by Mary Monroe
I looked from her to Jade, sucking in my stomach. “Whoever this bitch is, she will have to do more than send me nasty notes to make me leave town,” I vowed, shaking my fist.
I enjoyed a very pleasant evening with Jade and Rhoda. And it was a good thing I did, because after that night it would be a while before I enjoyed another pleasant evening with them or anybody else.
The very next day, while I was at a nail shop at the Melden Village Mall getting my nails done, somebody slashed all four of the tires on my car in broad daylight in the mall parking lot.
CHAPTER 56
I had to keep in mind that my actions and behavior affected other people in my life. Even if they didn’t know the reason I was acting so out of character.
I could avoid Muh’Dear and Daddy, therefore avoid their nosy questions. As much as I wanted to see Daddy and make sure he was following his doctor’s orders, it was better for me to call him. That way I could control the situation. The last thing I wanted to do was to break down in front of him and Muh’Dear. But it was getting harder and harder to maintain a level of sanity so that I could take care of my daughter and do my job.
“When is my daddy coming home?” Charlotte demanded when I picked her up from school in a rental car that following Monday evening. I had decided to take off a few days from work. “Did you get a new car, Mama? How come you look so mad?”
“Just get in the car and hush up,” I ordered.
I dropped Charlotte off at Rhoda’s house for Jade to keep an eye on her because I had to visit my insurance agent.
Once I got Charlotte situated in the house, Jade walked me back to my car, her arm around my shoulder. “Another package addressed to you arrived at the office today. It looks very suspicious,” Jade told me with a weary look on her face.
I could see that this mess was beginning to take a heavy toll on this poor child, too. “Did you open it?” I asked with indifference. Nothing my tormentor did surprised me anymore.
Jade shook her head. “There is just no telling what’s in it. Do you want me to bring it by your house tomorrow on my lunch hour?”
I shook my head. “That’s all right, baby. Whatever it is, it can wait until I return to work.”
“Unless it’s a time bomb,” Jade said with a chuckle.
I shook my head again and laughed, too. My mind flashed on the way Pee Wee’s face looked during my surprise attack while he slept at his cousin’s house the other day, and that made me laugh as well. I was glad to see that there was some humor in the situation.
“Jade, I know you’d rather be out with your friends instead of keeping me company. I appreciate all you do for me. Thank you so much for being here for me,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper. “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you and your mama behind me.”
Jade gave me such a strong bear hug, I almost lost my breath.
“Auntie, I love you and I’ll be glad when this is all over,” Jade assured me with a sob in her voice. “I can’t go on watching you fall apart! It’s wrong and I wish to God that I could find out who the bitch is who is doing this. I would take care of her myself!”
“Jade, don’t upset yourself. It’s not healthy. This whole thing will be over soon. I promise you,” I said, rubbing her back.
“Oh? Did you find out something else?”
“No, not yet. But I will.”
“Oh. Well, if you don’t, are you going to get a divorce, or what?”
I hunched my shoulders. “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do. Even if I don’t file for a divorce, Pee Wee might. I am not going to try to hang on to a man who doesn’t want to be with me. If he doesn’t want to stay with me, I can’t make him.”
“I’m glad to hear that. You don’t need to settle for that kind of marriage. But Auntie, this happens all the time. It’s a biological thing with most men. When they get a certain age, they have to get a younger woman. Everybody knows that. Donald Trump proved it—twice! Pee Wee is at that age when he wants a younger woman. Men get that itch any time after their thirties. You do know that, don’t you?”
I couldn’t bring myself to look in Jade’s face. I didn’t want her to see the pain in my eyes.
“Pee Wee doesn’t like younger women,” I said. “He told me that himself,” I said in an uncertain voice that cracked before I could finish my sentence.
“Of course he’d tell you something like that! I overheard Mama and Aunt Lola talking about that affair that Daddy had that time. Aunt Lola told Mama that one time Daddy told her that he didn’t like plain women. Well, that cow he fooled around with looked like Isaac Hayes!”
