by J. J. Murray
“You think you can take care of an entire house when you can’t even take care of half of this one?”
She had a point, but I didn’t say anything. I waited for the repeat, but she didn’t give me one that day.
“I asked you a question, Erlana!”
Again, I waited for the repeat. None came. “Mama, there’s not much to take care of at that house.” And besides, I had three strong men who would do all that for me.
“You know, Karl, if you refinish those cabinets, I might be up for that special thing you want to try…. Roger, boy, you need some sun! You know how I love your freckles. Go make me some new ones to count with my tongue. See all that grass out there? … Juan Carlos, want to go skinny-dipping? You do? Well, before I join you, why don’t you do something about that dock over there….”
Yeah. I can take care of that house all by myself.
“Erlana, you know you can’t multitask.”
She made another point. I can barely pee and brush my teeth at the same time. I’ve lost a few toothbrushes that way.
“Taking care of a house is multitasking all the time.”
“I’ll manage.” After all, it takes skill to multitask three men. I smiled. “I’ll be fine, Mama.”
“And you think you can afford to stay at that house making only seven fifty an hour and not working in the summer? Not even working in the summer!”
That calmed me down. The repeat had returned. All was right and well with the world again. “I’ll manage. Any work I do on the place gets deducted from the rent.”
“You are actually going to do some work around that house?”
It did sound kind of funny when I said it. “Yes.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it. But it still takes money to fix up a house, Erlana.”
“I have a couple thousand saved up in the bank.” I had been saving for a new car, but the Rabbit will just have to do for a little while longer. “I’ll be paying around sixty a month in utilities, sixty for my phone, the Rabbit is paid for, I have low car insurance”—since I have a five hundred dollar deductible—”I have no furniture to buy, no drapes or … okay, maybe all that yellow can go—”
“And what is it, thirty miles from your job?” Mama interrupted. “Thirty miles!”
“Twenty,” I said as I began to empty my drawers into two big old duffel bags, the only luggage I have ever owned.
“Twenty! That’s forty miles a day, two hundred miles a week, over seven thousand miles a school year! Seven thousand miles, Erlana!”
Mama’s really good at math.
“That car of yours can’t handle that!”
But Juan Carlos can. He’s a mechanic. He’s really good with his hands. I want to tell Mama about Juan Carlos, Roger, and Karl, but that would cause trouble….
Though introducing them to her might be fun. Hmm …
“Mama, this here’s Juan Carlos. You like the little mole on his cheek, his thin moustache, and his soft skin?”
Mama grabs her chest. “He’s a … C-c-catholic who barely speaks English!”
“I understand him just fine, Mama. And this is Karl. You like his little shaving bumps and the dimple in his chin?”
Mama slumps onto the couch, still clutching her chest. “Where’d he get all those tattoos? In prison?”
“Karl graduated Hampton U, Mama. He’s no felon. And this is Roger. You like his big pores, freckles, and goatee?”
Mama goes into convulsions mumbling, “He’s white? He’s white?”
“Yes, Mama, and guess what? I’m dating all three of them … at once!”
Once the introductions were over, we’d have to pay a couple hundred for the ambulance, so … Hmm. Which of the three would give her the worst heart attack? Probably Karl. He’s black with the most beautiful Afro, which I love braiding—or only half-braiding, depending on how horny I am. He also has more tattoos per square inch than the average tattoo artist.
And I’ve checked out each and every one of those tattoos, mainly looking for other women’s names. I haven’t found any yet, but if I do, I got me some strong teeth and sharp nails.
“The Rabbit will be fine, Mama.”
“And how are you going to feed yourself?”
I had shrugged. I mean, it didn’t matter because I was going to get fed in bed. Wait—Roger usually likes to eat at the table. “I’ll manage, Mama.”
“Child, you can’t cook.”
True. “I will manage, Mama, okay?”
“Well, what about—”
“Why should I stay here, Mama?” I interrupted.
