Can You Keep a Secret?

by Mary Monroe

  Lola flung the TV Guide to the floor. “I know what you meant. If you really need to know, Miss Shirelle is the only woman Daddy has sex with these days.”

  My eyes got wide. That information shocked me so much, I had to rear back and rotate my neck before I could tune up my mouth to ask the next question. “Do you mean to tell me that your mama and daddy don’t even do the wild thing anymore?”

  “That’s right. I heard them talking one day when they didn’t know I was in the house. Mama has some kind of female condition and having sex is real painful for her. She said her doctor told her that the operation she needs to correct the problem could cause even more problems, including a stroke. That’s the reason she allows Daddy to have a girlfriend.”

  “Hmmm. I’ll bet your mama was just tired of having sex anyway. She’s such a prim and proper lady; I can’t even picture her humping a man and hollering up a storm and stuff.” I gulped because I was a little nervous about what I was going to say next. “I bet your mama has never even had an orgasm.”

  Lola looked at me like I had suddenly sprouted a beard. “A what?”

  “Never mind,” I said with a deep sigh. “I keep forgetting you, uh, still got some catching up to do when it comes to sex. I know so much about that from watching the nasty movie cable channels on my brother’s TV. I’ll tell you about orgasms some other time because if I told you now, you’d probably freak out.”

  “Okay. What I don’t know now won’t hurt me, I guess.” Lola hunched her shoulders and continued. “Maybe Mama was tired of having sex. I used to hear her complain about all that sweating and flopping around in the bed.” I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. I could tell that Lola wanted to laugh herself by the way her lips kept twitching. She cleared her throat and raked her fingers through her long hair and pushed it back off her face. “Another thing I like about having Shirelle living with us is, she speaks up for me when Daddy and Mama get on my case about something.”

  “Most women would be hella jealous of another woman living in her house, especially when she knows that woman is her husband’s girlfriend. Your mama must be a f—” Lola didn’t even let me get the word “fool” all the way out before she interrupted me.

  “I don’t care what you or anybody else thinks. Last week Mama told me she knew about Daddy and Miss Shirelle a long time ago. She said she would rather have him be with a woman she knows—a clean woman—than out in the streets with prostitutes where he could either catch some deadly disease, get killed, or arrested. This way, she can control his affair.” Lola paused and gave me a serious look. “Besides, Miss Shirelle gets unemployment checks. She pays room and board so we have some extra money now. Last Saturday when Daddy and Mama wouldn’t give me extra money to spend at the movies, Shirelle snuck behind their backs and gave me five dollars.”

  I looked at Lola and blinked. “Well, Miss Shirelle is just as big a fool as your mama, I guess. I thought the whole idea of having an affair with a married man was so he could take care of you. She’s paying her way like she’s a hotel guest.”

  “You know something, Joan? Sometimes you sound like a grown woman. I guess you being the youngest one in a house full of grown folks is really making you grow up fast.”

  “You can’t talk. You living in a house with your parents and your father’s girlfriend is going to make you grow up real fast too. What if I do sound grown? What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, I guess. Now shut up and let’s see what’s on TV.” Lola grabbed the remote control off the nightstand and turned on the portable TV on the dresser facing her bed. We didn’t mention Shirelle anymore that night. But I had a feeling the whole situation bothered Lola more than she wanted to admit.

  Chapter 6

  Lola

  ALMOST EVERY PLACE I WENT, PEOPLE WERE TALKING ABOUT MY family. I got sick of them asking me the same stupid questions over and over again.

  “Lola, how is this Shirelle thing affecting you?” asked Lorna Beale, the woman who ran the candy store down the street from my house. “I’m sure you must be thoroughly confused by now.”

  “I don’t care about Miss Shirelle living with us. I like her,” I replied with a shrug as I handed her the money for the Tootsie Rolls I’d just purchased.

  “Well, you just be strong and pray about it. I hope you don’t end up in the same situation when you get married.”

  “I hope I don’t either,” I said firmly. “But if I do, I hope my husband picks a woman as nice and pretty as Shirelle.” I can still picture the horrified look on Lorna’s face when I said that. She never brought up the subject in my presence again.

