Authors: Mary Monroe
He didn’t call me back until eleven thirty.
“How much time can you spend with me today?” he asked, speaking in a low voice.
“My husband claimed that he was going on an overnight fishing trip.”
“Spending the night with you would be a dream come true. We can have dinner at Antonosanti’s since we missed it last night.”
“I’m so sorry about that. Let me make it up to you. This time dinner will be on me.”
“No, baby. I’ve never let a woman pay my way, and I am not about to start that shit now. Now, this is what we’re going to do. . . .”
When I got off the telephone, I couldn’t even feel my feet on the ground. It was like the walk of a dead woman.
C H A P T E R 3 3
“Speak of the she devil!” I had just given Louis some background information on Scary Mary when she hobbled into Antonosanti’s, leaning slightly sideways on a cane that was so long, it could have passed as a staff. The way that old crone walked straight to the last booth, in a corner in the back of the elegant restaurant, you would have thought that somebody had told her I was sitting up in there with my lover. I had met Louis an hour ago, at five thirty. I was enjoying every moment of our time together, until I spotted Scary Mary.
Louis had enjoyed hearing about the meddlesome old madam who was still lying about her age, even though she now looked like something straight out of a mummy’s tomb. For some reason, she thought her claim to be “just eighty” was something to brag about. Scary Mary was ninety if she was a day. To this day, she had not revealed her full legal name or how many ex-husbands she had racked up.
I had told Louis how the slick old madam had meandered into my life and helped me and Muh’Dear relocate from Florida to Ohio when I was a child. From the looks on his face, he’d found my stories quite entertaining. It felt good to know that somebody other than Rhoda paid attention when I spoke.
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“Annette, is that you?” Scary Mary asked when she stopped in front of our booth, shading her eyes to look at me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, with a sheepish grin.
“Girl, ever since you lost all that blubber, you just don’t know what to do with yourself, do you?” she said.
She wore a long black outfit, with a white collar so high, it looked like a priest’s frock. Her robe, or whatever it was supposed to be, touched the ground, so I couldn’t tell what she had on her feet.
She always wore a lot of makeup, even slept with it on. But it didn’t hide the wall-to-wall wrinkles, the liver spots, and the long scar—
from a fight with some straight razor–toting individual more than seventy years ago—on her face. And she had moles all over the place, even in the corners of her mouth. Since I had never seen any pictures of her as a young woman and she’d been in middle age when I met her, I couldn’t verify her claim that she’d once resembled Lena Horne.
She was a tall, big-boned woman who loved sopping up money more than the IRS. And with no relatives she liked enough to leave it to, she’d vowed that she wouldn’t die until she spent every last dime she’d stashed away. She was probably the oldest living resident in Richland and could still get around like a teenager. She purchased a brand-new van every year, which she drove herself. She always maintained a stable of five prostitutes, and she had powerful friends and clients in high places who worshipped the ground she walked on.
With her connections, she was one sister you didn’t want to cross.
They didn’t call her Scary Mary for nothing.
“How are you this evening, sister?” Louis asked in a voice so polite, I almost didn’t recognize it. He rose and gestured for her to sit. “Would you like to join us for a drink?”
Scary Mary declined, with a vigorous wave of her hand. Louis chuckled under his breath, eased back down in his seat, and bumped my knee with his.
“What’s wrong with you, boy? I’m here on official business. I ain’t got time to be socializin’,” she snarled, waving her cane threateningly in Louis’s direction. “I came down here to talk to these white folks about me rentin’ that dinin’ room, but I’m glad I run into you, Lucious.” She sucked in some air and offered a broad smile. “My daddy was named Lucious. That’s a nice name, ain’t it?”
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“Yes, it is, ma’am. But my name is Louis.”
I had not had a chance to tell Louis that Scary Mary didn’t like to be corrected, no matter how wrong she was. But from the look on his face, I had a feeling he had got the message from the look she gave him. She pressed her lips together, glared at him, and then slapped one hand on her hip. She remained that way for about ten seconds. Then she shook her head and gave him another dismissive wave.
