53
Fire and Desire
A
week had passed since Obadiah’s phone call ended Dorothea’s life as she knew it. Since then she existed as if in a daze, her mind filled with memories of her and Obadiah’s times together, and wondering how she could possibly go on, knowing that they’d never share such times again. Dorothea was not a drinker, but after her ex-lover’s devastating news she had gone to a nearby liquor store and on the cashier’s recommendation had purchased a fruity tasting wine called Moscato. The worker had chosen a brand he felt sure she’d like, even though she wasn’t necessarily fond of the taste of alcohol. He’d been right. Dorothea had taken home the bottle and once the wine was thoroughly chilled, took a tentative sip. It was surprisingly delicious, reminding her of the sparkling juices she so enjoyed. Before she knew it, she’d drunk the whole bottle and the next time she left the liquor store, it was with a case.
Dorothea eased open the screen door to her balcony and took a deep breath as she stepped outside. Though it was only 10:30 a.m., there was a glass of Moscato in her hand. It wasn’t her first, which may have been why she swayed a bit as she walked over to the patio table and clumsily sat down. “Why aren’t you calling me, baby?” she asked the open air. “Why you trying to act like we’re over?” Her words were slurred slightly, and the unkempt appearance that she’d adopted over the past seventy-two hours was not a good look. “We’re never going to be over!” A crow, perched on the next building’s roof, cosigned.
Caw! Caw!
“That’s what I’m saying,” Dorothea said to the bird. “That son of a bitch needs to call! Call!” She reacted to her own joke, but the sound that started as a chuckle ended as a sob.
Why can’t he just do the right thing? And why can’t I get over him?
It wasn’t as though she’d never loved anyone else. She’d not only been married twice before but she’d had her share of paramours and sugar daddies. The first one had come calling in the midfifties, when she was sweet sixteen and one of the finest beauties in New Orleans. She and Thomas Rutherford were deeply in love, and when he proposed marriage she was over the moon. His status-conscious mother was underwhelmed. Dorothea had the looks but not the pedigree, while the Rutherfords’ wealth and success was legendary, dating back to the early 1800s. Thomas gave her a ring and took her virginity. But when he took back his proposal as well, she was crushed.
The following year Dorothea fled New Orleans and landed in Dallas, where a friend secured her a job at a black-owned dress shop. Trading matrimony for money, Dorothea quickly caught the eye of an older, wealthy, and well-established doctor whose wife was infirmed. All of her living expenses were paid and she was given every luxury. The affair lasted until her benefactor died. It was during this time that at her sister Ruthanne’s insistence, Dorothea had attended a church meeting to hear a “hot new preacher” who was all the rave. After the service, she and her sister were invited to dine at the host pastor’s house. She found herself seated next to the man who’d held her enthralled from the moment he spoke, and the rest, as they say, was history. Like her doctor, Obadiah was married, but that didn’t stop Dorothea from giving him her heart. While his wife, Maxine, stayed home with the babies, Dorothea traveled from state to state, meeting him at conferences and revivals, and warming his bed. It was during one such conference, the National Baptist Convention in 1963, where their relationship shifted. His wife found out about them and, even though the affair continued, things were never the same after that June in Dallas.
Eventually Dorothea fled Dallas for the bright lights and big city. Fed up with being somebody’s seconds, she vowed to become a smashing success, and then rub that triumph in the faces of the men who’d not valued her worth. In Harlem, she became a moderately known name, but even more important, she became a wife. George Bates was a hardworking, loving man whose brain aneurysm at age fifty-three caused him to leave the world way too soon. Between him and her last husband, Reverend Reginald Jenkins of Palestine, Texas, she’d seen many men come and go. But none of them had ever held a candle to the Reverend Doctor Pastor Bishop Overseer Mister Stanley Obadiah Meshach Brook Jr. And now, it seemed, no one ever would.
Dorothea looked at her glass and was surprised to find it empty. Even more surprising was the fact that no matter how much alcohol she consumed, it wasn’t enough to fill the emptiness that was in her heart. She still loved Obadiah. She still missed him. And she was still alone.
“Damn you!” She flung the wineglass across the expanse and watched it shatter against the patio’s stucco wall. “I’m not going to let you just walk away from me. If I have to suffer, you’re going to suffer, too.”
She left the patio and re-entered her condo, looking around as if the answer to how to hurt him was in the room. She walked from the living room into the kitchen, retrieved another glass, filled it with wine, and then returned to the living room. While downing the drink as though it was Kool-Aid or water instead of alcohol, her eyes fell on the fireplace. She slowly lowered the glass from her lips as a thought took hold. She laughed, its sound sinister and hollow as she imagined the fallout from her actions.
