by Mary Monroe
We were out the door within five minutes. When we got to the convenience store, Pee Wee decided to go inside too. We went separate ways as soon as we got inside. I grabbed two liters of Pepsi, and when I attempted to join him in the next aisle where the beer was, I bumped into another customer. I didn’t recognize her at first because she had on a pair of big round-rimmed eyeglasses, and a woolen cap covered most of her head. It was Lizzie, the same woman who had ruined my marriage.
“Annette,” she mumbled, unable to look me in the eye. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”
My eyes immediately rolled down to get a look at her stomach. She had gained about fifty pounds, and most of it was around her middle. I knew that she was supposed to give birth in three months, but from the size of her belly, it looked like she was going to go into labor at any minute. “So,” I said, looking at her from the corner of my eye. She looked whiter than ever. As a matter of fact, she didn’t look like she had a trace of black blood in her now. “You look well,” I told her. “Better than I did when I was at the stage you’re at now when I was pregnant with Charlotte.”
“Yeah, but I’ve had a lot of complications. Water retention, gas—you know, stuff like that. I’ve moved back home, too, so my mama can take care of me.” She offered me a tight smile, but that was not enough for me to smile back at her. “Things didn’t work out between me and Peabo.” Things were probably not going to work out between her and any man that she got involved with, I thought with a smugness that I had to force myself to contain. I could tell she was uncomfortable about running into me after all this time. I hadn’t seen her this close up since that day back in March in my kitchen, the day Pee Wee moved out of my house and in with her.
“Uh, well, my stepdaddy is back there in the snack section. I’d better go check on him before he fills up the cart with Fritos and pretzels,” Lizzie said, already backing away.
“Yeah, you’d better do that,” I sneered. I didn’t see Pee Wee in the beer aisle. He was at the checkout counter when I got there, and had already paid for his beer.
“What took you so long?” he asked, looking at his watch. “We need to get back to the house so we can be there when Rhoda calls.”
“You know me. I can’t walk past a magazine rack without stopping,” I lied as I paid for my Pepsi.
Before Pee Wee pulled out of the parking lot, I saw Lizzie peeping from the store’s front window. He didn’t see her, so he didn’t see the unbearably vacant look on her face. She looked like she didn’t have a friend in the world, and after the way she’d betrayed me, she probably didn’t. As much pain as that sad sack had caused me, I still felt sorry for her. In her search for love and happiness, she had sacrificed a lot: her friendship with me, then Pee Wee, and only God knew what else. But now she was right back where she was when I had tried to rescue her from her drab life. She was living back at home with her elderly mother and stepfather with no daddy for the baby that she was about to bring into the world. My life was no bowl of cherries, but I wouldn’t have traded places with her for any amount of money in the world.
“Why you so quiet?” Pee Wee asked as we neared my street, driving about five miles an hour because it had begun to snow again.
“Oh, nothing. I was thinking about Rhoda and how I hope things work out between her and Jade,” I replied.
Five minutes after we walked into the house, Muh’Dear and Daddy brought Lillimae home. Daddy was hugging a pile of beautifully wrapped Christmas presents. He squatted down and set them under my tree, moaning and groaning because he had such a hard time standing back up. Then, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his plaid jacket, he looked at me and shook his head. “We heard all about you and Rhoda causin’ a ruckus up in that tittie bar,” he told me with a grimace on his face as he removed his coat and draped it across the back of the couch. Lillimae removed her coat and helped Muh’Dear remove hers.
“I don’t know what the world is comin’ to for women to even want to take off their clothes for a livin’,” Lillimae exclaimed, hanging the coats on a wall rack by the front door. “If those strip-club owners came up to me, they couldn’t pay me enough to show my shame in such a public way!”
I had to press my lips together to keep from laughing at the thought of 280-pound Lillimae stripping. I gave her a pensive look. It was only then that I realized that my half sister, unfortunately, looked like the human version of Miss Piggy; all the way down to the floppy blond hair, snout-like nose, and pinkish complexion.