“You don’t look like no Louis,” she said. She tapped her cane on the floor and sucked in even more air. Then her eyes settled on his hair. “You got some good hair, but you need to go home and rake a comb through it. Part it, and then layer it to the side like Duke Ellington. That duck do you wearin’ now would do a lot for a all-white cracker like George Clooney. But the only thing it’s doin’ for you is makin’ you look like a fool. I noticed that the other day, when I came to your place, and I been meanin’ to mention it to you ever since.”
I heard Louis gulp. From what I knew about him, he didn’t strike me as the type to argue with an elder. That was good to know, because he would not have a chance with the one standing in front of us. Before she spoke again, Scary Mary gave us something that was either a sinister smile or a facial tick. Her lips curled up at the ends, and she gnashed her teeth.
“Anyway, I checked with my girls about the menu for our little hoedown next month. They want to go with them soul-food en-trées.”
“That’s a great choice!” Louis said, excitement rising in his voice.
“It ain’t no great choice in my book! That’s a stupefied choice,”
replied Scary Mary. “I tried to get them hussies to order steaks and twice-cooked taters. Them dummies! They can eat up greens and neck bones at my place every day! It’s a damn shame that you can take a ho out of the ho house, but you can’t take the ho house out of the ho.”
Poor Louis. There was an extremely uncomfortable look on his face. And the way he started to shift around in his seat, you would have thought that he was sitting on a tack. “Uh, we don’t get too many requests from black folks for some good old down-home cooking anymore,” Louis said in a gentle voice.
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Just as I expected, Scary Mary changed her opinion and went in the opposite direction. A scowl crossed her face as she continued her rant. “That’s what I been tellin’ them dummies that work for me! Them heifers! Except for stiff dicks and long tongues, they don’t know what else is good for them! They are just like the rest of these uppity black folks in Richland that’s still tryin’ to be white.
Our peoples should never forget that we will always be just one step from the jungle as far as the white man is concerned. The only thing our peoples is missin’ is some spears, loin cloths, and bones in our noses.” Scary Mary paused and slowly looked around, like she was looking for somebody else who could offer her more things to complain about. She let out a great sigh and returned her attention to Louis and me. That peculiar smile was back on her face.
I disagreed with everything I had just heard, and from the stunned look on Louis’s face, I was convinced that he disagreed, too.
“I hope you ain’t heavy handed with salt,” she said to Louis.
“If you have any special dietary needs, all you have to do is let me know. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure you are happy with my service,” he replied.
That made her smile even more. “I declare, you ain’t as stuck-up as you look, young man. You clean?”
“Ma’am?” There was a horrified look on Louis’s face now, and I could understand why. This old woman was more brazen than Charles Manson. Had Louis not been with me, I would have bolted long before now.
“I asked you if you was clean,” said Scary Mary. “Do you wash your hands every time after you masturbate or take a dump or pee pee? If I ever find out that you served me somethin’ with nasty hands, I’m gwine to report you to the board of health, if I don’t coldcock and lay you out first.”
I still had a lot of respect for the older people I knew, even if they were as obnoxious as the one in my presence now. How Louis managed to contain himself was a mystery to me. I felt him stiffen, and I heard him gulp again.
“Excuse me. I have to run to the gentlemen’s room,” he said with a fractured cough. He rolled his exasperated eyes at me be-GOD AIN’ T BLIND
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fore he rushed away, almost tripping over his feet while trying to get away so fast.
“You sure you don’t want to join us?” I asked, feeling uncomfortable because of the way Scary Mary was looking at me. I knew this woman well enough to recognize when she was up to something.
“Uh, I met Louis here to go over some catering menu details,” I volunteered.
“Yeah, right! And I’m here to suck one of them dago waiters’
peckers.”
I lowered my head. When I looked back up, she was still staring at me. “Louis needs, uh, all the business, uh, he can get if he’s going to succeed,” I said, fumbling over my words as if my tongue had been tied into a knot.
“Uh-huh,” Scary Mary replied, nodding and narrowing her eyes.
Then she grunted under her breath like a hog and opened the large beaded purse hanging from her shoulder. She removed a white handkerchief with her initials on the bottom tip. I thought she was going to blow her nose. But she handed the handkerchief to me, winking like she had something caught in her eye.
