God Ain't Blind (20 page)

GOD AIN’ T BLIND

147

Just the mention of Louis made me shiver. “Oh? You like the food at Off the Hook that much?”

He nodded.

“Oh, that’s nice,” I said in a low, hollow voice. I left the room so slowly and quietly, you would have thought I was a burglar.

“You know me. I’m like you and Rhoda. I’m tryin’ to support black businesses more,” he hollered. “Them sissies need just as much support as the rest of us.”

I stopped in my tracks and whirled back around. “Sissies? I wish you wouldn’t use that word,” I snapped.

“What’s it to you? You ain’t one.”

“How do you know that the man is gay?”

“How do I know? Who don’t know? That brother got more sugar in his tank than RuPaul, Michael Jackson, Boy George, and Little Richard put together.”

“How many times do I have to remind you that a lot of people thought you were gay when we were kids? And I was one of them!”

I was immediately sorry for making that last comment. Pee Wee’s face looked like it wanted to melt and slide down his body like lava.

“And how many times do I have to tell you that if anybody knows I ain’t no fag, it’s you?”

I forced myself to laugh.

“Oh, so this is funny now?”

“No, it’s not funny, and we need to change the subject before one of us says something they will regret,” I replied.

“I think we’ve both already crossed that line. But to tell you the truth, I ain’t got nothin’ else to say on the subject.”

“Neither have I,” I declared. “Uh, I’m going to take a quick shower before I go out.”

“That’s nice, baby. Hand me the TV remote,” he said. “And tell that fag not to be so stingy with the gravy on my meat loaf, like he was the last time. I straightened him out real good that time, and he bowed down like I knew a sissy would. He gave me a side order of gravy on the house! But if he get ghetto mean with you on account of you bein’ a woman, you tell him who your husband is.”

“I’ll do just that, Pee Wee,” I said with a gloomy sigh. I handed him the remote control on my way out of the room.

C H A P T E R 3 0

The evidence that my husband was having an affair was purely cir-cumstantial, and I knew that in my heart. I also knew in my heart that even if he was having an affair, that didn’t justify me having one. But none of that mattered to me. I was having too much fun.

I felt like I was on a string and that Louis was the one controlling that string, like a yo-yo. When he wanted me, all he had to do was roll me up. Nobody could have talked any sense into my head or made me think seriously about what I was doing. And as far as me feeling any real guilt or weighing the consequences for my actions if I got caught, I forced myself to think about all of that as little as possible. I was a woman who believed that if you ignored something long enough, it would go away.

Nobody could have talked me into giving up Louis as long as I wasn’t getting what I needed from my husband. But there was something that stood out in my mind even more than that. I couldn’t ignore the fact that Louis had pursued me with so much vigor. No man, including my husband, had ever made me feel as special as Louis did. It was because of him that I felt young
and
beautiful for the first time in my life. I wanted to enjoy it while I could.

Instead of a quick shower, I filled the tub with hot water and rose-scented bubble bath. My body felt as tense as a gangster’s hat-band, and I couldn’t think of a better thing than a long, hot bub-GOD AIN’ T BLIND

149

ble bath to remedy that. I didn’t know if my evening with Louis would include any serious physical contact. But in case it did, I wanted to be more relaxed, and I wanted to smell and taste good to him. As special as he made me feel, that was the least I could do.

I had been marinating in that hot water up to my neck for about ten minutes when I heard a commotion downstairs. I held my breath and listened.

“Shit,” I said, splashing water all over the floor as I flopped around in the tub like a fish in a bucket. “Not tonight,” I groaned. Muh’Dear, Daddy, and Charlotte were yip-yapping at the same time. I snatched a towel off the rack and dried myself off as fast as I could. I didn’t even take the time to put on any underwear. Cursing under my breath, I threw on my housecoat, slid into my house shoes, and trotted downstairs as fast as I could.

“We want to get an early start tomorrow mornin’, so we came to get Charlotte’s stuff,” Daddy told me, picking his teeth with a straw from one of Muh’Dear’s whisk brooms. He looked like a field hand, standing in the middle of my living-room floor in his dingy bibbed overalls and wide-brimmed straw hat. For a man in his late seventies, my daddy was still a sight to behold. It was hard to tell that he’d once been a handsome man, with rich, healthy-looking dark brown skin and exotic features. Now he was just a mess. He had lost most of his hair, teeth, and vision. He was fussy and cantanker-ous most of the time. Some days all he did was complain and sleep.

