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The Sistahood of Shopaholics
By Leslie Esdaile, Monica Jackson, Reon Laudat, Niqui Stanhope St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2003 Leslie Esdaile Banks Monica Jackson, Reon Laudat, and Niqui Stanhope
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-08449-1
CHAPTER 1
Hotlanta, Georgia. July.
Della Mitchell clutched the steering wheel of her silver SUV and closed her eyes. The anticipation of one more shopping hit riddled her body as she tried to calm herself and prepare for her first solo mission back into the world. A whole year and twelve nearly impossible steps had led to this moment of freedom. The excitement within her almost brought on delirium. They'd told her it would feel like this when it was her turn for a furlough.
Her group had also cautioned her to remember what had sent her into a close brush with financial catastrophe. The thought stilled her as she opened her eyes and looked across the expanse of lot-bound cars toward Lenox Mall's shopping epicenter. Yeah, she had to keep things in perspective.
Silk was her nemesis, and only methadone for what she really needed in her life. Her addiction to lingerie had nearly bankrupted her. Della shook her head and got out of the vehicle, holding her designer Fendi bag close to her body. Not today. She would not OD on the luscious garments that made her feel sexy and wanton and sensually female. Nope. She could handle a first walk through paradise ... Victoria's Secret.
Today, her hands would not tremble like a junkie's when she fingered the fine fabrics and thought of what they felt like next to her skin. Uh-uh. Even though her fellow shopaholics claimed that once an addict, always an addict, she was healed. She had dredged and exorcised her demons.
The mall entrance was in sight, and she fixed her mind on the past while holding her head high. All right, so what, she'd married for every wrong reason in the book. Robert had been dependable, degreed, consistent—and controlling. Okay, that was then; this was now. But his ass was still cheap enough to make an eagle scream. Della felt her strides widening with purpose as her heels clicked against asphalt. She chuckled.
As Della approached the megacomplex of pure hedonism, her eyes tried not to drink in the liquid pleasure of chrome and glass to the palace entrance, where soon marble would be underfoot. What had possessed her to drive all the way from Roswell to be back on Peachtree Road? she wondered. Maybe she just needed the long drive to build anticipation, like foreplay—or just to clear her mind before she did this solo reentry thing? That was her motto these days, "Pace yourself, sister, 'cause it ain't going nowhere." She only wished, twice a day now, that she'd taken more time before deciding to marry Robert.
What had started off as a socially acceptable date with Robert turned into a consistent but unimaginative tryst with a logical lover. But the group told her that had been her own choice — no excuses. True. Her biological clock had ticked until the alarm went off, so his sterile proposal ("Why don't we just get married?") had sounded like a rational offer then. So had the little chip of a diamond, which he'd haggled over with the jeweler in front of her. It hadn't been the size of the ring that bothered her; it was the spirit in which it had been given: begrudging, complaining. Sadly, she'd accepted it, totally unaware of what that would really mean. A banker—what had she expected? She wanted to cry but made herself laugh instead, a survival mechanism developed over the years. Laugh, sister, because you are too crazy.
She took a deep breath and entered through two large glass doors and allowed the different smell of in-mall ecstasy to wash over her. Oh, God, it felt so good to be in here one more time. Determined to pace herself, she found a bench and sat, needing the time to contain her emotions before deep immersion.
Della watched the people going by. Some were hurried; some were strolling in a lazy, wealthy fashion. Thank God it was still too early for the teenage crowd to have descended upon the mall. She glanced around and noted that some of the early-morning shoppers were focused, as if they were on a mission, while others walked and gabbed and scolded children as they passed. Children. For the sake of her heart's deepest desire, at age thirty she'd sold a part of her soul to a man who had no generosity of spirit. Now, at thirty-five, she had the one gift she'd always thank Robert for, even if he didn't appreciate it himself—Claire. For the sake of her child, she still held on to her ex-husband's name, and for no other reason. That was love sublime.
The thought was so sobering that Della almost left the mall. Claire coming into her life had brought everything into exquisite joy, as well as painful focus. When she'd carried that breath of God up under her heart, inside her body, everything that had annoyed her about Robert Mitchell had become unbearable. His snide comments about her free, easygoing manner had irked the doodoo out of her. His insistence that she adhere to a strict diet, lest she gain an ounce more than she should, ripped at her self-esteem. The way he threw a fit if she bought a stuffed animal (or anything else he considered nonutilitarian for their baby on the way) used to send needles into her brain. And the way he'd looked at her ripening form with disgust rather than with pure awe had shattered her heart and almost broke her spirit. Screw him—now and forevermore—she was going shopping!
Feeling the breath evacuate her lungs made her take two long sips of air to replenish the void. Weight crushed her chest as her hand inadvertently went to her finally flat stomach. Beauty had been inside her and was never fully appreciated. All her husband had seen was bulk and stretch marks. Her widened hips, rounder behind, and more pendulous breasts remained after Claire was born, a badge of motherhood. No denying that fact. Instead of seeing lushness, he'd compared her with the dead, skinny-girl images within glossy pages of magazines.
