Full Figured 9

Book 9: Full Figured

by Carl Weber, Michel Moore, Paradise Gomez

Genres: African American; African American Urban

Synopsis

New York Times bestselling author Carl Weber has tantalized us with his provocative and sexy plus size characters in Something on the Side, Big Girls Do Cry and Torn Between Two Lovers. Now Weber has taken on the role of not just writer but mentor and editor with his highly successful Full Figured series. In this installment, Weber pens his own story, bringing back a familiar and well-liked character, the voluptuous bad girl Coco Brown, who is once again looking for love in all the wrong places. Urban Books author Ms. Michel Moore introduces us to Tami, another plus-size bad girl, in “This Can’t Be Life.” Often judged by her weight and not the size of her heart, Tami wants the same type of devoted love her younger, but much smaller in size, sister Tori has with her spouse. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem meant to be, until a “mysterious” accident brings her and her brother-in-law closer than ever. While Tori fights to live, Tami fights for the newfound love of her life—her sister’s husband.

Release date: July 28, 2015

Publisher: Urban Renaissance

Print pages: 304

Sample

I felt like a princess as I sat in front of the first man I had ever loved—the only man I had ever loved and the only man who had ever loved me. Any who came after him would have a hard act to follow. Victor Long, owner of Long’s Soul Food chain, was charming, sophisticated, and just like his last name, so were his pockets. Hands down, in my eyes he was the most successful, hardworking man in the entire state of California. Who gave a damn about real estate tycoons and A-list celebrities? None of them could hold a candle to the wealth and riches of Victor Long. Not monetarily, of course, because God knows some of the properties in L.A. that were going for millions weren’t worth the drywall they were made with, and I could name at least five overpaid actors. But Victor was rich in other things. Things that mattered. Love, gentleness, selflessness, kindness: those were some of the things kept in the bank of Victor Long’s heart and head.

I looked down at his hands reached across to the center of the table, cupping mine into his strong, thick ones. I felt so special and so secure, like I was his only girl. I looked into his soft eyes, knowing that I wasn’t his only girl. That was something I’d have to live with though. He loved who he loved. Who was I to hold that against him?

He could do no wrong as far as I was concerned. He loved hard, so I endured and loved him anyway. Most would say that I was biased in my opinion about Victor. As I should be. After all, isn’t a little girl’s daddy supposed to be the first man she ever loves and the first man to show her just exactly what love is? My daddy—the Victor Long. I couldn’t ever imagine having to live without him.

“I just wish your mother were here to see all your accomplishments,” my father said with a sigh as we sat on the patio at Gladstone’s Restaurant, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Other than my father’s restaurants, with its menu created from my deceased mother’s recipes, Gladstone’s was my favorite spot to eat.

“I know, Daddy.” I squeezed his hand and noticed his eyes beginning to water. He pulled away and turned his head before a tear could fall. I’d never seen my father cry before, not even at the funeral of my mother: his first wife and the love of his life. He was too busy being strong for me. I knew he was in so much pain losing the woman who had been his high school sweetheart and the woman who stood side by side with him when he opened the first restaurant. Ironically, Daddy’s credit hadn’t been so great at the time, so it was my mother who had to take out the business loan.

Although my mother had been dead since I’d turned five, thirteen years ago, my father still missed her. Although my memories were becoming vague as the years passed, I missed her too.

My father used his hand to briskly dab away any tears threatening to fall. “She’s looking down on you, though.” He looked up in the clear blue sky.

“I know what you mean,” I murmured, glancing upward, envisioning the angel-white silhouette of my mother hovering over us, her body dipping in and out of the puffy clouds. It broke my heart when my dad would talk about Mom. This was supposed to be a happy, celebratory moment, so I decided to change the subject. “I thank you for taking the time to have our father-daughter day. It reminds me of . . .” I allowed my words to remain tucked away in my voice box. I was about to bring her up, the other woman who was now my father’s second wife. I hated to say it, but how I wished his current wife could trade places with my mother and be six feet under.

Before Glendora came into my father’s life, I didn’t have to take the scraps of time he had left after catering to her every beck and call. There was a time when father-daughter days weren’t so few and far between, but my stepmother’s last name might as well have been Timex, because she clocked my father’s every second.

