Terry McMillan - How Stella Got Her Groove Back

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

How Stella Got Her Groove Back

A SIGNET Book / published by arrangement with the author

All rights reserved.

Copyright 1996 by Terry McMillan

This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

For information address:

The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com

ISBN: 9781101414989

A SIGNET BOOK

SIGNET Books first published by The Penguin Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

SIGNET and the S design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

Electronic Edition: October, 2003

Contents

Also by Terry McMillan

Mama
Disappearing Acts

Breaking Ice:
An Anthology of Contemporary
African-American Fiction (editor)

Waiting to Exhale

for Jonathan P.

on going anywhere. All I knew was that as much as I loved my son, I was glad to see him disappear after those doors to Gate 3 closed this morning. Quincys on his way to Colorado Springs to visit his daddy and now I have the house all to myself. Finally, some peace and quiet. And three whole weeks of it. Of course there are a million things I want to do and now I can do them without being distracted. Without hearing Mom, can I... ?! every fifteen seconds.

Thank God its Saturday. And thank God its summertime. Schools out. No more three-day-a-week Little League practice (rain or shine) or those long-ass games. No week-on/week-off revolving carpooling and forgetting its my week and being afraid to call the parents of the abandoned children who are all standing in the rain for an hour after I forgot them because they are allincluding my own sontoo dumb to call somebody else. And thank the Lord theres nowhere I have to be: no cant-wait portfolios to review and I dont have to pay attention to any of the four computers in my office, I mean I can actually be off-line for a change and I have no meetings no planes to catch, nada.

Ive got about a hundred books Ive been meaning to read since last year and I figure now I can probably read them all. Ive got a house full of trees and straggly vines that need to be transplanted which is what Im planning to do today but of course when I go out to the garage I have no big pots and just a drop of potting soil and not a single pair of those gloves with the little rubber dots on the fingertips, all of which means I have to go to Home Depot. I hate going to Home Depot because I always end up going down the plant rug toilet or sink aisles when I have enough plants rugs toilets and sinks already. But by the time I get to the checkout I usually have to exchange my cart for one of those flatbed numbers and then I realize I didnt drive the truck so I have to have them put my stuff to the side until I come back and as Im driving home it occurs to me that theyre probably going to switch some of my merchandise and not think Ill notice but by the time I pull the truck up to their automatic doors Im usually totally pissed at myself for buying all this shit I dont need because despite the fact that I am not a landscaper handywoman or carpenter I have all these useful new tools with which to express my fantasies of do-it-yourselfness and what is really bothering me is that I have most likely spent somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand bucks which seems to be my going rate here and at Costco and which is also why I am right this minute changing my mind about going today. Ill go tomorrow. With a list and the promise to buy only whats on it.

I look around the house and realize that the housekeeper does a pretty good jobfor a sixty-one-year-old Peruvian manof keeping it clean. He fixes everything that breaks around here, and since he is ultrareligious and I think maybe even a participating Buddhist, out of respect I sort of watch my mouth in my own home. He cleans under and behind everything which is the main reason I have no Saturday morning cleaning to do. I believe from the bottom of my heart that dusting polishing and vacuuming are entirely too tedious never-ending and boring tasks and there are so many other things I would rather be doing which is why I hired Paco in the first place. He is worth the money.

I open all the blinds and notice that the windows are pretty grungy-looking from all the rain weve had here this past spring. Flooding and mud slides wiped out hundreds of homes all over northern California and I felt lucky to be way out here in this boring little valley. I dont do windows which is why I make a mental note to call Of Course We Do Windows first thing on Monday. Paco tried doing them once but he couldnt get up high outside and if he fell and hurt himself I would feel terrible.

I go into the kitchen and make myself a latte and as I stare out into the backyard the first thing I see is Phoenix, our free-from-the-pound chocolate Lab, swimming in our black-bottom pool as if its his. Then I look over at what is now a storage shed that I was told was once a guesthouse and then I turned it into a studio but of course that was when I used to be this creative person and I had energy and a thriving spirit and I would design and conceive and sometimes actually manufacture what I used to call functional sculpture aka handcrafted furniture that people in fact solicited and paid me real money to make for them out of everything from aluminum copper steel wood whatever, but then it became so hard to like pay the rent and then this husband I ended up saying yes to when I shouldve just said no convinced me that I could use that MBA I got and like combine it with that MFA I also had which of course all by itself was worthless and who could afford this eccentric one-of-a-kind so-called furniture when a normal person could like just go to Thomasville or Levitz or Ikea and of course I didnt know how to mix commerce with art and so I failed at working with my hands. I went with the brain and forged figures inside my economic head and did the total business beat. I have been doing this now for like hell I dont even know how many years but it is another reason why right this minute, looking out at the dog at that clear black water at the little salmon-colored bungalow where I used to pray and dream and invent, I am getting a sudden overwhelming urge to run the vacuum through my mental house and chill out, sit down long enough to smell the cosmos the zinnias the coral bells hell the fucking coffee (which I actually can smell right now), so when Quincy comes home Ill be more poised balanced composed than Ive been in years. The generic term for it is relaxed. Maybe I can even acquire some of that stuff commonly known as patience that I havent had in a long time. Id like to be able to sit down next to my son and watch one of those moronic TV shows that hes always begging me to watch but after a few minutes I always find myself jumping up to do something during the commercials and I repeat this up-and-down business at least five times during a mere half-hour show which means Im not exactly setting a good example for someone whos always telling her child how he needs to learn to sit still long enough to give something his undivided attention. All I do when I get up is move things. Dishes go in the dishwasher. Or they come out. Never-read magazines newspapers and last weeks mail are tossed into the compactor for crushing. Clothes pulled out of the washer get pushed into the dryer. Now lets fold. Make stacks. Everything has to be in its place. Because if I dont do it, it wont get done.