“Obadiah would be furious!” she told the empty room. She knew how much he loved his tailored suits and how meticulous and fastidious he was with not only their care but that of his alligator shoes, his gold jewelry, his spun cotton shirts, and Italian silk ties. Oh, and don’t leave out his beloved books. He’d purchased a bookcase that covered the back wall of his bedroom and it was filled with Bibles and teaching aids and other religious works. More than once, he’d shared with Dorothea how much these books of knowledge meant to him. “Yeah, well, at one time,” Dorothea slurred, “I meant something to you, too.”
Mind made up, Dorothea plunked down the wineglass and picked up her purse. She was well aware of her state of inebriation but she wasn’t worried. She wouldn’t drive far. Just to the neighborhood gas station less than five minutes away. She left the house with the lights blazing and TV blaring. It didn’t matter to Dorothea. She wouldn’t be gone long.
Ten minutes later, Dorothea used the spare key Obadiah had given her to enter his apartment. Immediately, she was assailed with the spirit of him, the scent of him. She barely looked at the sparsely furnished living room as she walked toward her destination—the bedroom. That’s where she and Obadiah had spent much of their time together and where all of Obadiah’s most precious possessions lay. A feeling of melancholy came over Dorothea, and she almost changed her mind about what she was going to do. But hell—she’d already bought the gas, right?
Placing three of the four filled plastic gas cans she’d purchased on the bed, she walked with the other one into Obadiah’s closet. She uncapped it and quickly doused suits, shirts, slacks, shoes, and everything else within the enclosed space. The smell of gas almost gagged her as she emptied the can of its contents and threw it on the closet floor. Then she emptied the other three containers: one for the bookcase and its contents, one for the dresser, table, walls, and floor, and the fourth and final one for the bed. She virtually soaked the spread and sheets with the flammable liquid, crying openly now as, like her love affair, this room was about to go up in flames.
“Ah, hell, forgot the matches.” Dorothea walked from the bedroom to the kitchen and was delighted to find a box of wooden matches in one of the drawers next to the stove. She smiled through her tears, an evil smirk really, as she walked to the closet, struck the first match, and tossed it against the clothes soaked with gas. It fell to the carpet and promptly went out.
“Dammit!” She placed the matches down and in a mad rampage pulled the clothes from their neatly arranged position on the rods down to the floor. Then, to make sure a fire would catch, she rushed into the living room for the stack of newspapers she’d glimpsed while passing through. She tore them with her bare hands before piling them on top of the clothes. Satisfied that she had the makings of a proper fire, she scraped a second match against the box’s rough side and was rewarded with a blaze. “Burn, Obadiah,” she hissed before throwing another match onto the heap. “Burn!”
She tossed the match and was instantly rewarded as a second burst of flames shot up from the gas-soaked clothing. Knowing that she needed to work quickly, she walked over to the bookcase, lit another match, and placed it on top of a row of paperback books. A slow burn began, but grew quickly as the flames lapped at and began to consume the paint-covered plywood from which the bookcase was made. Finally she turned toward the bed, lit a final match, and after throwing the box of matches onto the bed, tossed the match on the navy blue silk comforter she’d purchased for Obadiah. “Now it’s really over.”
Whoosh!
A huge ball of fire shot up instantly, actually making a sound with its intensity. Belatedly, Dorothea realized it probably would have been a better idea had she been standing next to the bedroom door when she struck that final match.
I’ve got to get out of here!
Dorothea turned to run but as she did so, a portion of the burning bookcase fell to the floor. Dorothea tripped on it, lost her balance, and went flying through the air. On her way down, her right temple made its acquaintance with the left edge of Obadiah’s heavy oak nightstand. And then her world went black.
54
Oh My God
N
ettie absentmindedly rubbed her stomach as she lay on the couch. It was the second day of her not feeling well and if she wasn’t better by the morning, she’d have to visit the doctor. Reaching for the phone, she called her husband, Gordon, and asked him to bring home some over-the-counter medicine for what she hoped was just a bad case of indigestion. She was just about to place the phone back on its receiver when it rang in her hand. “Hello?”
“Hey there, Nettie. What you know good?”
“How do, Mama Max. I guess I can’t complain.”
“You sound a bit tired. You all right?”
“A bit under the weather; stomach been bothering me the last few days.”
“Gordon ain’t cooking is he? Ha!”
