by Mary Monroe
I had enough to keep my mind occupied. I tried to pretend that Pee Wee was not in the car with me. I was worried about Daddy, and Muh’Dear too, for that matter. She seemed to be in good health but she didn’t look so good anymore. And even though she never talked about it, I knew that the pressures she had endured over the years had finally taken a major toll on her. She had reached her limit. Now that my stalker claimed that she had proof that she was involved with my husband, I had reached my limit, too.
I stole a glance at Pee Wee. He was steering with one hand. I couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind. From the look on his face, he was as miserable as I was.
CHAPTER 32
When Pee Wee and I got home from the hospital, he went straight to bed. Jade had put Charlotte to bed. One thing I liked about my daughter, though she was no cherub and needed a good whupping every now and then, was the fact that she was fairly independent. She didn’t want to spend all of her time hanging around with me and Pee Wee. She loved school. And the time she spent with Rhoda and Jade was a real treat to her. As a matter of fact, sometimes Charlotte chose to be with Jade over me. That didn’t bother me because Jade often chose to be with me over Rhoda. So there was some balance in my confused life. But there was a downside. Jade was spoiled rotten and sneaky and I didn’t want Charlotte to pick up too many of her bad habits. That was the only thing that I really had to work hard at to prevent.
“Is your daddy going to be all right?” Jade asked as soon as I sat down next to her on the sofa.
I ignored the XXX-rated movie that she had been watching on the VCR when Pee Wee and I walked in. I was thankful that she had the sound on mute. Pee Wee kept a stash of dirty movies in a box in a corner behind some more boxes in our bedroom closet. It had been years since that box had been opened by him. And I certainly had no reason to open it myself. I hated pornography. But when he was younger and friskier, he liked to get wild and crazy with Otis and some of their other male friends and watch those nasty-ass movies. They would get freaky after a ball game or a fishing trip. Rhoda had assured me that it was no worse than them going to a strip club, and a lot safer. For Jade to have found those movies she had to have done some serious snooping. I didn’t have the strength to go into that with her now, though. Not tonight. But I made a mental note to throw out every single pornographic movie in that damn box, first chance I got.
I was surprised and glad when Jade reached for the remote on the coffee table and turned the movie off without me having to tell her to do so.
Jade’s yellow backpack was on the floor right next to her feet, bulging with God knows what. There was a can of Slim•Fast on the coffee table right next to an empty beer can. Both cans contained smudges of Jade’s plum-colored lipstick. She saw me looking at the beer can. “Uh, I got thirsty and couldn’t find any soda,” she said, ending her weak defense with a loud hiccup.
“Did you look in the refrigerator? I just put two six-packs of Coke in there yesterday,” I said tiredly.
“Hmmm,” she replied, a puzzled look on her face. “I didn’t even see that!” Jade sat up straighter, sliding her backpack a few inches away with her foot. “Is your daddy going to be all right?” she asked again, with an anxious look on her face.
Like the rest of us, Daddy was guilty of spoiling Jade, too. He was good with cars and electronics, so whenever her car—or the VCR or TV in her room—needed maintenance, she called up Daddy and he went running over to Rhoda’s house with his toolbox.
“I sure hope so,” I sighed, fanning my face with the TV Guide. “I didn’t get to keep him long when I was little, and it looks like I might not get to keep him long now,” I said, trying not to think about the thirty years that Daddy was missing from my life. “Did Charlotte give you a lot of trouble?” I asked, forcing myself to smile. I had licked off all of my lipstick and licked my lips so much they were now dry and threatening to crack. My trying to smile didn’t help. But I managed to keep a weak smile plastered on my face just for Jade’s sake. “I’m surprised you were able to get her into bed before I got home,” I said, looking at my watch.
