How Stella Got Her Groove Back Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  How Stella Got Her Groove Back

  A SIGNET Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1996 by Terry McMillan

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 9781101414989

  A SIGNET BOOK™

  SIGNET Books first published by The Penguin Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  SIGNET and the “S” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic Edition: October, 2003

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  I HADN’T PLANNED

  “WHO’RE YOU GOING

  IT WILL TAKE

  STELLA, YOU OUGHT

  I RUN AT

  MAYBE THEY ACCIDENTALLY

  WHEN I WAKE

  OKAY. SO WHEN

  “I’M REALLY BEGINNING

  I FEEL BAD.

  I CANNOT BEAR

  “IT AIN’T NOTHING

  MY ARMS ARE

  I JUST KNOW

  “MOM, WHERE’S WINSTON?”

  “YOU JUST DON’T

  “ONE TWO, ONE

  I’M SCARED, WORRIED

  IT IS LABOR

  “DON’T BRING HIM

  “YOU WANT TO

  “YOU SURE YOUR

  Also by Terry McMillan

  Mama

  Disappearing Acts

  Breaking Ice:

  An Anthology of Contemporary

  African-American Fiction (editor)

  Waiting to Exhale

  for Jonathan P.

  Acknowledgments

  I am totally grateful to everybody who converged and helped provide me with the time, space, confidence and love to write this book: my son, Solomon, has been my biggest motivator and supporter—I’m glad he’s my child and buddy; my agent, Molly Friedrich, for her continued faith and patience over these last few years; my old editor, Dawn Seferian, who I really miss, but also to my new editor, Carole DeSanti, who is so smart and intuitive and really understands authors which is why I’m glad to have her as my advocate; to my assistant, Judi Fates, for her dedication, hard work and patience; and last, but very much at the top of my list, are my mama, Madeline Tillman, and my very best friend forever, Doris Jean Austin: I miss you both.

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to actual events, real people, living or dead, or to real locales are intended only to give the novel a sense of reality and authenticity. Other names, character, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts, is entirely coincidental.

  I HADN’T PLANNED on going anywhere. All I knew was that as much as I loved my son, I was glad to see him disappear after those doors to Gate 3 closed this morning. Quincy’s on his way to Colorado Springs to visit his daddy and now I have the house all to myself. Finally, some peace and quiet. And three whole weeks of it. Of course there are a million things I want to do and now I can do them without being distracted. Without hearing “Mom, can I . . . ?!” every fifteen seconds.

  Thank God it’s Saturday. And thank God it’s summertime. School’s out. No more three-day-a-week Little League practice (rain or shine) or those long-ass games. No week-on/week-off revolving carpooling and forgetting it’s my week and being afraid to call the parents of the abandoned children who are all standing in the rain for an hour after I forgot them because they are all—including my own son—too dumb to call somebody else. And thank the Lord there’s nowhere I have to be: no can’t-wait portfolios to review and I don’t have to pay attention to any of the four computers in my office, I mean I can actually be off-line for a change and I have no meetings no planes to catch, nada.

  I’ve got about a hundred books I’ve been meaning to read since last year and I figure now I can probably read them all. I’ve got a house full of trees and straggly vines that need to be transplanted which is what I’m planning to do today but of course when I go out to the garage I have no big pots and just a drop of potting soil and not a single pair of those gloves with the little rubber dots on the fingertips, all of which means I have to go to Home Depot. I hate going to Home Depot because I always end up going down the plant rug toilet or sink aisles when I have enough plants rugs toilets and sinks already. But by the time I get to the checkout I usually have to exchange my cart for one of those flatbed numbers and then I realize I didn’t drive the truck so I have to have them put my stuff to the side until I come back and as I’m driving home it occurs to me that they’re probably going to switch some of my merchandise and not think I’ll notice but by the time I pull the truck up to their automatic doors I’m usually totally pissed at myself for buying all this shit I don’t need because despite the fact that I am not a landscaper handywoman or carpenter I have all these useful new tools with which to express my fantasies of do-it-yourselfness and what is really bothering me is that I have most likely spent somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand bucks which seems to be my going rate here and at Costco and which is also why I am right this minute changing my mind about going today. I’ll go tomorrow. With a list and the promise to buy only what’s on it.

  I look around the house and realize that the housekeeper does a pretty good job—for a sixty-one-year-old Peruvian man—of keeping it clean. He fixes everything that breaks around here, and since he is ultrareligious and I think maybe even a participating Buddhist, out of respect I sort of watch my mouth in my own home. He cleans under and behind everything which is the main reason I have no Saturday morning cleaning to do. I believe from the bottom of my heart that dusting polishing and vacuuming are entirely too tedious never-ending and boring tasks and there are so many other things I would rather be doing which is why I hired Paco in the first place. He is worth the money.

