by Mary Monroe
“Did this girl ask you and your friends to buy this thing for her?” I asked. I gave Jade a puzzled look before I frowned.
“No,” Jade said with an indifferent shrug.
“Well, don’t you think that giving somebody something like this, when they didn’t ask for it, might offend them?”
“Why?”
“Maybe she’s not into things like this, Jade,” I said, nodding toward the vibrator, glaring at it now like it was a bomb. “I would scream if somebody gave me one of these damn things,” I added with a shudder.
“You’d scream? That’s right.” Jade nodded vigorously, clapping her hands like a seal. “That’s the right idea, Auntie. That’s what it’s supposed to make a woman do,” Jade said in a voice too serious for a child of her age. I gave her a horrified look and my mouth dropped open, but before I could speak again, Jade continued. “Oh, I don’t have to worry about offending Plum. See, she’s from France so she’s very broadminded.”
Jade unzipped her yellow canvas backpack, designed by a European designer with a name I couldn’t pronounce. In addition to a platinum American Express card in her own name, the yellow backpack was one of the things that she never left home without. With a loud sniff, and the tip of her tongue parked in the corner of her mouth, she stuffed the vibrator into the backpack. Her eager eyes shone like diamonds.
“If you want one, let me know. I can get the next one for half price,” Jade said with a giggle and a wink. “But a great big woman like you would probably want one of the great big ones, though, huh?” Jade paused again, tilted her head to the side, and gave me a serious look. “But a bigger one will probably cost more. Now what color—”
I cut Jade off. “Girl, I don’t need anybody’s fake dick!” I hollered, waving my hands, forcing myself not to laugh. Then I slid my knuckles along the side of Jade’s head and chased her back out the door.
I returned my thoughts to the present moment, the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue still in my hand. I laughed out loud before I tossed it aside, so that I could sort through the rest of the mail.
The only thing that made the envelope stand out was the fact that it was pink and small. Like the kind used to send invitations or cards. I guess that’s why I’d decided to deal with it first. I was impressed to see that the sender had taken the time to type my name on the envelope, but it seemed odd that the person would not include a return address.
My birthday had just passed a week ago and belated birthday cards were still trickling in. The day before, I had received one from my half sister in Miami. And the day before that, I had received two from Miss Nipp, my first-grade schoolteacher. She was senile and in a nursing home now and I was the only one of her students she still remembered. Miss Nipp couldn’t even remember the names of her remaining family members. It gave me a good feeling to know that there were people who still acknowledged me after almost forty years.
I plopped down hard on the new living room sofa that had just been delivered a few days ago. It was the best birthday gift that I had received, and the most practical. It was the kind of gift that only a mother would give. Especially a mother like mine. But at least this was something I could use. The canning jars that she’d given me last year were in my basement, still in the box.
At forty-five, I needed very few things that I didn’t already have. My husband made good money as one of the three Black barbers in town and my promotion to supervisor at the Mizelle Collection Agency had moved me up to a tax bracket that was downright scary.
I loved my job as a bill collector, but it had taken me a while to get used to it. Now it was almost as entertaining as Jade. I never thought that I would benefit so much from people not paying their bills. And getting them to pay their bills was another story. The excuses that people gave were outrageous, like they couldn’t find their wallets, somebody had stolen the money that they had planned to use to pay their bill, or they didn’t have a stamp to mail their payment. I had heard every excuse but one about the family dog eating the money. Some people even swore that they’d paid their bill, but that they’d misplaced the receipt and would fax it to us as soon as they located it. That bought them a brief reprieve, and it also meant job security for people like me. I had to laugh to myself when I thought about all the times my mother had made me lie when I was a child when mean bill collectors called our house asking for her. Now I was one of those bill collectors who often had to get mean with folks, hoping that it would encourage them to pay their delinquent debts. It was an unpleasant but necessary job.
Like I did in every other situation, I made the best of my job. Life was too short. I was grateful and surprised that I’d made it to forty-five with my sanity intact.
