His Last Wife

by Grace Octavia

  “What is this?” Val quizzed sharply, tossing her purse on the counter with a thud.

  Mama Fee and Ernest turned to the doorway connecting the living room to the kitchen and displayed their best looks of surprise under Val’s glare.

  “Hey, baby girl,” Mama Fee said sweetly, like Val had just walked in from getting off of the school bus and had twin pigtails dangling over her shoulders. She turned to Ernest, who was grinning, and added, “Did I tell you my Val is my baby girl? She got two sisters home in Memphis. Neither one is as pretty as—”

  “Shut up!” Val barked at Mama Fee, but her stare was on Ernest. “What are you doing here?”

  “Came to visit you. Your mother was kind enough to let me in. Made me some tea. What’s this tea called, Mama Fee?” Ernest smiled wide at Val and then turned to his new ally.

  Val could smell the Adam and Eve root and hibiscus leaves.

  “Just some roots from the garden,” Mama Fee answered. “You want some, Val? Why don’t you come over here and have a seat?”

  Val felt four eyes set on her with heavy expectation. Like she was a skittish horse or feral cat needing to be gathered in, in, in. “No, I don’t want any tea! I want you out of here—out of this house!” Val said, looking at Ernest.

  “Why he need to leave?” Mama Fee asked, like this was the most absurd directive she’d ever heard. “He was just telling me about his days playing football and how he retired from sports altogether to start his very own trucking business.” She smiled at Ernest like he was a piece of cake she was about to put on a plate and present to her daughter. Before Val had gotten there, she’d already recited Genesis 2:18 to the man as she’d served him the tea. His impression on her had been that strong.

  “Mama, shut up. You never should’ve let him into this house,” Val charged, pointing her finger at Mama Fee.

  “Damn, you need to stop talking to your mother like that,” Ernest said, getting up from his seat and half-empty cup of tea. “Now, if you want me to leave, I will, but ain’t no reason to speak to this sweet woman like this.”

  “Good. Great. Get the fuck out,” Val said, clearly unaffected by Ernest’s valiant effort to defend her mother’s honor.

  Ernest turned and bowed slightly to Mama Fee in her caftan and turban. “It’s been a lovely afternoon. Until we meet again?”

  “That’ll never, never, never happen!” Val cut in before her mother could answer. “Now get out!” She’d stepped into the kitchen and came up behind Ernest with fists balled at her sides.

  A series of slurs shot from Val’s mouth at Ernest’s back as she stayed tight on his heels, following him out of the kitchen, through the living room and into the front foyer. Mama Fee knew not to go along for the sad stroll or else Val would turn on her too. She just sat in the kitchen, sipping her tea and listening. Soon, she’d grab the teacup Ernest had been holding and set it on her altar upstairs.

  Old folk would say Val had called Ernest “everything but a child of God” on the way to the front door. Still, the behemoth of a man kept his mouth closed and, more importantly, his hand in his pockets, because these were fighting words, clauses, and phrases that had led many men to wrap their hands around a quick-tongued woman’s mouth, push her into a wall, and holler, “Shut the fuck up!” But Ernest was unmoved.

  Annoyed that her words weren’t leading to a response, Val said, “You ain’t got to say shit! You ain’t fooling nobody with this good-guy shit! You’re up to something, just like every other nigga!” right when Ernest had his hand on the doorknob in the front foyer.

  He stopped.

  Val stopped behind him.

  He paused.

  She looked at his hand on the knob with more expectation and desire than she was willing to admit. When she was little, she’d memorized every angle and curve of the front doorknob in the home she’d grown up in. She’d sit on the creaky wooden floor, her knees held into her chest, just feet away from the door, and wait for the knob to turn. In her mind, in her imagination, always on the other side of the knob would be her father’s brown, rough, workingman’s hand. He’d push the door in. The sunlight would make a crown around his head and so Val couldn’t really see him until he’d get up close on her. But she could hear him saying, “I’m home, baby girl. Back from the dead, just for you. Not ever leaving again. Nothing no one can do to make your daddy leave you.” He’d pick her up and kiss her cheeks and count her fingers and toes like the white people did their newborn babies on television. Take her into the kitchen, where a table filled with different kinds of ice cream would be waiting for a feast that would end with laughing and full bellies.

  “What you waiting on?” Val said to Ernest. “Open the door! Leave! Leave!”

  Ernest was about to turn the knob. He really was. But something made him stop.