Just thinking about wife number two made me lose my appetite. I pulled my hand from my father’s and pushed my plate away. This dinner was not going the way I had imagined it would. It was hard trying to stay upbeat. This morning when I woke up I’d told myself that I was absolutely not going to feel sad today. This was supposed to be a celebration dinner for my receiving a score of 2200 on the SAT. I’d also received acceptance letters from several top universities. I actually did have a lot to be happy about. Now if only someone could give my emotions the memo.

I looked at my father, who was looking at me. Whenever I was down, he felt like a failure. He’d told me so on more than one occasion.

“What’s the matter, pumpkin?” my father would ask when I was younger whenever I appeared to have the blues. “Tell Daddy so he can make it better. That’s what a daddy’s job is: to make his little girl happy. If he can’t, then he’s not doing that great of a job at being a daddy. Now tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it and make you happy again, because I won’t be happy unless you are.”

A tiny smile stole a moment on my lips as I thought about how my father would stop the world from revolving to make sure I was okay. That alone was enough to lift my spirits. “I’m happy to be here with you, Daddy,” I said.

The corners of his mouth lifted into a smile. Inside I questioned, though, just how genuine it was. Unfortunately, in the last few years I’d seen forced smiles, usually to appease her. She wasn’t here and he had no reason to fake it, so I would simply take his expression at face value and cherish the night.

I was so glad it was just us two on this beautiful April evening. When I was little we used to have father-daughter day once a month. It had been years since we could be that consistent. We’d plan them, but something else always just happened to come up, or we had unwelcome guests—unwelcome from my end anyway.

I was so excited when Dad told me that it would just be him and me, alone, without the company of the Wicked Witch of the West. I almost broke out into a happy dance.

Daddy had married Glendora when I was ten. Ironically, he met her at the hospital where my mom spent her last days. Glendora worked as a CNA there, and my mom was often assigned as one of her patients. She was very nice when I first met her. I remember her giving me a card, a bouquet of daisies, and a box of chocolates the day after my mom died to try to cheer me up. She even showed up to the funeral and brought a tuna casserole to our house a week later. From that point on, she was a permanent fixture in our lives.

What I liked most about Glendora was that she made Daddy smile. That was a good thing considering he never really smiled much after my mother passed. Glendora making Daddy happy made me happy as well. Like I said, she was nice back then, so I had no qualms about having a stepmother when he ended up marrying her. Glendora seemed nothing like some of the horror stories I’d heard from friends at school who had a stepparent.

She and Daddy eventually got married, and she and her two kids—Brielle, who was two years younger than me, and Brendon, who was my age—moved in with us into our home. Even when the two adults sat the three of us kids down to talk about the whole marriage and blended family thing, I had no worries. Our four-bedroom home was plenty big. We’d just have to turn the guestroom into a room for one of Glendora’s kids, and turn the bedroom we used as a library into a real bedroom. I was excited to say the least. As a matter of fact, I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. I had a mom again, and I gained a new brother and sister. I had lost my mother, but God gave me three new people to be a part of my life. I pictured family outings, sibling pranks, and late-night girl chats with my little sister.

Unfortunately the picture-perfect portrait I had fantasized about turned out to be anything but that. The moment Glendora, her children, and the U-Haul truck showed up in our driveway, things went downhill. Soon after she moved in, she quit her job to become a stay-at-home mom. I overheard her telling Daddy that this would allow her more time to do “mommy things” with us kids. Sounded good to me. What she should have said was that she would do those things only with her kids. She began treating me like I was an unwanted stepchild.

It all started when she forced me out of my princess-inspired room and moved Brielle into it. Brendon moved into the guest room and, well, remember that makeshift library? Well, that became my bedroom, which also just happened to be the smallest bedroom in the house. In all actuality, it didn’t even feel like part of the house. It was located off the kitchen right before the garage door. I remember my dad once telling me that it was designed for a live-in maid or something.

Being kicked out of my bedroom wasn’t the worst of it. Glendora offered to help me pack up my room and relocate, but only so that she could go through all my things and “throw them out.” To her, throwing them out meant hanging them up in Brielle’s closet.

