God Don't Make No Mistakes

by Mary Monroe

  “You see what you’ve done to your mama,” Pee Wee said, rubbing my back.

  “I am so sorry for causing all this mess. I will be good from now on. I want people to be proud of me. I don’t want to be another Jade... .” Charlotte wiped a tear from her cheek. “I never thought Jade would be stupid enough to come over to that tent revival and act a fool like she did that day.”

  I looked up, blinking so hard my eyes felt like somebody had splashed some bleach in them. “Well, now Jade is where she needs to be.”

  “Huh?”

  “You don’t know about the mess she’s in now?” Pee Wee asked.

  Charlotte shook her head again and rolled her eyes from Pee Wee’s face to mine. “Uh-uh. What did Jade do? Where is she at?”

  “She’s in jail too. But she is in a worse place than you’re in, and for a far more serious crime,” I said. Charlotte stared in slack-jawed amazement as I told her about Jade’s arrest for smuggling drugs. “If you don’t straighten up and fly right, you will be where Jade is,” I warned. I don’t know why I added, “And I will make sure of that.” Yes, I was willing to do what Rhoda had done to Jade if I ever felt that jail was the only way to save my child.

  It was another Friday, a few days after we had first visited Charlotte. And black Friday in my life. Lillimae had taken Daddy to see his doctor. Charlotte was still in custody. Pee Wee and I had visited her again the evening before. She had practically foamed at the mouth because she was so anxious to get back home. But Pee Wee and I agreed with the social worker that a few more days in custody might send a very strong message to Charlotte. One thing I was convinced of was that once she got home, she would walk a chalk line and be as pliable as a pile of Silly Putty until she was old enough to get a job and move out on her own.

  Even though it was just past noon, the sky was almost pitch-black. We were in the middle of one of the worst thunderstorms that season and it seemed to fit everybody’s mood. Muh’Dear was at the house when the same two male investigators came to talk to me again so that they could finalize their investigation. She eyed them with contempt and hovered over them like vultures, clucking and mumbling stuff under her breath, shaking her head in disgust, and rolling her eyes. She caused so much tension that the investigators rushed through their final meeting with me and practically left my house running.

  As soon as the investigators drove off, Muh’Dear broke loose. “I don’t trust none of them folks,” she complained. “If that anonymous person hadn’t blew the whistle on Harrietta, there is just no tellin’ how far that wench would have gone.” Muh’Dear paused and gave me a puzzled look. “You reckon the tipster was one of them kids?”

  I gasped and shook my head. There was no way I was going to tell my mother, Lillimae, or anybody else, other than Rhoda, that Charlotte was the one who had broken the case wide open. I didn’t want this situation to be drawn out any more. If Harrietta changed her plea and hired a lawyer, I didn’t want some sharp-talking fool yelling and screaming at my child, making her feel like a criminal, the way some defense attorneys did.

  “The investigators are pretty sure that it was one of the folks who bought pictures and videos from Harrietta,” I said.

  “Hmmm, huh. You probably right. That just goes to show you, there ain’t no honor among thieves. Maybe she took somebody’s money and didn’t send them the right nasty pictures of whatever the hell it was they wanted. My Lord! Only demons would find a child sexy!” Muh’Dear sucked in a deep breath and began to rub circles on her chest. Suddenly, she gasped and covered her mouth. Then she gave me a pitiful look. “Good God! This must bring back all kinds of memories to you about that dog Boatwright and what he done to you when you was a young’un!” Muh’Dear shuffled across the room and joined me on the couch. She wrapped both arms around me and hugged me so tightly I could hardly breathe.

  I squeezed her hand and offered her a tight smile. “I’ve pretty much forgotten all about the things Mr. Boatwright did to me,” I said, and it was true. I could barely remember my ordeal. “Thank God it didn’t get that far with Charlotte.”

  Muh’Dear sniffed and mopped sweat off her forehead with the tail of her blouse. “When you get that little devil home, I’ll hold her while you whup her rump ’til it’s mincemeat!”

