Chapter 4 - Cheryl's Song

Cheryl describes her earlier life and relationship to Mike. 1st 3 chapters online at UntilTheSunComesUp.com

NEW STUDENT

August 1976 - Maryland State University

He came to me as in a dream, a shining example of loves I’d seen. Out of the haze of my work routine, the man spoke.

“I want that.”

He was standing in my line, the express checkout at our campus bookstore. This muscular, deep-brown-skinned specimen, with just enough of a hard edge to that handsome face and a funny D.C. twang on the end of each of his words, was one of the many students returning from summer break. Between gathering books for classes and the necessities they’d need to live on campus for an entire semester"most spent over $700"their one concern was ending this last “to-do” my checkout line represented so they wouldn’t miss another moment of their precious few free days before classes began.

He pointed at the football jersey I was holding but looked at every inch of my face, studied my features so hard I blushed.

“Sonny don’t come cheap,” I said.

He was after, though his eyes fixed on mine, a special edition, Washington Redskins Sonny Jurgensen football jersey. The customer before had decided to put it back, swayed by the doubts stirred from idle time in long lines.

“I decided my ‘friend’ ain’t been good enough to me to spend all that on him,” she’d said.

“That’s a special edition,” I told the new would-be purchaser. “Don’t see one of those everyday.”

“Tell me about it,” he said, eyes never dropping below my neckline.

I turned the jersey inside to expose the hefty price tag. That’s when he looked behind. Two guys in fraternity jackets were staring. One mouthed the words, “Cut it,” and slashed a forefinger across his throat. My customer paid for the jersey.

“Friends of yours?” I asked.

His eyes said our conversation wasn’t over, but he took his change, grasping my hand gently as if he’d caught a lifeline made of sand. As quickly as I warmed to his touch, he withdrew those gentle hands, gathered his new prize and other school supplies, and left.

That was my introduction to the secretive world of college fraternity and sorority life.

Maryland State University had become my new home. I’d come from Chicago with the expectation college would feel like home. It didn’t. I felt a million miles away from my dad and even my aunt who lived less than an hour from campus.

I grew up with Dad, the man neighbors came to resent for his after-midnight, hundred proof concertos, sung loud and off-key to the torment of every dog within earshot, their only defense to howl and whine as they bounced like dolphins, leaping over and over in vain attempts to clear the tops of their fenced barriers and fulfill the neighborhoods’ collective prayer someone would finally shut Sam Fields up.

Dad never found his keys. His drunken homecomings usually ended with me talking him inside and waving apologies to the few onlookers. No one shouted back. The dogs were the only ones who didn’t know Sam Fields may have been a terrible singer, but he was a crack shot.

I spent many a summer in Washington, D.C. My aunt, Dad’s sister, lived there. She loved me and my dad, but knew his lifestyle. The Navy was Dad’s life. When we lost Mom we only had one another. I learned quickly Dad’s way of handling me was not Mom’s. He trained new recruits every day and treated me the same. It was all he knew.

Aunt"I call her, “Auntie”"Rose was my savior. When Daddy couldn’t understand how a little girl thinks or what I needed, Auntie stepped in.

“Sam, this girl is doing your laundry, ironing military creases, cooking you breakfast, dinner, and filling a lunch pail for you before she goes off to kindergarten, and you’re going to slap this five-year-old? I’m not having it, Sam. I will take her out of this house and back with me so fast your head will spin. The way we got beat was wrong, Sam. I won’t see you do this child like that.”

Aunt Rose stood in the middle of my father’s kitchen, folded her arms across her chest, stuck one foot out, flung her head back, and dared her brother to move. I stood behind, peeking out, fingers locked in her belt loops, blood still oozing from the gash over my temple where I’d hit the corner of the bathroom sink, falling face first after my father’s slap. He thought that was the right way to punish me for getting out of bed 20 minutes late.

I don’t remember ever seeing Daddy show emotion except that day. He knelt beside Aunt Rose, pulled me around from behind, and said, “Rose, never say you’re going to take my Cheryl. She’s all I have.” Daddy brushed aside the tear forming in his eye, held me tight and, shaking his head, said, “She’s all I got now. This little soldier is the only Fields left.”

Dad winced at the blood I allowed to flow towards my eye as I maintained what he’d taught of how to stand at attention. My father dropped his head, then pulled his starched, just-cleaned, spare dress whites off the table and gently wiped blood from the gash. I stood still, not knowing what he wanted.

“You help Aunt Rose today, OK, Cheryl? You go out shopping with her, OK? She knows what to buy you. OK?”

“OK, Daddy.”

“OK.”

With that, my only parent grabbed the empty lunch pail and walked out the door. I worried he’d be hungry.

Auntie tried to explain how people mix anger with love sometimes. I was more concerned with the gray Mercury sedan pulling out of the driveway and the man steering carefully around my dolls.