More jaw dropping. I rarely interrupt her. She picked up her jaw and blinked at me. “You should stay here because it’s the … because it’s the sensible thing to do.”
“It’s sensible to pay rent to your own mama for seven years?” I asked.
She had sighed. “Is that what this is about? Is that what this is about? If this is about money, Erlana, I can—”
“It’s not about money, Mama.”
“It isn’t?”
“No.” Simple answers are the best for jaw-dropping, repetitive mamas.
“Then why do you have to leave?”
She had finally asked the right question. “I am twenty-five years old. All these years you’ve been saying that I need to grow up”—definitely repeated to me more than twice a day—”and when I finally do something grown-up, you tell me it’s not sensible. Now Mama, I know you’re not bipolar”—though she eerily fits most of the clinical descriptions. “And I know you don’t like to contradict yourself”—although she does contradict herself as often as the sun rises. “So what did you really mean all these years when you said that I needed to grow up?”
Lots of blinking, ending with her eyes sealed shut, her lips twitching. Her eyes opened with a little roll, a few nasally exhaled breaths escaping. “I meant …” Arms folded, head shaking, eyes closed again. “I meant that you should settle down.”
With a man, a house, and a baby. It was time to drop the hammer. “Like you did, Mama?”
Eyes open. More whites than browns. Eyebrows stitched together. “Erlana Joy Cole, you will not sass me in this house, I will not have sassing in this house, you will not sass me in my house!”
And she said it three times three different ways! I had looked away and started on the next drawer. “It isn’t sassing if it’s the truth,” I whispered.
“What did you say?”
My mama can hear the click of a car door gently closing five blocks away and know that it’s me coming home really late from a date with a boy. My mama can hear me whispering on the phone under my covers while she’s working in her garden outside on a windy day. My mama can hear ants fart and fleas sneeze. She can hear snow falling in Maryland. She had heard me, so I didn’t repeat it.
Her hands dropped to her sides. “I don’t want you to go.”
My heart hurt a little when she said that, but I haven’t watched half a lifetime of Oprah and Montel for nothing. “I’m only twenty miles away.”
“Twenty miles … I want you to stay.”
“I’m not a dog, Mama.” I couldn’t help myself.
“I didn’t say you were!”
I turned to her. “I am leaving this house, Mama. I am moving into another house. I have been here long enough. I—”
“Your daddy put you up to this, didn’t he?”
No matter how often I tell her, she still won’t believe me. “Mama, I haven’t spoken to Daddy in almost seven years. You know that.” He called and talked to me for all of two minutes the day I graduated from high school. “I am putting me up to this.”
I had finished packing my dresser and opened the closet door. I didn’t have much in there, so with one swoop of an arm, I had emptied my closet of “dress” clothing. Man, do I hate wearing church dresses. As for the shoe boxes stacked floor to ceiling, though, that would be tricky. My feet stopped growing ten years ago, and I religiously take care of my shoes, saving all the boxes.
“What am I going to do without you, Erlana Joy?”
Another shot at my heart. I had to be strong. “You have your flowers, Mama. They’re starting to come up now, right? And like you’ve always said I’m not worth lint around here.” I also wasn’t worth a pickle, a penny, and later (after inflation) a nickel.
“I didn’t mean … You know I didn’t mean any of that literally, Erlana. I was just trying to … to motivate you.”
I removed an old framed snapshot of my daddy from my nightstand. “You have motivated me, Mama, and this is the result. You have motivated me to grow up and move out.”
“You hate me,” she said.
That one bounced right off my heart. Is this a line all mamas use as a last resort? “I don’t hate you, Mama. I’ll never hate you.”
“Then why are you running away?”
Oh, I suppose I could have said something lame and melodramatic like “I am going out into the world to find out who I truly am, Mama,” or “I am going out into the great beyond to find me, Mama,” or “I want to see what I can possibly be in this wild and wonderful world.” None of that would be true, and I try never to say anything too melodramatic like that.