  “I don’t think a whuppin’ is what Charlotte needs right now,” Lillimae said, entering the house, bless her heart. “She’s scared and confused. She’s been victimized, and the last thing she needs now is a whuppin’ from the folks she thought would protect her.”

  “There won’t be any more whuppings in this house,” I stated firmly. “But I do want Charlotte to learn from this. And I want to make it clear to her that she can come to me and her daddy and talk to us about anything. I don’t care if the Devil is threatening her; she can still come to us.”

  “The Devil was threatening her, Annette, and you wasn’t listenin’,” Lillimae pointed out.

  “Well, from now on, I will be listening to my child,” I vowed.

  CHAPTER 65

  THE INVESTIGATORS HAD ALREADY INTERVIEWED CHARLOTTE SEVERAL times about Harrietta and Hollywood, and I wanted her to get through all that before she came home. Harrietta had already pleaded no contest, so there would be no trial.

  We were lucky. That Hollywood fool had pleaded guilty to all of the charges against him, so there was not going to be a trial for him either. I didn’t think that I could survive my daughter going through one trial, let alone two.

  Despite my latest dilemma, I still found time to check in with Rhoda about her daughter. Yes, I had been lucky, but Rhoda had not. Jade was in a much deeper and darker hole than Charlotte. I called Rhoda the first chance I got, that Monday, a couple of hours before Pee Wee and I went to collect Charlotte from juvenile hall. “How is Jade doing?”

  “As well as can be expected, I guess. She’s still in county lockdown until her hearin’. She continues to deny packing the drugs, of course, but they all do that,” Rhoda told me. “Otis is mad as hell. Daddy still feels that she got what she had coming, but he and my in-laws and my mother want to hire the best attorney that money can buy. You know what?” Rhoda paused and let out a dry laugh. “The girl just might beat this case.”

  “But how? If they found drugs in her possession, how do you think she can beat this?”

  “I found out from the authorities that last month some baggage handlers in Jamaica got caught smugglin’ drugs into the States in the luggage of unsuspectin’ travelers,” Rhoda told me.

  “What?”

  “There is a large gang of baggage handlers workin’ together, mostly in Jamaica, Thailand, Malaysia, Colombia, and several other foreign countries. All they have to do is snoop around until they come across some unlocked baggage. Then they hide the drugs on their end and notify their cohorts in whatever city the unsuspecting traveler is going to give them all the necessary information. The cohorts intercept the baggage on their end, remove the drugs, and nobody knows.”

  “So Jade can claim that this is what happened to her?”

  “She could, and they just might believe her.” Rhoda sounded worried. “I just read a piece on the Internet about some girl travelin’ from Australia to Bali with two kilos of heroin in her suitcase. They tossed her into jail immediately and hinted that she might be sentenced to death! Anyway, a cellmate had told her about those baggage handlers. The girl’s family got a good lawyer, and he hired somebody to launch an investigation. Right away, two of the baggage handlers in Australia got caught red-handed on tape puttin’ some of that shit in some other innocent travelers’ luggage. Ironically, it was the same two who had put that heroin in that poor girl’s suitcase. They confessed and Bali let that Australian girl off scot-free.”

  “Hmmm. So if Jade’s lawyer is smart enough to talk a judge into believing that she was just another innocent traveler caught up in this baggage-handler smuggling shit, she could get off, too, huh?”

  “Uh-huh.” Rhoda sounded even more worried.

  �
��Then you’ll have done what you did for nothing. What if she beats this case and they turn her loose? What will you do then?” I asked.

  “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,” Rhoda quipped. “Right now, at least Otis and I know where she is. Well, we can be happy to know that at least two criminals are goin’ down for sure. No other mother will have to go through what you and I went through on account of Hollywood or Harrietta. Those snakes’ heads have been cut off.”

  “True. But there are a lot of Hollywoods and Harriettas in this world,” I said. “In cases like these, when you cut off a snake’s head, two more grow in its place.”

  “And that’s more food for the mongoose,” Rhoda grunted, spitting out the words like she was spitting out mucus.

