God Don't Play

by Mary Monroe

  “And Lord knows Bully will have made a mess in my kitchen and I’ll be up all night cleanin’ it up.” It was one of the few times that I’d seen Rhoda complain with a smile on her face.

  “Well, the way my head is throbbing, all I want to do is crawl into bed,” I muttered. “I’ll call you from work tomorrow.”

  After Rhoda and her family had left, knowing I had a headache, Pee Wee saw that Charlotte got herself ready for bed. And when he finally came to bed, I pretended to be asleep.

  This was one of the few times that I was grateful for middle age. Especially middle-aged men. In some ways, it had slowed Pee Wee down more than it had me. With so much beer in his belly and him being tired from jumping around in our backyard, he was out like a light in no time, purring like a cat. This was the first time in years that his snoring didn’t bother me. When I finally did get to sleep, I woke up every half hour or so with thoughts whirling around in my head like gnats.

  I left to go to my job at the Mizelle Collection Agency the next day an hour ahead of my normal time. That way I didn’t have to see Pee Wee before he left to go to the barbershop that he owned and managed. He had inherited it from his late father, so it meant a lot to him. He enjoyed his work so much, he often stayed on the premises long after the last customer had come and gone.

  We had an agreement that he would get Charlotte up and off to the child-care center that Rhoda operated out of her house during the summer months. I took care of her the rest of the year. I didn’t complain about having to get my daughter up and out of the house nine months out of the year when Pee Wee only did it for three months. I looked forward to it. But Pee Wee was such a hands-on kind of daddy that I thought it was good for him to do some of the things that most men left to their women to do.

  Other than Mr. Royster, a bowlegged security guard in his late sixties, I was the only one in the office. Over the years it had become my home away from home because it was where I went when I needed some time and space to be alone.

  Right after I graduated from high school I had worked briefly as a switchboard operator. Then I moved to Erie for about ten years. But when I returned to Richland, the phone company gave me my old job back. I remained on that switchboard for several more years.

  Two years ago I landed a receptionist job at Mizelle’s, the biggest collection agency in Richland. Unlike at the phone company, where I’d only been qualified to work as an operator, Mr. Mizelle, the owner, had promoted me to a management position a year ago. They would have given me the moon to stay because I was the third person to fill that position that year. It didn’t take me long to figure out why. Even before Shakespeare created Shylock, the ferocious collector in one of his plays, collection agents had been despised. The company often had to bribe and beg employees to stay. Ironically, we shared the first floor of a small office building with the IRS, the only other group I knew of that was even more despised than collection agents. But I felt like some of the other brave people who stayed: it was a job and somebody had to do it.

  Some of the same angry people who had to visit the IRS for an audit also visited us on the same day to make arrangements to pay off a bill that they’d ignored until we stepped in. More than a few angry deadbeats had stormed out of the office spewing threats. That’s why we had to have a security guard. And an armed one at that.

  Mr. Royster’s age and the fact that he was so bowlegged fooled a lot of people. But this old brother was sharp and fearless, and he knew how to use that gun hanging off his bony hip. Before he came to work for Mizelle’s, he’d worked at one of the downtown banks. One day, a masked man entered that bank, armed with a gun himself. Mr. Royster had saved the day by shooting the would-be robber in both legs, incapacitating him until the police arrived. I felt safe at the office with our bowlegged security guard there to protect me.

  My only hope was that he would never have to use that gun on my behalf.

  CHAPTER 17

  If Mr. Mizelle had not promoted me, I probably would have returned to my old job at the telephone company, or moved on to another place of employment by now. Bill collectors were not very popular in Richland.

  Along with the fourteen collectors I supervised, some days I spent half of my time on the telephone. On a regular basis, I heard so many cuss words from the people we had to call that profanity now sounded like a separate language to me. The turnover among the collectors was incredible. By the end of my first month of employment three of the collectors had left that place, running out like somebody was chasing them with a shotgun. And one time a man did show up with a shotgun and threatened one of the collectors.

  The verbal abuse that we had to put up with when we called up people was so extreme that I started seeing spots in front of my eyes when I got an angry person on the telephone. And most people did get angry when we called them up and threatened them with legal action for not paying a bill. Muh’Dear used to cuss out bill collectors or avoid them. I’d even done it a few times myself when I was younger and didn’t know how to plan and stick to a budget.

  After a man I’d called—about his delinquent account with a furniture store—told me to suck his dick and then hung up on me, I started planning my own resignation. That was when I got wooed into staying by Mr. Mizelle himself offering me that promotion.

  I was just as surprised as the rest of my co-workers. Especially the ones who had more education than I did and a background more closely related to the business. Gloria Watson, a bitter woman who rarely had anything good to say about anybody else, started rolling her eyes at me the day the announcement was made. Even when I hired one of her nieces as a temporary receptionist, that ungrateful wench continued to hold a grudge against me.

  Gloria’s behavior did not surprise me. She had a major chip on her shoulder. It got even bigger when the names of several members of her crude, irresponsible family appeared on our list. The old man who had told me to suck his dick was Gloria’s older brother, and the father of the niece that I’d just hired.

