by Mary Monroe
“Auntie, if that bitch ever starts to fuck with you again, she’ll be sorry.”
I nodded and smiled some more. “In the meantime, you watch your language, girl.” I tapped the side of Jade’s head and we both laughed. “And keep your eyes on the road. You almost jumped that curb just now.”
Right after I commented on Jade’s driving skills, an old memory shot through my mind like a cannonball. Rhoda had been a horrible driver when we were young. Her daddy had bought a used Mustang for her. Before she had learned how to maneuver the vehicle properly, she had knocked over mailboxes and run into more trees with it than anybody I knew. She had used that same car to mow down the ex-cop who had killed her brother. The man’s death had been listed as a hit-and-run. Nobody had questioned Rhoda about the severe dent in the front of her car that she’d come home with that same day. But by then, every body shop in town had worked on Rhoda’s car.
Once again, she’d gotten away with murder.
CHAPTER 22
Before we were married, I had told Pee Wee about Rhoda’s crimes even though I had promised her that I wouldn’t. However, some of the secrets I carried around like a sackful of rocks eventually got too heavy for me to handle by myself. I trusted Pee Wee and I knew that my secrets would be his secrets. His response had surprised me. He had been so amused and nonchalant the day I told him, I regretted doing so. I still didn’t know if he believed me or not. It was something that we hadn’t discussed in years. I wanted to leave it that way.
I knew enough about crime to know that there was no statute of limitations when it came to murder. Even though Pee Wee was no longer the type of person who ran all over town spreading rumors and gossip, I had no way of knowing whether he would leak that information anyway. I knew that there was no guarantee that we would remain together. I had a concern that if he married another woman he might share what I’d told him with her. Only God knew what would happen then. Information like that usually found its way to the authorities. And I had every reason to believe that if Rhoda went down, I’d go down with her. At least for Mr. Boatwright’s murder. I gave things a lot of thought now before I shared them with Pee Wee. Like the mess that was going on in my life now.
I had also told Pee Wee about Mr. Boatwright abusing me and the fact that out of desperation I had sold my body to some of Scary Mary’s clients so that I could raise money to leave home. I really don’t know if he believed any of that, either. It had also been years since we’d discussed that confession. The only other person I had shared this same information with was Lillimae. She had believed every word I told her. I couldn’t explain why I had not called her when I got that note in the mail. But even though this was something I didn’t want to share with my husband, I knew that sooner or later Lillimae would pry it out of me.
I called Lillimae from my office but got her answering machine.
“Hey, little sister, it’s Annette. I need to talk to you. Please call me back as soon as you can. I know you are at work now, but don’t call me at home tonight because I can’t talk. Tomorrow, when you can take a break, call me at the office.” I hung up and let out a loud, deep sigh, feeling better already. As soon as I hung up, someone tapped on my door and opened it before I could respond.
“You want to join me and Mom for lunch?” Jade asked.
“Oh, no, sugar. I’m going to run across the street to McDonald’s and grab a salad, I said, sucking in my stomach. Tell your mom I’ll see her at the beauty shop this evening, and afterwards we’ll go for drinks.”
As hard as it was to believe, Rhoda and I got our hair done at the same place. What was even harder to believe was the fact that even though she had four times as much hair as me, they charged me the same amount that they charged her. Rhoda got her hair done once a week. I only had to go every other week. So there was some justice in the world of beauty. My monthly hairdressing bill was half of what she paid. But even on the weeks that I didn’t have to visit my beautician, Rhoda and I had a standing date to meet up at the Red Rose for a couple of drinks.
“OK,” Jade said, her big green eyes slowly looking over my head. “Auntie, no offense, but don’t you think you should consider going back to braids? And the longer and thicker the better. Uh, people are laughing at your bald spots. From the front, your hairline looks like Harry Belafonte’s.”
