I Tried to Change So You Don't Have To by Loni Love

Author:Loni Love
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2020-05-05T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Things Only White People Get Away With

Being late

Not paying taxes

Not seasoning food

Yelling at the cops

Putting their kids on a leash

Posting forty-eight photos of the avocado toast they had for breakfast

“Forgetting” to pay the rent check on the first

Putting their dogs in strollers

Adding raisins to potato salad

* * *

Chapter 9

Trouble in Paradise: When the Good Life Feels All Wrong

The first thing I noticed when I stepped into Mrs. Peters’s tidy stucco house were the photographs. It was hard not to. They took up almost the entire far wall of the living room and were carefully arranged in a giant heart formation.

“I knew you’d like my display,” Mrs. Peters said, gesturing toward the wall of photos, a tribute to her son, Lavar, who also happened to be my first serious boyfriend. “My baby boy has always been so very handsome,” she added. “Girl, you got yourself a good man.”

“Yes, Mrs. Peters,” I said. “I sure do.”

Lavar and I had met in our senior year at Prairie View. At the time, I was the head of the Pan-Hellenic Council, the organization that coordinated all Greek life on campus. I’d called a council meeting of fraternity and sorority reps to discuss our upcoming step show. The meeting was already in full swing when Lavar, who was repping Phi Beta Sigma, strolled in.

“You’re late,” I said.

He glanced around: “You talking to me?”

“You see anyone else walking in fifteen minutes late?”

Lavar shot me a flirtatious smile. “If I’d known you were chairing this meeting,” he said, “I would have been here early.” We started dating the very next week.

Lavar was a business major with big plans; at Prairie View we called guys like Lavar “go-getters.”

“The goal is upper management,” he told me one day as we walked to the library. “I’m talking corner office, six-figure salary, a good woman, and a couple of kids. It’s the American dream and I’m gonna get it. Sounds good, right?”

“Yeah, Lavar,” I said. “It sounds perfect.”

I appreciated that Lavar had his eyes on the prize. But what I really liked was that his plans for the good life also included me. He said I was “wifey material” and that I was the perfect package of a “good mind” and “baby-making hips.” The way he talked about our future together made us sound like the next black power couple, like Cliff and Claire Huxtable. It was the kind of life that most girls from Brewster-Douglass Projects only dreamed about. There was only one hitch: before we settled down, I wanted to start my career.

Prairie View was known for its excellent engineering program. By the time I was in senior year, recruiters from companies all over the country looking for entry-level engineers were flying me out for interviews. Back then, there were very few women or minorities working in electrical engineering, which is what I was majoring in. For companies looking to diversify, I was a great candidate. They could check off two diversity boxes and call it a day.

I

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