Then he’d wake up and complain some more. He removed his horn-rimmed glasses and stared at me with dark eyes that looked like they’d seen all the troubles of the world. “Don’t forget to go by the house and water them plants and check the windows, like you done that last time we took off out of town.”

“I won’t forget,” I mouthed. Charlotte rushed up to me and gave me a big hug. I rubbed her back and patted the side of her head. “You better behave yourself down there,” I warned.

“I know, I know,” she replied, rolling her eyes. As soon as I released her, she ran to the suitcases I had packed for her.

“Y’all ain’t got to rush off,” Pee Wee said. He stood next to my mother as she bent over my coffee table, running her fingers across the top. She seemed disappointed not to find any dust. “Frank, you want a beer? Muh’Dear, you want a beer?”

150

Mary Monroe

“Don’t mind if I do, Pee Wee,” Daddy said, flopping down on the sofa with a piercing groan.

“I guess I’ll have one, too,” Muh’Dear said, now standing by my front window, inspecting the gold brocade curtains that I had purchased last week. “Even though I know I shouldn’t be drinkin’ on no empty stomach.”

“Oh, we got plenty of food. Why don’t y’all get comfortable while I heat up some of them greens and that neck-bone casserole left over from yesterday,” Pee Wee said, looking at me. “Baby, do you mind whuppin’ up some hush puppies?”

“Uh, I guess not,” I said. I sounded flat and distracted, and I knew it. There was no way I could look and sound like I was happy to be making some hush puppies! I had left my watch on the counter in the bathroom, so I glanced at the clock on the wall by the door.

“I guess I have time to make some hush puppies before I go.”

“Where you gwine this time of night?” Muh’Dear asked. She was talking to me but looking at my husband.

“I was going to meet a friend for dinner,” I said quickly.

“Well, don’t let us stop you,” Muh’Dear said with a pitiful look that made her face look twice as long as it really was. “If you don’t want to visit with us, that’s fine.” She sucked on her teeth and blinked.

“Even though we won’t see you until the end of August after tonight . . .”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so trapped.

“I told my friend that she could count on dinner with me tonight. I sure hate to stand people up,” I said. “I’d hate for somebody to disappoint me that way.” I glanced around the room, but I saw no sympathy for my predicament. All I did see was mild contempt, and I knew why. Unless it was a matter of extreme importance, nothing was more important to my parents than family.

“Why don’t you call your friend and have her come over here?

We got plenty of food. And, like your mama just said, after tonight you won’t see them, or your daughter, until the end of August,”

Pee Wee said. It was just like him to join forces with my folks. “I know you don’t like to disappoint people, but when it comes to family, you need to make some exceptions.” That sucker looked from Muh’Dear to Daddy and received their sheepish looks and nods of approval.

GOD AIN’ T BLIND

151

I heard Charlotte whimper and then mutter something unintel-ligible under her breath. “I wanna go now,” she insisted, stomping her foot. She stood next to the suitcases I had packed for her, toying with the handle on one. “I thought we was just going to come over here to get my stuff, then go get some hot dogs at the Weenie Dog House.” This was the first time I didn’t mind my daughter pouting like a toddler.

“Shaddup, young’un,” Muh’Dear ordered. “We ain’t gwine no place until we get them greens and hush puppies.”

Muh’Dear slipped off her pink sweater and kicked off her fuzzy pink house shoes. A shower cap covered her thick hair, which was almost all white now. She had earned her share of lines and wrinkles on her light brown face, but she was convinced that she was as foxy as she was fifty years ago.

Suddenly, all eyes were on me, and I knew what I had to do to keep the peace intact and the questions and suspicions at a mini-mum: I had to cancel my date with Louis.

“I’ll go upstairs and put on some clothes,” I managed, stumbling back toward the steps that led to my bedroom. “And I’ll call, uh, Gloria Watson and tell her that I have to cancel our plans for tonight.”

“Gloria Watson?” Pee Wee gasped, and then he gave me a dumbfounded look. “Ain’t she that jealous, blockheaded woman you work with that’s been a thorn in your side ever since you got that manager job?”

I nodded.

“Since when did you and Gloria become so chummy?” Pee Wee looked from Muh’Dear to Daddy again. “Gloria is a evil ghetto woman that Annette works with that gives her such a bad time.” Then he looked at me with both eyebrows raised. “You and that woman have been at each other’s throats for years.”