“My hairline looks like Harry Belafonte’s? What…I…what bald spots?” I asked with a profound gasp. Both hands flew up to my head, patting and feeling around. I plucked my purse out of my desk drawer and fished out my compact.
Jade shut the door and moved over to my desk. “You can’t see them, but other people can,” she informed me. “Especially in the back…and on the sides.”
I gave Jade a thoughtful look before I rolled my eyes upward. “I don’t have a receding hairline.”
“I didn’t say you did.” She rushed around my desk and stood behind me, her fingers raking through the top of my hair. My skin tingled as she inspected my scalp with the tips of her fingers. “But, I swear to God, these bald spots need all the attention you can give them,” Jade complained. “Just look this mess!” Jade walked back from around the desk, shaking her head.
“Who has been laughing at me?” I asked quietly. “Other than Gloria Watson, I mean.” Gloria made fun of a lot of people, so whatever she said about me usually didn’t bother me.
Jade shrugged. “Well, her mostly. She cracks jokes when she’s got an audience.”
“Uh-huh.” I shook my head and shifted in my seat. “You go on to lunch. Paula Barton is out again today and she left a long list on her desk. I’m going to have to make some of her calls.”
“I can help you make some of the calls when I get back, if you want me to,” Jade offered, heading for the door. “Now you just sit there and relax.”
I didn’t like the fact that Jade, at times, held such a high position of authority in my life. There were occasions when I felt like I was the child and she was the adult.
Muh’Dear and a lot of other adults I knew complained that Jade was too mature for her own good, and that it would eventually cause some problems. Not just for Jade but for other people in her life.
“And don’t worry about that bitch,” Jade said. “Me and Mama, we got your back.” Jade gave me a firm nod before she left my office, gently closing the door behind her.
I was worried about that bitch. But I was worried about Jade, too.
CHAPTER 23
What Jade had said about people laughing at me didn’t really faze me that much. A lot of people had said a lot of stupid shit about me, and to me. Some had even been brazen enough to say it to my face. I had been used to it for a long time. However, mean and nasty comments still hurt, but I got over it all a lot easier and sooner than I had when I was younger.
I had a lot more going for me than some of the people who took it upon themselves to criticize me. My job as a supervisor at a respectable company was one of the many things that I had going for me. Despite the negativity that I had to deal with, I still felt blessed.
There was only one other enclosed office at Mizelle’s. Our bookkeeper shared that cramped little fishbowl with a wall of files and Mr. Mizelle, my boss, when he visited. And that wasn’t very often. It was a privilege for me to have an office all to myself when the other employees had to work in tacky little back-to-back cubicles. The four cubicles along the wall had windows, and those cubicles were almost as coveted as my office.
My promotion had included a cash bonus of three thousand dollars that I had used to buy myself some new office furniture. The company had a budget that covered furniture, office supplies, and a few other miscellaneous items, but the company didn’t want to pay for what I wanted. I got myself a large red oak desk with a matching file cabinet. I even purchased some ethnic artwork for my walls. I loved plants but I didn’t have much luck with them. I had to replace the plants in my house on a regular basis because I couldn’t keep them healthy and looking good. I did the same thing at the o
ffice. A large, framed grinning portrait of me, Pee Wee, and Charlotte was the only photograph that I had on top of my desk, even though we took pictures all the time.
I removed the latest issue of Ebony magazine from the top drawer on the side of my desk. After I glanced at the table of contents and didn’t see anything I was anxious to read about, I dropped it back in the drawer. As much as I liked to read, women’s magazines especially, I hadn’t done much reading in the last couple of weeks. It angered me to know that the person who had chosen to harass me had caused me to make so many changes in my routine.
I rolled my chair around just far enough so that I could look out the window behind my desk. There was not much of a view: just the side of another dreary gray building and a few naked trees. Fallen leaves covered the ground like a thin brown blanket with jagged edges. I leaned forward toward the window so I could see the corner of the Chinese restaurant where Jade and I often ate lunch. Despite the fact that there was nothing that interesting to see, I sat and stared out my office window.
