Page 46 of Queen of the Pole

“On the way back. I had it picked up, so that somebody could fix your window,” he said. His response caught me off guard. I just wasn’t used to a nigga doing shit for me like that, especially not a nigga that I wasn’t giving pussy to.

See, it’s easy to get money out of niggas. I was a stripper. I sold dreams for a living. I knew how to stare into a niggas soul to get money out of him. I felt like it was a totally different ball game to get a nigga to do a chore though. Niggas threw out money all the time because it was easy. Shit, it didn’t require much to dig in your pocket, and hand a bitch a few dollars. The real motion is when a nigga sees a problem, and he fixes it, without a woman having to tell him.

I didn’t expect Wolf to get my window fixed. I was fully prepared to be annoyed with Range Rover again, putting my car in the shop, waiting for them to fix it for me.

“Oh. Umm, thank you. Thank you for the stuff from Target too,” I admitted.

He did that thing again, where he just nodded his head, as if what he did for me wasn’t a big deal. It just proved how much of a man he was, and that he did this without expecting any kind of praise or recognition from it.

“Where your phone at? You don’t want to call your people, and let them know that you’re straight? I’m sure you got people looking for you,” he said to me.

“When I woke up for a couple of hours earlier, I sent out text messages to everyone, letting them know that I was fine. I told them that I was ducked off, and just clearing my mind for a little bit. They had questions, but I wasn’t ready to answer them yet. They’re giving me my space,” I responded.

He gave me that intense glare. He was reading me. Probably carefully thinking over his words, wondering what he should say back.

“Look, I ain’t expecting you to go to the cops about that nigga. Shit, I would rather you want some kind of street justice put on his ass. The only expectation that I have is for you not to protect him and to not get back with him. I’m not even telling you not to get back with him because I’m standing in line for my shot. That’s not what this is about. You, or no other woman deserves for a nigga to be beating on you like that. I don’t play when it comes to that kind of shit,” you could hear the passion in his voice as he said this to me.

It made me think about it deeper. I know he told me that his dad wasn’t a perfect husband. I wondered if his ass was putting his hands on his wife too.

“Did you witness domestic abuse growing up? Like, was your dad abusive towards your mom?” I asked him, in hopes that I didn’t trigger him, or offend him with my question.

“Fuck no. I would have killed that nigga for putting his hands on my mom. It’s four of us. If we even saw our mama come around us with a scratch, we would have tackled his ass. I’m passionate about it though because of the relationship that I have with my mom. I kinda put her and all women in the same box. If I got a woman in my presence, I feel like it’s my duty to protect her. Shit ain’t cool for a man to cause a woman any kind of pain. That’s the reason why I’m always at it with my pops, and one of my older brothers. Both of them niggas married, but they always hurting their wives with their infidelities,” he shared with me.

You know when you’re around a man, and they’re talking up a good game, and you can just tell that they’re full of shit? I didn’t get that kind of vibe from Wolf. I felt like the things he was saying to me were exactly the kind of person that he was in real life.

He ended up turning the stove down on both eyes. He looked inside both pots, and after a few seconds, put the tops back on. The cabinet that was to his left, he opened it and pulled out two large black glass plates.

“You haven’t eaten anything since you’ve been here. I know you’re hungry,” he announced, turning around to look at me.

“What did you make?” I wanted to know.

“It’s called Doro wat. It’s an Ethiopian dish. You’ve had Ethiopian food before?” he wanted to know.

“No. I’m not a picky eater, so I’ll try it. What is it though?” I inquired.

“It’s like chicken stew in a sense. It’s onions, spices, and boiled eggs inside. We going to have it with injera. You know what that is?” he asked, and because I didn’t, I simply shook my head no.

God, I hoped this man didn’t think that I was some ghetto bitch that wasn’t cultured. I’ve been out of the country plenty of times, and whenever I travel to a new country, I like to experiment, trying new foods. I’ve never been to Ethiopia, so these dishes that he was talking about, I wasn’t aware of them.

“It’s basically flatbread. You said that you aren’t a picky eater, so you’ll like it,” he said.

He went ahead, and fixed both of ours plates. He came over, sat the plate in front of me, and he took the empty spot next to me. I looked at him, pretty much asking him with my eyes where the utensils were.

“What happened?” he asked me.

“A fork,” I said.

“You gotta pick that shit up with your hands and eat it. Let me show you,” he went on to say.

I sat back, watching him as he picked up what I now knew as injera.

He tore off a small piece, using just his fingertips. After that, he folded it, pressing it into the thick sauce, peeling off a piece of chicken with it. Just like that night at the drive- in theater, I wanted to be the food that was in his fuckin mouth, as he chewed it. It was the way his jaws flexed as he did it.

I didn’t want to embarrass myself, and start coughing again, so I turned away, looked down at the delicious looking food that was in front of me, and I copied everything that I just saw him do.

“Hmmmm,” I couldn’t help the moan that escaped my lips.

I didn’t expect the food to be so good. Having a man cook for me wasn’t something that I was used to, so I was prepared for the food to be bland. I thought that his ass wouldn’t know what he was in the kitchen doing. As someone that grew up with my grandmother’s southern cooking, my mom’s cooking whenever she felt like it, my aunt, and now my own cooking as an adult, I knew good food when I tasted it. Wolf knew exactly what he was doing in the kitchen.