by Mary Monroe
“Muh’Dear said I could be like you one day,” I replied. I smiled and tried to look composed, but my whole body was nervous with energy.
Scary Mary held up her hand, and a sad look appeared on her face.
“When they give me my foster girl I’m goin’ to raise her up to to be better than the mess I turned myself into,” she said, her voice cracking.
I just smiled at her again, grateful that she thought I was important enough to speak up for.
“Rhoda’s a nice girl, too,” I added. I had not brought Rhoda to meet my mother and Mr. Boatwright yet because I was too embarrassed. Compared to our house, hers was Camelot. I was also ashamed of Mr. Boatwright. Since Muh’Dear’s work schedule kept her so busy, she was never available to attend any of my school events, like PTA meetings and Parent/Teacher meetings. Once when I asked if she could take a day off and come meet some of my teachers, she sent Mr. Boatwright in her place and the kids talked and laughed about him for days. I never mentioned any school functions again.
Muh’Dear, Scary Mary, and I moved from the kitchen to the living room to watch The Lawrence Welk Show, one of their favorites. It baffled me the way almost every Black person I knew worshiped certain TV shows. Their allegiance to Lawrence Welk was probably the most baffling. Perry Mason, the comedies, and Ed Sullivan I enjoyed. I only sat through Lawrence Welk because I had no choice if I wanted to watch anything on TV.
When we gathered in the living room to watch TV we only talked when a commercial came on or if there was an emergency. “I wish we had another TV set so I could watch wrestling,” I complained. “Like Rhoda,” I added.
“Speakin’ of Rhoda, she such a good friend of yours, how come she ain’t got time to come over here and introduce herself?” Muh’Dear asked, adding with an amused look, “Tell her we ain’t gwine to bite her.”
I frowned; Scary Mary cackled.
“The girl must have somethin’ to hide,” Mr. Boatwright said. It was amazing how he often appeared out of nowhere. “Good evenin’.” Entering from the kitchen, he nodded to Scary Mary, who was sitting next to Muh’Dear on the couch with her feet on the coffee table. I was glad the commercial was short.
When Lawrence Welk went off, I left them in the living room discussing Scary Mary’s plan to take in a foster daughter. I could hear them from the kitchen. Scary Mary was going on and on about how angry she was about the fact that there were so many Black kids in need of new homes. She had lived in several foster homes when she was a child she claimed. “As a Christian, I feel duty-bound when it comes to our young’ns. Black folks got a obligation to he’p less fortunate Black folks. Sister Goode, you takin’ in Brother Boatwright is a good example. Just think how Annette might have turned out if he hadn’t been around to keep his eyes on her all these years,” Scary Mary said firmly.
They jumped from discussing Scary Mary’s future foster daughter to Caleb and how he overcharged his customers. Caleb arrived right after Scary Mary left. As soon as he got comfortable, they started gossiping about her missing so much church.
Mr. Boatwright said she just wanted a foster daughter so she could collect money from the state, and he would pray for the white folks to give her an ugly one so she’d be less trouble. Pretty girls got men in trouble, he said. After Caleb left, Muh’Dear and Mr. Boatwright decided that Caleb probably didn’t have a bullet lodged in his head. It was most likely water on the brain. He just said that it was a bullet because a bullet commanded more sympathy and attention than water.
Later, Scary Mary returned with more beer. By then, Pee Wee had joined in, and the subject was white folks. Judge Lawson arrived a half hour later. “Good evening, everybody!” he yelled, rushing in after I opened the door. “Hey there, judgie wudgie. How about a little drink?” Caleb slurred. “How about a big drink!” the judge howled. The next subject they discussed was the mysterious undertaker across the street and his family. I couldn’t stand to listen to them trash my best friend and her family.
I called Rhoda on the kitchen phone and told her about Scary Mary planning to take in a foster daughter when she got off probation.
“That’ll be good for Mott. But knowin’ Scary Mary, she’ll have the girl cleanin’ that whorehouse and baby-sittin’ all the time.” Rhoda chuckled.
“Yeah. But with Scary Mary being a madam having a police record, do you really think they’ll let her have a foster child?” I whispered, glancing every few seconds toward the kitchen door.