  “Why you so fucked up?” he asked, looking at Val over his shoulder. He turned to her.

  “Shut up and get out!”

  “Who did this to you?”

  “Shut the fuck up and get the hell out!”

  As Val spoke, Ernest spoke beneath her. “Can’t you see what I’m trying to do? Why I’m here? I want you. I’m here for you. Nothing else.”

  “You know what?” Val was saying over Ernest’s words. “You want to know why I’m so fucked up?”

  “Why?”

  “Because of niggas like you. Niggas. I’m so fucking tired of this shit I don’t know what to fucking do. You say you want me, but for how long? How long? Huh? You don’t know me. You don’t know where the fuck I been. What the fuck I been through!” Val was screaming so loud her mother had covered her ears in the kitchen and was praying aloud.

  “That’s what you’re missing, Val. I do know you. I know exactly who you are.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “I do. Look, I didn’t know when or how I was going to tell you this but, I knew you before.”

  “You knew me?”

  “We . . . um. When I was playing for the Falcons, we—I slept with you,” Ernest admitted, afraid for sure of what Val would do or say next. He hadn’t wanted to tell her, but also feared not telling her.

  “Get out,” Val said bluntly, like all emotion in her had been turned off at the clear mention of the reality of her past.

  “I didn’t say that to embarrass you. I was just—”

  “Get out.” She cut him off.

  Ernest chose to ignore her again and kept up his explaining. “I just wanted you to know that I don’t care about your past. I have a past too. We all do.”

  “So I’m your charity case now?” Val posed. “What? Because you slept with me you’re supposed to just slide right back in and get it again? Sorry, the kitchen is closed.” Val tried to reach past Ernest to open the door, but he blocked her.

  “I’m not here to get anything from you. I’m here to give something to you,” Ernest said.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, what do you want?”

  Val crossed her arms over her chest like she was holding something in. “I don’t know. Okay? That’s it. I have no fucking clue. Thought I did. Thought I wanted all of this!” She held her hands up and looked around the foyer. “But now I know it don’t mean shit. ’Cause I got it and you know what, the only thing I can think about is that it ain’t mine. None of it. Because every time I pull into that driveway in his car, I look at this house and think, this is his house too. And he ain’t even here! He ain’t even here!” Val started crying inside, but she wasn’t the kind of woman to let those tears pooling up fall to her cheeks—not then and there.

  Ernest wrapped his arms over her arms and around her body and pulled her into his chest, where his big frame made her so small, discounting years and years and years of growth and dissipating the sad occurrences on a timeline marked up by a brokenhearted little girl. And he felt that energy transferring into him the way a father does when he kisses his daughter’s fresh bruise and causes the crying to instantly cease. It was what he’d felt that firs
t night they’d slept together in that bed upstairs. When Val had finally fallen asleep—not when she’d faked sleeping by closing her eyes and breathing hard through her nose, but when she’d really left the world and her worries—she actually rolled over toward Ernest and threaded her hand through his arm and around his back. She leaned her head into his chest like he was a pillow. Ernest leaned back and slowly moved her body on top of his before wrapping his arms around her waist, making a cradle of himself. Into the night, he laid there still and listened to Val’s slow heartbeat. It might have been the most beautiful thing he’d ever felt. The closest he’d ever been to someone. Still, he knew it wasn’t for him. It was just for her. All of this pleasure in rest, she needed it. That second night when he’d returned, it was for Val to get some sleep. Not him.

  “He may not be here,” Ernest said to Val. “But I am.”

  “But I don’t want you to be. Don’t you understand? I don’t want you to save me. I don’t want to be saved. Please just go,” Val said, hardly holding onto those tears.

  “You really want me to go?” Ernest asked.

  There was silence at first.

  “Yes,” Val answered soon. “Just go.”

  Ernest released her and backed up to the door. He could see the water in Val’s eyes and reached out to cup her cheek.

  “I will be back,” he said firmly. “When you know you need me, I’ll be back.”

  “Just go,” Val repeated with all of the bite out of her tone.

  Ernest nodded in defeat and removed his hand from Val’s cheek.

  As he backed his arm away, Val noticed a symbol of some kind on his inner wrist. It was a big, black square with spikes that looked like daggers on the four corners.

  Val grabbed his wrist and turned the palm up, facing her. She’d seen the symbol, but not on him.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “What? My tattoo?”

  “I see it’s a tattoo. What is it?”