She might have endured his disdain, but there was no forgiving the man for looking down at their perfect newborn girl, still damp from delivery, his sigh one of pure disappointment rather than joy. He'd wanted a son. Even the nurses had turned away from him and studied Della with sad, mute expressions before their eyes blazed with quiet rage. The child was perfect — a gift, a blessing. She'd been born gorgeous, alert, whole, healthy, and hale, and this bastard was still complaining and measuring the gift of life like he measured everything else, with a warped yardstick.
She told herself that she had to move, had to stop thinking about the moment that she could remember like it was yesterday. In the middle of the mall, Della could feel a panic attack about to sweep through her. She was still so very angry. The OB-GYN had even glanced over his mask at her husband, and then quickly pulled his focus away to keep his eyes trained on the post-birthing task at hand. Yeah, even the doctor was through, but the man was professional enough to stay out of the province of marital counseling. However, the delivery team's eyes spoke volumes. Robert was a fool. Wouldn't even go to counseling or church, convinced that his position was logical and righteous. Pullease.
Della swallowed hard and studied her hand, which no longer bore Robert Mitchell's pitiful ring. Two professionals—a banker and a marketing executive—a match made in Hell. Through the sudden moisture in her eyes, Della almost laughed again. Maybe she wasn't ready for a maiden flight back into a shopping venue? She could feel the old rage bubbling within her, threatening to drown her.
The group just didn't understand what it had been like having every task in the house measured according to a fifty-fifty division of labor—on paper, no less! Before she went to the market, Robert insisted on developing a list that was adhered to, lest she pick up an extra cut of meat that wasn't sanctioned. He'd been so infuriated when she sometimes forgot to use the coupons he'd clipped that he'd taken to going to the market himself. And her friends had thought it was because he was such a nice, responsible, helpful guy. Absurd.
How could she explain to them what it was like to have all the household duties posted on the refrigerator weekly with names beside each task, and if she should get busy at work, or later with Claire, then Robert would cross off one of his own chores and put her name beside it to keep the score exactly even? Just like he made love. Exacting. Even. There were some things she hadn't been able to tell the group.
The mall felt like it was closing in on her. Anxiety threaded through her veins. Della glanced up and down the long expanse of glistening corridors. Okay, so fine. No excuses. She'd been all wrapped up in the prospect of getting married, like any newly engaged woman would, and filled with joy that she could finally have the big day in white. There was no measure for the look of completeness on her parents' faces. And, yeah, she'd been so busy building her career in year one that all these little Robertian foibles seemed minor. She hadn't worried about them.
Year one, she was still in bliss. Then came year two, and much of the euphoria had burned away by the time she became pregnant and they'd bought the house. The real fights started then, too. As did her recognition that these weren't little spats, but serious issues ... but by then, Claire was firmly in her womb.
Della pushed herself up to stand, blinking back tears. The group had been good to her. With them, she'd shed twenty-five pounds of Michelin tire from around her waist, face, and arms, albeit she still had twenty to drop from her big butt, thick thighs, and hips. With the group's assistance to stay on a strict financial diet, she'd cleaned up the ten thousand dollars of credit-card debt and had lived like a nun. Abstinence in every way. No splurges, no men, no nothing—just take care of Claire, work off the debt, rebuild a career. Focus. Yeah, having support was a good thing. A necessary thing. It numbed a sister up like Novocain.
The support group had taken some of the sting out of the pregnancy aftermath: a year of listening to her husband's sarcasm about her figure, a year of him giving her his back in bed because her body had changed and a part of it still belonged to her little girl, a year of buying beautiful lingerie to make herself feel pretty, a year of hoping he'd cut the bull and just be nice to her, a year of socially acceptable self-destruction from frustration (good food, gorgeous fabrics). Finally letting him take the lion's share of property just to be done struggling with him once and for all. Yeah, she'd been addicted to a very private joy—feeling pretty for herself—and even that had gone awry. The cost was prohibitive at her levels of indulgence.
Headed for a sure crisis, like an epileptic fit, she knew she had to get out of the mall, now. Thinking of Robert was not a good thing. The girls were wrong. Thinking about Robert required morphine, not methadone. Thinking of that asshole and his skinny, highyella secretary was going to make her melt plastic, big-time. Fry it at the register. Thinking about all the cutting words, the two years of struggle to get away from him—the bitter contention being about property, not custody—could possibly spiral her into a twelve-hundred-dollar binge. She could feel it coming. Her hands were literally shaking.
Della reached for her cell phone and called her coach. As soon as Gillian's voice filled the receiver, Della blurted out the truth. "Gurl, help me. I need an intervention. I'm in the mall. I'm staring down at my purse. Victoria's Secret is fifty feet away, and I'm not ready."
