by Mary Monroe
I didn’t even bother to lie or act like I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Just my fist,” I admitted. “And I let that bitch have it with my rolling pin,” I said proudly through clenched teeth, looking around the room. “They were both lucky I didn’t have a few bricks lying around.” The tip of my nose was itching so I rubbed it before I drank a few sips of the strong coffee Rhoda had made.
“Atta girl!” Rhoda said, giving me a vigorous black power salute with her raised fist.
“You know I am not the kind of woman to be fighting,” I said, clearing my throat. “It wasn’t worth it anyway.”
“But you are glad you did it, right?”
I nodded. “I guess. I feel a little bit better knowing that I let them know just how pissed off I was.” I exhaled a deep breath. “I need to get out of this house soon. It feels like these walls are closing in on me. That dog lied to me. He was supposed to come get the rest of his things and talk to me about what we are going to do next. And he was supposed to discuss this with his daughter.”
“What do you want to do next? Are you goin’ to fight to get him back?”
I gave Rhoda an incredulous look. “Hell no! I don’t know what I’m going to do next, but I do know what I am not going to do. I’m not going to chase after him or beg him to come home. If he doesn’t want to be here, I don’t want him here.”
That Monday, I lumbered into my office a few minutes before noon. I was glad to see that all of my workers were busy. As soon as I got myself a cup of coffee from the break room, I locked myself in my office and did more work in the next two hours than I normally did in a day.
I didn’t even stop to eat lunch. I had not had much of an appetite since Pee Wee left. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t even eaten anything since that morning! I must have dropped a few more pounds, because the navy blue pants I had on felt a size too big. I was happy with my current weight and didn’t really want to lose any more. But I knew that if I didn’t start back to taking care of myself, my weight wasn’t the only thing I’d have to worry about losing. I didn’t want to lose my grip on reality. One of my mother’s employees had suffered a severe nervous breakdown last year when her husband left her. Sister Hawkins had been in the state hospital ever since, talking to herself and rubbing her own shit in her hair. The last thing I wanted was for some man to take credit for me losing my mind.
It was after six by the time I opened my office door and strolled out onto the main floor. Except for the janitor, everybody had left for the day. I stopped when I got to the cubicle that Michael Dench had occupied during his short stay. Even though it had been a while since he’d committed suicide, I still thought about him from time to time. As sad as it was to stand in the same spot that he had occupied, it offered me a brief distraction. The more I focused on other things, the less I had to deal with my own situation.
I finally ate something when I got home; some strawberry yogurt straight out of its container, as I stood in front of the refrigerator with the door open. As soon as I entered my bedroom, I knew that something was different. The closet door was ajar, and it looked like somebody had been sitting on the bed. I checked the closet and saw that Pee Wee had removed all of the clothes that he had left behind. I shuffled into the bathroom and saw that he’d also taken all of his toiletries.
The only messages on my answering machine were from my mother, Rhoda, Scary Mary, and my daughter. Just as I was about to fix myself a very stiff drink, the front door flew open and my daughter flew in like a bat out of hell.
“Hi, Mama! Grandma just dropped me off,” she sang, dropping her backpack onto the living room sofa as she dashed toward the steps leading upstairs. “I gotta do my hair!”
I had not talked to her much about her daddy’s departure. When she came back downstairs about twenty minutes later, I brought it up.
“Charlotte, I don’t want you to think bad things about your daddy. He’s still a good man,” I started, joining her at the kitchen table where she sat rolling up the end of her ponytail with some pink sponge rollers. “Uh, he’s going to let me know when we can sit down with you and explain what is happening.”
“Why?” Charlotte asked, giving me a puzzled look. “I already know what’s happening between you and him. I got eyes. I got ears. I know how crazy you old people are.” Her eyes seemed to see clean through me, like she knew more than I did. “What I don’t understand is why any of y’all old people are still having sex in the first place.”
CHAPTER 39
“Look, girl. Sex is not just for young people. Some elderly people do it right up to the day they die,” I said, stunned and saddened to hear that my daughter had even thought that much about sex at her age.
“Maybe that’s why they die,” she suggested.
It did me no good to sigh with exasperation. That went right over Charlotte’s head. “Mama, stop looking so sad about Daddy leaving. At least you had him for a while. Some women don’t keep their husbands half as long as you kept my daddy.”
“Well, I am glad to see that his leaving doesn’t bother you that much!”
“It does bother me, Mama. I am just not going to let it spoil my life like you. Dang.” Charlotte’s eyes suddenly lit up. “Me and all of my girlfriends said we’re going to be like Liz Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor when we grow up. Each time a husband leaves us, we’ll just get another one.”
I shook my head. “There are a lot of things you don’t understand. You’re not mature enough yet. And in a way, that’s a good thing. Stay a child as long as you can….”
“Huh?”
“Baby, being an adult is hard,” I admitted, my voice cracking.
“Mama, I don’t have no idea what you’re talking about,” Charlotte complained, giving me a look of confusion that I’d never seen on a child’s face.