“Thanks for not hitting my dolls,” I shouted. “Barbie told me she loves you and Ken.”

I saw my dad smile.

I spent every high school summer in D.C. Aunt Rose had connections on K Street through her paralegal girlfriends and their network of attorneys. I was always good for a summer job. Some of the most powerful attorneys in the world"that is the highfliers who don’t have offices there already"call K Street’s law firms to help gain influence over congress.

There were no skyscrapers on D.C.’s streets. Other than the absence of a real skyline and the deep police presence"D.C. Police, Secret Service, U.S. Capitol Police, and it seemed a police force for every government building"D.C reminded me of Chicago.

My Aunt Rose worked the night shift. That left me free to get into a lot more than I chose. I was home most nights, just like back home.

With only myself to take care of, my prayer for peace was answered during my high school summers in D.C. Sam Fields was free to roam Chicago’s streets with no one to keep him in check. No matter how good that peace got, no matter how many attorneys, bellboys, grocery clerks, or cute guys told this shy, tomboy-at-heart teen something I had made them come over and say nice things, my nights didn’t end until the phone rang.

“Home, baby.”

“Your home, Dad?”

“How’s Rose?”

“Working.”

“You get some sleep, Cheryl.”

“Love you, Dad. You get some sleep too.”

“Way ahead of you.”

“Night, and thanks for remembering to call.”

“This is why I come home.”

He always made me smile.

“Call me tomorrow, Daddy.”

“OK, songbird. Dad misses that beautiful voice of yours floating around this house.”

“I’ll be home before long.”

“I promise I’ll be right here.”

“I know. That’s why I come home, Daddy.”

“Night, Cheryl.”

“Night, Daddy.”

 

September

 

She had coarse, close-cropped hair, her Afro a sharp contrast to the freckles dotting her anxious face. My unexpected roommate, Susan, had finally overcome her dread of cramming herself into my single room, a temporary solution offered by Resident Housing as a way out of the dormitory lobby she and 16 other freshmen girls shared.

As a Resident Assistant, I was the only student on the floor with a dorm room to herself. My supervisor, Mrs. Feingold, asked me to help ease the swell of unhoused freshmen. School officials weren’t prepared for the 40 more students who would choose Maryland State’s housing than we’d had dorm beds readied.

“Come on in,” I said. “I’ve got two or three ideas cooking for this space. I see you like red.”

Susan brought two red suit jackets, a bag of her favorite red velvet cupcakes, two pairs of red dress shoes, size 6, one suitcase, and a red gift-wrapped box.

“For you,” she said.

“Oh,” I said, “that was so nice.”

She would melt the formality I learned being raised in a military home. I learned kindness during our two years as roommates. Susan was the first friend I ever called sister. She broke through my fear of falling short of Daddy’s high standard by lightening me up with her laughter every time I got stressed out. Our room soon became my new home.

Most of our freshman classes were the same, although our schedules differed. Susan was a night owl and hated early morning classes. She had been raised in Baltimore, less than an hour’s drive from campus, but snuck her underage self into night clubs as far away as New York.

We struggled to understand the same subjects. Our public high educations didn’t include the level of math, chemistry, or general science Maryland State demanded of freshman. Half our study time was spent catching up on material others considered review. Susan started from the position nobody gave her anything. If she didn’t know how to solve a problem in College Math because her Geometry skills were weak, she studied both subjects until she got it.

I knew when I saw her kiss the nose of the Betty Boop doll she’d given me, the one hiding under the red gift wrapping the first day she’d shown up at my door, our study time was over.

“Gotta go, Boo,” she’d say, and my roomie was out the door.

Susan didn’t study after dark. She had too many places to go.

I stayed up for Daddy’s midnight call, slept until sunrise, and was done with classes by 2. Part of me wanted to dress up, hop in the car, and find myself in the middle of one of Susan’s “flirting almost got me in trouble” stories. I stayed on call for our floor. I didn’t mind. As Resident Assistant, I had to be prepared to talk my girls through the most harrowing experiences, from red dye in their clothes to rape.

 

October

 

“Why do you keep running into the hall to answer the phone, Susan? Are you OK?”

The flood of emotional swings our relationship took that first semester entered through the hallway phone, the doorway to the outside world shared by the majority of us who did not have a phone in our rooms.

“It’s nothing,” Susan said, hanging up as she hid a list she’d scratched off. She sat on her bed, back to me, and wouldn’t discuss any detail of the whispered call.

It started as a trickle, a few hushed conversations, late night phone calls that always left Susan in a panic over some suddenly all-important task. She wanted to let me in.

“Don’t be mad at me, Cheryl,” she said. “I can’t talk. People would get hurt.”