“Miss Pimp always gets what she wants. Anyway, the white folks would give Black kids to Godzilla just to get them off their hands,” Rhoda snarled.
I gave this information some serious consideration. “You’re probably right. But with all those nasty men in and out, it’d be a miracle if the girl doesn’t get raped, huh?”
“If the girl is smart, she won’t let that happen,” Rhoda said angrily.
“Like I should have been.” I sighed. “Mr. Boatwright said Scary Mary just wants a foster child so she can collect money from the state,” I added.
Rhoda sighed with disgust. “Does that mean old goat trash everybody?”
“Yep,” I said quickly. Then I told Rhoda some of what Mr. Boatwright had said about her and her family. She insisted on coming to meet him and Muh’Dear that next day.
An hour before Rhoda arrived, I sprayed our downstairs with Glade air freshener. Glade was no match for the potent, lingering smell of cabbage greens.
I cleaned all the floors downstairs, but there was nothing I could do about our cheap furniture.
After I had worked on the house, I went to my room and stood in my front window watching Rhoda’s house, waiting for her to walk out her front door. I waited for more than an hour. Uncle Johnny and Mr. Antonosanti climbed into Mr. Antonosanti’s car, a shiny blue Buick, and sped off. Mrs. Nelson came out to sprinkle water on her rosebushes. I got misty-eyed when Mr. Nelson came out and kissed Mrs. Nelson before roaring off in his car. Finally, Rhoda appeared. She kissed her mother, then skipped across the street. I ran downstairs to make sure I got to her before Mr. Boatwright and Muh’Dear did. Ed Sullivan had them mesmerized. They didn’t even look up when I ran across the living-room floor to open the door for Rhoda.
“Sorry I’m late. My facial took longer than I expected,” she apologized, looking around the room, wiggling her nose. Muh’Dear and Mr. Boatwright turned at the same time to stare at Rhoda.
“Y’all shet that door before them mosquitoes come in here and eat us alive!” Mr. Boatwright ordered, stomping his foot.
Muh’Dear’s eyes rested on Rhoda’s expensive black-leather boots. Mr. Boatwright leaped up and put his hands on his hips. “Is that your real hair, girl?” he asked suspiciously.
“Yes it is.” Rhoda smiled, shaking that gorgeous mane of hers.
“It look like a wig hat,” he added, turning to Muh’Dear. “Don’t it, Sister Goode?”
Muh’Dear rose and stumbled over to Rhoda and tugged on her hair. “It’s real all right. I bet Miss Rachel charge you double to straighten this horse’s tail,” Muh’Dear mouthed. I was glad she had on a nice dress, a green shirtwaist she often wore to church.
Rhoda turned to me with her mouth hanging open. I cleared my throat and introduced her. Mr. Boatwright took a few steps back, fanning his face with his hand like he had just had a hot flash.
“Um…Annette tells me how she helps you with your peg leg. I help my daddy prep the dead folks,” Rhoda said casually. She walked over and shook Mr. Boatwright’s hand. He looked at her like he didn’t know what he was looking at and shook his head.
“Girl, young as you is, ain’t you scared to be ’round all that…death?” he asked, screwing up his tortured face like somebody was pinching him. “Oooooh!”
Rhoda shook her head, and said seriously, “Dead people don’t faze me.” The room got uncomfortably quiet. Mr. Boatwright and Muh’ Dear were staring at Rhoda like she was a circus freak. I could see that this was making Rhoda nervous. I was trying to think of what to
say next to get the conversation going again, but Rhoda beat me to it. “Mr. Boatwright, you look a little wobbly standin’ there. Here, let me help you to a seat.” He seemed surprised that she was so gracious.
Muh’Dear gasped and smiled.
I stood back and watched as Rhoda helped Mr. Boatwright back to the couch, holding on to him by his arm. Part of the reason he was wobbly was because he had been drinking.
“Is this real leather?” Muh’Dear asked when Rhoda handed her her jacket to hang up. “Yes it is,” Rhoda said proudly.
“Did you buy it new?” Mr. Boatwright wanted to know. Like me and Muh’Dear, most of the things he wore came from secondhand stores.
“Yes sir.” Rhoda nodded, giving him an incredulous look.