I just wanted a place where I could be loved, without restrictions, without strings, and without daily lectures, where I could be worth more than lint, a pickle, and some change.
I simply said, “I am not running away, Mama. I am growing up. There’s a difference.”
“You’re running away from me.”
“Mama, if I had wanted to run away from you, I would have left long ago.” When I was eight years old. “I have overstayed my welcome at your house, that’s all, and it is time I was moving on.”
“Oh, you’re exactly like your daddy, despite all I’ve tried to do for you. Just exactly like your daddy.”
I took that as a compliment. “Thank you, Mama.”
And that’s how I left her. I didn’t feel bad about it. I mean, twenty-five years is probably seven years too long to stay at home. After high school, I could have gone to Radford University—they accepted me and my measly 2.8 GPA—but I stuck around Roanoke because I really didn’t have an escape plan for after Radford. I would have probably gotten a business degree and worked customer service at the bank for the rest of my life, maybe with Mama as my boss!
It’s still one of my recurring nightmares. Not very pretty.
Now, I had an escape plan, and the day I moved, I introduced Jenny’s dollhouse to Juan Carlos.
And the housewarming gift he gave me—repeatedly—didn’t warm up just the house.
Chapter 6
After dumping what little I had and setting up my entertainment system (a twenty-inch TV/DVD player and a boom box) at my new house, I drove back to Roanoke to pick up Juan Carlos at Berglund Auto World. Yes, he is a mechanic without his own ride. Karl at least has an old Chevy Blazer, and Roger has a Nissan pickup. Almost every day, Juan Carlos’s mama drops him off at work in her old Pontiac Bonneville or he takes the city bus to work. His mama also gets most of his money. At first, I thought it was sweet, but now … He is definitely too attached to his mama, and though I have never met her, I want to smack her for not severing the umbilical cord. A man pushing thirty should not be living at home with his mama.
“Where are we going?”
“For a drive.”
He licked his lips. “You have something … planned?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, okay.”
Juan Carlos isn’t exactly a conversationalist, but he’s very good with his tongue.
I watched Juan Carlos’s eyes for any signs of life when we got to the cottage, but there were none. When the road finally ended at the beginning of the tall grass, he turned and stared at me. “What is this all about?”
I raised my eyebrows and got out.
“Who lives here?” he asked as he got out.
I turned and stepped into his arms, resting my forehead on his chest. “I do.” He started to speak but stopped. “Come on,” I said.
“Wait,” he said. “Is this your house?”
I kissed his nose. “Yes. And it’s a cottage, not a house.” Okay, it’s a love shack, but I doubt Juan Carlos would understand. “And I’m staying here nearly rentfree as long as I do a few things around the house.”
“Like cutting all this grass.”
I kissed his lips. “That will be the first thing you’ll do.” Though Roger really needs the sun worse. Juan Carlos’s skin is like hot coffee laced with jalapeño peppers. He doesn’t need any more sun. “Do you like it?”
“I have not seen it yet.”
“Well, do you like what you’ve seen so far?”
He looked around. “Where are your neighbors?”
“There aren’t any. Maybe a deer or two will come sniffing around.”
“And it is nearly rent-free?”
I nodded.
“Well, show me this place.”
Since it was only five o’ clock, we had plenty of light to see inside the house without having to crank up Sheila. Juan Carlos didn’t say much as we moved from room to room. Mr. Wilson had cleaned out all the closets, so I had a better idea of what my office/studio/future glorified shoe rack would look like.
“Well?” I asked as he sat on the bed in the master bedroom.
“This place is like a museum,” he said.
“I like it just fine.”
He raised and lowered his eyes. “It is so far from Roanoke.”
I straddled him, wrapping my legs around his back. “It’s only twenty miles.”
“Yes, but …”
“If you’d only get yourself a car. Doesn’t Berglund give employee discounts?”