  I was still experiencing headaches, and I was having a hard time getting to sleep at night, but I felt better than I’d felt in a long time. It was almost spring, my favorite time of the year. The snow was gone and a few trees had already begun to bloom. It was refreshing to watch the squirrels play hide-and-seek in my front and backyard. I even felt different. For the first time this year, I felt different in a positive way. I had even lost the weight that I had gained by eating all of that food Lillimae had put in my face.

  Rhoda was doing so much better now too. “Have you ... have you talked to Jade? Have you been to visit her?” I asked. It had been a week since all the hell in our lives had broken loose.

  “Not yet. I’m the last person she wants to see right now.” Rhoda sighed. “Like I said, at least I know where she’s at now, and what she’s doin’. I’ve turned it over to God. Whatever mysterious thing He does to make things right again is fine with me. I think we’ve all learned from all this shit we’ve been through.”

  I agreed with Rhoda. What had happened to my daughter with Harrietta was bad, but it could have been a lot worse. Had I not received such a mind-blowing wake-up call, there was no telling what might have happened to my child down the road. And because of what Harrietta had done, I knew that I could never let my guard down again. Had I listened to Charlotte’s vague, but frequent cries for help earlier, this was one mess that I could have avoided. But it had happened, and it had happened for a reason.

  “Maybe Otis was right when he told me ‘God don’t make no mistakes,’ ” I said, talking more to myself than I was to Rhoda.

  “What?”

  “Oh, that was something your husband said to me a while back. He meant ‘God don’t like ugly.’ ”

  “And it is so true. Both. God don’t like ugly and God don’t make no mistakes,” Rhoda insisted. “Hey, wanna go out for a drink tonight?”

  “Pee Wee is coming over in a little while. He’s bringing the rest of his stuff,” I said shyly. “It’s time for him to come home. He and I and Charlotte have an appointment with a family counselor on Tuesday.”

  “I’m glad to hear that! It’s just a damn shame that you had to go through so much mess just to end up right back where you started.”

  We both laughed.

  “Lillimae’s husband keeps calling and begging her to come home,” I revealed. “I know she wants to go home, but now Muh’Dear wants her to stay up here and help with the cooking at the restaurant.”

  Rhoda laughed again.

  “I wish she would stay, but I think it’s time for her to be with the people who need her the most right now. God sent her up here to be with me, because at the time, I was the one who needed her the most.”

  “Well, girl—hold on. I have another call comin’,” Rhoda told me.

  It was five minutes before I heard her voice again. And when I did, I almost didn’t recognize it. “It was her!” she squealed. “Jade wants me to come visit her. Oh, Annette, she was cryin’ like a baby. She couldn’t stop tellin’ me how sorry she was for the way she behaved. She ... she sounded so ... so remorseful! She even wants me to bring her a Bible. Jade—the biggest Devil in Richland!”

  I didn’t know what to say. But I had to choose my words carefully, because the last thing Rhoda needed right now was for me to sound skeptical. “Oh, Rhoda, I am so happy to hear that!” I exclaimed, and I really was.

  “But listen to this. She said she had planned to hide some drugs in her luggage, but her connect didn’t come in time! Do you know what that means?” Rhoda didn’t give me time to respond. “If she had put drugs in her luggage, and if they had searched her, she would have been arrested and detained anyway! And if it hadn’t happened this time, it would have happened sooner or later anyway! She may have even got caught with a much larger stash, and that would have made it even worse for her. They just charged her for possession, not smuggling with the intent to distribute. So what I did was not such a bad thing after all! At least it shook her up enough for her to be sorry for doin’ all the shit she did to me last year!”

  Like I said, I didn’t want to sound skeptical, even though I was. I decided to say something neutral. “I am so happy to hear that Jade has finally come around.” It made my tongue tingle for me to speak those words, because I didn’t know if they were true. “I’ll let you go so you can do whatever you need to do now. I need to get off the phone anyway so I can go pick out a cute outfit for Charlotte to wear home from that place. We’ll talk again as soon as we can.”