I sat there wondering if I would ever find out the identity of the woman who had targeted me. But then I had to ask myself: what good would it do me to find that out? My instincts now told me that it probably wasn’t Gloria Watson. She had not done anything out of the ordinary that I was aware of. But I didn’t want to rule her out. I let out a sigh that was so strong it fogged up part of the window, forming a large, steamy O.
I lost track of the time so I don’t know how long I sat in the swivel chair behind my desk, as stiff and mute as a statue. When I finally stood up, my legs almost folded. My head was spinning and I couldn’t understand why I was so dizzy. I decided that I was going through some kind of an aftershock and my body and mind had to readjust. That little note, the blacksnake, and the telephone calls had done a lot of damage to me. And I knew that it would all stay on my mind for a long time to come.
Just before noon I decided to leave the building. I walked briskly past the cubicles near my office, flipping a folder in my hand. I looked busy and in a hurry and that’s the way I wanted to look. I didn’t even want to talk to anybody unless I had to. My workers were pretty independent and reliable. I knew that they did what they had to do without me breathing down their necks.
With my purse swinging off my arm like a pendulum, and my legs aching like I’d been kicked, I trotted the one block down the street from our office to McDonald’s. I was so preoccupied, I crossed the busy street without looking both ways for traffic, and an eighteen-wheeler missed mowing me down by just a few inches.
That incident was responsible for my stomach feeling something other than hunger pains. I decided to not pick up the three Big Macs that I had planned to eat for lunch because I had to stand in the order line for so long that by the time I got up to the counter to give my order I had lost my appetite. I was annoyed because I had wasted twenty minutes of my lunch hour.
“I don’t want to order anything. I keep forgetting that I’m on a diet,” I told the young girl behind the counter with a sheepish grin on my face, my chin tucked in.
“I don’t blame you,” the girl hollered, with a frown on her face as her heavily made-up eyes roamed all over me as I turned to walk away. Her reaction made me feel twice as big as I really was. I waddled to the restroom, sucking in a stomach that wasn’t going anywhere.
Before I left the restroom, I looked at myself in the full-length mirror on the wall, raking my fingers through my hair. I was horrified at what I saw. I had left home without putting on any makeup and my hair looked like I’d been flying. The buttons on my blouse were buttoned wrong. I had on a flowered blouse and a plaid skirt. I looked like a humongous piñata. I wondered why Jade hadn’t also commented on my attire. Realizing how tacky I looked, I was afraid to go back out in public. But I did. I couldn’t have felt more uncomfortable walking back to work if I’d been naked.
People gave me the usual looks of disgust that they gave other obese people, but my weight was their problem. I had stopped obsessing about it a long time ago. Diets didn’t work for me, my doctor said I was in good health for a woman my size and age, and my handsome husband couldn’t keep his hands off me. I knew that Jade and Rhoda, both being a size four, thought that being slim was the greatest thing in the world. They suffered a lot to remain thin. Three years ago when Rhoda returned from a cruise eight pounds heavier, she fasted on water and juice until she got back to her normal weight, which took three whole weeks. The fast had almost killed her, but to a person as vain as Rhoda, it must have been worth it.
I didn’t envy Jade and Rhoda for their beauty. If anything I felt sorry for them. Especially Rhoda.
In Rhoda’s case, nature had given her a lot. But it had taken much more away from her.
CHAPTER 24
I was thankful that nature had not chosen to disrupt my good health, so far. I was obese, there was no doubt about that. But that was an affliction that I could have controlled better, had I tried. When I compared my health to Rhoda’s, I decided that I was the lucky one after all.
Unlike Rhoda, I had never really been sick or incapacitated a day of my life. Death had even come knocking on her door; lucky for her she was too sick to open that door and she’d escaped death that time.