“Yes, but …”
But Mama needs the money. I didn’t want to go down that road. “Aren’t there loaner cars you can borrow?”
“Yes, but they do not like employees to do that.”
“Well, you know I don’t mind picking you up.” It was kind of how we met in the first place, only the other way around. Sort of. More on that later.
“I do not like you picking me up.”
“Because it’s not macho,” he was about to add, and I didn’t want to have that conversation again. Juan Carlos has a long list of what a woman should and shouldn’t do.
“I don’t mind picking you up, you know that.” I kissed him on the neck. “As long as I can have you here all to myself more often, I don’t mind at all.”
“But I must work,” he said.
I unbuttoned his shirt and unbuckled his belt. “Let me do all the work, baby….”
Forgive us, Jenny, I prayed while we made love in a yellow room as the orange sun set over the green pond, rocking Jenny’s bed as the waves gently kissed the shore. And afterwards, while we cuddled without speaking, I realized something monumental.
I like this, but I don’t really like Juan Carlos.
I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, and I still can’t. There’s something … wrong with him. The loving is better than good, but the conversation is butt, and it’s not because he doesn’t speak English that well. He’s just too … something.
I spent the rest of that spring break breaking my own back, since Roger was busy with his job (more on that and him later), Juan Carlos was working double shifts because of another damn GM recall (which makes me glad I own a VW), and Karl, well, I couldn’t find Karl. I paged him to death, but he never answered my page, which most likely meant he was on the road somewhere.
Mr. Wilson came to my rescue. He just … showed up, real sneaky and freaky like, saying, “Jenny said you might need some help.”
I was beginning to like Jenny, though it’s beyond freaky at night to know a ghost might be walking around her kitchen downstairs.
Mr. Wilson and I reduced the dock to a stack of wood on the left side of the barn, talking mostly about the wildlife around the pond. He told me about anemones, arbutus, Indian pipes, and blazing stars, and all their medicin
al properties. He recounted stories of white-tailed deer, red foxes, mink, muskrat, ground squirrels, and even a few wild turkeys that visited the dollhouse. I know I have a ground squirrel living in the attic, which really makes no sense. He should be living on the ground, right? I hear him rooting around up there every night, but he (or she?) is usually quiet after eleven. Maybe Jenny quiets him down, too.
I then asked Mr. Wilson about snakes.
I wish I hadn’t.
“There are some gopher snakes around here, but they’re harmless,” he said. “They’ll keep the field mice down, though. I remember when we had to use an outhouse behind the barn before we had the septic put in. One day, I was sitting there taking care of my business when I felt something poking me from below. I stood up, and sure enough, a gopher snake six feet long came up out of the cesspit. I don’t rightly know why it was down there….”
I always check the toilet bowl now, even though the bathroom is on the second floor. Shit, I even check it at work. Roanoke isn’t that far from the country.
“That pond out there,” he said as we took an iced tea break a little later in the day, “is full of largemouth bass, but if anyone asks you, you tell ‘em that there’s nothing but bluegill and sunfish in it. We don’t want our secret getting out.”
He pointed to a long aluminum canoe balanced between two rafters in the barn. “That there’s the best way to fish the pond, if you ask me. Shove off, drift a bit, and move with the water like the fish do. Some of the best spots to cast are within twenty feet of this dock.”
I’ve never done it in a canoe. That might be interesting. Roger would try it. He’s the most adventurous. We’d probably tip over that canoe fifty times … and we’d have a million mosquito bites for our troubles. Hmm. Maybe there are some places where a lady cannot entertain her man properly.
Mr. Wilson then took me around the front of the house. “There’s a sidewalk under all this grass. It’s just a bunch of concrete squares that run from the house to the driveway.” He took a few steps from the door, kneeling and pulling up a clump of sod. “Here’s one. There are even a bunch leading down to the dock, spaced about a foot apart.”