  People eventually stopped asking me my opinion because I always said something similar to what I’d said to Lorna that day. I didn’t care about Daddy’s girlfriend living with us. She had brought some excitement into our dull lives.

  Even though Miss Shirelle had come between my parents and had people talking about them like dogs, it was hard for me not to like her. She was only thirty-three but she seemed even younger. She was eager to do things with me that my own mother didn’t like to do. Miss Shirelle took me roller skating and skated along with me, which was nice. She also liked to watch cartoons as much as I did. Since I didn’t know anybody seventeen or older who could take me to the R-rated movies, Shirelle took me—as long as it was not a movie that she thought was too gory or featured too much sex and violence. It was nice to be able to see the good movies at the same time as my friends instead of having to watch them at Joan’s house when they came out on a cable channel or on their VCR—a necessary item we didn’t own until Shirelle went out and purchased one. Most of my friends liked Shirelle as much as I did. When the snow-cone truck rolled into the neighborhood she treated every kid present at the time. That drove my popularity up several notches.

  Unlike Mama, I could ask Shirelle about anything. Mama was squeamish about certain things. When I was six, I asked her where babies came from. She said we’d have that discussion when I turned twelve. Shirelle didn’t feel that way. When I asked her the same question, she sat me down right away and told me everything there was to know. Most of it made no sense to me, but at least I knew something.

  When I mentioned what Shirelle had told me to Joan, she laughed. Of course, she had already been exposed to sex. With six older siblings, how could she not? There was that masturbation thing she had told me about, and she had already let a couple of cute boys fondle her. Every time I turned around one of her sisters was pregnant or one of her brothers had made some girl pregnant.

  After a while, even Joan liked Daddy’s live-in girlfriend as much as I did. “That lady is so fly,” she told me one Saturday afternoon after Shirelle had treated us to a pizza and a trip to the video arcade. “What do you call her?”

  “I call her Shirelle,” I responded. Since this woman had literally become my other mother, I eventually began to refer to her as “my other mother” during conversations with my friends. The first two months, she slept in our spare bedroom. After that, she moved into the bedroom with Daddy and Mama moved into the spare room!

  Mama had a few allergies that had become more aggressive and bothersome over the years. She began to get sick from all the various medications she had to take. That eventually took its toll on her looks. She looked haggard and older than she was, even when she wore makeup. No matter how sick and old she looked, Daddy still kissed her and brought her flowers a couple of times a week. Now he was also bringing flowers to Shirelle.

  Shirelle had a lot of relatives in the area, but they rarely came around. From the conversations I’d overheard between them and her, they were not too happy about her living arrangement. One grouchy female cousin named Johnnie Bea had called her “a whore and a damn fool” and tried to convince her that she deserved better. Shirelle ignored her comments, just like she did with everybody else.

  The only other person in the Odom family that I could stand was Shirelle’s niece, Mariel. Her parents had died in a car crash a year
ago so she lived with family members. She and I were the same age but she attended a different school. When most of the other relatives came to our house, they rarely came inside. They would sit in their cars and Shirelle would go outside to talk to them. Other than a couple of her older sisters and an elderly aunt who came to the house once a week so Shirelle could do their hair for free, the only other one who visited regularly was Mariel. We liked some of the same things so I enjoyed her company. When Joan or any of the other kids I knew were not available to hang out with me, I called up Mariel. She’d drop whatever she was doing, hop on a bus, and be at my door in a flash.

  “I don’t care what people say about Aunt Shirelle living with y’all. Shoot! Your mama ain’t complaining so I don’t know why everybody else is,” Mariel told me. Even though her grandmother didn’t like me or my family, Mariel was a free spirit like Shirelle. She called me up and came to visit whenever she felt like it. Not only that, she looked like a younger version of Shirelle. Being that pretty, Mariel got a lot of attention from the boys. A lot more than me because I looked goofy with braces on my teeth and a limp ponytail. “Granny keeps saying I’m going to be a man-magnet like Aunt Shirelle and I tell her ‘I hope so’,” Mariel told me during a lunch at Wendy’s one Saturday afternoon during our Easter vacation week from school.