  I open all the blinds and notice that the windows are pretty grungy-looking from all the rain we’ve had here this past spring. Flooding and mud slides wiped out hundreds of homes all over northern California and I felt lucky to be way out here in this boring little valley. I don’t do windows which is why I make a mental note to call Of Course We Do Windows first thing on Monday. Paco tried doing them once but he couldn’t get up high outside and if he fell and hurt himself I would feel terrible.

  I go into the kitchen and make myself a latte and as I stare out into the backyard the first thing I see is Phoenix, our free-from-the-pound chocolate Lab, swimming in our black-bottom pool as if it’s his. Then I look over at what is now a storage shed that I was told was once a guesthouse and then I turned it into a studio but of course that was when I used to be this creative person and I had energy and a thriving spirit and I would design and conceive and sometimes actually manufacture what I used to call functional sculpture aka handcrafted furniture that people in fact solicited and paid me real money to mak
e for them out of everything from aluminum copper steel wood whatever, but then it became so hard to like pay the rent and then this husband I ended up saying yes to when I should’ve just said no convinced me that I could use that MBA I got and like combine it with that MFA I also had which of course all by itself was worthless and who could afford this eccentric one-of-a-kind so-called furniture when a normal person could like just go to Thomasville or Levitz or Ikea and of course I didn’t know how to mix commerce with art and so I failed at working with my hands. I went with the brain and forged figures inside my economic head and did the total business beat. I have been doing this now for like hell I don’t even know how many years but it is another reason why right this minute, looking out at the dog at that clear black water at the little salmon-colored bungalow where I used to pray and dream and invent, I am getting a sudden overwhelming urge to run the vacuum through my mental house and chill out, sit down long enough to smell the cosmos the zinnias the coral bells hell the fucking coffee (which I actually can smell right now), so when Quincy comes home I’ll be more poised balanced composed than I’ve been in years. The generic term for it is relaxed. Maybe I can even acquire some of that stuff commonly known as patience that I haven’t had in a long time. I’d like to be able to sit down next to my son and watch one of those moronic TV shows that he’s always begging me to watch but after a few minutes I always find myself jumping up to do something during the commercials and I repeat this up-and-down business at least five times during a mere half-hour show which means I’m not exactly setting a good example for someone who’s always telling her child how he needs to learn to sit still long enough to give something his undivided attention. All I do when I get up is move things. Dishes go in the dishwasher. Or they come out. Never-read magazines newspapers and last week’s mail are tossed into the compactor for crushing. Clothes pulled out of the washer get pushed into the dryer. Now let’s fold. Make stacks. Everything has to be in its place. Because if I don’t do it, it won’t get done.

  But I’m tired of jumping up. Tired of running. I would like to be able to just sit there with my son without moving without wishing I were somewhere else doing something else without thinking about something else and I’d like to just hold his hand or put my arm around his narrow shoulders because I know in a few more years he won’t want me to sit on the couch with him and watch anything and he probably won’t want me to touch him.

  I walk from the kitchen into the family room and sit on the red leather love seat and I look around and see all this color all these different textures—those golden maple floors those celery concrete floors these purple plastered walls that teal suede sofa that black oak pool table that eggplant leather floor in my office and this silver slate under my feet—and I am proud that over the years I have made my funky little California castle suitable to my needs my tastes and I have rigged equipped and outfitted it in such an unorthodox way that it might actually be impossible to sell even though I am not even thinking of moving anywhere but for some reason today like right this minute I am feeling imposed upon by all of it as if I went too far and now all this color all these juxtaposing textures are backfiring instead of soothing as they always have been even until just yesterday but not today and as I sit here and watch Phoenix shaking himself dry, I decide that today maybe I should shake myself up a little too.

  But how? And where do you start? I look down at the coffee table and notice Quincy forgot the stationery I bought him so he could write to me and his homies while he’s away. Maybe I should write a few long-overdue letters or something to some folks. That’s it! Yeah, I’ll write to a few long-lost relatives and to some folks I haven’t seen or talked to in ages. Just little notes. Some maybe-you-think-I’ve-forgotten-you-but-here’s-a-gesture-to-let-you-know I-haven’t notes. Hell, I remember when I used to write tons of letters. Now who has time to even call anymore? A lot of times when I do call I’m secretly hoping the person won’t be home and that I’ll get the answering machine because I know there’s something else I could or should be doing that’s a helluva lot more productive like washing clothes or doing something in the kitchen but the portable phone is too staticky in the laundry room and kitchen which means I have to stand in one place and talk which is why it’s so much easier to leave a two-minute message (if they’ve got a decent machine) than it is to talk for a half hour or longer, depending on where they fall in your chart of closeness, trying to cover what has happened to you both over the last week month year or two.

