She answered the phone. “This is Sally. Could you come by and get your severance pay, or do you want me to mail it?”
“Hi, Sally. I’d appreciate if you’d mail it. Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m doing what Jack told me to do. If it was left to me, you wouldn’t get air.”
“I told you I was sorry, Sally. I forgot how homophobic Jack is. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have told him.”
“But it wasn’t your business. Anyway, what’s the use of wasting my breath on you? You got yours, and you won’t be switching around here lording it over the rest of us like you owned the place. I don’t want to see your shadow, much less you. Gail walked out on me, and it’s your fault. You caused me to get demoted and lose a third of my salary, and I don’t make enough to take care of her.”
“Sally, I never…I’m sorry. I…Oh, what the hell.” She hung up. Reverend Collins does not want to give me any more dribble about forgiveness. I’ve had enough of it for now. I do not even want to see his face.
Nonetheless, the following Sunday morning, Petra dragged herself to church, although she didn’t want to go. Her mama insisted that she attend and give thanks that the surgeon hadn’t taken her life. She sat on the aisle in the last bench and, with a lot of effort, made herself stay awake. She wasted no time leaving as soon as the preacher said the benediction. Her decision to go directly home and not stop at the corner coffee shop to gossip with friends as she usually did had consequences that she would gladly have avoided.
As she opened her gate, Ethel, her next-door neighbor stepped out of the house. “Hi, Ethel,” Petra said and paused for a talk, temporarily forgetting that Ethel probably hated her. “How’s Fred?”
Ethel stopped, pressed her knuckles to her hips, and glared at Petra. “How is Fred you asked me? How is my husband? He’s off with some other lowlife woman doing what he did with you. I kicked him out of my bed, and the bastard is out of my life. My husband of thirty-two years, the father of my grown children, the man you fornicated with right under my nose does not live here anymore. Don’t speak to me!”
“I’m sorry, Ethel. I thought I was doing the right thing in telling you. It only happened once. I wish you could forgive me.”
Tears streamed down Ethel’s cheeks. “I would rather not have known. I was happy till you told me, and now I got no husband and no friend.” She raised her head, laid back her shoulders, and walked on.
“I’m beginning not to respect Jasper Collins’s opinions,” Petra said to herself. She entered her house with a heavy heart. If only she hadn’t come back! Oh, she loved Krista and her mother, but she longed to shed the concerns that had weighed on her since she returned. And she longed for Winston. Why hadn’t she gotten his address or at least given him hers? She stooped down, icked up a handful of mail and went to the kitchen to get a cold drink, which she would sip while she read her mail.
She browsed through the mail, tossed most of it into the waste basket, and went to her room to look at the pile of letters that arrived during her absence and the day before. “Good grief!” she said, jumping up and dropping the half-full glass of ginger ale. “When did I spend all this money?” She opened a bill from another credit card company and gasped. With those bills, she would have been better off if the prognosis that Barnes gave her had been correct. She had paid full fare for each flight, taken train trips in sleeper cars, failed to seek low-budget lodging, and done a lot of other foolish things. As if her travel expenses weren’t enough, all of her regular living expenses faced her. I must have been out of my mind.
Krista came home from work that afternoon bringing a smoked ham. “I won this at work,” she said. “I also received a hundred bucks in cash and a bottle of Dior perfume. I’m employee of the month, and I can choose a complete outfit for up to six hundred dollars. What do you think of that?”
“I think I’m proud of you.”
“I’d rather have had the whole thing in cash to put toward my tuition.”
“Did you get accepted?”
“Not yet. I received a letter inquiring about my financial situation. When they do that, they usually admit you.”
“Well, these credit card bills are telling me it was the wrong time for me to chase around the Southwest. It’ll take me ages to pay this off, especially since I don’t have a job.”
“Oh, you’ll find a job. Till then I’ll make sure we eat.”
“I appreciate that, Krista, but I’d be much happier if I thought you’d forgiven me for telling you that lie.”
“I forgave you, Mom. It just eats at me sometimes.”