“Lillimae, I don’t think you have to worry about that,” I said, hoping that it didn’t sound like I was trying to be funny. But everybody laughed anyway, especially Lillimae.
“I don’t know why you and Rhoda lied about gwine to the revival tonight. You should have been up front about that tittie bar. I would have gone with y’all in case some of them goons up in there got ugly and y’all needed some protection,” Daddy said, still huffing and puffing from squatting down to place the Christmas presents.
“Frank, you can barely walk from one room to the next without walkin’ into the wall. You wouldn’t have been no good in that tittie bar up against all them young, big ox bouncers,” Muh’Dear said, giving Daddy a pitiful look. Then she gave me the same look. “Annette, I hope you and Rhoda don’t never do nothin’ that reckless again. If y’all had told me, I would have gone over to that place and talked some sense into Jade.”
We were all sitting in the living room sipping on iced tea when Rhoda steamrolled through the front door without knocking—just thirty minutes after I’d spoken to her.
“Did you meet with Jade already?” I asked, motioning her into the house. “Did your daughter talk to you?”
Rhoda looked so depressed and defeated. There was just no telling what Jade had said to her. “Yes, my daughter did talk to me. It didn’t go well. It didn’t go well at all.”
CHAPTER 48
RHODA DROPPED HER CAR KEYS AND PURSE ONTO THE COFFEE table. She exhaled as she sat down hard on the arm of the couch where Muh’Dear and Daddy sat with anxious looks on their faces.
Pee Wee stood next to Rhoda, rubbing her back. “You don’t look too good, sister,” he noticed.
“I don’t feel too good either.” Rhoda exhaled again. “I told Jade she could come home and all would be forgiven, if she agreed to my conditions. I told her she had to get a real job, respect me, be more responsible, and help me keep the house clean.” Rhoda’s eyes rolled back in her head; then she laughed in a strange and eerie way. It was disturbing to say the least. “Then she tells me that she will only come home if I agree to her conditions. She earns anywhere from five hundred to a thousand dollars a night in tips at the club, so she claims. She will quit the club only if I give her an allowance equal to half of what she’s makin’. Can y’all believe the nerve of that girl?”
There was a horrified look on every face in the room, especially mine. Every feature from my forehead to my chin felt like it had frozen in place.
“I’ll say she’s got some damn nerve!” Muh’Dear shouted, almost jumping off the couch. “Who in the world does that little chicken-leg hussy think she is?”
Rhoda laughed in that same eerie way again. “Oh, this is the best part. She said I had to agree to let her come and go as she pleases, let her smoke weed in the house, hire a maid to clean her room, and let her entertain her boyfriends in her bedroom, no questions asked.”
“I hope you didn’t agree to any of that shit!” Lillimae snapped. There was a disgusted look on her face as she handed Rhoda a glass of rum. “Take this, sugar. You look like you need it.”
Rhoda sipped from her glass and then sucked in a deep breath. “Fuck no, I didn’t agree to her demands! So I guess she won’t be comin’ home. There is nothin’ more I can do. I realize that now.”
“Rhoda, you ain’t done all you could do. She is still your child, and you got to be there for her and love her unconditional,” Daddy suggested.
“Oh, shet up, Frank! You didn’t have no
trouble raisin’ your girls. I don’t know about your other daughter Sondra that you had with Lillimae’s mama, but Lillimae is one of the most upstandin’ women I know. Jade ain’t right. There comes a point in time when a bad child can cause more damage to a parent than a serpent’s tooth,” Muh’Dear said. “Rhoda, you got a King Kong–size mess on your hands, girl.” She shuffled over to Rhoda and gave her a long bear hug.
“Well, y’all, I’m goin’ home to my husband now,” Rhoda said, looking strangely serene.
“If Jade was my child, I’d teach her a lesson she’d never forget,” Muh’Dear said. “I’d straighten her out once and for all. It’s been years since I had to whup Annette, but I still know how to swing a mean switch. Shoot!”