  “As long as Gloria Watson ain’t signin’ your paycheck, you ain’t got nothin’ to worry about,” Pee Wee had said when I told him.

  “I’m not worried about Gloria,” I said, forcing myself to laugh. It was easier to laugh about Gloria than to take her too seriously. I came across women like her, some even worse, on a regular basis. My time and energy were too critical for me to waste on their foolishness. But Gloria was in my space so she could not be entirely ignored. “I just don’t feel comfortable around her when she treats me that way. If I’d known she was still going to treat me like shit, I wouldn’t have hired her niece. I’d have given that temp job to Jade.”

  Jade had just graduated from Richland High School at the time and was eager to start her first real job. Up until then she’d only earned her spending money babysitting and running errands for me and some of the other neighborhood mothers.

  Three weeks after I’d hired Gloria’s niece, that lazy devil started showing up two to three hours late—often with alcohol on her breath! Some days she didn’t even bother to come in at all. For a while I let all of that slide, but the day I caught her smoking weed in the ladies’ room was the last straw.

  “You know, they say that your own folks can sometimes be your worst enemy,” Gloria said, talking with her back to me in the break room. It had been two weeks since I’d fired her niece, but the tension between us was still like a poisonous gas.

  I noticed how Gloria had waited until we were alone. She had become so disgruntled that the only time she spoke to me was when she had to, or when she had something to get off her chest. My firing her niece had upset her more than it upset the niece. As a matter of fact the niece had grinned and sighed with relief. She didn’t even seem to mind being escorted out of the building by our bowlegged security guard.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, not even bothering to look up from the box of Kentucky Fried Chicken that I had picked up for lunch.

  Gloria was just as big as me. But
the way she pranced around the office, wearing outfits I wouldn’t wear to a Halloween party, you would have thought that she was as petite as Jade. For the past year she’d been bringing in Weight Watchers’ lunches and going to the gym down the street three times a week on her lunch hour. She was firmer now and didn’t jiggle as much, but she was still a very large woman and the biggest bitch I knew.

  “You know what I mean.” She paused and sucked on her teeth until I looked over at her, standing there with one hand on her hip and a scowl on her face. “Black folks oughta be tryin’ to help other Black folks get and keep a job.”

  “If you are talking about your niece, anybody else would have fired the girl a long time ago. I warned her several times about her tardiness and it did no good. What was I supposed to do, let her continue to work here just because she’s Black?”

  “That ain’t what I said. She’s got three kids and she needs a job more than you and me do. You didn’t have to fire her. Yeah, she was late now and then, but at least she came to work.”

  I gave Gloria an incredulous look. “Is that how Black folks are supposed to look out for each other? She didn’t follow the rules, and I was not supposed to do anything about that? Well,” I said, rising, “if you were the boss, you could supervise your way. Until then, let me do my job the way I think it should be done. And, by the way, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t spend so much time on personal telephone calls. It sets a bad example.”

  I didn’t wait around to see Gloria’s reaction. I waltzed out of the break room and returned to my office and shut the door. I couldn’t ignore the increased tension between myself and Gloria.

  The note, the blacksnake, and the telephone call probably had come from her! If not her, then who?

  CHAPTER 18

  I felt pretty stupid just sitting in my office alone—so early in the morning that all of the lights on the floor in my area were still off, except the one above my desk. I must have looked pretty stupid, too.

  “Mrs. Davis, is everything all right?” Mr. Royster asked for the third time in the last half hour. “Can I get you a cup of coffee or something? I just made a fresh pot.”

  The security guard had a pained look on his face. I had never seen anybody as bowlegged as him. Not knowing that much about the condition, I wondered if it was painful. From the look on Mr. Royster’s face, it looked like it was a strain for him to stand or walk. With his leathery dark skin and bushy mustache, he reminded me of Daddy, even though Daddy was close to eighty now. Daddy often had the same look of pain on his face. In his case I knew that it was because on any given day something on Daddy’s body was aching.

  I cleared my throat first. “I’m fine. And a cup of black coffee would be nice.”

  I waited until Mr. Royster disappeared around the corner before I resumed my thoughts about Gloria. She hadn’t been the only one who had had issue with me firing her niece. To my surprise, Pee Wee considered it a bad move on my part.

  “A triflin’ girl like that ain’t goin’ to be able to get another office job in this town. She’ll be pickin’ beans for the rest of her life. And don’t forget that’s what you used to do,” Pee Wee reminded me, as he lay on his back in our bed, naked and frisky. His hands couldn’t stop moving all over my body—poking, prodding, and squeezing, no matter how many times I pushed him away.