“Oh, but she went kicking and screaming. And even then only because I agreed to read to her. I had to promise her two movies at the mall, and a day at the park, too,” Jade said, glancing at the floor. “I hope you don’t mind if I spend the night,” Jade said with a sniff, giving me a long, hard look, as if she was daring me to say no. “I brought my pajammies, and I already called Daddy and told him to tell Mama you wanted me to spend the night.” Jade dipped her chin and gave me an anxious look. “Is that all right with you?”
“You know I don’t have a problem with you spending the night here as long as it’s all right with your mama and daddy. But tomorrow is a workday and don’t you have things you need to do to get ready for work tomorrow?” I asked, pushing a strand of Jade’s hair off her face.
Jade let out a deep sigh before she let out a sudden sob. “Auntie, I need your help. Uh…I got another little problem that I need you to help me out of.”
“What is it, child?”
“I just found out…Um…I don’t know how it happened!” Jade rose. “I was using the pill and everything!”
“Jade, don’t tell me you are pregnant again!” I hissed, glancing toward the stairs to make sure that Pee Wee or Charlotte had not crept back to the living room.
Jade nodded so hard one of her false eyelashes came unglued. “Madeline Green is having a swimming party at the Y next month, and I can’t be seen in my bikini with my stomach poking out like a melon. I’m going to make an appointment for…um…that thing. I’m getting rid of it. I need you to go with me and drive me home. And…um…to pretend to be my mama.” Jade paused and adjusted her eyelash, securing it back in place with her long nails. Blinking both eyes, she continued. “You have to help me, Auntie!”
I threw up my hands and shook my head. “Jade, I have to think about this. I already have a lot of heavy shit on my plate these days. If something happens to you, and I’m involved, your parents would probably run me out of town on a rail! I wish you would stop dragging me into all the messes you seem to get yourself into!” Jade often made me angry, but I rarely showed it. I loved her so much that the last thing I wanted to do was disappoint her.
“But what about that time you got pregnant when you were a young girl! You got rid of yours and you didn’t even go to a real doctor like me!”
One thing I regretted was sharing too much of my past with Jade. True, I had experienced an unwanted pregnancy when I was a teenager, and Jade’s own mother had tried to help me abort it by forcing a whole bottle of whiskey down my throat while I sat in a bathtub full of hot water. I’d ended up in the hospital anyway and lost my mother’s respect. However, Jade’s situation and mine were as different as night and day. Sleeping around with whoever she was sleeping with was a long way from what I went through. I had had old Mr. Boatwright, my live-in rapist, to thank for my predicament.
“I don’t know what else to do,” Jade sobbed, grabbing my hands and placing her head on my bosom. I couldn’t stop myself from rubbing her back.
“It’ll be all right, honey. If you really need my help, I’ll be there for you.” I sighed and gently lifted Jade’s head and looked in her eyes. “What about the boy?”
“What about him?” Jade asked, with a look of complete indifference on her face now.
“Does he know? Can’t he go with you? Does he want you to have this abortion?”
Jade dropped her head. “When I told him, all he did was cuss me out and call me a slutty whore.” Jade sucked on her teeth and gave me a serious look. “Just goes to show you can’t trust too many people these days. I don’t know what this world is coming to.”
“I see boys haven’t changed much over the years,” I said sadly, swallowing a huge lump in my throat. Boys had changed over the years, but they had only gotten worse. Although the same thing could be said about girls.
“Huh? Is that how it was when you told the bo
y who got you pregnant?”
“Uh…yeah. It was something like that.” Jade didn’t know all the facts about that pregnancy. She didn’t need to know that a man old enough to be my grandfather had sexually abused me throughout my childhood, and I would never tell her. I prayed that Rhoda wouldn’t either. “Let’s get some sleep and we’ll talk more about this in the morning,” I said, my arm around Jade as I led her to the guestroom upstairs. “And I’m telling you right now, if you get yourself into a mess like this again, I am going to be the one to tell your mama. Do you understand me, girl?”
“Yes, I do, Auntie,” Jade said, giving me a peck on the cheek.
It was the same thing she had said, and the same thing that I had said, the last time she got pregnant.