  “I hope I’ll be one too someday,” I said. I loved attention but it seemed like it was the one thing I couldn’t get enough of.

  I didn’t have to worry about my relatives calling up or coming around to make a fuss about Shirelle living with us. Mama had only two sisters still living. The older one lived in Newark, New Jersey and we only heard from her on Christmas or when somebody she and Mama knew had died. I’d never met her. Mama’s younger sister lived in New Mexico. I’d only met her one time when Daddy and I accompanied another family on a camping trip to Albuquerque when I was six. She and her husband and their four kids were members of some weird religious group that didn’t vote, eat meat, watch TV, listen to the radio, drive cars, or use public transportation. They lived in a commune with a frizzy-haired preacher and his frumpy wife, and a bunch of other religious freaks.

  Daddy rarely communicated with his brother in Anaheim. He had a few distant cousins in various parts of Oklahoma where he was from but he didn’t keep in touch with them either. Since my family was so disconnected, I was determined to have a lot of kids when I got married. I promised myself that I would keep as many of them as close to me as possible.

  At the same time, there were times I was almost glad I didn’t have a lot of relatives underfoot like Joan. I didn’t like the way her family members stayed all up in each other’s business.

  After Shirelle had been a resident in our house for a little over a year and a half, the busybodies finally stopped talking about it. But when she blabbed to the folks with the biggest mouths that she and Mama had switched beds two months after she’d moved in, the gossip resumed with a vengeance. A lady I didn’t even know had the nerve to stop me on the street one day and ask me if it was true. I told that nosy heifer that it was true and that it was “no big deal” and went on about my business. But the busybodies didn’t ease up on us. The talk got so bad Mama stopped going to church. I still went with Daddy every now and then but that didn’t last long.

  On Easter Sunday the following year, the whole congregation at First Baptist Church on Pike Street greeted me, Mama, Daddy, and Shirelle with horrified looks, gasps, and whispers.

  The talk was also still going strong in other places.

  “Lola, I thought your mama was a fool to let Shirelle move in, but now I think the bigger fool is that Shirelle,” Joan’s mother said one evening when I was visiting Joan so we could work on a volcano project for Miss Allen’s science class on the kitchen table. It had been three weeks since my family and I attended that uncomfortable Easter Sunday service at church. “It’s one thing to have that woman living in the same house, but ain’t no way in the world I’d let another woman kick me out of my own bed so she can slide into it!”

  “Thank you, Mama. I was wondering that same thing,” Joan eased in. She turned to me and gave me a pitiful look. “Girl, I feel sorry for your mother.”

  “You don’t have to feel sorry for my mother. Except when she’s sick, she’s happier than she’s ever been. She’s got something now called shingles and my other mother even has to help her take a bath and put on her clothes. Shirelle does almost all of the cooking and cleaning now since Mama gets so sick so much,” I pointed out. “She even does my hair and helps me with my homework.”

  Joan and her mother looked at one another then at me. “Then how come your father won’t divorce your mother and marry Shirelle?” Joan asked, in a tone of voice that was so sharp it made me angry. Had she not been my best friend, I probably would have punched her in the nose.

  “Because, he loves Mama, that’s why,” I said, rotating my neck the way Shirelle did when she wanted to get a point across. “He tells Shirelle all the time that he will never divorce my mama for her, or any other woman. Besides, she is just as happy as Mama is so I don’t know what all the fuss is about.” I paused and sucked in some air. “It’s all good,” I added.

  Joan blinked and shook her head. Her mother gave me a guarded look. But at least the conversation took a drastic detour. By now Elmo and Too Sweet had entered the kitchen and joined the conversation. Now the subject was a mysterious woman who had recently moved into the neighborhood. The rumor was that she was our mayor’s mistress. That story had so much meat, Joan’s family could really sink their teeth into it. I couldn’t wait to go home. They barely noticed when I excused myself and slunk out the back door.