Instead of a sentimental birthday card that I had expected to find, with a spidery note or a neatly typed message from Miss Nipp, the pretty pink envelope contained a sheet of perfumed pink stationery. There was a picture of a white dove in the upper right-hand corner. Both the sheet of paper and the envelope were rose-scented. The text had been typed in a crisp, bold font. I fanned my face with the envelope and the roselike fragrance was even more potent. But the pleasantries ended there. I gasped so hard that hot, foul-tasting bile rose in my throat as I read with my eyes stretched open as wide as they could stretch:
Greetings, Miss Piggy:
You are in trouble up to your receding hairline! Who in the hell do you think you are? It’s time for somebody to put you in your place. You are nothing but a fat, slimy, middle-aged, stinky, bald-headed, rusty-necked black cow! Don’t you know that by now? And you need to start acting like one and stay in your place. If you know what’s good for you, with your nasty stinking self, you will crawl back up under that rock where you came from and stay there or else! And guess what? I am going to make sure you do just that! Bitch!
Signed, me: your worst nightmare
“My worst nightmare?” I asked in a loud voice. “What in the world…?” My mouth dropped open and my heart started beating so loud I could hear it. I turned the sheet of paper over, blinking at it so hard my vision got fuzzy and my eyes burned. There was no signature, of course, or anything else that might have identified the sender. I went back out on my front porch, looking in every direction. I even stumbled out to the sidewalk in my bare feet and looked around some more. Puzzled, I returned to my living room.
“What in the world is this?” I managed, talking to a big, empty living room. An empty house, for that matter. Pee Wee and Charlotte were in Erie, Pennsylvania. My father-in-law’s grave was located there in a family plot where we would all end up someday. Every year on the anniversary of the fussy old man’s death, Pee Wee drove the three hours to Erie from our house in Richland to place fresh flowers on his father’s grave.
I looked at the telephone on the end table next to the sofa but I quickly decided not to call my husband. He had lost his mother when he was just a child, so he had been very close to his daddy. Visiting his daddy’s grave was enough to put him in a somber mood. And if that wasn’t enough in Erie to drag him down, he had some relatives over there that were so obnoxious they could bring down a satellite. The last thing I wanted to do was add to his burdens. Especially with something this off-the-wall.
I read the message again, blinking hard as my eyes continued to burn. Then I laughed. I mean, what else could I do? I read the message a third time, more slowly this time to make sure that it said what I thought it said. Then I blinked some more. My eyes were burning even harder, but I suddenly stopped laughing. If this note was for real, I had an anonymous enemy whose mission was to destroy me—and that was nothing to laugh about.
I folded the sheet of paper and slid it back in the cute little pink envelope. I looked at my hands, turning them over. Three chipped nails and ashy skin made them look like bear claws to me. Had I not received the pink envelope, I would have been on my way to the nail shop by now.
“Who sent me this damn thing?” I asked the empty room, glaring at the envelope. “And why?”
CHAPTER 4
I stumbled to the telephone. I felt like I was already drunk, even though I had not drunk even a beer. But I would—and I wouldn’t stop with just one beer! In the meantime, I needed to talk to somebody about the very strange piece of mail that I had just received.
My life story would have made a good made-for-cable television movie. It had all of the necessary sensational elements: rape, murder, prostitution, poverty, betrayal, and even more. I had survived it all. People were always telling me how strong I was. I guess it was hard for anybody to believe that somebody as big as an ox could be weak. My size didn’t matter when it came to feeling pain or anything else that I considered negative. Receiving a nasty piece of hate mail was the worst thing that had happened to me in a long time. All I wanted was a normal, peaceful, and happy life, and I thought I had finally achieved that. I resented the fact that somebody else had decided that I didn’t deserve what I had.
“Damn, Pee Wee, I wish you were here,” I said, talking to the wall. As soon as I got those words out, I was glad that my husband was not with me. He was my best friend, but there were a lot of things that I couldn’t share with him. The same was true of my elderly parents. But there was nothing I couldn’t share with Rhoda Nelson O’Toole.