“Hey, that’s my BeBe sweat suit,” I said to Glendora when I saw her taking it out of my drawer and putting it in the giveaway box.

“Girl, this is a size small, and you know you are a large all day long,” Glendora said, ignoring my plea and tossing it into the box anyway. “I told you to lay off all that cake. You getting fat. Keep it up and no boy in his right mind is going to want you.”

I looked down at my size-eight frame. What was she talking about? I wasn’t getting fat. I grabbed at the side of my stomach. There were a few extra inches of skin, but still, I was no size large. Medium at best. And that extra skin was nothing a few side-to-side sit-ups couldn’t get rid of. I just had to tone up a little bit. None of this mattered to her though. Not even the fact that Brielle was the chunky one. If anything, she should have been passing her outgrown clothes down to me!

Glendora’s mind was made up though. She had every excuse in the world why this designer top needed to be thrown out or that pair of designer pants needed to go. Heifer even went through some of my jewelry, passing that on to her daughter as well. Now, a damn earring can fit in anybody’s ear. That’s when I realized that she had a hidden agenda. Underneath it all Glendora had to have truly liked me, I decided. Why else would she have wanted her daughter to be me?

I was starting to see a completely different side of my stepmother—a not so nice one. My father, however, was so caught up in Glendora’s phoniness that he didn’t even notice her evil transformation. She started doing little nasty things to me here and there behind his back. Every time I even thought about telling my father about Glendora’s antics, his jovial spirit would make me reconsider.

“Dad, I need to talk to you,” I would say. “It’s about Glendora.”

“Isn’t she just amazing?” he would say before I could drop the dime on her ass. “It feels so good to have her in my life . . . in our lives.” He’d stare off as if he was in la-la land. “I never thought I would find love again after your mother, but Glendora was really there for me in my time of need. I don’t think I would have made it through such a difficult time without her.”

He looked to me for confirmation. I simply nodded.

“She was there for you too,” my dad reminded me. “And now look at us.” He pulled me in for a hug. “We’re all one big, happy family who can be there for each other, right?”

What could I do? Take my foot and kick him so hard that he’d come tumbling off of cloud nine? “Right, Daddy,” was what a good daughter would say. So that’s what I said as I went to exit the room, head down.

“Jamela, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?” my father asked, stopping me in my tracks.

I lifted my head to face him, trying to decide one last time if I should tell him about that wife of his. Looking into my daddy’s eyes, I just couldn’t. “I . . . I forgot. It must have been nothing.” I gave him a smile and then exited the room. Hopefully one day he’d see her on his own for the woman she truly was.

Once my dad noticed Brielle running around in my clothes, he did make mention of it. Glendora gave him the same song and dance that she gave me. The clothing issue wasn’t the only thing he noticed. After dinner I was always the one clearing the table and cleaning up the kitchen while Brielle ran off to FaceTime her friends.

I remember hearing Glendora and my father arguing about it one night. She always had some excuse that he pulled out his wallet and bought.

“Jamela is the oldest. She’ll be off to college here soon and will need to know how to take care of herself. Not to mention one day she’ll have a husband she’ll need to tend to. I know I’m not Jamela’s mother, but I feel it’s my job as her stepmother to teach her how to be a woman.”

Bullshit! I could smell it through the door. My dad, on the other hand, thought her shit didn’t stink. She made up anything to justify how she was treating me. Her explanation for putting me in the small room was that Brielle had dust allergies and needed a large and airy room. As for giving her my clothes, again, she told him it was clothes that I had outgrown. My father always believed her, to the point where he stopped questioning her at all.

Feeling as if my father was no longer concerned about the little things she did to me, and realizing that I wasn’t going to rat her out, this gave Glendora free rein to treat me even worse than she already was. She’d talk to me like a dog on the street, at least when my father wasn’t around. When he was around, she didn’t talk to me at all. It was as if I wasn’t even a part of their happy little family.

No one even noticed me. Dad was busy keeping the restaurants in order, Glendora was busy shopping and spending afternoons at the spa, and Brielle was busy being a spoiled brat. The only one who ever did notice me was Brendon. Ironically, it was when I was around him that I pretended to be invisible.

