The Jacket

It’s just a coat. A nice coat, but just a coat. More of a jacket really, white suede outside, white sheepskin inside and around the collar and wrists. Sharp. The special thing about this jacket is that you could dress it up or down. This jacket with a t-shirt and a pair of jeans would be hot. Or hook it up with a camisole and a nice skirt and it would be a completely different look. Yeah, it’s a nice jacket.

She got it for Christmas. The three of us, cousins, were out shopping for others. We stopped in at this little boutique that she always wanted to go into but thought it was too expensive. But it was Christmas and they were having a sale so we went in, not planning on buying anything, just to look.

They did have nice things; very expensive, beautiful things; designer clothes, diamond necklaces, gold bracelets and rings. A little too frou-frou for me but I could appreciate my cousin’s taste. While I stood at the jewelry counter trying on five hundred dollar bracelets, I scanned the store looking for Tanya. There she was, standing in front of the mirror wearing the jacket. She was modeling that jacket like she was on “America’s Next Top Model,” and it looked great on her. Like it was made for her. I looked around for my cousin Mya and caught her eye. I nodded toward the mirrors and she followed my gaze.
Without speaking, we had decided to buy the jacket for her. Our eyes said, “yes it’s expensive, but we could both go in half.” We knew she wouldn’t buy it for herself. She still had other gifts to buy and her money was tight. “It wasn’t a practical jacket and what would I wear with it? And do you know how dirty white gets?”

We batted what we knew her excuses would be, back and forth with our eyes and smiled as we watched her give the jacket one more turn in the mirror. She smiled, shook her head and returned the jacket to its hanger and placed it back on the rack. After looking around a little more, the three of us walked out of the store and split up to brave the other stores alone in the outdoor mall.

As soon as she disappeared into the toy store, we rushed back into the boutique and bought the jacket. We went to the car and put it in the trunk. We were so happy with that damn white jacket, like two little girls with a secret. Later the three of us met up, all of our shopping done. We finished the day with a late lunch and then went back to living through the ten days to Christmas.

On Christmas morning she called and we wished each other a Merry Christmas. As we went through the list of things that we received, she took a deep breath and said, “ I can’t believe you two crazy fools bought me that jacket…thank you.”
I laughed and said,” that jacket was made for you girl, and we wanted you to have it.” We talked a little more about ended the conversation with another, “Merry Christmas.”

Weeks later as we went back to the dreary days of cold, snow and gray skies, I began noticing that whenever my cousin left her house, she carried the jacket with her. Sometimes just over her arm and sometimes in a bag. It wasn’t that she was going to wear the jacket because she’d already be wearing a coat or jacket. If we were going shopping or to dinner or a movie, she’d leave it in the car but it seemed that she always had it with her. It was, to say the least, odd.

One day when Mya (my partner in Christmas gift buying) and I were having lunch, I asked her if she noticed how Tanya always carried the jacket with her and she looked away for a moment and then leaned in and softly said, “ you know her boyfriend is on crack.”

Me, wanting to break the tension and being the smart ass that I am, said, “aren’t we all?” I wanted us to laugh and not have to think or talk about the ugliness of what we have learned about crack since this boyfriend had came into her life. The missing things in her apartment, the trips to the pawn shop to search for her things. The times when he was gone for days or longer periods of time because his crack behavior had landed him in jail. His mood swings from being “crack happy” or being pissed off because he hadn’t had or couldn’t get his crack.

My cousin didn’t have to say anything else because we had learned to understand the crack life and although Tanya wasn’t on crack, she was in love with someone who was. And that meant that she took whatever came with that life, until she couldn’t take it anymore.

So she carried that jacket with her because she valued it. She didn’t want to go home and find it missing because crack heads will take anything that they think they can get money or crack for. She carried it with her because she didn’t want to look for it in pawn shops or wonder if her boyfriend had given it to someone in exchange for a rock or two. She carried it with her because we had bought it for her.
My cousin and I finished our lunch in silence. There really wasn’t anything to say. We wished that she loved herself enough to leave him. That she valued herself one tenth of what she valued that jacket. I thought back to how happy I felt seeing her modeling that jacket in the store and now how much I hated that damn, sharp, white jacket, because I now know that it causes her stress and worry.
And…it’s just a jacket.