CHAPTER 33
I was convinced that nobody knew Rhoda like I knew Rhoda. She had a very close relationship with various members of her family even though her parents lived in New Orleans, and her favorite aunt, Lola, lived in Alabama. But she was particular about what she shared with them. There was no doubt in my mind that Rhoda’s family was totally unaware of the dark side she had that I knew about. There were even times when it seemed like I knew her better than I knew myself. I could predict her actions more often than I could predict my own. My relationship with Rhoda had always been this way. Now I was in a similar situation with Rhoda’s daughter.
About ten years ago, I had had no contact with Rhoda for several years. We had reconnected at a funeral and promptly resumed our friendship.
Jade was seven when she entered my life, but there had been two sides to that child even then. She had been just as cute as a button and one of the most likeable children I’d ever met. But she was also self-centered, secretive, and manipulative back then, too.
She had not changed. Well, I guess you could say she had changed: she was even more self-centered, secretive, and manipulative now. I pitied the man she married. He was going to have his work cut out for him. But knowing Jade, she’d latch on to some lovesick fool that she’d pussy-whip so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him. The bottom line was, history was being repeated. Jade was Rhoda all over again. But I thanked God that it was in a much less sinister way. I was convinced that my influence would help keep Jade from duplicating her mother’s homicidal behavior.
Jade was the daughter I dreamed of having, and until I gave birth to Charlotte I treated Jade like a daughter. It was bad enough that Rhoda and Otis had already spoiled the girl rotten, but I had to go and jump into the mix with both feet.
I was the one who Jade had run to when she got her first period at thirteen. “Oh, Auntie, I don’t know what I would do without you. I don’t like what’s happening to my body!” she had wailed that day in the middle of one of my cookouts, angry and embarrassed to discover the bloody stain on her new white shorts. It was doubly bad to her, because Pee Wee was the one who had noticed it first. Right in the middle of a volleyball game. “And to let Pee Wee see me like this!”
“Don’t think he hasn’t seen this before. You’d be surprised what men, especially men his age, already know about us females,” I chuckled. I gave Jade one of my old housecoats, which wrapped around her three times, to put on until I washed and dried her shorts. “Don’t you think you should call your mama so she can pick you up?” I asked, gently scrubbing the bloody crotch of Jade’s shorts.
“I don’t want to go home yet,” Jade said with a smirk. “I can’t leave until I beat Pee Wee at a few games.”
I was glad that Jade got along so well with Pee Wee. She loved babies and being around Charlotte, who was a fussy five-year-old at the time, and it kept Jade out of trouble. Or so I thought.
A month after Jade’s first period, she came to me again with another personal crisis. I came home from work and she was sitting on my front porch with her schoolbooks in her lap and a look of terror on her face.
“What’s wrong now?” I asked, dragging my feet as I walked toward my front porch. I had a hard time moving when I encountered unpleasant news. From the look on Jade’s face, I expected to hear the worst. I covered my heart, which had started racing like mad, with my hand. Then I braced myself.
“Nothing,” she said with hesitation, following me inside.
“Then why the long face?” I asked, my arm around her shoulder.
“I bled again,” she stammered.
I gasped. “Well, honey, you are going to bleed a lot more in the next thirty or forty years. According to nature, you are a woman now. I know a smart girl like you knows that by now,” I chuckled. “They were teaching sex education when I was in school, back in the Stone Age, and I know that these days they are telling you kids a lot more than they were telling us. If you don’t talk to your mama, I will. You will need to know how to take care of yourself every month.”
“I know everything I need to know. Mama knows I know. She even took me to the drugstore and bought up a bunch of tampons—yuck—and she gave me that ‘keep your legs closed’ talk. And what she didn’t tell me my friends did.”
“Then what’s your problem? You say you’re bleeding again, but didn’t you know that was coming?”
“I had my period again last week.”
“Oh. Well, if you are bleeding again already, you might need to see a doctor. The first few periods are irregular, but you should still see a doctor just to make sure everything is all right.”