  “And I’d still be pickin’ beans if I had acted the way Candace Watson acted.” As if picking beans had been the worst thing I’d done to get paid. I didn’t want to remind my husband about my brief stint as a prostitute shortly after I got out of high school. “You can hire her if you feel that sorry for her. I am sure a successful Black businessman like yourself can put your reputation, business, and sanity on the line just to keep another Black person employed.” I didn’t like being so sarcastic and it wasn’t something I wanted to do. But the sarcastic comment that I had made to Gloria in the break room about her niece had made her even more upset with me, and that was what I’d wanted. It was my way of reminding her that I was still the boss lady. As a supervisor I didn’t think I’d be that effective if I let my subordinates walk all over me. But sarcasm from me usually didn’t even faze Pee Wee. It usually took something pretty extreme to get a serious reaction out of him.

  As soon as we ended our tense discussion about my firing the useless receptionist, things got really physical. It had been a while since Pee Wee had kept me up most of the night. When he finally climbed off of me, with both of his hands still prodding, poking, and squeezing various parts of my body, we both went to sleep smiling.

  I considered myself one of the luckiest women in the world. Pee Wee was the kind of man that any woman would have been proud of. Not only was he good looking and great in bed, he was sensitive, generous, hardworking, and smart. His temperament was one of the many things that I loved about him. But there were times when he truly got on my nerves. Like when I told him that I was going to hire Jade to replace the slovenly receptionist I’d just fired. I had already run this by Rhoda and Otis. Jade had just graduated a few days before. She was scheduled to head off to college in September. Now, I had to admit to myself that it had not been my idea to hire Jade. I loved the girl. I loved her as much as I would have had she been my own daughter. But she had her moments and was a real piece of work by anybody’s standards. Once she set her sights on something, she didn’t stop until she got it. It took her a year of whining, moaning, and begging, but she eventually pestered Rhoda and Otis until they purchased her a car—a year-old Tercel.

  And as soon as Jade had found out that I had fired the temp receptionist, she made a beeline to the same temp agency and signed up.

  “Auntie, call up the Marchoke temp agency, ask for Pam Jackson, and request me for the receptionist position you currently have open. I am willing to work overtime at a moment’s notice, as long as it doesn’t interfere with anything else I have planned. I expect to be able to take time off when I need to, like my birthday, or if I need to stay home and help my mom run her child-care business. But that’s only if my absence does not cause any hardships…” Jade paused, but because I had no comment to make at that moment, she continued. “And, because the temp agencies don’t offer holiday pay or sick leave pay, I need a salary that will make up for that,” she instructed me over the telephone that same day.

  Just like that. Like she had been sitting back waiting for this particular job to become available.

  “Let me think about it for a while,” I said, so taken aback I wasn’t sharp enough to just say no.

  “Good. But make it a short while. I would like to start on Monday,” Jade chirped. I was impressed with her level of enthusiasm. It had been a long time since I’d come across somebody so eager to work. From the determined tone in her voice, I knew that she wasn’t going to let up until she got her way.

  I didn’t waste any time discussing this with Pee Wee first because I didn’t want his input. But I decided to let him think that it had been my idea to hire Jade. “Uh, I told Rhoda and Otis that I’d like to hire Jade to replace that receptionist I had to fire. It’s so hard to find good help these days…”

  “Oh, shit,” Pee Wee laughed, giving me an incredulous look from his side of the bed that Sunday night.

  I had agreed to let Jade start her new job that Monday morning like she had requested. I had even agreed to all of her other demands, making her promise not to share that information with the other employees that I supervised.

  “This will be good for Jade. With my other collectors quitting left and right, we need all the help we can get. And Jade speaks Spanish so she could even help make some of the calls to the Spanish-speaking folks. It’s amazing how many of them forget how to speak English when a bill collector calls them.” I paused as I groped for more words. “Rosita Menendez is the only other Spanish-speaking collector we have right now and the way she’s been complaining, I expect her to run out of that place screaming any day.” I was rambling now. “Rhoda taught Jade how to speak Spanish when she w
as little. And when they lived in Florida, most of Jade’s friends were the children of the Cubans and Puerto Ricans who worked in the orange groves that Otis’s family owned. She even speaks it without an American accent.”

  “And how would you know she speaks Spanish without an American accent? Unless there is somethin’ you ain’t told me, you don’t speak nothin’ but English yourself.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I know because the Cuban lady who does our nails said so,” I snapped.

  “Yeah, but do Jade speak the language good enough to be doin’ it on a job?” Pee Wee wanted to know. “With all the slang these kids use today, knowing Jade, she speaks Spanish like them Cholos over on Willow Street.”

  “Well, the girl won’t be dealing with any diplomats from Madrid or Argentina. She’ll be dealing with some of those ignorant Puerto Ricans that come up here to work on the farms, and then jump into a cesspool of debt right off the bat. You wouldn’t believe how many of them run out and get new cars and charge accounts they can’t afford. One man we call on a regular basis lives in his car.”

  “And how do y’all call him if he’s livin’ in his car?”

  “On his cell phone, of course, which he can’t afford either!” I snapped. “I’m going to have Jade start right away.”

  Jade showed up that following Monday morning, eager to begin her first real job. Not only was she dressed to kill, she had her own expensive-looking black leather briefcase in addition to her beloved yellow backpack.

  CHAPTER 19

  Even I didn’t carry a briefcase to work. The large black shoulder purse that I always carried around was cumbersome enough.