  “If I tell you, can I stay?” Ernest joked and Val shot her eyes at him like bullets. “Okay, shit. Just playing.”

  “What is it? Tell me.”

  “It’s the fihankra. An adinkra symbol. I got it a few years before I left the league. Actually, a couple of the other players got it too,” Ernest explained and Val remembered when he’d mentioned that he used to play for the Falcons.

  “Why? Why get this tattoo?”

  Ernest looked at the tattoo with Val. “It means protection, security. Every time I look at it, it reminds me that I have to take care of my own—that includes me and everyone I love. No matter what. By any means necessary. Have you seen it before?”

  “Yes,” Val said, remembering the symbol on some of the paperwork with Jamison’s will. “I have.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business.” Val’s rigid composure returned. She dropped Ernest’s wrist and looked at the door.

  “I’m going,” Ernest said. “You don’t have to say it again.”

  He dropped his head low and turned to walk out, hoping Val would stop him and knowing she wouldn’t.

  Val slammed the door behind Ernest and walked into the kitchen, ready to fight.

  “Why would you let him in here?”

  “Child, don’t start again. You won the fight. Can’t you see? You done drove him away.” Mama Fee was standing at the sink, with her hands in the cold water. She’d been waiting for Val to come for her. Underneath her breath, she mumbled, “Drive everyone away from you. That’s what you do.”

  “No. This isn’t about me. This is about you letting him in here and you don’t even know him. He could’ve—”

  “His name is Ernest and he been here twice. I know him plenty,” Mama Fee said, pulling the stopper out of the sink bottom and letting the water rush between her fingers as it headed down the drain.

  Val came and stood beside her. Stuck her hip out and leaned into the counter.

  “Oh. So you been spying on me now?” she asked, sounding less than flabbergasted by her mother’s actions.

  “Can’t spy on what’s done out in the open. May be done at night, but not all of God’s creatures go to sleep with the sun.” Mama Fee looked at Val. “Besides, somebody got to keep an eye on this doorway. Too many things moving in and out, seen and unseen.”

  Val remembered Jamison’s mother falling to her knees, dying in the stairwell right in front of her after their last fight.

  “Well, I don’t need you keeping an eye on me or the door. I ain’t bring you here for that,” Val said. “Not that or Ernest.” Val reached into the draining sink and pulled out one of the teacups. “What were you doing, Mama Fee? You trying to put some kind of spell on him? Make him love me? You think he’s gonna love me?” she listed sarcastically.

  “Can’t put a love spell on a man that’s already in love,” Mama Fee revealed knowingly.

  “Please. That nigga just whipped. One night and he thinks he’s about to be up on me. Probably broke. Probably saw this house and thought he’d hit the jackpot. Well, he can have it if he wants it so bad, and he can have you too, since y’all so damn close.”

  Val dropped the cup and walked away from the sink.

  “Obatala! Obatala! Eni Orisa!” Mama Fee cried out. “Please help my child. Help my blind child to see!”

  “Oh, stop with all that shit! Cry out to Obatala, Jesus, Jehovah, whatever and whoever, ain’t nothing going to change.”

  Mama Fee was compelled to rush toward her baby with her finger pointed out at her. “You know what I can’t stand about you, girl? You always angry about the broken parts. Can’t focus on nothing but what you don’t have and what ain’t yours. Want something from everybody’s plate on your plate. World ain’t right unless something wrong. And the worst part is that you can’t even see when you got it all. When you got a good thing.”

  “What’s my good thing, Mama Fee?” Val cried, with her tears coming down then. “You? This house? Ernest?” Val laughed like a madwoman. “My dead baby? My dead husband, who didn’t even fucking love me? What, Mama Fee? What’s my good thing? What can’t I see?” Val rushed toward her mother in her anger and the women met in the middle of the floor in a standoff neither of them was expecting, until Val said the words, “My father?”

  “Don’t you bring up my dead. Now, you called on yours, but mine is resting in peace and I don’t reckon he needs to be woke because his child is having some tantrum,” Mama Fee said in a rare order to Val.

  “Resting in peace? How?” Val asked. “When the people who killed him are out in the world, walking around free and probably got grandkids and retirement homes and Cadillacs? How is he resting in peace?”

  “I couldn’t do anything about that. You know that. Those white folks: They killed my husband and there wasn’t nothing—”

  “You could’ve done something,” Val cut in.

  “What?”