“That’s just it, baby. There are things going on that you don’t understand, things that you can’t understand. Things that only adults can deal with, and we need to explain them to you.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Like what? Dang, Mama, I’m eleven. I am not a baby no more,” she said in a strong voice, sounding so mature it scared me. “I’m almost grown,” she informed me. Right after she said that, she lifted a yellow water pistol off the table, and squirted water onto her bangs and on the roller she had just used to roll up the end of her ponytail.
It was heart wrenching to see just how innocent and young my daughter really was. If it had been up to me, she would have remained that way until the day she died. But I was realistic enough to know that I could protect her for only so long from the black boots of misery that were waiting to stomp her into the ground the way they’d done me. Even though all of the hard knocks I had survived had made me the woman I was today, I didn’t want my daughter to walk in my shoes.
“You’re not as grown as you think you are,” I said.
She rolled her eyes again; then she dipped her head and looked at me with a dry expression on her face. “Too bad you and Daddy ain’t like Rhoda and Otis.”
Both of my eyebrows shot up. My breath caught in my throat and it took me a while to form the words I wanted to release. “What do you mean by that?”
“Rhoda and Otis are the perfect married couple. They love each other, and neither one of them would never be running around with somebody they wasn’t married to like my daddy. Jade won’t do something that nasty to her husband either.”
I had no desire to discuss Jade and her marriage. But I was curious as to what made Charlotte think that Otis and Rhoda had the perfect marriage. But I was not curious enough to ask. The last thing I wanted to deal with right now was her asking me questions I didn’t want to, or couldn’t, answer.
However, I couldn’t stop myself from bringing up Jade’s name in another context. “I don’t want you going over to Rhoda’s house to spend time with Jade. I’ve already told you that it’s better if you spend your time with kids your own age. Jade is a grown woman now. And she’s married. You should not even b
e thinking about her.”
“And that’s another thing, Mama. I know the real reason you don’t want me to hang with Jade no more. I know how you got mad at her. I seen her at the movies one day and she told me the whole story about how you was jealous of her.”
“That’s not the whole story,” I protested.
“Mama, I don’t care. I’d rather be around kids my own age anyway. Can I order a pizza for dinner?” Charlotte had already jumped out of her seat and was walking toward the telephone on the wall before I could answer.
“Make sure it’s a small one,” I told her.
As soon as she’d placed her order and returned to her seat, I started up again. “Your daddy is in love with another woman and he wants to be with her. We’ve had a few problems recently, and I think he’s still trying to get over that. That’s part of the reason he doesn’t want to live with us right now.”
“You didn’t tell me what you did to make him fall in love with another woman yet. What did you do to him?”
“That’s not important. Anyway, he still loves you, and no matter what he does to me, you should not let that stop you from loving him. Men his age sometimes feel that the love of a wife is no longer enough.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do women your age feel like that, too?” Charlotte gave me a guarded look as if she was trying to read my thoughts. “Are you going to get a boyfriend?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. The important thing right now is for us to adjust to your daddy being gone.”
Shortly after I’d put Charlotte to bed, I received another unwanted visit from Scary Mary. “I was just in the neighborhood,” she lied, looking around my living room as she practically pushed her way in. “Pee Wee still gone?” She wore a beige trench coat with a black belt. She had on a pair of white house shoes. “I’m glad to see you ain’t crawlin’ around on your belly with grief.”
“Yes, he’s still gone, and you won’t ever see me crawling around on my belly with grief. You want a drink?”
“A beer if you got one you don’t need,” she said, following me into the kitchen.
“I went back to work today,” I told her. “And he came to the house while I was gone to get some more of his shit.” I gave her a beer and poured myself a glass of milk; then I sat across from her at my kitchen table.
“That nasty puppy!” Scary Mary drank her beer; then she slammed her fist down hard on the table. “Mens, mens, mens! We can’t live with ’em, we can’t live without ’em.” She stopped and gave me a curious look. “If I was you, I’d get me another one as soon as possible. You know what they say about fallin’ off a horse. As soon as you fall off one, get on top of another.”
“I think it’s too soon for me to even be thinkin’ about another man,” I decided. I didn’t know what made everybody think it was that easy for me to run out and get another man. Had it been that easy, every woman on the planet would have somebody, and most of the women’s magazines would go out of business.
“Well, you ain’t got all the time in the world, you know. And you ain’t got what Janet Jackson got.” The old madam glared at me for a moment, making me uncomfortable. Had I known she was lurking around my neighborhood, I would have turned off all of my lights and refused to answer the door. “I remember when Pee Wee was an itty bitty boy. He was scared of white folks then. Now he done fell in love with one and moved in with her. Tsk tsk tsk.”
“I wish everybody would stop referring to Lizzie as a white woman. Nobody started saying that until this…this mess with Pee Wee.”
“Her skin is as white as Michael Jackson’s!”
“So what? Lizzie has always identified herself with the black community.” Lizzie Stovall was the last person in the world that I wanted to defend. But after what I’d just said, and the way Scary Mary was looking at me, that was what it sounded like. “Not that I care what race she is. She’s still a no-good whore who just happens to be the daughter of a white woman.” I tilted my head to the side. “I guess it would make everybody happy if I got me a white man.”