  “Annette, I am so happy that things worked out so well for Charlotte. I’m glad you told me that she was the one who sent that stuff to that reporter. And you don’t have to worry about me ever tellin’ anybody that. But who would have thought that a Morgan Freeman movie would be so important?”

  “Speaking of movies, remember when we saw The Usual Suspects two or three years ago?”

  “Kevin Spacey and Stephen Baldwin,” Rhoda swooned. “How could I forget a movie with those two? Why do you ask?”

  “Remember that line from the movie that went something like: The Devil’s greatest trick was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.”

  Rhoda’s silence told me that she knew where I was going with this reference.

  “Rhoda, I know you love your daughter, and you want the same thing for her that I want for Charlotte. And please don’t get mad about what I’m going to say next. But I’m going to say it anyway because it needs to be said: No matter what Jade says to you, don’t ever let your guard down again with her. She’s got some issues that won’t go away overnight. One of her greatest tricks was convincing me that she cared about me all those years.” I blinked back a tear.

  “I agree with you. My daughter was, and may still be, a devil. I don’t believe that she’s made a complete turnaround this fast. But the main thing is, this is a new beginning. I have to give her a chance.”

  “And I’m glad to hear that,” I said. And I was.

  After I hung up, I thought about everything that had happened to Rhoda and me and our children in the past twelve months. It was because she and I had supported one another so diligently that everything had been somewhat resolved ... this time.

  EPILOGUE

  May 27, 2012

  MY FIRST GRANDCHILD, A BOY, WAS BORN TEN MINUTES AGO, three minutes after midnight. My daughter, Charlotte, had endured a long and rough delivery.

  A few seconds after Dr. Morris cut the baby’s umbilical cord, Charlotte rose up in her hospital bed and yelled, “Y’all better enjoy this baby, because I am never going through this kind of pain again!” At the grand old age of twenty-six, she still looked like a teenager.

  Charlotte’s handsome husband, Anthony Borden, one of the young attorneys at the law firm where they both had recently made partner, had almost fainted during her labor. He breathed a sigh of relief when it was over. I had a feeling that this was something he didn’t want to go through again either.

  Had my parents lived a few years longer, they would have been here to celebrate this blessed event with me and Pee Wee. They died two weeks apart, four years ago. Three years earlier, Scary Mary passed. Not from old age, or one of her many alleged illnesses; she died in an automobile accident. A drunken driver, going
in the wrong direction on the freeway, had hit her van head-on.

  Now that there was finally a baby boy in our family, Pee Wee was grinning from ear to ear. I knew that he was going to spend the rest of his life spoiling this child like it was his.

  Rhoda would too. She was in the delivery room with me, Pee Wee, and Anthony. She looked so tired and old. She no longer dyed her hair, so it was almost completely gray, like mine. Looking good, or “younger,” like Rhoda and I had tried to do for so long didn’t seem so important anymore.

  We had our share of wrinkles and ailments associated with age, but we were all still in fairly good health and things were going well.

  Rhoda and Otis were still together and had even renewed their vows on their fortieth wedding anniversary three years ago. She had finally ended her long affair with her husband’s best friend, and as far as I knew, her husband had never found out about it.

  My marriage had been restored, and even though Pee Wee and I still had a few ups and downs every now and then, our relationship was stronger than ever. Charlotte was a loving, intelligent young woman who enriched our lives in every way. The trauma of what she had endured when she was twelve at the hands of Harrietta Jameson and that pimping fool they called Hollywood had not affected her that much. At least not in a negative way. She never lost her spark or got moody the way some abused kids did. She didn’t like to talk about that ugly episode too often. But when she did, she bragged about the fact that because of her, two monsters would be behind bars for a very long time. And she vowed that she would get a lot more of them off the streets. Charlotte’s nightmare was the reason she had decided to become a lawyer.

  One of the biggest mistakes I had made was not listening to my child’s cry for help—in time—when she had repeatedly tried to tell me that something was not right about Harrietta.