She was more than my best female friend. She’d been my lifeline for over thirty-two years. She could not have known me better had she been able to read my mind. She was half my size but twice as strong. We shared some secrets that were so complicated you needed a pie chart to explain them. And so serious they could have put us both in prison for a very long time. But I’ll get to that later.
Other than the police, the ambulance, and the fire department, Rhoda’s number was the only other one I had on speed dial. My mother would have made a huge fuss about that if I’d been stupid enough to tell her. Not that I cared more about Rhoda than I did my own blood, but, well, there was no way I could explain what Rhoda meant to me. Not to my mother, my husband, or anybody I knew. When I thought about how important Rhoda was to me, I recalled some lyrics from an old Curtis Mayfield tune called “Pusherman”: I’m your mama, I’m your daddy, I’m that nigger in the alley… That old song, which the local R&B radio station still played on their oldies-but-goodies hours, was referring to a drug dealer. Right now Rhoda was the fix that I needed. I pressed the buttons for her number so hard on the telephone in my living room that the ball of my index finger throbbed.
“Woman, please be home,” I chanted. “Please be home. I need to talk to you.”
I had never meant to hurt anybody before in my life, but apparently I had done something that had pissed off at least one person. The innocent-looking envelope that had entered my life so calmly had struck me like a torpedo. I whipped my head around and looked toward the front door, wondering where the sender was at the moment, hoping that he or she did not occupy a residence too close to mine.
All of a sudden it occurred to me that the note had to have been sent as a joke. That had to be it! What else could it be? Like the black plastic snake in a gift-wrapped box addressed to me, which somebody had left on my desk at work a few days ago. I had laughed about that, and so had my co-workers. I still didn’t know who had sent that to me. Now I had to wonder if the blacksnake and the nasty note were related.
“Hello,” Rhoda answered on the third ring.
I was having trouble responding. I opened my mouth and my lips and tongue moved, but nothing came out but a few drops of dribble, sliding down my chin like poison.
“I said, hello!” Rhoda snapped. “Is anybody there?”
“Hi, it’s me. Can I come over? I have something to show you,” I muttered in a voice that sounded like it belonged to a timid child.
There was a moment of silence before Rhoda replied. “I was on my way out the door,” she said softly. “You don’t sound too good, girl. Is somethin’ wrong?”
“Uh-huh,” I replied, still sounding like a timid child. My heart had not thumped half as hard and loud during my phone sex session with Pee Wee as it did now. And there was no telling when I’d make it to the nail shop now. But the claws on my hands were the least of my worries.
“Well, why don’t I just come over there instead?” Rhoda asked, her slight southern accent sounding more prominent.
“Okay, but hurry up,” I said, breathing hard and loud. I didn’t realize I was sweating, too, until a few drops fell off my face onto my ashy hand.
There was a long pause before Rhoda spoke again. “You sound serious. Don’t you want to tell me what this is about?”
“Well, it’s probably nothing, but I think I’ve pissed somebody off,” I said in a flat voice, making a mental note to put some lotion on my hands.
“Well, you are pissin’ me off by bein’ so mysterious. Exactly what are we talkin’ about here?”
“I just received something in the mail,” I stated, sucking in my breath. I had to clear my throat before continuing. “And it’s not very nice. As a matter of fact, it’s downright mean. Maybe you can convince me that it’s nothing to worry about.”
CHAPTER 5
“Well, if it’s not a dead chicken, I could probably convince you that it’s nothin’ serious,” Rhoda chuckled. “Or one of those fierce-looking dolls with pins sticking out of it. There is a lot of shit bein’ sent through the mail these days. I’m glad that a lot of that useless junk doesn’t come to my address,” Rhoda said, releasing one of those proud snorts that smug people were known for. “I’m so glad that I don’t have to worry about openin’ my mailbox and findin’ none of that shit.”
