by Mary Monroe
“I wish we could have met sooner,” I said, forcing myself to smile. I nodded at Rhoda, who sat there with a grim expression on her face. “I got here as soon as I could,” I told her, looking at my watch.
Just then, Rhoda’s husband, Otis, entered the room. “Annette, good to see you,” he said, giving his chin a quick lift to enhance his greeting. He still had on the khaki uniform he wore to work every day, and there was a thin coat of brick dust on his hands. I knew that Otis loved his job as a lead supervisor at the Richland Steel Mill, and so did Rhoda because he made a damn good salary doing it. Like my husband, Otis was no longer as trim and handsome as he’d once been. But with his strong chiseled features and neat, shoulder-length dreadlocks, he was also the kind of man whom most of the women we knew dreamed about. And according to Rhoda, Vernie was, too. Which made it even worse that somebody had attacked him.
“Did the police catch who did this?” I asked, looking from Otis to Vernie. Rhoda was looking at her hands when I turned to her. There was something else wrong with this picture. “Where’s Jade?” I wanted to know, still looking from face to face. I noticed how Vernie flinched at the mention of Jade’s name.
“She’s at the house,” Rhoda mumbled as she twiddled her thumbs.
“Oh. Well, it’s a good thing she wasn’t with Vernie. Whoever attacked him might have hurt her, too,” I said, sighing with relief.
“You’re right!” Otis said quickly. “Me baby girl is a lucky bird….”
Rhoda let out a loud breath and a muffled sob. She quickly looked away when I looked at her.
“Is there anything I can get for you, Vernie? Some bottled water maybe. Or would you like a snack from the vending machines?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.
“I’m fine, but thank you very much, ma’am,” Vernie said, speaking with a very slight southern accent. He seemed like such a nice, polite young man. He was a cute one, too, but not as cute as the Mexican whom Jade had scared off, though. Since he was stretched out on his back, I could not tell how tall he was. But just by looking at his finely chiseled face and long arms, I could tell that he was concealing a fairly nice body under those hospital bedcovers. And Rhoda had said something about him working out at the gym several times a week. He had thick, curly black hair and small brown eyes. His nose was a bit sharp for a black man, but he had a nice, neatly trimmed mustache and a pair of the most kissable lips I’d ever seen on a man. I could see why Jade had been attracted to him. She was the kind of girl who wouldn’t be found dead in the arms of a homely man.
But why was she at home and not with him now? That was one question that I was afraid to ask.
Otis disappeared from the room and returned a few minutes later with coffee in paper cups for me and Rhoda. We made small talk for a few more minutes; then I left. Before I could make it into the elevator, Rhoda caught up with me.
“Are you going back to your office?” she asked in a gruff voice.
I looked at my watch. “I guess so. I was supposed to meet Pee Wee for lunch, but it’s too late for that now. I’ll just grab a sandwich and eat it at my desk.” I looked down the hall toward Vernie’s room. Two rosy-cheeked doctors swished by us with the tails of their long white smocks flapping like parachutes.
“I need to talk to you about somethin’,” Rhoda told me in a nervous voice.
“You want to call me when I get back to my office? Or do you want to go somewhere now and talk about it over a drink?”
I had not pushed the button for the elevator, but the door opened anyway. A plump nurse exited, scribbling on a chart. Rhoda surprised me by guiding me into the elevator and pressing the button for the lobby. As soon as the door closed behind us, she turned to me with a wild-eyed look. “She did it!” Her words exploded through gnashing teeth.
“What? She who? And…what…did she do?” I stammered.
“Vernie didn’t get mugged!” Rhoda claimed. “At least not by a stranger.”
“What—did Jade do that to him?” I asked.
“Yes, she did. Jade did that to Vernie.”
“Oh, God no,” I muttered, not the least bit surprised to hear this nasty piece of information.