Rhoda didn’t want me to, but I went home with her anyway. Otis and Bully were snoring like bulls in the living room. Otis was stretched out on the couch; Bully was slumped in the love seat. I wondered how things would be if Jade came home while Bully was still occupying the guest room.
Rhoda and I went into the den to watch the eleven o’clock news. The lead story was about a teenage boy who had robbed the Grab and Go, threatening the cashier with a baseball bat. The whole crime had been caught on the store’s security camera. An announcer for Channel Four asked viewers if they could identify this stupid-ass boy. Before they could even finish the story, they reported that the switchboard had just lit up like a Christmas tree. The very first call had come from a viewer who identified the boy without hesitation: the boy’s own mother.
“Damn! Can you imagine a mother turning her own son in knowing he’s probably going to jail?” I gasped.
There was a blank expression on Rhoda’s face. At first I thought she was asleep with her eyes still open. “Oh my God! Rhoda, are you awake?”
“I’m awake.” Rhoda’s voice was barely audible.
“Girl, did you see what was just on the news?” I asked.
“Mmm-huh. Sure I saw it. Some woman turned her own son in for robbin’ the Grab and Go,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t blame her one bit... .”
We didn’t mention the strip club or Jade anymore that night. We talked about the Grab and Go robbery, some upcoming sales at the mall, the latest gossip from Claudette’s beauty shop, and a new movie that had been recently released. “So you think Titanic is goin’ to be a box office hit?” Rhoda asked. We had both seen the new movie a few days ago.
I shook my head. “I’m sure that it won’t be half as big of a hit that Jaws was. That Kate Winslet might make it big some day, but that Leonardo Di—whatever his name is—looks too much like a teenager for anybody to take seriously. He’ll be waiting tables this time next year.” We spent a little more time talking about a few things we’d seen on TV, and how glad we’d be when Christmas was over. Before long, we had forgotten all about the report about the woman turning her son in for robbing the Grab and Go. At least I did.
“That woman must really love her son to turn him in like that,” Rhoda said in a hoarse voice.
It took me a moment to realize what she was talking about. “Oh, you mean that mother the news said turned her son in? Well, that boy cooked his own goose. He’s going to jail for sure. And at least his mother will know where he is for a while. Yes, I would say she loves him. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have turned him in. And he would have continued to commit crimes. That fool would probably end up killing some innocent person, or getting himself killed.”
Rhoda nodded. “Uh-huh. I agree with you on that one. At the rate that boy is goin’, he would be much better off in jail than on the streets.”
CHAPTER 49
“THAT’S IT! I’VE GOT IT!” RHODA SAID. IT WAS THE FIRST THING out of her mouth when she called me up on Sunday morning.
“You’ve got what?” I asked, glancing at the clock on my nightstand. It was only seven A.M.
“I know how I can save my child!” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard Rhoda sound this giddy. “I’m goin’ to send Jade to jail,” she announced. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner! But after seeing that TV news report about the woman who turned her son in last night, I know that I need to send my daughter to jail to save her.”
“You want to send Jade to jail? For slapping you? I don’t think she’ll get much time, if any, for that. And don’t forget, you slapped her back. Not to mention the fact that this happened last summer,” I pointed out.
“She’s goin’ to get herself killed, or end up in prison anyway, Annette. With the people she’s runnin’ with, it’s just a matter of time.”
“I won’t argue with you on that, but what can you do to her to send her to jail? From what you keep telling me, she wants nothing else to do with you, so you won’t even be around her to know what she’s up to.”
“I think I know a way.” Rhoda paused and snorted. Rhoda was not the kind of woman who snorted much; that was more of a guy thing. Or something you’d expect from Muh’Dear or Scary Mary, or even me. But this time she snorted like Mr. T. “Poppy is dyin’.” Poppy was Rhoda’s elderly father-in-law. “Jade adores him. That old Jamaican lives and breathes for that girl. He taught her how to fish, scuba dive, and how to spit halfway across a room. Last week she told Scary Mary that she plans to go to the islands after the New Year to spend some time with Poppy while he’s still alive. The doctor says he’s only got a few more months.”