“How much you pay for a new leather jacket like this?” Rhoda didn’t answer him right away. She sighed, pressed her lips together, and scratched her head. Mr. Boatwright looked around, impatiently waiting for her to answer.
“I wouldn’t know. My mama picked it up for me when my daddy took her to New York to shop last month.”
“They went all the way to New York just to go shoppin’?” Muh’Dear wailed, then covered her mouth and shook her head in disbelief.
“Yes. We do it all the time.” Rhoda was not revealing this information to be bragging. This was the life her family lived.
She stayed for dinner and even helped us prepare it. She made Mr. Boatwright nervous. He kept rolling his eyes at her and dropping things. Rhoda was such a distraction he removed the skillet with the corn bread out of the oven without using a potholder and burned his hand. He squealed like a stuck pig and started hopping like he had to pee. Rhoda applied butter to his burn.
During the conversation at the dinner table, Muh’Dear and Mr. Boatwright asked Rhoda a lot of nosy questions. All of them about her family, like how much money her daddy was worth, her family’s relationship with the Antonosanti family, and how much her daddy spent on his white relatives. Rhoda answered every question, giving answers so vague she confused Muh’Dear and Mr. Boatwright so much I think they got mad. “Lassie fixin’ to come on,” Mr. Boatwright said, looking from our wall clock to Muh’Dear. They both sighed, with relief I assumed, when I told them Rhoda and I would stay behind to do the dishes.
She didn’t stay long after helping me clean up the kitchen, and, under the circumstances, she had stayed longer than I expected her to. She excused herself just as Bonanza was coming on. Muh’Dear smelled Rhoda’s leather jacket before handing it to her. “It even smell new,” she commented, inspecting it like she was searching for a flaw.
“This evenin’ was…um…interestin’,” Rhoda whispered when I walked her out to the porch.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know they were going to jump all over you like that. They had no business asking some of the questions they asked you,” I told Rhoda. She made a dismissal gesture with her hand, chuckled, then trotted off our porch. I waited until she went inside her house.
“She sure is grown for fourteen,” Muh’Dear remarked, after I closed the door and sat down in the living room across from her and Mr. Boatwright. “You need to be more like her, Annette. I bet she don’t squall like a panda about house-cleanin’. And she eat like a bird. Why she barely touched all that good food Brother Boatwright put on her plate.”
“I wonder why,” I mumbled under my breath low enough so they couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t imagine a girl as pampered and sophisticated as Rhoda gnawing and smacking on neckbones like we had. I was surprised that she had eaten the corn bread and turnip greens.
“I heard she threatened to cut a white teacher’s throat last year,” Mr. Boatwright said quickly, nodding and fanning his face with a newspaper. “She’ll wind up in either a room in the state penitentiary or a room at Scary Mary’s place one of these days and start takin’ advantage of men. No wonder Scary Mary like her so much. You seen the way that little hussy was swingin’ them little narrow hips of hers, Sister Goode?”
“Just beggin’ to get herself raped.” Muh’Dear sighed and shook her head.
“What were you doing looking at her hips, Mr. Boatwright?” I asked under my breath.
“What you say?” he grunted, then belched.
“Nothing,” I whimpered. I couldn’t get to my room fast enough.
CHAPTER 20
About two weeks after Rhoda’s first visit to my house I accompanied her to her house, where we had planned to study.
She left me in the living room going through her records while she went to the kitchen to get me some of the peanut candy she had made the night before.
“You heard the new Beatles song?” It was Jock talking. I whirled around to see him walking into the room smiling. Fresh scabs ran the length of his face on both sides. There was a Band-Aid on his chin. I knew he got into a lot of fights so the scabs and the Band-Aid did not surprise me.
I looked at him, stabbing myself in the chest with my finger. “Are you talking to me?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding, his smile gone. “Rhoda told me you’re a big Beatles fan, too.”
“I am. Do you like them?”
“They’re all right.” He let out a short chuckle and waved his hand. “I think they’re more for girls though. And white kids. I’m into Motown.” He turned on the stereo and put on an album. “Where’s Rhoda?” he asked, looking around the room, snapping his fingers to Marvin Gaye’s latest.
