Color Blind

Chapter 19

                                                                           MATURE CONTENT AHEAD

"What about this one?" I asked, pointing to a modest sized stone in a thin gold band.

"What? Now you know I'm not even goin' out like that," Lafayette argued, frowning up his nose at the medium sized diamond. "I want to buy my baby a rock. You're just here to make sure I don't get an ugly band."

"Ok baller!" I laughed. Lafayette had gotten a job as a chemical engineer straight out of college and was getting paid so much that he had immediately started having plans drawn up for his new house. He frequently asked all of us for input on how the blueprints should look, but it was obvious that the only opinion that really mattered was Tia's.

When the boys moved back to Florida, Scott decided to go to law school at the University of Miami and become a juvenile defense attorney. His plan was to eventually start some sort of rehabilitation program in the state for kids under the age of twenty-one that would give them more focus and motivation than just sending them to prison would.

He said that by learning the way the law worked, it would be easier for him to "infiltrate the system and take it over."

Leave it to a white boy who hung around a bunch of black folks to have such an IceT-esque perspective on things...and then actually try to put action to it. I couldn't argue with him, though. It sounded like a great idea to me. He had always been really good with kids, anyway, and had always tried his hardest to help keep as many of them out of trouble as he could.

After graduation, Tia went back to school to get her Master's degree in Child Psychology. I guess all of those years of dealing with the crazies in her own family had finally paid off. She breezed through her first year of grad school and, like Scott, only had two more years to go.

Being the bookworm that I was and having the short attention span that I did in undergrad, I ended up changing my major to several different sciences and finally decided on going to medical school to become a pediatrician. Whenever I told people this though, they would always ask me, "Girl, do you know how long you have to be in school to do that?" But I didn't care. I'd never had any problems with school...other than showing up for class, and luckily, when it was a subject that I liked, I never had to study a whole lot to understand the material. Plus, math and science had always been my two strongest subjects.

So when I scored well enough on the MCAT to get into med school my first try, no one who knew me well was at all surprised. They were, however, surprised that I thought I could actually pay attention long enough to get through another four years of school, and then complete a "however long" residency.

I was due to start med school in the fall when Lafayette decided to propose to Tia.

"Now, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!" Lafayette exclaimed, pointing to a platinum ring with an emerald cut two-carat canary yellow diamond, surrounded by two smaller heart-shaped baguettes. "Rica, this is it!" His excitement was uncontainable and he bounced excitedly from one foot to the other. "Ay, how much's this one?" he asked the salesman - Louisiana Creole in full effect - then waved his hand as if shooing the question away. "It don't matter. Ring it up. I want this one."

The salesman looked at Lafayette skeptically and remained where he was. Anger flashed across Lafayette's face, but he was too taken by the ring to make a scene.

"You heard me, dawg," he demanded and pulled out his platinum VISA card - which I had never seen even close to the limit, since he paid it off in full every month. "I said ring it up." After checking two forms of id and having Lafayette sign about a hundred papers, unnecessary probably since he was making the purchase in full, the man finally handed the blue gift box to us in a fancy blue paper bag. Lafayette, true to form, opened the box before we got out of the store to make sure that the guy hadn't switched rings on him. I chuckled. "Hey, you never know 'bout these folk 'round hea'," he said. The heavy Louisiana accent that he had somewhat lost over the years in Mo' City had now returned with a ferocity. "Look here, beh-be, I'm starvin' lez eat."