“So?”
“Otis and I are goin’ down there too. Jade’s goin’ to get busted at the airport when she attempts to reenter the States.”
“Oh? And what is she going to do to get herself busted?” I wanted to know.
“She’s goin’ to get caught with drugs in her luggage.”
I wasn’t sure that I’d heard right. “What did you just say? I know it’s not what it sounded like you said.”
“What did it sound like I said?”
“Rhoda, it sounded like you said Jade is going to get busted at the airport coming back from the islands with drugs in her luggage. Now, either I’m hearing things or you did say that. And if you did, why did you say that?”
“They don’t search everybody. But if an anonymous tipster calls the right person and tells them Jade is a mule, she’ll get searched.”
I still didn’t know if what I was hearing was what I was hearing. I could have sworn that Rhoda had just told me that her daughter was going to get busted at the airport for transporting drugs from Jamaica to the States. That made no sense at all to me. If Jade was not even speaking to Rhoda, how did she know what Jade was planning to put in her luggage?
“Rhoda, what are you talking about? I know that your daughter is a little off, but I don’t think she’d be fool enough to try and smuggle drugs out of Jamaica into the States. It’s too risky. They’ve got dogs sniffing all over the airports and DEA agents running around like headless chickens.” I had to pause to catch my breath. “How do you know Jade is going to have drugs in her luggage?”
“Because I’m goin’ to put them there.”
The room got frighteningly quiet. Even so, I could hear a ringing noise in my ears. “Rhoda, have you lost your mind?”
“No, I have not lost my mind; but if I don’t do somethin’ to save my child, I will lose what’s left of my mind. I love Jade, and I’d rather send her to jail than let her continue doin’ all the crazy things that she’s doin’ now.”
“And where will you get the drugs?” I asked dumbly. “Wouldn’t you have to go to a lot of trouble?”
“Where would I get drugs?” Rhoda cackled. “Honey child, that’s the least of my worries! I know more ganja farmin’ Rastafarians in Jamaica than Bob Marley knew. Half of them are my in-laws. I’d have no trouble gettin’ my hands on what I need.”
“But even if they find the drugs on Jade, they’ll have to prove that they are hers, won’t they?”
“The drugs will be in her possession. It will be up to her to prove they are not hers.”
“I don’t know about this, Rhoda,” I said, sha
king my head. “They come down really hard on smugglers. Jade could get sent away for a long time.”
“I know... .”
“But is that what you want for her? Wouldn’t that be like cutting off your nose to spite your face? If they find drugs on her, she’s probably going to go to prison!”
“Annette, my daughter is already in prison if you ask me.”
“Rhoda, I—”
“Let me finish! She’s livin’ with drug dealers, pimps, strippers, and who knows what else. And from what we both heard her say in that strip-club dressin’ room about her givin’ some regular a blow job, she’s obviously involved in prostitution too! At least if she was in prison, she would have to follow somebody’s rules. Her daddy and I would know at all times where she was and what she was doin’.”
“Rhoda, you really need to think this through. This could really backfire on you. I do read the news and I watch a lot of true-crime TV. People get killed, raped, and abused in prison.”
“People get killed, raped, and abused on the street too. What would you do if Jade was your daughter?”
“But I—”
“What will you do if Charlotte turns out like Jade? If you had the chance to shake some sense into her by settin’ her up to get arrested, wouldn’t you do it? If this was the only way you could save her?”
“I don’t know, Rhoda. And I hope I never have to find out.”
“I hope you don’t either.”
I prayed that Rhoda would change her mind. There had to be a better way for her to turn her daughter around. But after all Jade had done and said, I honestly didn’t know if such a thing was possible.
Had I not known any better, I would have sworn that Jade was going out of her way to antagonize her family on purpose. She had behaved in such an atrocious manner in that strip club that I didn’t think she could outdo herself.
But it wouldn’t be long before she did.