One of the many things that Rhoda and I rarely discussed was Jade’s hostile nature and what she might eventually do to somebody some day. Her level of aggression was extreme. The girl had a temper and could fly off the handle over the most trivial of things. To my knowledge, she had never physically assaulted another person; her attacks had always been verbal. That was no longer true.
I could not ignore the grim thoughts running through my mind. Rhoda had committed several murders. Was it possible that Jade was going in a homicidal direction, too? I shuddered. The thought of it made my flesh crawl. Even though Rhoda and Jade looked alike and had a lot of the same personality traits, Rhoda was a somewhat sensible person when it came to chastising her enemies. If there was such a thing as a “considerate” killer, that was Rhoda. She had killed some pretty nasty, evil people. The kind of devils that normal people like me had often fantasized about killing. But the fact that Jade was so irrational made this prospect even more chilling. “Rhoda, please tell me you’re joking.”
“I wish I could.” She released a rapid chorus of choking sobs. I waited for her to compose herself.
“You’re upset. Do you want to talk about this later?” I asked, clapping her on the back.
“No, I’m fine. I want to talk about this now, if you don’t mind. Just give me a few seconds.” I waited some more as Rhoda coughed a few times and cleared her throat. It sounded like she was in pain, and I knew she was. Her voice sounded so sad and desperate when she started talking again. “Yes, she attacked him, and it’s not the first time.”
I didn’t want to make things any worse than they already were by asking unnecessary questions. The situation was grim enough, and I could see how hard it was for Rhoda to discuss it. But I couldn’t keep my thoughts to myself, or my mouth from revealing them. “And I have a feeling it won’t be the last time,” I said.
CHAPTER 29
After Rhoda and I exited the elevator, we stood in the hospital lobby on the first floor near the registration desk. Had the weather been nicer, I would have led her to the atrium outside. I didn’t like to look at all of the injured folks coming in to get medical attention. One was a little boy with so much blood on his face that I couldn’t tell what race he was.
“Rhoda, if there is anything I can do, just let me know,” I told her, squeezing her shoulder. “If you want to talk about it some more, just call me.”
I checked to make sure the buttons on my coat were done as I prepared to walk toward the exit. But from the look on Rhoda’s face, I decided she wanted me to stay.
“Are you going to be all right?” I asked.
She shook her head and gave me a dry look. “Yeah, I will—I don’t know, Annette. Instead of gettin’ better, Jade seems to be gettin’ worse.” Rhoda looked toward the elevator and then around the lobby before she returned her attention to me. “My son called me up and told me that just before she came back up here, she bounced her cell phone off Vernie’s head just because he spoke to an old girlfriend—in church! He said that right after Vernie fell to the floor with his head bleedin’, she got so aggressive that the pew they were sittin’ in turned over! Can you imagine that? It took three ushers and my son to restrain her. Poor Vernie. He’s a smart boy, so he should have known better. He shouldn’t have messed with her.”
He shouldn’t have messed with her? I was so taken aback by Rhoda’s last statement that I almost choked on some air. Something told me that Jade would eventually meet her match. I wondered if Rhoda was going to say that person shouldn’t have messed with Jade, too.
The more I heard, the more I feared for Vernie’s safety. But I was in no position to intervene. For the time being, all I could do was listen. “I know now that I should have never sent her to Alabama. I should have kept her up here so I could keep her under control.”
/> “Under control? Rhoda, if you can’t even keep yourself under control, you can’t keep Jade under control!”
“The hell I can’t!”
We were talking loud enough for some of the nurses and incoming patients to hear. I moved back a few steps, closer to the exit, with Rhoda following. I resumed my end of the conversation in a voice that was just above a whisper. “If what you call yourself doing now is keeping Jade under control, I’d hate to see the kind of damage she could do if you weren’t keeping her under control. Honey, your daughter needs some professional help.”
Rhoda looked at me like I had just revealed the secrets of the universe. It was good to see the way she’d suddenly perked up.
“Maybe you’re right! I’ve been thinkin’ about somethin’ like that for years, but I guess it’s time for me to stop just thinkin’ about it.”