“James Brown,” I corrected.
“Huh?”
“The woman your daddy cheated with looked like James Brown. That’s what your mama told me. They even called the woman J.B.” I was surprised that I was able to laugh. Jade didn’t laugh, though.
“Whatever.” Jade sighed and gave me another bear hug. “I just want you to be happy, Auntie.”
I didn’t go straight home. I did something that I had not done in years. I went to a bar alone. Not a bar where I might run into somebody I didn’t want to see, but a dim, dark, country-western type of place on the side of the freeway, near a trailer park. In the bar’s parking lot tipsy hillbillies with crooked, chewing-tobacco-stained teeth leered at me as I approached the bar entrance. As soon as I made it through the door and plopped down on a stool at the bar, a potbellied redneck in jeans and a plaid shirt appeared out of nowhere. He sat so close to me our elbows touched.
“’Scuse me, ma’am,” he said, tipping a faded beige cowboy hat. His breath had an unholy stench. His dusty clothes smelled like metal. “Have I seen you somewhere before?” He bobbed his head to a Willie Nelson song playing on the jukebox in a corner near the bar.
I ordered a bottle of beer from an exasperated-looking bartender before I answered. “It’s possible. I’ve been somewhere before,” I smirked.
“And you’re cute, too. Plump as a pheasant. You lookin’ for somethin’ in particular?” he crooned, his eyes roaming all over my body.
“I was in the neighborhood and I just came in for a drink.” It took me a few moments to realize I was being picked up. “I am meeting my husband in a little while down the street,” I said, looking at my watch.
“We don’t see gals like you in here too often. You a…uh…workin’ gal?”
Thirty years ago I would have been flattered to be asked that question.
“I have a husband and a daughter,” I snapped, rising to leave. I took just one sip from the bottle of beer that the bartender had set on the counter in front of me. Then I dropped a few bills on the counter and rose to leave.
I was so disoriented that I got lost trying to get back on the freeway. I turned on the radio to listen to the news, something I had not done in days. I was surprised to hear that O.J. Simpson had been found not guilty almost a week ago of murdering his estranged wife and her friend! That’s how out of touch I had been. If Rhoda, Jade, or anybody else had mentioned that story to me, I had completely forgotten it.
Maybe I really had suffered a nervous breakdown! I was certainly not myself, especially today. I couldn’t figure out how I ended up on a narrow dirt road. Especially when I could actually see the freeway from where I was. I had not consumed enough alcohol to be drunk, but I lost control of the rental car anyway. I didn’t even see that stray horse when it galloped out of a field and onto the road, right in front of me.
There was a tremendous crash and then it got so dark, it seemed like somebody had put me in a room and turned off all the lights.
CHAPTER 57
At least I wasn’t dead, or even hurt. If anything, the accident that had just happened had sharpened my mind and made me more aware of what was going around me.
I didn’t like having to deal with the police twice within a twenty-four-hour period. It had been enough of an ordeal for me to make out the police report when I discovered that somebody had slashed the
tires on my car.
The rental car had not been too badly damaged, but the horse that I’d hit was dead. Rhoda eventually came to pick me up from a nearby fruit stand where I had called her from. A tow truck had immediately come to haul the damaged car away. I was glad the police didn’t keep me on the scene too long. I couldn’t stand to look at the broken carcass of the horse I’d hit.
“Jade told me you hit a Porsche. Are you all right?” she asked, helping me to her SUV.
She gasped when I started laughing. “I must have sounded pretty wild to Jade. It was a horse I hit, not a Porsche.” I yawned, even though I was far from sleepy. “Rhoda, I…am falling apart,” I stammered.
Rhoda stared at me for a few moments and then she laughed.
“Well, thank God you are all right and insured. This could have happened to anybody, you know.”