“She went to get some of that candy she made,” I told him. I was nervous. I kept looking toward the door, praying that Rhoda would return before I started sweating through my cheap blouse.
Just then an elderly, heavyset white woman in a plaid nightgown entered the room, walking with a cane.
“Jock, did you—” She stopped and looked at me leaning over the stereo with an album in my hand. “Whose little nigger is this?”
I could hear Jock snicker. I gasped and dropped the record. Lucky for me, Rhoda returned a few seconds later.
“Granny, now you know you ain’t supposed to get out that bed. You could fall down the steps and break your hip again,” Jock said, shaking his head, facing the old woman with his arms folded.
“Granny Goose, this is my friend Annette from across the street,” Rhoda told the old woman, then turned to me. “This is our grandmother. The doctor told us to make her stay in bed as much as we can, but as you can see, she sneaks out.” Rhoda laughed nervously.
The woman looked me up and down, frowning. Her hair was as white as snow, and her pale face was heavily lined and dotted with moles and age spots. It was hard to tell if she had ever been attractive. Her nose seemed too big for her face, and her green eyes were too far apart. She had almost no lips. “You leave them albums and that stereo just like you found ’em,” she barked at me, waving her cane threateningly. For a brief moment I had a flashback. She looked like mean old Mrs. Jacobs, the woman who had whacked Muh’Dear with her cane. I had to close my eyes and count numbers in my head to keep from losing my cookies.
“Sit down, Granny Goose.” Jock attempted to lead the old woman to the couch, but she raised her cane and swung at him, missing only because he ducked. Rhoda tried not to, but she laughed.
“Get your black hands off me!” the woman cried.
Uncle Johnny came running into the room. “Mother, don’t get excited. Come on with me now so you can take a pill and get some rest. You ain’t got no business gettin’ out of bed after what Dr. Thompson told you. You ain’t well, sugar.” He had on a pair of plain black pants and a leather apron with a bib over a white shirt. I had a feeling he had been in the room helping Rhoda’s daddy prepare some deceased person for burial. He smiled and nodded at me. “How you doin’, Annette?” Before I could answer he turned to Jock, “Boy, get back yonder where your daddy’s waitin’ on you!” The old woman ranted and raved and swung her cane as Uncle Johnny steered her out of the room. Over his shoulder he yelled, “Jock, get a move on!” I looked at Jock, hoping he would leave the room immediately so that my heart
could stop jumping around in my chest. The boy just stood there like he had not even heard a word his uncle said. Then he picked up another stack of records and sat down on the floor.
“That’s daddy’s and Uncle Johhny’s mama,” Rhoda explained.
“I thought so.” I nodded. I eased down on the floor and crossed my legs at the ankles.
“None of her other kids will have much to do with her,” Jock added, looking at me. “Just Daddy, the only Black one and the only one she rejected.”
“Didn’t she raise him?” I asked. Like Mr. Boatwright there was a lot about Rhoda’s family I didn’t know.
“His daddy’s mama raised him. Once Daddy got back from the army and the Antonosanti family put up the money for his trainin’ and to get him started, his white relatives had a sudden change of heart.” Jock shrugged. “None of them had a pot to piss in and didn’t know where the next meal was comin’ from. Right away Daddy started helpin’ out his poor white relatives. To make a long story short, Granny Goose got to be too much of a problem for the rest of her kids. They wanted to put her in the state old folks’ home. We were all up here by then. About eight years ago Daddy left the house one mornin’ while we were all still asleep and when he came back two days later Granny Goose and Uncle Johnny were with him. She’s been here ever since, and so has Uncle Johnny off and on.”
“What does Uncle Johnny do for a living?” I asked. I had heard a lot about Rhoda’s favorite uncle, but nobody had ever mentioned his line of work.
“That’s a good question,” Rhoda said seriously. “He works as a dishwasher at Antonosanti’s, off and on, and of course he helps Daddy out, off and on.” Rhoda nodded. “He’s been tryin’ to preach the gospel for years, but he keeps backslidin’.”
“I’m glad he’s here. With Muh’Dear bein so sickly, Uncle Johnny takes a big load off her helpin’ with Granny Goose.” Jock shrugged. I looked toward the door, praying he would leave.