Like your teenage daughter’s sex toys, I thought to myself. I wondered what Rhoda would say if I revealed that information to her. I didn’t really want to know, so I put that thought out of my mind right away.
Rhoda was, without a doubt, one of the most intelligent people I knew. But there were times when it seemed like she was a little dense, or slow, when it came to recognizing a serious situation. I didn’t like her initial response to the peculiar information that I’d just shared with her.
“This is not a joke, Rhoda. Well, it could be a joke, but I don’t know who would find something like this funny.”
“Annette, what the hell are you talkin’ about?”
When Rhoda was impatient, she didn’t even try to hide it. I could even hear her drumming her fingers on a hard surface.
“This morning I received one of the meanest notes I ever received in my life. As a matter of fact, it is the meanest note I ever received in my life. A few kids used to pass me nasty notes in school but this is not kid stuff.”
“What do you mean by ‘received’? Who sent it to you?” Rhoda demanded.
“I have no idea who sent it to me. They didn’t sign it with a real name. And they didn’t include a name or return address on the envelope. It came in the mail this morning in a cute little pink envelope, smelling like a rose.” I don’t know how or why, but I let out a sharp laugh. “It was typed and it looks so…professional. Like somebody really gave this a lot of thought.” I bit my bottom lip and looked around my living room, paying close attention to the corners and other hiding places where a bogeyman might lurk.
“Auntie, did you tell Mama about the blacksnake yet?” It was the voice of Jade.
She had the annoying habit of eavesdropping on some of my telephone conversations with Rhoda. I had a problem with that because there were many things I felt that Jade didn’t need to know yet. Even though she was a very mature seventeen-year-old. Complaints and even punishment didn’t faze Jade. This girl thought that the world revolved around her, and that she could do whatever she wanted to do. It was no surprise that she did do whatever she wanted to do, and with little or no consequences.
“Girl, get your ass off that phone!” Rhoda yelled.
“Yes, ma’am. Anything you say,” Jade said with an irritating whine. Then she let out a loud sigh before she slammed the extension down. She had her own telephone in her bedroom with a separate line. But she
was such a busy little body that she liked to be all up in her mother’s business, too.
“You’d better enjoy Charlotte as much as you can now. Another Jade is what you have to look forward to,” Rhoda told me with a heavy sigh. “I swear to God, sometimes that girl makes me itch all over! I just wish that she was more like her big brother,” Rhoda added.
I never took Rhoda seriously when she “complained” about Jade. Because Rhoda bowed down to Jade like she was royalty. She didn’t even convince me that she was serious. Rhoda’s only other child, a handsome young man named Julian, lived in Mobile, Alabama, where he owned and operated a shoe-repair business. It was no secret that the boy was as gay as an Easter parade. Rhoda was as proud of him as I was. Her only regret was that Jade was her only chance to have grandchildren, and that had a lot to do with the fact that Jade was treated like she was made out of gold.
“She’ll be mad at me for a little while, so I’d better take her to the mall with me,” Rhoda said, almost choking on her words. “And let her pick out somethin’ expensive and pretty. Poor thing. She must be havin’ her period.” Rhoda sighed so much when it came to Jade, you would have thought she was on a respirator.
“Can you hurry on over before you go to the mall? And, uh, leave Jade in the car when you get here, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to upset her.”
“Girl, you are scarin’ me.” Rhoda paused and let out a mild belch, then complained vaguely about a chipped nail. “And what’s this about a blacksnake?”
“Oh. I didn’t think that it was anything to get upset over when I got it, but now I don’t know.” I tilted my head and sucked in so much air my lungs felt like they were going to explode. My eyes were on the evil note still clutched in my hand. It took me a few seconds to compose myself. Rubbing my chest I said, “They had a little surprise party for me at work last week. I came out of a staff meeting and there was a cake on my desk with one candle on it, and a pile of birthday gifts.” My voice trailed off as I recalled how I’d jumped and shrieked when I’d opened the box and saw the fake blacksnake.