“Lord, child, if that were the case, I’d be dead by now!”
The women laughed. “What about you?” Nettie asked. “How are things in your neck of the woods?”
“Heart still keeping the proper time,” Mama Max responded. “And Obadiah still acting a fool.”
Nettie sat up and frowned as her stomach roiled. “How so?”
“He came over here yesterday with a mess of dandelions and a prime piece of smoked pork. Said he’d gotten it from a friend who works at the city market. The day before that it was fresh green beans and tomatoes and the day before that it was fillet mignon.”
“Hmm. Sounds like somebody’s gone a’courtin’.”
“Hmph. It’ll take more than prime beef to undo what he did to me, that’s for sure.”
“But he is trying, Mama Max. You said it yourself that it took a lot for him to return to Kansas with his tail basically between his legs.”
“That’s where dogs usually hang ’em.”
“And he’s staying at that hotel, ready to wait it out until you invite him back in. For a proud man like Obadiah, that’s quite a lot.”
“No more than it should be.”
A pause and then, “I thought you said that you forgave him?”
“I did. That don’t mean I’m going to let him waltz back in here without sweating a little . . . or a lot.”
“But you
are
going to let him back in.”
“I don’t know,” Mama Max said with a sigh. “Sometimes I wake up and forget he don’t live here and other times I kinda like having the house to myself.”
“That Henry still sniffing around there?”
“Henry ain’t sniffing nowhere. He’s my neighbor’s son, a good man who’s become a good friend.”
“All right, Mama. If you say so.”
“I say so.”
“Lord have mercy!”
“What? You think I should just let him treat me any kind of way and then take him back just because that’s what he wants?”
“No, no, not you, Mama. I’m watching the news and they’re showing a breaking story about a huge fire that broke out over in Dallas. They just flashed pictures of the damage on the screen and the place looked like a bomb hit it. Hold on.” Nettie reached for her remote and turned up the volume.
“. . . the time the firefighters arrived at the Meadowbrook condominiums, the entire unit was engulfed in flames.”
Nettie sat up and peered at the screen. “Meadowbrook . . . isn’t that where Obadiah was staying?’
“I think so,” Mama Max answered. “Is that where the fire broke out?”
“Hold on.”
Nettie turned up the volume as the story continued. “Police say that so far the body of one victim has been recovered. Fire and police personnel continue to search for more possible casualties, as well as for the cause of the blaze.”
Nettie muted the television. “So far they’ve only confirmed that one person died,” she explained to Mama Max. “They’re looking to see if there were others.”
“Lord have mercy on that person’s soul,” Mama Max replied. “I sure hope they were saved and their soul went to heaven. It would be every kind of bad luck to burn up twice.”
“Mama, you’re a mess.”
“Just telling the truth and shaming the devil.”
The women conversed for another fifteen minutes before Gordon walked through the door and Nettie ended the call.
Later that night, Gordon and Nettie sat up in bed reading the newspaper and the Bible, respectively, and waiting for the ten o’-clock news.
“You feeling better?” he asked.
Nettie nodded her head. “That medicine helped and so did the soup.”
“Could have been something you ate.”
“I’m just glad that whatever it was seems to have subsided.” Nettie glanced up at the television. “Turn up the volume, Gordon. Here’s that fire story I told you about.” They both listened as the somber-toned reporter spoke from the scene.
“Residents of the Meadowbrook Condominium Complex are breathing a sigh of relief tonight following today’s tragic fire that claimed one victim. Firefighters responded to a call in the fourteen-hundred block of Kensington Avenue early this afternoon, after a nine-one-one call claimed that a fire was burning out of control. Firefighters arriving on the scene found unit one-twenty-seven engulfed in extremely hot flames, the interior of the unit totally destroyed. Fire chief William Sutton says the fire seems to have been intentionally set as several burned gas containers were found at the scene. The victim who died in the fire has been identified as seventy-three-year old Dorothea Jenkins, a—”
Nettie gasped.
Gordon looked at her, his brow creased in confusion and concern. “What is it, Nettie?”
“Oh my Lord!” She turned to her husband. “We know her, Gordon. That’s the woman who was married to Reverend Jenkins, the one who came over for dinner shortly after they married. Remember?”
“The one what brought those pecan pralines?”
Nettie nodded. “Oh my God.” She reached for the phone and quickly dialed a number. “Mama Max, you’re not going to believe this.”
“Believe what?”
“What me and Gordon just saw on the news.” Nettie hesitated before delivering the unthinkably unbelievable news. “I think Dorothea is dead.”