After two weeks, during which the girl who’d become my first sister became almost impossible to bear, Susan seemed to come back to our normal life, the openness we’d shared.

Then she brought into our room to sleep on our floor some guy she said wasn’t her boyfriend. He was in the hall when she peeked through our half-opened door and asked. I didn’t blink.

“Not happening,” I said.

That set our relationship back to “Hi” and “Bye.”

 

November

 

This continued"phone calls, food being prepared and taken by rushed women to whom I was not introduced, secret meetings terminated when I walked into our room"for another two weeks.

When Susan left her Chemistry exam in plain sight on her bed, a “45-F” circled in red, ran into the nearest shower stall in the bathroom across the hall, curled herself into a ball, and began to wail like someone died, I decided for her.

Enough was enough.

“This whatever-it-is has to let you sleep and study,” I said, cradling Susan in my right arm as I lifted her left over my shoulder and helped her out of that dirty shower stall. “You can do anything you want except fail out of here, Susan. I learned so much watching you, how smart you are and how you don’t let problems beat you. My professors don’t even know I started the semester behind. You were my friend, Susan. You need a friend.”

We stopped at the door so Susan could straighten her shoe. We caught the image at the same time. Susan stared in the bathroom mirror, for the first time seeing the dark circles, perpetual frown, and tired eyes that had taken over what had been the cheerful face of my beautiful roommate.

“Let’s get super-Susan back on her feet,” I said.

She fastened her tennis shoe heel and then burst out in laughter.

“That’s bad,” she said.

I thought she felt I was taking things too seriously until I followed her eyes. We laughed so hard we almost fell on the floor at the sight of her one red and one off-red mismatched shoes.

“You were so out of it when you blew out of here this morning you’re lucky your socks match,” I said.

She seemed to release a whole month’s tension laughing at those shoes.

“Help me?” she asked.

“Give me my sister back?”

“Deal.”

We walked out of there arm-in-arm and had one of our longest talks.

“Wait until one of those fools shows up,” I said, pacing back and forth in the six-step, arm’s-length space that served as the only open living area in our cramped room.

I had convinced Susan to spend all night studying her Chemistry. She would hole up in the all-night section of the library, and I’d stop being angry over what she’d shared and get a few hours sleep before meeting her there. We agreed to catch up with her other classes no matter how long it took. I paced back and forth trying to sort this new world Susan had revealed to me. I finally feel asleep, determined Susan would no longer be anybody’s “Sweetheart.”

That was the night that changed my life.

The banging on the door started in my dream. Dad and Mom were dancing their way across the bowling lanes at the Naval base bowling alley. They jumped from lane to lane as the whole alley became a cloud. Each lane was a gold piano key that rose to meet their footsteps.

Dad wore a black topcoat and hat, the stove-pipe kind he tipped each time he held Mom’s hand, leaned back, and gazed into her eyes. Mom’s white dress became the cloud under the bowling alley, settling each time they touched cheek-to-cheek and nestled into one another’s arms. I sat in the booth by lane two, my voice capturing the tune the gold keys played as I happily serenaded the lovers.

Some man with a gun began to bang on the bowling alley door and call my mother’s name. I turned to look, and Susan’s empty bed came into focus. I rolled over and pressed my eyes closed to recapture the dream.

I had to stop that man.

“Susan! Let me in. I need your help. Come on, Susan.”

I buried my face in the pillow and covered my head with the blanket as if it was a soldier’s helmet during a bombing raid. I lay still, hoping to recover my dad and mom.

They were gone.

“I don’t believe this,” I spat at the barking door.

I started to yell, Susan’s not here, idiot, but I wanted to see this enemy face-to-face. The same fury surged that had welled as I listened to Susan’s story of spending time, tears, her last dollar, and of alienating her friendships while trying to help a group of young men at our school who were stupid enough to let someone they called “Big Brother” beat them up.

Now one of them was at my door.

As I reached for the door, the tip of my white bra shown despite the checkered wool pajamas. I decided to wrap, toga-style, a hastily plucked bed sheet around to avoid giving the wrong impression. I snatched our door open and just as quickly moved my entire body to block the opening. These fraternity people popped through just-opened doors like they’d been naked in a snowstorm.

“Don’t you know what time it is?” I asked.

He stood and stared like he was the one awakened from a dream, mouth wide open, body leaned back like he’d shown up at Snow White’s door and King Kong answered.

“They told me Susan’s roommate was pretty,” he recovered, “but now, seeing for myself...wait, weren’t you the one at the Student Union? That smile...Sonny’s jersey. Oh, I remember you. That skin...your skin is as smooth as a summer night, moonlight over the water. Those eyes, like they came out of a dream, drinking me in. I saw those eyes for weeks. I’ll never forget. I said that day I’d never forget. What’s your name?”

