I Was Supposed to Marry Michael

They left us.
 
Not all black folks operate on C.P. time, but I thought my friend who invited me on this hike would hang back to make it easy to know which way the group was going.
 
I was not alone. This girl I didn’t know got left too. We looked at each other in the parking lot and decided to find out how to catch up to them. We asked a couple of people which way hikers travel. They pointed to a wooded path that was void of foot tracks.

Our group had left us to figure out, like hound dogs on a scent, which hiking trail in Great Falls VA. to follow. We hadn’t been walking more than10 min before the heel of my timberland shoe came off. It had been so long since I had exerted this much outdoor energy that my shoe gave way to dry rot. She followed me as I hobbled out the forest and decided instead to walk on the biker’s path. I had to walk gingerly  to keep my heel attached.

I don’t remember how we started to talk about Michael Jackson. All I remember is her telling me, “I was gonna marry Michael.” 
 
I then told her, “If Michael had married me, I would have saved him.”

And with emphasis she said, “No! No! Michael was supposed to marry me!”
 
I blinked. I then stopped walking, put my hand on my hip, looked her up and down, and proceeded to inform her why she was wrong. “If Michael had married me, he would not have bleached his skin, changed his nose or gotten a Jerri curl. I mean, I rocked a Jerrie curl back in the day too, but he would have still had that fro.”

This chick had the unmitigated nerve to stand me down! I don’t remember what she said. I don’t know if she started talking about their sun signs matching up or some other crap. All I know is that she said I was wrong! 

I told her, “When I was nine, my mother took me and my cousins to the Spectrum in Philly to see him and the Jackson Five, and when he spun around and sang ‘Baby, I wantcha back!’ he pointed his finger at me! Me and Michael locked eyes! He was talking to me!”

Well, somehow, that wasn’t enough proof for her. She began talking about her Right On! magazine posters, how she had him on her wall, and maybe she said she belonged to his fan club? I’m not sure. I couldn’t believe this chick was still trying to argue me down about my claim to Michael?! 
So, to give her what I thought to be irrefutable evidence of my right to Michael, I told her about the dream I had when I was ten that never faded from my memory and how dreams are harbingers of things to come. She listened as I recanted:

“Me and Michael were in an alley. I’m not sure what we were running from, but we were running together. For some reason we were at the back door of my house. The point is, me and Michael were together in my dream. We needed each other. The fact that I still remember parts of the dream or that I remember I had the dream, even if I can’t remember what actually happened in the dream, I remember the feeling the dream left me with which is why I still know I had the dream fifty some years ago which is proof that if I had only met Michael, he would not have died because he would not have needed drugs to go to sleep. He would have had me. I would have saved him from people who made fun of his skin, nose, lips, and his hair wouldn’t have caught fire because he would still have his ‘fro. People would see him with me and know he liked chocolate covered women with natural hair, and he wasn’t weird and that he liked black people who looked like me and other black people too.” 

I tell her all this, and she shakes her head and says, “No!”

I think her name was Toni. Us two strangers facing each other like fighters out of punches, wheezing and breathing hard, we sat down on a wooden bench unable to finish the last round.  I swear, If we weren’t both so winded from walking and fussing for over an hour, we probably would still be fightin’ over who was supposed to marry Michael.