I stopped hoping that things would get better, and I learned to keep to myself and stay out of Glendora’s way. Once she realized neither I nor my dad was going to speak up about her ways, she became even more bold and obvious. She had no problem letting it be known that her own blood children were her priority and I was just someone in the way of her seeing to it that her children had everything their hearts desired. Everything their hearts desired came with a price tag. Since my dad was the only one bringing in income, that meant he financed it all: everything from Brendon’s old-school Corvette he’d found on eBay to Brielle’s little two-door sport convertible. Me, I drove my mom’s old car. She was never big on material things. She didn’t even upgrade her cell phone unless the old one broke. So when I say her car was old, it was old. It ran just fine though. It got me to where I needed to be, which was pretty much just back and forth to school.

I loved driving the car. It felt good to have inherited a piece of my mom. When I first sat behind the steering wheel, I closed my eyes and inhaled. I swear I could smell my mother’s scent: a mixture of eucalyptus lotion and fried chicken. Sometimes when I was driving I’d pretend she was in the passenger’s seat. I’m sure folks who pulled up next to me at red lights thought I was crazy, because sometimes I’d even carry on a conversation with her. I couldn’t talk to my stepmother about anything, so I compromised.

Even though my dad didn’t speak on our divided household, I knew it was hard on him—trying to be fair to his ready-made family and making sure that I wasn’t feeling like I didn’t belong. What was supposed to be a happy family became more like a living arrangement. Whenever we went out to dinner together, we were just one big, dysfunctional family. Brendon and Brielle would spend most of the time on their phones. Every now and then Brendon would look up at me and wink. Perhaps that was his way of reminding me of my miserable existence. Lord knows I was invisible to everyone else.

I ate my dinner in silence while Glendora and Daddy made small talk. Here there were five people sitting at the table, hardly acknowledging one another, yet when it used to be just Daddy and me, the table would be full of laughter and conversation. It was a prime example of less being more. I quickly went from desiring a big family to wishing to be rid of Glendora and her kids. I made it my mission to try to arrange for me and Daddy to spend time together alone. Just the two of us.

At first I’d make plans to go to the restaurant he was working at that day and eat with him while he was on break. That never went well. Every five minutes one of his employees had an issue they needed him to tend to.

“I’m sorry, Jam-Jam,” he’d say, using the nickname he’d given me. “Maybe another time.” He’d get up from the table, leaving his not even half-eaten meal on the table. I’d find myself eating both my meal and his, just to at least be under the same roof with him for as long as I could.

Eventually I came around to the concept of if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. In between school and homework, I started working with Daddy at the restaurant. Even though my time with him was business, it was a pleasure, and it sure beat being at home, where Glendora always found something for me to cook or clean. I figured I might as well do it where I could get paid for it.

Needless to say, working at my dad’s restaurant had other benefits, too, besides me just being able to spend time with him. A sista could get her grub on. Getting my work permit was like getting a food stamp card. Working at the restaurants, I had access to all the food I wanted. That’s when I began to pick up weight. Food started to become both a comforter and a protector for me. It was a struggle, though, finding comfort in my size-eight clothes anymore. They were getting tighter by the day. If there was ever a time when Glendora had a reason to give Brielle all the clothes I was outgrowing, it was then.

A local paper ended up doing a write-up on Daddy’s restaurant. That landed him a cooking segment on a morning show. The next thing we knew, one of his to-go desserts ended up as one of Oprah’s favorite things. Business was booming so much that Daddy decided to open up another restaurant. This meant he was now much busier. He was always working and running back and forth between the two locations. He wasn’t as accessible as he was when we were both working out of the same restaurant, which used to be the only one—the first restaurant he and my mom had started together.

That didn’t deter me from trying to spend quality time with my dad. I would arrange for us to go to the museum or for a walk and picnic in the park or something. Whenever Glendora caught wind of it, though, she’d be sure to dig deep in her tool chest and pull out a monkey wrench to throw in our plans.

“Honey, remember, you have a meeting,” Glendora would remind him. “You have a doctor’s appointment.” Then there was, “You promised me you’d take me out.” Anything she could do or say, she did.

As the clock wound down to my appointed daddy-daughter time with my father, I’d sit back and wait for the infamous knock on the door. The door woul. . .