"Okay, okay, okay, lady, think. Get to a calm place in your head. You can do this."
Della paced before the bench as her knuckles went white around the tiny black phone. "A year with him bitching at me, then almost a year with him while pregnant—complaining, hovering, making me feel horrible about natural body changes—and two years to battle my way out of that trap called a marriage with a cheap SOB, Gil! Oh, my God, a year to clean up the credit-card carnage of trying to find a little joy in silk, and to redecorate an apartment—my daughter is three, and I'm a statistic. I'm thirty-five. I've just relocated to Atlanta. I've got this new, high-pressure job, and all my family is back in Philly. I had to sell the house, give up sex —"
"Stop," Gillian urged in a soothing tone. "Remember why you got into trouble. Inner rage at the lack of appreciation, anger, feelings of deprivation, and the shopping was only a temporary fix. Remember our work in healing the woman within? But now, you have a new start. You're making healthy personal choices nowadays. You are working for a premier soft-drink company —"
"I know, I know," Della rushed in. "Thank you for everything. If your headhunting firm hadn't gotten me out of Philly ... Oh, girl."
"Listen," Gillian pressed on. "I didn't say that about your new job to make you feel guilty. You couldn't have landed the job unless I had something to work with. You don't owe me. The company paid me well to place a good candidate who is a successful single mother, who just so happens to be a good friend. You're beautiful, young, attractive, dynamic, and you have value. You're free, and you have no one but yourself and your child to please, and you have your own apartment. You don't need to binge. You don't need a toxic relationship to fulfill your desires — not as long as they make D batteries. You are strong."
Growing steadier, Della closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "You're right." A sad chuckle escaped Della's throat. "Duracells and lace. Yeah. I remember the pledge. Nothing toxic. I was just having a silk hysteria attack. It's been so long. In fact, I think I'm going to walk out of here right this moment. I've already got every color of silk—from faux virgin white to vampire black, and every shade in between. I don't need a thing. So, I'm set. I already have enough lingerie, and haven't had a soul to wear it for in like ... uh ... damn, girl, years."
"Buy some more batteries," Gillian said with an easy giggle. "I can hear the strain in your voice."
"No. I'm fine. Just had a moment."
"We must be honest with ourselves, Della. You are a sensualist. It is a part of your nature. The feel, the smell of new silk, the way it makes you look, the sound of it as it moves against the sheets while you sip champagne and eat chocolate."
Della shut her eyes. "Gurl, it's been too long. Please, don't even talk about it. That was BC: before Claire. I'm a mom now. I can't go into that store. Not yet. Too many pre-Robert memories of what silk can do, okaaaay. I'm not ready."
"Don't live in denial, embrace that part of you that makes you, you—don't suppress her, just give her limits."
For a moment, neither woman spoke as Della collected herself. Gillian broke the silence with gentle laughter.
"Right. Right," Della finally whispered, joining in Gillian's good humor. "I remember what the facilitator said. Like Ramona's shoe thing ... when she had to take back the five pairs of Pradas and select just one." However, Della's breath came out in a hard rush as she opened her eyes and stared at paradise not fifty feet away.
"Exactly. Okay, now. You can do this. Today is supposed to be a happy day. A chance to show yourself that you have limits that you control and can set. If you turn back now, you'll just break out one night without an intervention call, and you'll binge because you'll really feel deprived. Now, listen, I've got Claire for the day. You march yourself in there, buy a couple of items, have a healthy lunch, stop at a drugstore for some Ds, and then go home."
Gillian's laughter continued to pour through the cell phone, and it made Della giggle harder at her own craziness.
"Right. That's true. Yeah. I can do this."
"Pray for strength," Gillian said, her tone soft but firm. "Call me before you get to the register, though. The first time back in is really difficult."
"All right. I will," Della replied on another long exhale.
"Say it with me: Help me change the things I can change, and to release the things I can't, and to have the wisdom to know the difference between the two."
Della nodded, allowing her voice to join with her friend's in the Serenity Prayer. The two fell silent for a moment once more. She added in her own private lament: Lord, help me find some joy, real passion, and fun that's not detrimental to me or my baby girl.
"You okay, lady?"
"Yeah," Della said. "I'm going in."
* * *
He hated malls. But there were some things a man just had to do. Okay, so if he was going to break up with Vanessa, he'd at least go out with a righteous apology. Why he felt like he owed her one was still unclear in his mind. She'd been like all the others—well pedigreed, educated, long-legged, beautiful, and a total barracuda. As long as he had the pockets, he had a date. And that had begun to feel like he was paying for an elegant escort service. No matter.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Sistahood of Shopaholics by Leslie Esdaile, Monica Jackson, Reon Laudat, Niqui Stanhope. Copyright © 2003 Leslie Esdaile Banks Monica Jackson, Reon Laudat, and Niqui Stanhope. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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