“It’s a start,” I added.
She agreed with me by offering me a nod and a weak smile. Then her mood seemed to darken again. “What did you mean a few moments ago when you said this wasn’t goin’ to be the ‘last time’ Jade does somethin’ like this to Vernie? I gave her a good talkin’ to. Do you think she will do somethin’ like this again?”
“Why wouldn’t she? And by the way, why did she attack him this time? Did he provoke her?”
“I guess you could say that. As far as Jade was concerned he did.” An embarrassed look crossed Rhoda’s face.
“It must have been pretty bad,” I mouthed.
“To her it was. You know how sensitive she is. Well, he sassed her in public. She attacked him with one of those metal chairs at Big Bobby’s Burger joint where they were havin’ lunch today. All because he smiled at the waitress and back talked to Jade when she complained about it.”
“I’m surprised somebody didn’t call the cops,” I said, shaking my head.
“They did. Remember that goofy-ass Lonnie Shoemaker from school? The brother with that peanut-shaped head who was a year ahead of us? He’s a cop now. And still just as big a butthole as he was in school.”
“I know. He gave me a speeding ticket last week, and one the week before.”
“Anyway, I get there, and right away I try to talk him out of arrestin’ my child. Otis had already arrived and was in the ambulance with Vernie. Jade was a wreck, hollerin’ and screamin’ like a banshee. A blind man could have seen that the girl was delirious. By the way, she’d been smokin’ some weed with a couple of her she-devil, clonelike girlfriends before she met up with Vernie. She was a little light-headed and, you know, confused. I’ve told Vernie over and over to run when she’s smokin’ that shit. And I’ve told her over and over to stop smokin’ that shit. But that’s a moot point because it’s in her blood. She’s half Jamaican. Every damn time she goes down to the island to visit her daddy’s folks, or sit around in the same room with her daddy and her uncle Bully, they pass around thick blunts like candy. That’s the real reason she wasn’t really that responsible for her actions this time….”
“As far as I’m concerned, her smoking marijuana doesn’t justify what she did to Vernie,” I said firmly. “I know a lot of people who smoke it, and they’ve never done anything stupid because of it. Myself included—back when I was a kid myself, of course.”
“I agree with you. Weed is more harmless than a glass of wine. If anything, she should be more mellow when she smokes it. And she usually is—but not this time. Vernie must have really looked at that waitress with a hungry eye for Jade to react so violently.”
“Rhoda, if Vernie had fucked that waitress in front of Jade, she still had no right to attack him with a chair,” I insisted.
“Look who’s talking!” Rhoda blasted, giving me an amused look. “What about you beatin’ the crap out of Louis when you found out he was playin’ you?”
I rolled my eyes and chuckled. “That…that was different,” I stammered, my face burning with shame. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“But you did,” Rhoda said, nodding.
“Well, it won’t happen again, I hope,” I bleated. “You know that that wasn’t the real me.”
“Anyway, Shoemaker had a crush on me one time, so he’s got a soft spot where I’m concerned. Jade claimed self-defense, so he didn’t arrest her. Poor thing.” Rhoda paused and took several deep breaths. “She wouldn’t last an hour in a jail cell. I couldn’t have that.” Rhoda pressed her lips together and shook her head. “And damn that Shoemaker! He had the nerve to talk trash to me! All because I told him I wasn’t goin’ to leave the premises until he promised me that he wouldn’t even put my daughter’s name on his report. I told him that he had to refer to her as ‘an unidentified perpetrator who got away before he could detain her.’ With his four-generations-livin’-in-the-same-house ghetto self! He agreed to write up his report that way, but he still told me that if I didn’t get out of his face, he was goin’ to plant some weed on me! I don’t know what this world is comin’ to!”
I could tell that Rhoda was disgusted beyond belief. But I couldn’t tell if she was more disgusted about what Jade had done to Vernie or the fact that a cop had “talked trash” to her.