“Lo’ Reese Freeman said you bleed the first time you have sex.”
“You will,” I sighed. “And you can expect it to hurt like hell,” I said over my shoulder. Jade followed me into my kitchen where I snatched two sodas from the refrigerator, handing one to her.
“I did,” she said with a sheepish grin.
“You did what?” I asked, already knowing the answer and not liking it one bit. Jade dropped her head and giggled under her breath. “Jade, you are still a baby! You don’t have any business getting that close to any boys right now. You have all the time in the world. Don’t grow up too fast, baby.”
“But I really like this boy and he likes me. He let me ride on his bike. He gave me a dollar. And he said I was the prettiest Black girl in the world.” Jade sniffed and stuck out her chest. “This boy only likes White girls, so getting him wasn’t that easy. Especially for a girl as dark as me.”
“Jade, boys will tell you anything and everything that they think you want to hear, just so they can fuck the hell out of you. Excuse my language, but that is exactly what it comes down to. Sex is a double-edged sword. It’s ‘fucking’ when it’s with the wrong person. It’s ‘making love’ when it’s with someone that you care about, and someone who cares about you.”
“But guess what? I care about Jeffrey Rollins and he cares about me. Honest to God. I think about him all the time, and he thinks about me. He told me so.”
“I am sure he does think about you all the time. All of the other boys would too if you let them get in your pants. Listen, baby, you need to forget about boys right now and concentrate on school and growing up. You have lots of girlfriends and they can offer you a lot more than any boy can right now. The main thing is, you can do whatever you want with your girlfriends and a girl can’t get you pregnant.”
From that day on, Jade surrounded herself with female friends and I was glad to see that.
I had no idea what that was going to lead to.
Unlike Jade, Rhoda had not had many friends when she was a teenager. Had it not been for Pee Wee, Rhoda would have been the loneliest girl in her class until I came along. As a matter of fact, Pee Wee and I were the only friends that Rhoda had until she met Otis and married him as soon as we finished high school.
Our classmates had despised all three of us for different reasons, the same classic and typical reasons that kids had used for centuries: Rhoda was too pretty and her family had too much money, Pee Wee was too sissified and he was friends with a dark horse like Rhoda. Me, I was an even more popular target because I had more of the typical flaws that attracted bullies: I was fat,
Black, ugly, shy, and poor.
It was a damn shame that a lot of the girls hated Rhoda back then because of her looks. But Jade was just as beautiful and it didn’t seem to bother the other girls. Old Mr. Boatwright had convinced me that the only reason Rhoda had befriended me was because I was no threat to her. “With that bald head and butt-ugly face of yours, ain’t no girl got to worry about you givin’ them no competition. And if that ain’t enough, that big, fat-ass blimp you call a body is.”
At the time, I didn’t care if what Mr. Boatwright said was true or not. His opinions were so off-the-wall that I could not take him seriously. And it didn’t matter what he thought of me anyway, because Rhoda had chosen me, and only me, to be her best girlfriend. And in all the years that I had known Rhoda, she had never made an issue out of the way I looked.
I couldn’t say the same for Jade and her prissy little friends. One thing I learned early in my relationship with Jade was that she did not tolerate unattractive people. All of her girlfriends looked like living Barbie Dolls.
Jade had started watching her weight at the tender age of eleven. Two years later she had attempted to wear makeup at thirteen, but Rhoda nipped that in the bud right away. “No makeup and no dating until you are sixteen,” Rhoda had declared.
CHAPTER 34
As strict as Rhoda was with Jade, Jade pretty much did and said whatever she wanted anyway behind Rhoda’s back. Especially when it came to me.
“Auntie, I love you to death, but I’d rather be dead than be as big as you are.” She had just turned sixteen. Jade blinked and shook her head with a look of pity on her face. “Geraldo had a man on his show one day that was so fat, he had to tie a bath rag to a stick to bathe himself. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he had to squat over his bathtub when he had to go to pee or…whatever.”
