Knowing Read Free Page B

take a shower.” She stormed up the stairs. He followed her, swearing under his breath.
    “What did you say?” she fired. She turned at the landing before the flight of stairs leading to their bedroom, and looked down into eyes staring up at her from three steps below.
    Jackson propped himself against the wood railing. “You got a one-track mind —”
    “So do you. It’s your way or no wa —”
    “That’s why it don’t do no good to tell you nothin’.”
    “What!”
    “ ’Cause you got your mind made up already. That’s why I can’t help you with nothin’.”
    “That’s not true, Jackson, and you know it.”
    “I can’t give you no suggestions because you got a one-track mind. I try to help, and tell you how I feel about things. Ain’t that important?” His eyes begged understanding.
    “Not when they differ from mine. Which is all the time. Are my feelings important to you?”
    He expelled a few exasperated breaths. He was getting nowhere fast. “Ginger, it’s always your way or no way. If you would just take time to listen to me once in a while, you’d save yourself a lot of time. You know I want to help.”
    As Ginger took a step down, her eyes grew wide in fury. Her right hand made a half-arc above his head. “How dare you! When’s the last time you offered to help me at anything?”
    “I don’t waste a lot of good advice on you because you don’t take it.” Jackson’s knuckles gripped the banister as he pushed himself up a step closer to Ginger.
    Her tone became angrier. “Because you’re manipulative, Jackson —”
    “No. No. You can’t recognize good advice. What you’re looking for is someone to support your thinking. Your imagination runs away —”
    It’s too bad you don’t have a little imagination outside the bedroom! Ginger thought to herself before shouting, “There isn’t a damned thing wrong with my mind.” She stepped back, gripping the rail.
    “Can’t you step outside yourself for a moment, look at the situation and be objective?”
    “I can’t. Suppose you try stepping inside yourself and being a little objective? I’d like you to tell me your shortcomings. You’re so quick to pinpoint mine. Lord have mercy, I can’t believe how well you know me. We should get along like two peas in a pod.”
    “Knowing you is one thing, being able to speak the truth to you about you is another thing altogether, Ginger.”
    “Are you willing to sit down for a few hours and listen to me tell you about yourself, like I’m supposed to be willing to let you tell me about me?”
    “I’m not going out trying to open a business, Ginger.”
    “Oh! So you don’t think Oprah had any personal problems when she started out?”
    Jackson crisscrossed his wrists on his knee and spat out the words “You ain’t Oprah.”
    Jackson had long since tired of hearing Ginger brag about Oprah’s success. Oprah was a goddess in Ginger’s eyes. Her mentor. She could do no wrong. If he happened to be in the room when her show came on, Jackson would get up and walk out, saying “I don’t want to hear this shit today.” That always pissed Ginger off, and he knew it. She liked him to watch the show with her. Every now and then he would. Whenever he thought Ginger was on the brink of coming up with another big idea, he knew where it came from. Oprah was causing problems in his home she wasn’t even aware of. There were probably a lot of other husbands out there who felt the same way he did: Leave my woman the way she was, I liked her better that way.
    “And you ain’t Michael Jordan either, but do you hear me complaining?” She knew that would piss him off, because he knew how she felt about Michael.
    He ignored that retort, and continued honing in on his point. “Listen to me for just a minute, baby. You have a good head on your shoulders. We both know that. But sometimes you get too far ahead of yourself — move too fast. If I don’t support your first thought then I’m