“I’m going over to Lurlene’s tonight. We’re playing pinochle with Twylah.”
“Then don’t worry about me. Mom, you and Ms. Lurlene ought to encourage Ms. Twylah to get rid of some of that blubber she carries around. It’s unhealthy.”
Petra stifled a laugh. “That’s true, but don’t talk that way. She’d be hurt if she knew you said that.”
“By the way, Mom, tonight’s my night to attend choral rehearsal. I’ll be home around ten.”
“I gather you’re going to tell me how you became involved with these singers.”
“Sure. No problem.” Krista eyed Petra with what seemed to be misgivings. “You’re not too happy about my growing up, are you?”
“I wouldn’t say that, but I’m not happy about you acting as if you’re eighteen with the rights and privileges of an eighteen-year-old when you’re still seventeen.”
“Jeez. That’s deep, Mom.” She kissed Petra’s cheek, something she hadn’t done since she learned about her father. “See you later.”
Her phone rang, and Krista rushed to answer it. “Yes, this is Krista. You mean…Okay, I’ll tell her.”
“That was miss Lurlene. She said she has a headache and doesn’t feel like playing pinochle tonight. She’ll call you.”
Petra phoned Twylah. “What’s the matter, Twylah, y’all don’t feel like playing cards tonight? Since when did a headache stop Lurlene from doing anything she wanted to do?”
“You asking me? When Lurlene called me and said she was going to bed, I figured she was mad with either you or me, and if it wasn’t that, she met a man. If she’d met a man, she’d be shouting it from the steeple on top of City Hall. I guess she’s hot because you didn’t feel like giving her the gossip the minute you got back in town. ’Course, I ain’t exactly pleased with you about that, but I guess you were tired. What’s all this about you having your head bandaged up? If you don’t tell people what’s happening, they make up their own version.”
“You feel like coming over? I can give you some ham and hash browns.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Petra hung up. On top of everything else, her two closest friends were displeased with her. She’d bet anything that her mother told Twylah and Lurlene about her operation. Nothing had changed, and she wondered why she had thought anything would.
Goodman sat at his desk in his studio waiting for Krista. He planned for the two of them to eat something together after he gave her her piano lesson, and then they would go to rehearsal in his car. Five minutes before he expected Krista to arrive, Jada sauntered in.
“You don’t teach this evening,” she said, defending her presence there.
“You’re wrong. My daughter gets her piano lesson, and she’ll be here in two or three minutes.”
“Well, she’s already seen me here. Did she tell her mother?” So Jada thought his wife was Krista’s mother. It was well to leave her in ignorance.
“How do I know? The man hasn’t been born who can figure out a woman. What do you want? You have to leave in a minute.”
“I’m having trouble on my job. I’m up for a promotion, and I’d be dealing with sensitive material. I need somebody to speak for me. A couple of years back, I was accused of starting a brawl in a bar. I didn’t. Honest! But I spent ten days in jail for it. About five months ago, Petra Fields told me she was in that bar, and saw the whole thing, and—�
��
“Who? Did you say uh…Etta Fields?”
“No. I said Petra Fields.”
“Uh…I thought you said Etta. Go on.” He knew she said Petra, but he was not about to involve himself in any deeper entanglement with Jada. He’d already gone too far with her.
“Anyway. That woman didn’t want anybody to know she’d been to a bar, so she didn’t witness for me, and I spent ten days in the Ellicott City jail for something I didn’t do.”
He thought for a minute. “I don’t see what I can do about that, Jada.”
“Maybe you know a judge or somebody high up who’ll sign something. Otherwise, I won’t get that raise, and I’ll always be stuck in that cubicle I’m in now.”
He sat on the edge of his desk and swung his right foot. “It doesn’t work like that, Jada. If I approached a judge on your behalf, I’d be interfering with the law. I can’t do that, especially since you were convicted. I think it’s best that you try for a job that isn’t…well, sensitive.”
“I’d like to put Petra Fields out of commission.”