  Chapter 7

  Lola

  MY OTHER MOTHER’S POSITION IN MY DADDY’S LIFE WAS NOT AS secure as she and everybody else thought it was. Especially me. The way Daddy had always fawned all over Shirelle ever since I could remember, I didn’t think he’d ever put another woman before her. I was wrong. I don’t think anybody was as surprised as I was about what Daddy did next.

  Two years after Shirelle moved in, Daddy began to come home from work later and later, two to three times a week. He would often disappear for hours at a time on weekends. He had stayed out all night twice in the same month. Somebody would repeatedly call the house and hang up when anybody other than Daddy answered the telephone. Shortly after each hang-up, he’d leave to “go get a six pack of beer,” or to “visit a friend.” He used the same excuses to get out of the house that he had used in the early part of his relationship with Shirelle. The only difference this time was he didn’t take me along with him. By now a lot of people knew what a smooth operator Daddy was. Even I knew that, so Shirelle had to know it, too.

  “Where have you been, Clarence?” she asked when he came home around eight a.m. one Saturday morning. He had left the house the evening before to go visit a sick friend.

  “Uh, my car broke down on the way home.” Daddy had his hat in his hand as he shuffled into the house with a sheepish look on his face. “I got stranded on the freeway and couldn’t get nobody to stop and give me a hand. I sat there for hours before a highway patrolman showed up.”

  “Is that right? Well, tell me this; how come you didn’t walk to a pay phone and contact Triple A like you did the last time?” Shirelle hollered.

  “I did walk to a pay phone! It was three or four miles from where I broke down, so it took me a while,” Daddy claimed, nodding his head and wiping sweat off his face with the back of his hand. “Lord have mercy, that damn phone was out of order. And my legs were aching way too much for me to drag around and look for another one so I went back to my car and sat there to wait on the highway patrolman.” Daddy looked at me and Mama standing a few feet away near the living room couch. Mama had her arms folded and her jaw was twitching. It didn’t take a mind reader to know what was on her mind. I was sure she was thinking that Shirelle was getting what she deserved. I stood there as quietly as I could, hoping they wouldn’t make me leave
the room. I looked from Daddy to Shirelle to Mama, wondering who was going to say what next.

  “Clarence, is that lipstick on your collar?” Shirelle asked.

  “Lipstick? Oh hell no! I had some red wine while I was at my friend’s house and some dripped on my shirt,” Daddy answered with his eyes darting from side to side. He could not have looked guiltier if somebody had written the word on his face with a red Sharpie.

  “Red wine my ass! I’m not stupid!” Shirelle shouted, wagging her finger in Daddy’s face.

  “I know you ain’t stupid but I’m telling the truth this time,” Daddy replied, brushing past her. “I’m fixing to go up to my room and get some rest. You can chew me out later.” Before he reached the staircase, he stopped and turned around. “Wasn’t you worried about me? I could have been robbed and lying in a ditch somewhere for all you knew.”

  “You keep messing with me and you will be lying in a ditch somewhere!” Shirelle warned. She stormed into the kitchen and a few seconds later I heard the back door slam.

  Shirelle was a lot of things but she was not a fool. When she was seeing Daddy on the sly, she had to know that he had to lie to Mama to be with her. Now, she was in Mama’s position, in more ways than one.

  Mama looked at me and shrugged. The only way I could describe the look on her face was “smug.” “Miss Thing ain’t seen nothing yet,” she muttered. To my surprise, Mama covered her mouth with her hand and let out a muffled laugh. She had never complained about Daddy’s outrageous behavior and still didn’t. One day I heard her tell somebody on the telephone that as long as he handed over his paycheck to her and always came home after his “dates” with other women; that was enough for her. Mama had female friends who felt the same way. My father was not the only married man in our circle acting like a fool. The list of other unfaithful husbands was long and their wives put up with it too. But because of the mean looks that Shirelle eventually began to give Daddy and the things she said to him when he stumbled into the house after one of his late nights, I knew she was getting fed up. She was not going to continue to tolerate his behavior the way Mama had.