Rhoda took me to her house to pick up Charlotte before she drove me home. I grabbed the mail out of the mailbox on my way in and tossed the stack of envelopes and magazines onto the coffee table.
It was hours later, after I’d fed Charlotte and chased her off to bed, before I went through the mail. There was no return address on the last envelope, but I knew who it had come from. The note read:
Bitch, you are running out of time!
Attached to the note with a paper clip was an old picture of me standing in front of my house next to Charlotte. Rhoda and Jade had posed with us for that same picture, but all traces of them were missing, except for part of Jade’s hand, which was on my shoulder. The photograph had been trimmed on all four sides. Pee Wee had taken the picture on Charlotte’s first day of kindergarten. I had not seen this particular photograph in years. I could barely remember posing for it, let alone where I had left it. We had several photo albums in the house, not to mention family pictures on the walls and tables. This picture could have been anywhere and anybody could have taken it.
The picture, with me smiling like I’d just won the lottery, had been neatly cut into the shape of a coffin. My face, and Charlotte’s, had been crossed out with a huge black X. I could still smell the ink from the Magic Marker that the sender had used.
I was glad that Charlotte was not around to see me hyperventilate. It took several minutes for me to compose myself. I was standing in front of the kitchen sink drinking my second glass of water when the telephone rang.
“I want to speak to Annette.” I did not recognize the woman’s loud, angry voice, but at least it was not the raspy whisper that I had become far too familiar with.
“This…this is she,” I mumbled.
“This is Daisy Hawthorne. I am only goin’ to tell you one time: stay away from my husband!”
My mind went blank for a few seconds. “What? I don’t even know you or your husband.”
“You are a goddamn liar. We went to school with your fat black ass, and you done called my house buggin’ us about a goddamn jewelry store bill. You damn well do know me and my husband, Brady Hawthorne, you whorin’ ass bitch! You can play dumb if you want to, but I will—”
I slammed the telephone down and started to walk away. I stopped when I noticed that the indicator on my answering machine was flashing the number of messages I had received. I had never received twelve messages in one day. The first two were from Muh’Dear, the next one was from Pee Wee. The next six were from women I did not know. Each one accused me of sleeping with her husband!
I erased all of the rest of the messages without listening to them. The feeling that came over me was one of the worst feelings I had ever experienced in my life. I felt like I was alone in the world. Other than Rhoda and Jade, there was nobody I could talk to about what was happening in my life.
“Thank God you are still up,” I said to Jade as soon as she answered the telephone.
“Well, yeah. I left you two messages. I wanted to see how you were doing. You have been through so much lately, and I am so worried about you, Auntie.”
“Oh, shit! I erased your messages. I will explain later.” I rubbed my chest and my eyes. I could barely feel my legs and when I tried to shift my position, I almost fell to the floor. “I know you have to go to work tomorrow. But as your supervisor, I give you my permission to take tomorrow off with pay.”
“Cool! But why would I do that?” Jade asked in an excited voice.
“I was feeling kind of lonely and wanted to know if you’d come keep me company for the night. If you want to go to work in the morning, that’s fine. If you don’t, that’s fine, too. Like I said, you can take tomorrow off with pay if you want to.”
“Did something else happen?”
“I got another note in the mail. This one really upset me a little more than the others. And a bunch of women left messages on my answering machine accusing me of sleeping with their husbands. I guess I’ve reached my breaking point,” I said plaintively. “Is Rhoda still up?”
“Yeah, but she’s not here. She went for a drink at the Red Rose with some lady from her exercise class.”
“Well, can you come over right away?”
“I’m on my way,” Jade squealed.
CHAPTER 58
I didn’t realize it was raining outside until Jade walked in my front door with a see-through raincoat on over her silk pajamas. In addition to her overnight case, she had her ever-present yellow backpack slung over her shoulder.
“I just put on some tea,” I told her, hanging her raincoat on a hook near the door.