Scary Mary yelped and looked at me like I’d sprouted horns. “What white man would want to stick his dick into that pothole between your legs?”
I ignored the brutal insult that she’d hurled at me by pretending like I didn’t hear it. “You want another drink?” I rose and rushed over to the cabinet where I kept several bottles of leaded fuel. The first bottle my hand touched was a fifth of gin. “Or do you want something stronger?” I asked, pouring myself a large glass of gin.
“Pour me one, and then you set down and shet up. I got a bug to put in your ear. A big one.”
“What?” I asked in a nervous voice, easing back down into my chair.
“He done already talked to a lawyer, baby,” she told me in a low voice, glancing toward the doorway. “That’s what I rushed over here to tell you. I didn’t want you to be caught off guard.”
My mouth dropped open. I had to take a drink before I could speak again. With some of the liquid still in my mouth, I said, “Pee Wee is already talking to a lawyer. How…Who told you that?”
“Look, girl. I got eyes and ears all over this town. Don’t nothin’ go on around here that I don’t find out.” Scary Mary gave me an impatient look as she sucked on her teeth. “If you really must know, the lawyer in question is one of my regular tricks. He is one of them Republicans at that, so you better hire you a real big gun if you want to have a chance.”
“So…” I said with such a huge sigh on my lips that I had to pause. “He’s not coming back. But he told me that he would never want a divorce!” I mouthed, speaking more like I was talking to myself.
“And that wasn’t the only thing he lied about!”
“Do you have any other lawyers on your list? Give me the name of the best one!” I yelled. “I’ll beat him to the punch, and by the time I get through with his black ass, that barbershop and everything else he owns will be mine.”
CHAPTER 40
As soon as Scary Mary had left my house, I boiled a couple of hot dogs and was able to eat them both. After I took a long, hot bubble bath, I poured myself a glass of white wine. That helped me relax.
I had begun to wonder what in the world was going to happen to me next. It seemed like every time I got to a comfortable place, things blew up in my face. And what scared me so much was the fact that I didn’t know why. Was I being punished for the things I’d done? There had been so many, and some had been so extreme that I had to wonder if karma had finally caught up with me. Or maybe the devil, and God, were testing me some more. I dismissed all of those thoughts. I knew that I was responsible, at least on some level, for the way my life had turned out. Now I had to figure out what to do to fix it.
I must have wandered around the house for at least an hour with my wineglass in one hand and the wine bottle in the other. One minute I was in the kitchen wiping off the counter and rearranging the dishes in the cupboard. After that, I wobbled to the dining room where I rearranged the chairs around the table, watered my plants, and brushed off the place mats. I eventually ended up in the living room, where I opened and closed drapes, straightened the area rugs, and dusted off the coffee and end tables.
No matter what I did, I couldn’t ignore the pain that Pee Wee had caused me. I wanted him to be in pain, too. I couldn’t wait to get lawyer information from Scary Mary. Before I went to bed, I pulled out my phone book and wrote down the numbers of three lawyers.
As soon as I got to work the next morning, I called the first one on my list and made an appointment. Ten minutes after I’d concluded that call, Pee Wee called me up. Just the sound of his voice made my heart jump and my breath freeze in my throat. I had decided that if he called to apologize and told me that he had made a terrible mistake, and that he wanted to come home, I’d cuss him out first. But then I’d tell him to come on back home where he belonged.
“I just wanted to talk to you,” he began, sounding
sad.
I leaned back in my seat trying to decide how to respond, especially since he was sounding so down in the dumps. I quickly decided that I wasn’t going to cuss him out after all. What I really wanted was for us to work things out.
“Pee Wee, there is nothing in the world we can’t work out. If you could get over what I did to you by getting involved with Louis, I can let this thing between you and Lizzie slide.”
His silence stunned and disappointed me. He didn’t break down and beg me to forgive him. He didn’t even tell me that he missed me. “Annette, I’m in love with Lizzie.”
Even though he had already told me that, those words chilled me all the way through my flesh to my bones. He got silent and I didn’t know what to say next. I just sat there holding my breath, silently scolding myself for letting him know that I was such a lovesick fool, and that I was ready, willing, and able to take him back if that was what he wanted.
But that was not what he wanted, and he wasted no time making that clear. “Uh, all I wanted to do was to touch base with you,” he said, talking in a stiff and impersonal voice. “I want you to know right off that you ain’t got to worry about money.”
“Who said I was?” I hissed. “If anybody should be worried about money, it’s your scaly black ass. God don’t like ugly, and He’s the one you’ll have to answer to for what you did to me!” I was amazed at how quickly I went from wanting him back to wanting to put a major curse on him.
“Maybe God can strike us both down at the same time,” he muttered.
“I wish you would stop reminding me about my affair with Louis Baines!” I screeched.
“Baby, you are the one who usually brings it up. I can’t stop talkin’ about it if you don’t.”
“What did you call here for?” I asked, sounding as impatient as nature would allow me to. “And hurry up! I’ve got things to do, places to go!”