He didn’t like the sound of that, because he was almost certain that, underneath, Jada had a rough texture. “Why? She didn’t do anything to you,” he said, careful to keep the anxiety out of his voice and facial expression. He looked at his watch. “I’ll see you at rehearsal.”
She stood and looked at him for a long minute without the sexiness that she usually tried to affect. “I’ve been thinking. If a woman’s got a man who’s making it, and he never gives her one dime, he’s either stingy as hell or she ain’t worth much in the sack.” She walked toward the door, but without her usual arrogance. “I put it down every time, so you must be stingy.” She walked out and closed the door.
Goodman didn’t have time to think about that for, a minute later, Krista walked in. He didn’t ask her whether she encountered Jada, because he knew that if she had, she’d volunteer the information. “Hi, Daddy.” She kissed his cheek. “I hadn’t been accepted to any college, and today I got acceptances to three.”
“Which three?”
“Howard University, Ohio State, and Brown. Brown is the bomb, Daddy.”
“I suppose that means you think it’s top quality.”
“It is, but it costs a lot of money. I saved all I made this summer, but that won’t get me in the front door.”
“We’ll deal with that later. Do your finger exercises.
“You did well today,” he told Krista an hour later at the end of the session, “but you’d be much farther along if you practiced more. Come on, we’re about to be late to rehearsal.”
“OK, I’m ready, Daddy,” she began, skipping backward as they walked to his car. “When are you going to introduce me to my brothers? You’re not ashamed of me, are you?”
He stopped walking and grasped her arm. “Of course not. I’ve told them about you, so they know you’re here and that they will eventually have to reckon with you. But seeing you in person will be, for them, like receiving a court summons when up to that time, they could still hope that someone else would be accused. Once they see you, they’ll have to deal with your existence.”
“So why procrastinate about it? The longer you take, the more you’ll dread it.”
“I know, but I’m not ready to deal with the turmoil.”
Goodman knew he did it, but efficient and capable Petra wouldn’t have thought herself guilty of procrastination. Yet, instead of dealing with her enormous credit card debt and looking for a job, she took the bus to Maryland Avenue, crossed the railroad tracks at the station, and walked down to the Patapsco River’s edge. Immediately, her thoughts roamed back to the day the doctor gave her the dreadful news that she would die within six months. Thoughts of that rainy and chilly day, a bleak day when she had been numb with her fear of the future, brought tears to her eyes.
Perhaps she had behaved foolishly in what she now realized was not only an attempt to cram a lifetime into the few months that she thought remained, but also an effort to escape, to avoid dealing sensibly with the problem. She sat there until twilight encroached, and then found her way back to the bus stop. Now, however, a different kind of blues weighed upon her, and heavily, too. Her grief over Winston Fleet poured out of her eyes, grief for the pain she had surely inflicted upon him when she ran away, taking a course that made things easier for her but surely not for him. And grief for a love lost.
Petra dried her eyes and boarded the bus. She paid the fare, found a seat, and told herself, “If I could face dying, I can face never seeing Winston again. I’ll move on. Somebody will hire me.” The next morning, she phoned the credit card company to which she was most indebted and worked out a payment plan, then took half of the money that remained in her checking account and paid off the other credit card bill.
“Lord, I hope I find a job soon,” she said to her mother, who came to Petra’s house late that afternoon with a bowl of stewed collards, a pan of baked cornbread, and half a dozen seasoned and breaded catfish.
“While I stayed here with Krista, I got out of the habit of eating by myself,” Lena explained. “We can heat this up, and I’ll fry the catfish soon as Krista gets here. You got any coffee? I could sure use a cup.”
Well, here we go again, Petra thought. When Mama and coffee get together, reasoning flies out of the picture; she just talks.
Petra handed her mother a cup of freshly brewed coffee, sat down at the kitchen table opposite her, and told herself to be patient.
Lena didn’t make her wait long. She sipped her coffee, leaned back in the chair, and said, “You know, I’m glad I got here before Krista came home. It doesn’t pay to let your child know everything that goes on with you. Krista’s smart aleck enough as it is.” She took another sip of coffee, savored it, and narrowed her left eye.