“Well, since I don’t have to work tomorrow, and since Mama’s not here to mess with me, I’d rather have a beer,” Jade said, with a cheeky grin.
“Jade, you know I don’t like you drinking over here,” I scolded, knowing it was useless. “Your mother wouldn’t like it either. I am responsible for you when you are with me.” I dipped my head and gave Jade a critical look.
Jade blinked her big green eyes, dropped her backpack onto the sofa, and headed for the kitchen with that silly grin still on her face.
Several minutes passed and Jade hadn’t come out. She was probably drinking a beer anyway. I was too tired to fuss with her. I picked up the stack of mail, with the nasty note still on top of the pile. I set it aside so I could show Jade when she returned to the living room.
With a groan I flipped through the rest of the stack, praying that I would not see anything else that I didn’t want to see. I did. Between my light bill and a car ad was another Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue addressed to Jade.
I picked up her backpack to put the catalogue in it, surprised that such a dainty-looking thing was so heavy. As soon as I opened the backpack out fell a can of hair spray and a paperback romance novel with a longhaired man on top of a half-naked woman on the cover. Because Jade was so neat, I was surprised to see something stuck between the pages of the book, separate from a plastic bookmark toward the end. I flipped the pages, chuckling. I was not surprised, but I was disappointed to see that Jade was reading such trash. On almost every page I looked at, the characters were having sex. That was disturbing enough. However, what I removed from between two pages, where the author had described an orgy in great detail, could just have well been a deadly blacksnake—a real one this time.
My eyes burned as I stared at what I held in my trembling hand: neatly cut parts of the picture that had been clipped from the disturbing picture that I had received in the mail!
I shook my head, then I shook the book. Nothing else fell out. I dropped it onto the sofa and poured out all of the contents in the backpack. A pair of scissors and a packet of small pink envelopes with matching paper, complete with a white dove in the upper right-hand corner, like the sheets I’d received, were the last things to land on my sofa.
From a distance, I could hear somebody crying. I didn’t realize it was me until Jade strolled back into the living room with a loud burp. She stopped in her tracks when she realized what I had stumbled onto.
“Omigod! Omigod! Oh, no! Auntie, please!” she yelled, dropping her cup of tea to the floor. “Oh, shit.”
I nodded. “Oh shit is right,” I said, rising from the sofa with the pieces of the picture in one hand and the pink envelopes and matching paper in the other.
I could not have been more stunned, horrified, hurt, and confused if the Devil himself had walked into my living room.
But a devil had just walked into my living room.
CHAPTER 59
“Jade…Oh, Jade, baby…It was you. It was you all this time. It was you?” The words left a bitter taste in my mouth.
With the same soulless look in her eyes that I’d seen when I’d spent the night at Rhoda’s house, Jade just stood there glaring at me. And then she nodded.
I swallowed hard and blinked even harder. “Jade, are you sleeping with my husband?” I asked, bile rising in my throat. My voice was so hoarse I could barely recognize it. I couldn’t move from my spot. “Jade, talk to me!” I shrieked. I don’t know where I got the strength that kept me from falling flat on my face or snapping completely.
“You were never supposed to find out.”
Jade’s voice was a low whimper at first and there was a frightened look on her face. But that look didn’t stay there long. Within seconds her face turned hard and threatening. Her eyes became slits, her lips thin, dark lines that trembled with every blink of her eyes. Her voice changed just as suddenly and sharply as her face.
She hissed, “Why didn’t you just pack up your shit and move to China or somewhere before it came to this?” Jade clenched her teeth and chanted, “Why, why, why? Why don’t you go somewhere and disappear?” she asked, stomping her foot so hard the remote fell off the coffee table and onto the floor.
I was so profoundly stunned, I could barely talk anymore. In the back of my mind I wanted to scream and fly into a rage like a betrayed woman was supposed to do. But I couldn’t. At least not yet. This young woman, this child, meant too much to me. And because of who her mother was, this was one situation that had to be handled with extreme caution.