  I know I’m not alone because I’m forever getting messages from estranged friends and relatives who are pissed because I haven’t returned their phone calls from whenever and they say things like, “Girl, I could be dead and you wouldn’t know it what kind of fucking friend are you Stella we used to be close did I do something that I don’t know about” and I shake my head no or they say we just had a baby or I finally got my divorce and I just wanted you to know that I don’t live in Atlanta or Memphis or Los Angeles anymore, and oh by the way, I’ve got a brand-new grand-baby and did you get the pictures if you did you didn’t say nothing about how cute he is and hell, he’s got three teeth now or he’s walking or in kindergarten and this is the MCI operator with a collect call from BENNIE please press one if you accept and two if you decline and sir the party’s not at home and he says okay but can I leave a message anyway and then there is a click and he is just one of my many relatives who call from the penitentiary but then there’s hey yeah Stella this is your cousin Rafiki As-Salaam-Alaikum my sister peace be unto you all praises are due to Allah and hey I know you surprised I ain’t calling collect but my lady let me use her calling card for a month and you still ain’t sent me no pictures of you and I’m still working on my own defense and I was wondering if you could send me fity dollars for some toiletries and such cause my mama ain’t been up to see me in over six months she mad at me and my lady ain’t got no mo transpo to get way out here and I been in the hole for the past month for something I ain’t even did but it’s all good and anyway let me know if you can do that and baby, this is your aunt Junie calling and I don’t know if you know it or not but Miss Willamae’s in the hospital and I know you remember her cause she used to baby-sit you when you was a baby and you know she got cataracts and she had to have that operation finally that she been putting off because of her having all them insurance problems and everythang but you remember her she’s Miss Bessie’s cousin’s sister from her first marriage to Silbert what used to live on the corner of Moak and Fortieth Street, right down the street from Ms. Lucy when she was living and anyway you went to school with her granddaughter but I can’t remember her name right now but pray for her even though she’s doing much better now and I just wanted to touch base don’t get to talk to you much no more and how is Quincy these days? I bet he’s tall as you and how old is he now (there is a long pause because she’s waiting for an answer) and like a fool I say, “He’s eleven and a half, Aunt Junie,” but even though you don’t stay in touch I want you to know that you both are in my prayers and the Lord is watching over you and I’m gon’ call your sisters as soon as I hang up since the rates is low. Love you, baby. I wonder if her machine is gon’ get all this and Stella? Did you get this whole message, sugar?

  I also don’t get very many letters either—maybe five or six a year and that’s counting the preaddressed prestamped envelopes I give Quincy when he’s away at camp—and shoot, I know at least a thousand people and at least five hundred of them live more than five hundred miles away. Far enough away to write.

  It just feels like nothing is the way it used to be anymore and it’s not that I’m on some nostalgic trip or anything but I just wonder if I’m feeling like this because I can’t believe I’m really forty-fucking-two years old because people tell me all the time I don’t look forty-two and to be honest I don’t have any immediate plans of really acquiring the look if there is a way to look when you’re forty-two and I certainly don’t feel forty-two even though I don’t know how I’
m supposed to feel being forty-two and what I do know is that I’m not angry about being forty-two but it feels like I’m slowly but surely catching up to my mama because she was only forty-two when she died and I’m thinking how is this possible that I could ever be the same age as mama? I wonder if I could secretly be having a midlife crisis?

  Ever since Walter and I split up I guess I have been a little numb. I don’t dislike him or hate him for being who he is but I certainly stopped loving him because of it. He bored me to death. Living with him was like living in a museum. It was drafty, full of vast open spaces and slippery floors. He wasn’t a bad person, but I just didn’t care for his attitudes and later on his principles turned out to be on the opposite end of the spectrum from mine. He wanted me to be just like him. I wanted him to respect our differences. I ended up telling him that he should’ve married himself, and later that he should try fucking himself. And this is what we basically argued about. Who we were. We never seemed to come to any neutral turf where both of our feelings and positions were acceptable or at least tolerable. We sort of kept this demerit scoreboard for the last eight years, until we ran out of space. He and I both knew that our time was up, so we didn’t make a big tadoo about it, we just agreed to stop this before we ended up hating each other.

  We were both running on high octane and barely had time for sex anymore and when we did we were both so exhausted the thought of actually being tender and sensuous and playful was not something that even crossed our minds. Or hearts. We just did it to get off, to relieve some of the tension. Some of the stresses and strains of the day that we brought home with us. At times I felt like his prostitute and I’m sure on occasion he probably felt that way too. It got old. And after a few years of this, I started wondering if I’d ever feel any excitement or passion toward him or any man again, and now that it’s been a few years since our divorce, I’m pretty much feeling the same way.