  “Fight,” Val said. “Fight! Fight! Fight with more than your roots and herbs and chanting and prayers. Burn down their fucking houses and fight for me!”

  Mama Fee was crying at the shame of the past.

  “I had you girls. I had to carry on. Had to show you how to move on,” Mama Fee defended herself.

  “Did we? Did any of us move on?” Val asked, staring into Mama Fee’s eyes for an answer. “Two of your daughters are afraid to leave Memphis, one is married to an ex-con, and the other got so many babies neither one of us can name them. And the third—” Val grinned sadly and pointed at herself. “Look at her. Just look at her, Mama Fee!”

  An arm straight out, Val cleared everything from the kitchen counter in a fit, sending glasses and silverware and trinkets crashing to the floor. She looked at the damage, turned, and left the room and broken pieces behind. In the middle of the mess was a Post-it note with a number Lorna had taken from a man who’d called the house that morning when Val was away. Agent Delgado was written above the name.

  Mama Fee hadn’t noticed it before, but sh
e felt an itch beneath her left breast and thought she should pick up the little note. She took it upstairs and burned it in a pot with poke root at the foot of her bed.

  That night was something like many others for Val, like déjà vu, the “already seen,” lived and relived. She’d gotten out late and vowed to stay out until there was some warm body she could find to break the chill on her own. And though that was an accurate accounting of her most recent activities, it wasn’t what made the behavior so familiar. The aching that drove her into a pair of killer platform stilettos and the tightest dress with oval cutouts at the hips she could find in the closet, hot pink lipstick and enough eye shadow and concealer to hide the dark circles around her eyes long after midnight, had been riding her for a long time. It always seemed like something wasn’t right. Couldn’t get right. Be just right. Not for her. And what was she supposed to do about it? Lie in bed all night and think? Cry? Feel? For what? She had to keep moving. And within the four walls with vibrations from an unending stream of music and bodies moving to it all around, just for a little while she wouldn’t have to think, cry, or feel anything. She could focus on what she could do to fix things. Numb herself just enough to come up with a plan. Because that’s what she needed.

  So, she was back at the bar. Well, a bar. This one was in one of those updated, chic lounges that hosted cliques of professionals who preferred to hide the heavy drinking and dirty dancing they’d consider immature or reckless once they exited the city and started making the long drive back to the suburbs, some place more upscale than a nightclub. It was the kind of place where thirtysomething single ladies sat at the bar in boring Ann Taylor LOFT dresses with two layers of shape wear beneath them, praying some “good catch” would speak to them, and fortysomething “good catch” guys walked in with their porky chins up and portly chests poked out, praying some “easy catch” would actually fall for their weak lines. Because of this ironic mix of corporate desperation, the drinks were strong and the service was friendly. Val sat at the bar and turned out toward the room with her third drink in her hand. While this mix of entertainment and attention could usually settle much of what was on Val’s mind, she couldn’t seem to get herself together that night. Maybe it was the parade of information that strung her through the day. The last twelve-plus hours led her from Kerry to Leaf to Mama Fee and whatever Ernest was. Every situation had a new problem she couldn’t solve easily or without guilt. She couldn’t understand how she’d actually felt bad about asking Kerry for the ten thousand dollars to pay Coreen. It was what was best for both of them, for all of them. But why was it so heavy on her heart? And just when a few sips made her cover up her feelings with lies or slick sentiments, she’d move on to Leaf and his suspicions about Thirjane and who really killed Jamison. She told herself she didn’t care who did it or why, but she wondered. Could feel Jamison’s lips on her back and wondered. Why? More sips. More lies and slick sentiments, but then there was Mama Fee and all of the issues Val could never solve between them. She loved her mother as much as she could, as much as she knew how, but it was so much to hate her for, to box on her, to blame. Val knew this was wrong; she always did. But who else could be the punching bag? Who else would know the exact role to play to drag out all of Val’s emotions and help her line them up as crosses to bear? It was a dramatic affair that had tired most everyone else in Val’s life. Friends. Family. Lovers. It certainly ran Jamison off. But Mama Fee always stuck around. Two more sips and lies about that relationship would come. Then slick sentiments about how bad of a mother Mama Fee was, anyway. Then there was Ernest. And Val needed a shot for that one. Who the hell was he? Who the hell did he think he was? Talking about he’d be back when she needed him. He’d already come back—from the past or whenever. And anyway, she didn’t care to remember when or how she’d known him. The point was, she was sending him away again. Why couldn’t he get that?