I felt so sorry for Rhoda. She was one of the smartest women I knew, but one of the most pathetic, too. She still thought that the world revolved around her. And apparently, so did Jade.
“Hmmm. Well, your daughter was lucky this time.” I gave Rhoda a stern look.
She gave me a stern look back. “What do you mean ‘this time’? This will never happen again,” Rhoda vowed. “I will see to it; you’ll see. Oh, and by the way, you’ve got a daughter, too. Raisin’ daughters is not easy. This could happen to you.”
“True. But little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems. Right now we need to focus on your daughter,” I said.
I didn’t go back to my office. I left for the day. Since I had flaked out on another lunch date with my husband, I decided that he deserved some special attention, and a special dinner.
CHAPTER 30
Despite my weight loss, and the fact that I no longer ate like a hog, I still liked to cook. My husband enjoyed the usual down-home plates that almost every other black person I knew who had southern roots enjoyed. I usually planned our meals so that I didn’t have to come home from work and then scramble around the kitchen trying to decide what to cook. I was not the kind of homemaker who would fiddle around with microwave plates unless I had to. When greens were on the menu, I took the time to pick and wash them the night before. I always made sure I had thawed out a chicken in time for me to cook it for dinner, and if I was going to make some cornbread, I made sure I had all of the ingredients at my disposal. My daughter, Charlotte, didn’t appreciate my hard work in the kitchen, but that didn’t bother me. She was no different from most of the other kids her age. She hated almost everything I cooked, so at least once a week, if she’d been good, I ordered a pizza or took her out for a fast-food treat.
After I’d left Rhoda at the hospital, I stopped at the grocery store and picked up all of the things that I needed to prepare one of Pee Wee’s favorite meals. We usually ate dinner between six and six thirty, but there were always exceptions to that rule. Some days we ate as early as six or as late as eight. It was a toss-up on weekends and holidays. Then there were days when one, or all three of us, walked around the house nibbling on something off and on all day. On days like that, I didn’t even set the table. When Pee Wee had not come home by seven that evening, I set the table and summoned Charlotte.
“Yuck! Mama, how could you? Greens, squash, and pork butt, slimy okra and cornbread again,” she complained, frowning at the plate I’d just prepared for her. “Eyow!”
“You can ‘yuck’ and ‘eyow’ all you want, Miss Thing, but you’d better eat everything on your plate. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Charlotte picked up her fork and stared at the contents on the plate in front of her like she was looking at a pile of horse manure. “And where’s Daddy?”
“Uh, he’s workin
g late again,” I told her. “Eat your dinner. And hurry so you can do your homework, then go wash your rusty little body.”
I fixed myself a plate, just a small portion of greens. No meat and no bread.
“Is that all you’re going to eat? You making me eat all this slop, and all you’re going to eat is some of those nasty greens. Mama, you know that ain’t fair!”
One of the things that I didn’t like, or tolerate, was a child mouthing off to an adult. Especially when that child was mine and I was the adult. I didn’t say a word. I simply lunged at Charlotte with my fist poised and gently mauled the side of her head—the same way my mother used to do to me when I got out of line.
She howled and then sniffled for a few seconds, but she dug into her meal the way she was supposed to. We ate our dinner in cold-blooded silence.
Charlotte winced with each bite she took. From the looks on her face, you would have thought she was being forced to eat a skunk. I felt so sorry for kids like her who didn’t know how to appreciate real food. When I was her age, a plate of greens and cornbread used to make my eyes and mouth water. And that was still true to this day. I just didn’t eat as much.
Every time I heard a car outside, I ran to the window, thinking it was Pee Wee.
Charlotte swallowed hard and took a sip of her water. She still had a lot of food on her plate to eat, but she was taking her time, prolonging her agony. A few minutes ago, she’d stopped eating to run to the bathroom. A minute after she returned, she stopped eating to run outside to make sure she had put her bicycle on the back porch like she’d been taught. When she returned from doing that, she had a piece of paper in her hand.