There was something in the way this one saw me, like he saw me, beyond what others see, into who I was. My anger melted. I remembered him. It wasn’t because of some line. God knows I’ve heard enough.

It was where those eyes went when I first met him. Their gaze didn’t race like so many men’s below my chin, but twinkled round my nose jumping from eye to eye and back again, resting on the corners of lips forming in me first a grin then a surrendered smile as the trial judge in my heart found him genuine. My guard came down as his appreciation settled in.

I was blushing again.

“Cheryl. And don’t let the smile fool you. It’s terrible the way you people have been treating Susan.”

“Cheryl, you can’t tell me this wasn’t meant to happen. We’ve been on social probation"no outside contacts"since the pledge program started. I was going"can I come in? No telling how many women in this dorm have reported some Black man in combat boots and an army jacket running around at 3 a.m. I hear you don’t take kindly to visitors. Make an exception?”

He got another smile.

“Get in before you get me fired.”

He came in, and I motioned towards the wall.

“I gotta stand in the corner?”

I turned, stepped over Susan’s bed, and sat on mine. He was still in the doorway when I looked up. I nodded towards the corner.

“Go on.”

He threw his hands up, his shoulders drooped, and he began dragging his feet like he was walking his last mile. He stopped short of the corner, dropped his head, and snapped his fingers.

“This may spoil my chances, but if I don’t get back with two six-packs of beer, there’ll be hell to pay. I’d stay, but they’re already back there paying while the brothers wait. You are so like no woman I ever met, I forgot why I came.”

I started to ask, Who are “they,” but laughed when I realized what was happening.

This Negro wanted money.

“If I give you-?”

“Five dollars.”

I shook my head, cutting my eyes at him and flashing a smile of appreciation for the show I was starting to believe he’d put on.

“If I give you five dollars will you let my roommate have her nights back so she can study and not fail out of here?”

He looked me in the eyes and pointed his finger at my doorknob.

“I was about to tell you my first stop after I finish the pledge program was going to be your checkout line at the Student Union. I don’t want your five dollars. That ain’t right. Don’t confuse what I’m after. I don’t want your money. I want you. I’m going to keep turning that doorknob and asking to talk to you. I just needed to have this happen again, to have the whole world melt away when I’m talking to you. Just tell me you feel that too. Don’t you? Don’t leave me hanging. I know you do.”

He cupped a fist over his mouth to stifle a smile, knowing what I was thinking, but wondering what I’d do.

“Do you?”

The few seconds I took to decide between admit and hide saw every emotion register on his face: joy, horror, hope, pride. We both leaned forward, he waiting for my answer, me trying to keep it inside. I was so caught off guard by this whole thing I didn’t have the sense to lie.

“I do,” I said. “I feel it too.”

He extended his hand.

“Mike.”

He waited for me to come to him. I stayed seated and held out my hand. 

“Mike Johnson,” he said.

I stepped over Susan’s bed, and he walked to meet me halfway.

“Cheryl Fields.”

We shook.

He turned to leave, and I held our handshake, yanked him back towards me, and raised my index finger.

“Hold on,” I said. “I’ll make you a better deal.”

I let go of his hand and reached into my bottom drawer.

“Hold your hand out,” I said.

 He did, and I slipped a five into his palm.

“I’ll be your Sweetheart if you promise to treat us better. Can I count on you, Mike Johnson?”

He wrapped those large, surprisingly gentle hands around mine, more firmly this time, and pulled me towards him. His eyes begged me to surrender my lips. Our heads tilted, eyes filling with visions of our first kiss.

My palm caught his chest just as I was losing my head.

“I’m a long-term project, Mister. You got that type of time?”

He put his hand over my palm, slid his grip to my wrist, and brought my outstretched hand to his lips. My body shivered as his kiss moistened the inside of my palm as lightly as the dance steps he’d intruded on. He slowly guided my trembling palm until it was placed firmly over his heart. Mike Johnson looked in my eyes, then over his shoulder at my doorknob.

“That doorknob-”

Mike stopped when he noticed I’d begun to listen to the steady rhythm of his heart beating hard as mine. He closed his eyes, I closed mine, and he spoke again.

“Every..”

He said each word on his next heartbeat.

“day..I’m..going..to..try..to..make..you..mine.”

I opened my eyes. He opened his at my next line.

“Take your time.”

“Every..day.”

“I’ll be here,” I said. “Don’t lose your way.”

“I won’t.”

I took my palm from his heart, opened his hand, neatly folded the five that was inside and motioned towards the door.

“They’re waiting.”

He let out a long breath and walked towards the door.

“So, you’ll be my Sweetheart?”

“I don’t know what I’m getting myself into, but I trust those eyes. Can I trust you?”

“Cheryl, I won’t ever stop this.”

Three days later, I was a Kappa Sweetheart.