“What’s this for?” I asked, giving her a puzzled look.
“You know damn well what it’s for!”
I shook my head.
Scary Mary leaned forward and shook her cane in my face. “When that boy get back from the toilet, you wipe your lipstick off his jaw,”
she told me.
C H A P T E R 3 4
“I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night,” Scary Mary informed me. “That boy got more of your lipstick on his jaw than you got on your lips.” There was a devilish twinkle in her fishlike eyes. “You and him came here just to go over caterin’ menus, my ass.” She looked at the table, then back at me. “I don’t see nary a menu. What y’all do? Eat ’em?”
“Oh,” was all I could say. I looked up at the old woman and just blinked. That was what I usually did when I knew the jig was up.
“It’s not what you think,” I said in a very unconvincing voice.
“Girl, shet up. You ought to know by now that you can’t fool a fool,” she told me, shaking a gnarled finger in my burning face.
“That was nothing,” I continued, handing her the handkerchief back. I lifted myself up in my seat just high enough to look around her. I was glad to see Louis coming back. But when he got close enough to see that the old woman was still present, he stopped in his tracks. There was an exasperated look on his face as he stood there shaking his head.
Scary Mary held her hand up to my face and cackled. “Girl, shet up. You ain’t got to waste up no excuses on me. Save that shit for your husband.”
“Would you do me a big favor and keep this to yourself?” I asked with a pleading tone of voice. “Can you do that?”
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“What’s wrong with you, girl? You know me by now. I know how to keep my mouth shut. I ain’t never told nobody how you stole business away from me,” she said, leaning forward and giving me an accusatory look. I was glad that Louis was still out of earshot.
“I was just a teenager when I did that,” I hissed. “A stupid, desperate teenager who would have done anything to make enough money to leave Ohio.”
“You got paid big-time for that young pussy, too. Part of that money you made off my tricks behind my back should have come to me. It would have been fair, on account of you wouldn’t have never known nothin’ about sportin’ if y’all hadn’t met me.” I couldn’t think of a sight that was worse than an old woman pouting like a baby. “I could have done a lot with that money that you didn’t give me. . . .”
“Will you put this behind us if I pay you what you think I owe you? I’ll write you a check right now if it’ll make you happy.” I glanced over at Louis; he looked confused, but there was no indication that he was in a hurry to return to his seat.
“A check?” Scary Mary croaked. There was such a twisted look on her face that for a moment I thought she had had a mild stroke.
“What the hell would I do with a damn check, girl?” She threw her head back and laughed. That made me feel a little less uncomfortable, but her presence was still getting on my last nerve. “Annette, you know I still love you. I don’t want your money, and I wouldn’t do nothin’ to hurt you. Don’t you know that by now?”
I nodded. “But if you blab that you saw me out with another man, people might get the wrong idea,” I said, my voice getting weaker by the second.
“Wrong impression? Then explain to me why his face is so stiff?”
“Stiff?”
“Yes, stiff! The last time I seen a face that stiff, it was in Orleans, and it was a mask some fool had on during Mardi Gras. You sittin’
up in a out-of-the-way place with a man that ain’t your husband, and y’all was sittin’ closer than Siamese twins when I walked in.
What other impression could a person get?”
“It’s a long story,” I said, holding my hand up defensively. What else could I say? “I’d appreciate your discretion.”
“
Discretion?
You stop chunkin’ them ten-dollar words at me, girl.
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You was just out of diapers when I met you. Ain’t I always had your back?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I admitted.
“I still got your back,” Scary Mary assured me with a nod. “I ain’t got a damn thing to gain by broadcastin’ your shame. Shit. I’m a businesswoman. If somethin’ ain’t got nothin’ in it for me, it don’t interest me.” Scary Mary lifted her chin and gave me a dry look.
“However, it’s always good to be in the know about some of the things I stumble up on. It just might benefit me some day.”
Louis threw up his hands in exasperation when I looked at him again. There was no telling how much longer Scary Mary planned to honor us with her presence, and he must have come to that conclusion. He returned to the table, looking like an unruly school-boy on his way to the principal’s office.