“Well, things are different now. I’ve become more tolerant, and Gloria’s a changed woman . . . since she started going back to church,”

I replied.

“See there! If church can turn that Gloria woman around, just think what it could do for you!” Muh’Dear yelled.

I ignored my mother’s outburst. “And I’ve learned to be a little 152

Mary Monroe

more patient with Gloria,” I explained. I cleared my throat and excused myself.

As soon as I got to the top of the stairs, I held my breath and shot down the hall like a missile toward my bedroom. I called Louis immediately, but he had already left work for the night. I tried to reach him at home but had no luck. I whirled around and looked at the clock on the nightstand by the side of my bed. It wasn’t quite six yet, and I was supposed to meet him at seven thirty. There was still a chance that I could meet him on time.

But when I got downstairs and saw that Pee Wee had popped a video into the VCR with the last six episodes of
The Cosby Show
that he’d recorded, I knew I was in for the night. I let out a sigh of defeat as I headed for the kitchen to make the hush puppies.

Charlotte fell asleep on the sofa, with her head in my lap, right after the third episode of
Cosby.
Muh’Dear, who was on the sofa with me, had started yawning right after she finished her second plate of collard greens. Daddy had fallen asleep on the floor, with his head propped up on four pillows, a few minutes before I announced that those damn hush puppies were done.

I didn’t know if Pee Wee was really asleep in his La-Z-Boy or just playing possum, because every time I tried to get up and go use the telephone to try and reach Louis, he stirred and moaned.

As soon as I turned off the VCR and the television, everybody came back to life.

“What time is it?” Daddy asked, with a gaping yawn. He sat bolt upright, looking like a deer caught in somebody’s headlights. He rolled up the sleeve of his plaid flannel shirt and wobbled up from the floor. “We better get home so we can get up in time to get to that airport in the mornin’, y’all.” He grabbed Muh’Dear by the arm and pulled her up from the sofa.

Charlotte sprang up like a jack-in-the-box on her own, rubbing her eyes and mumbling under her breath. “We still going for hot dogs?” she asked with a pleading look.

“You should have et when we did,” Muh’Dear scolded.

“I didn’t want no greens and neck bones!” Charlotte wailed. “I wanted some normal American food for a change.”

“If you don’t stop sassin’ grown folks, you ain’t goin’ to the Ba-GOD AIN’ T BLIND

153

hamas or nowhere else,” Pee Wee threatened. “Now do you want them greens or not, girl? You missed out on them neck bones and hush puppies. I gobbled up the last of them bad boys myself.”

“No! Collard greens is for old folks and rednecks!” Charlotte declared.

“Charlotte, don’t you never let me hear you use that word in this house again!” Pee Wee yelled, shaking his finger at Charlotte.

“Which word, Daddy? Greens or rednecks?” she asked, looking confused and innocent at the same time.

“
Redneck
is a bad word. That’s the white folk’s version of
nigger,
”

Muh’Dear explained.

The explanation didn’t help, or make Charlotte feel any better.

She still looked confused. And now a major pout was on her face, too.

“Well, y’all, we best get to steppin’,” Daddy said, stretching and yawning again. “We don’t want to wear out our welcome.”

After several group hugs, they finally left.

I had already turned to head upstairs when Pee Wee stopped me in my tracks.

“Uh, I’m takin’ the day off tomorrow. I’m goin’ to ride over to the Blue Creek. They tell me them carps is bitin’ like mosquitoes,”

he informed me. “Maybe you can call up that friend you had to stand up tonight, and y’all can go eat tomorrow evenin’,” he said.

I nodded. “Maybe I will,” I replied. “Maybe I will.”

He slept in the bed with me that night. Had he not been snoring like a chain saw, breathing on my neck, and blasting farts in his sleep like a skunk, I would have sworn that he was dead.

C H A P T E R 3 1

It was a difficult night for me. I tossed and turned so much, I de-veloped a cramp in my neck. I got up around midnight to take some Advil, but that didn’t help. Even though it got rid of the cramp in my neck, it didn’t stop me from continuing to toss and turn like a washing machine. I grabbed the remote off the nightstand and turned on the portable TV on the dresser facing the bed. There was nothing on worth watching. I tried to listen to the radio at the head of the bed, but what was on it was just as boring as what was on the TV.