God's Gift to Women Read Free Page A

promised to respect each other’s privacy. When there was no answer, I went in. Just as I expected, she had on her headphones with the music blasting. She was also wearing my long-sleeve denim shirt; it was her mother’s favorite. She must have taken it out of the box, because I had packed it the day before. Her back was to the door, so she didn’t see me coming.
    “Boo!” I shouted.
    She jumped, then spun around with her hand over her heart.
    “Daddy, you scared the mess out of me! I hate it when you do that!”
    “Well, I hate it when you listen to that rap music. Didn’t I tell you not to bring that garbage in this house?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Samantha, don’t play the dumb role, you’ve got the volume turned up so loud I can hear those filthy lyrics a mile away.” I pushed the eject button and removed the CD. “Jay-Z? Don’t tell me. This is a jazz group—right?”
    “It’s not mine.” She tried to sound convincing.
    “I don’t care who it belongs to. I don’t want you listening to that trash, do you understand?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Now, go downstairs and open the door for the movers. And put my shirt back where you found it. I don’t want you to mess around and forget it.”
    As she walked by me, with that pitiful look on her face, I popped her upside the head.
    “Ouch! What was that for?”
    “That’s for lying to me. Now, take your narrow behind downstairs.”
    As I looked around her room, I thought about all the good times we use to have playing hide-and-seek and one, two, three, red light. It was the only home Samantha had ever known. We moved in back in ’93, Sam had just turned three. I smiled as I looked around the room at the posters hanging on the walls. When she was five the walls were covered with Barney the dinosaur and
Sesame Street
characters; a huge poster of Big Bird used to hang over her bed. Samantha thought it protected her from the bogeyman.
    When she turned ten the posters had changed. Big Bird and Ernie had been replaced by Usher, Destiny’s Child, and Alicia Keys. She really loved Alicia’s music. It had rekindled her interest in playing the piano. “Thank God,” I said as I looked at the poster of Li’l Bow Wow. “We definitely have enough rappers.”
    As I was walking out of her room, I heard the phone ring.
    “I got it!” Samantha yelled from downstairs. I figured it was one of her girlfriends, so I went back to my bedroom to get dressed. I pulled out a pair of jeans and a Fubu T-shirt. Before I got dressed, I admired my physique in the full-length mirror on the closet door.
    “Julian, you need to lay off of those Krispy Kremes.” I pinched an inch of my love handles.
    It was easy to gain weight in the radio business. Sitting in one spot five days a week, four hours a night had expanded my waistline and everything else. I tried to keep it in check by playing ball and hitting the weights as often as possible.
    “Never let your stomach get bigger than your ass.” I began doing crunches. “There’s nothing a woman hates more than a man whose butt is bigger than hers.”
    I did two sets of fifty and then I admired my four-pack in the mirror. At thirty-nine I had accepted that my six-pack was gone forever. I flexed one last time by doing my Bruce Lee impersonation from
Return of the Dragon. “Whaa!”
    At that moment, I heard snickering in the background. It was Samantha. She was standing in the doorway watching me flex in my drawers.
    “Ahem.” She cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Jackie Chan, you have a call.”
    “For your information, that’s Bruce Lee,” I said, feeling embarrassed. “By the way, I thought we agreed to knock before entering.”
    “Yes, Bruce—I mean, Dad.” She laughed. “But you were screaming so loud I thought you fell in the shower.”
    “Just give me the phone, you little comedian. Who is it?”
    “It’s Denise. She’s looking for Uncle Eddie.”
    “Thank you, my little secretary.” I slowly