Here it comes, Petra thought.
“You tell me there’s nothing to this awful gossip going on about you. One of the women at church, a good friend of mine, too, asked me if you went off to get rid of a baby.”
Petra could feel the heat of the anger that began to furl up in her. “I would certainly like to know your answer to that, Mama. I can imagine who that was.”
“Well, did you?”
“I told you why I went away. Have you forgotten?”
“Now, don’t get your back up, and don’t give me no sass,” Lena said. “I have a right to know what goes on in my family. Somebody else told me you slept with Docia Holmes’s husband and her son, too. ’Course, I didn’t believe the part about Docia’s son. Jimmy’s so full of pimples, a woman couldn’t get near him. That is, not unless she wore dark glasses and was desperate. But surely you didn’t sleep with Chuck Holmes. Docia’s been a real friend to me, and I wouldn’t stand for you mistreating her.” She sipped more of her coffee. “Docia’s real down.”
Petra looked at her mother with sad eyes, acknowledging that her mother loved smut and gossip as much as her friends did and was a principle carrier of tales, as many untrue as true.
Well, she’d give her something to talk about. “Mama, I wouldn’t consider sleeping with either of those Holmes men. If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s the smell of beer on someone’s breath, and Amstel beer could make a profit just off Chuck and Jimmy Holmes alone. Fred, my neighbor, is the only married man I ever slept with, and that only happened once. Tell the gossips they have the wrong man.”
Lena gagged on the coffee she’d been about to swallow and jumped up from her chair. “What in the name of the Lord have you been doing? You telling me you went to bed with Ethel’s Fred? He’s been staying with Armena for the past few weeks. How many women has that man had? I never would have thought it of him. Why, the man’s a deacon, and a front row deacon at that. Well, I declare! I never.” A key turned in the front door.
“That’s Krista,” Lena said. “Let me get this pan hot and warm up these collards and this cornbread. Lord, what my ears have heard here today!”
It did not escape Petra that her moth
er hadn’t commented on her lapse of morals, but had instead focused on what would be fodder for gossip. She wished she’d kept the matter to herself.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Grandma. Mom, one of my coworkers said her mother is retiring as a court reporter. Didn’t you say you could speed write or stenotype? I got the information for you in case you want to check it out tomorrow.”
“Sure I can stenotype. I may need a couple of days to brush up on it. I couldn’t get a stenotyping job here, because the court only hires three. I’ll be down at court tomorrow morning at eight-thirty.”
Lena fried the catfish and served the meal. “This is the bomb, Grandma.” Krista looked at Petra. “Grandma cooked some first-class soul food while you were away, Mom. I was wondering what kind of people you met. Like you didn’t always travel and go sightseeing by yourself, did you?”
Petra had promised herself not to tell anymore lies, so she decided to remember selectively the people she’d met. “Honey, you have a high school education, so please don’t start every sentence with the word ‘like.’ It sounds awful. Now, as I recall, I met some remarkable people, but I doubt I would have gotten to know some of them if I hadn’t thought my days were numbered. On the other hand, if I hadn’t been so certain that I wouldn’t live long, I would have let myself know some of them better.”
“Really?” Krista said. “Does that include any men?” Trust her daughter to release a bombshell. She had no intention of telling a seventeen-year-old girl that she would have developed a liaison with a strange man, and certainly not that she picked up a hitchhiker on an interstate highway. As her grandfather always said, “Never lie, but use the truth selectively.” In dealing with Krista, that was a very good principle.
“There were some who wanted to be friendly, but my motto is that if you want to avoid making stupid mistakes, never do anything away from home that you wouldn’t do at home.”
Krista rolled her eyes. “The gospel according to my great grandfather. I’ll clean up, Mom,” she said, and Petra realized that Krista wanted peace between them, but without apologizing for the times she’d behaved rudely.
A Different Kind of Blues Page 19