Even though she was still an extremely beautiful woman, Rhoda’s deterioration had begun right after she had given birth to Jade. Breast cancer had claimed both of her breasts, but she had learned to live with that disfigurement. She wore clothing that hid it so well, even I didn’t know until she told me. But that was just the beginning.
About ten years ago she suffered a stroke that had almost killed her. Of all the places on her body to be affected, it had to be her beautiful face. To a vain person like Rhoda, that was as good as a death sentence. For several months one side of her face was so contorted that she’d looked like a leering gargoyle. She also had some paralysis and speech problems. After two intense years of physical therapy, she recovered. At least on the outside. Her face resumed its original appearance, but for several years after, her left eye wouldn’t close and tears streamed from it at the most inconvenient times.
“I finally got my husband to fuck me after a two-year dry spell and right in the middle of it, my damn eye up and starts floodin’ like Niagara Falls,” Rhoda complained. Rhoda’s marriage suffered, to say the least. She and Otis would go for weeks at a time not speaking to each other.
But Rhoda’s marital problems had started long before her physical problems, so she couldn’t get any mileage out of that. Time had not healed the wounds in Rhoda’s marriage. In some ways she and Otis lived separate lives. They were more like roommates than husband and wife. It pleased me on the occasions when they showed some affection toward one another, but they were rare.
Before Rhoda’s stroke, right after giving birth to her first child, Rhoda gained a lot of weight and had a hard time losing it. Her husband had found her repulsive, and started to ignore her in the bedroom. But some men found Rhoda’s weight gain attractive.
The man who had found Rhoda most attractive was her husband’s best friend, Bully. For several weeks they had fucked the hell out of each other—once even in the same bed where she slept with Otis. Rhoda had told me all of that out of her own mouth.
After Bully had moved on and married some English woman, Rhoda discovered she was pregnant with his baby. Since Otis had not touched her in months, she knew that if she wanted to save her marriage she had to come up with a plan. She got Otis drunk and dragged him to bed. When he woke up the next morning naked, she was in his arms. Self-inflicted scratches on her thighs had convinced Otis that he had made love to her. She’d even scolded him for being so rough.
A month later when Rhoda told Otis she was pregnant, he was jubilant. By then she had lost most of the weight from the first baby, but he professed that he didn’t care how much she gained this time. She gave birth to her second son and regained her original figure in no time, with the help of an aggressive and expensive personal trainer. H
er marriage was wonderful again. But Rhoda’s bliss was short-lived.
Things fell apart again when the little boy died shortly after his birth. Rhoda was devastated. She then seduced Otis several times a day until she got pregnant with Jade. When the cancer claimed Rhoda’s breasts she fell into a bottomless pit of depression. Otis didn’t neglect her this time, but she neglected him, and that drove her husband into the arms of another woman.
They had worked through their problems and managed to stay together for the sake of Jade and her older brother, Julian. Jade was almost grown now and Julian was on his own. The marriage that Rhoda and Otis had now was more like a relationship of convenience, a sham and a shame. I didn’t know what Otis did on his own, but Rhoda was as busy as a bee.
Even though Rhoda avoided the subject, I had a feeling that she and Bully had resumed their affair, right up under Otis’s nose.
Since Bully had come to town, Rhoda paid even more attention to Jade. But something told me that that was just a smoke screen. Even if it was, Jade was still the center of Rhoda’s universe. As far as Rhoda was concerned, Jade could do no wrong. But I knew things about Jade that I didn’t want to know. Things that I had promised myself I would keep from Rhoda for as long as I could.
Rhoda often bragged about how Jade would continue to be a virgin until she got married. Well, unless Jade knew how to perform a miracle, being a virgin on her wedding night would be impossible. I didn’t have the heart to tell Rhoda that Jade spent more time on her back than a quadriplegic does. Like so many other young girls hot between their legs, Jade regarded sex as a pastime. Like hanging out at the mall with her friends or getting one of her weekly egg facials.
