Authors: Mary Monroe
I looked at Jade in a way that must have made her uncomfortable, and that was not easy to do. She crossed and then uncrossed her legs two times. She blinked hard a few times, and then tucked her bottom lip into her mouth.
“What?” she asked, twisting in her seat. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Girl, you are just full of surprises,” I said in a tone of voice that was sharper than I wanted it to be. Jade flinched and looked disappointed. I blew out my breath and gave her a concerned look. “Who is this girl you think you are in love with?”
“Auntie, she’s so smart and so pretty and so fly. She really is. I mean, she’s just like me!”
“So basically, you are telling me that you are in love with yourself?” I was teasing now.
“Something like that,” Jade said.
She was serious so I became serious again, too. I cleared my throat before I spoke. “You know, this could be a phase. I never told anybody, but once upon a time, I had a crush on a female. I got over it.” I saw no reason to tell Jade that her mother was the female I’d had “unnatural” urges for. “Kids your age are still confused about what they like.”
“Please promise me you won’t tell my mama? I know she likes gay people, especially since my brother is one and all, but I don’t know if I’m ready for her to know about me, too. All she talks about with my grandmothers and other folks is how she can’t wait for me to make her a grandmother. Can you imagine that?”
“No, but why are you telling
me
something this, uh, sensitive? I would think you’d want to keep this lesbian thing a secret. Unless you are planning to ‘come out,’ as they say.”
“Because Noelle, that’s my lady, and I need a place to meet. I really want to make a good impression on her, see? She’s got too many folks in her house and you know how gloomy it is at my house. Besides, Mama is always around.”
“My house is not a motel, Jade. I have a husband and a daughter, and I don’t want them in the middle of something like this.”
Jade shrugged. “Oh well. Then when Noelle and I want to spend some time together, you can rent us a motel room. When we tried to get a room the other day, they asked for ID and a valid credit card. Like, how many sixteen-year-olds walk around with credit cards.” Jade gave me a disgusted look. “I swear to God, some adults can be so…so…dense. Don’t these motel people know that if we really want to get a room, we will find a way? They should just give us what we want in the first place. Just like the folks who sell alcohol. They know we are going to get what we want one way or the other! Like they didn’t do the same things when they were kids.”
I was no longer interested in Jade’s company. I had heard more than I wanted to hear about her love life.
“Jade, as an adult, I have to maintain a level of responsibility. A lot of adults feel the way I do. I already do things that I shouldn’t do on your behalf. Letting you receive questionable items at my address is one thing, but I am not going to rent motel rooms for you.”
“I’ll pay you back…if I have to,” Jade said, a desperate look on her face.
I held up my hand and shook my head. “It’s not about the money for a motel room. If you and this girl Noellen, Norelle, Noreen, or whatever her name is, want to be together, you are going to have to figure out how to do so by yourselves. I am not getting involved.” I was getting impatient. “Let me get you home right now before you drop another bomb on me.”
CHAPTER 35
J
ade never mentioned her “alternative lifestyle” to me again. After a few weeks had passed I was convinced that she was over it. I guess that’s why I reacted the way I did when I came home one day a month after Jade’s true confessions and found her upstairs in my guestroom in the bed. And she was not alone.
As soon as I entered the room, I slammed the door shut. Then I stood there in a state of shock with my back against the door. About five different thoughts jumped to the front of my mind at the same time. The one that concerned me the most was the fact that my young daughter could have entered this unlocked room. Or anybody else. When Muh’Dear, Daddy, and Scary Mary visited my house, they roamed all over the place, being nosy. It would have been right up their alley to peep into my guest bedroom just to see if I was keeping it clean. Another thing I thought about was the fact that I didn’t know the girl Jade was with. What if she was some she-thug whose real motive was to come case my place so that she and her friends could come back later and commit a robbery?
I had to rub my eyes to make sure they were not playing tricks on me. I reached behind me and locked the door and then I stood there with my hands on my hips.
Jade was on her back splayed like a frog, naked to the world, with the head of her companion bobbing up and down between her thighs.
“Jade, what in the world are you doing, girl? You get your nasty little self up off my bed!” I shouted. Pee Wee and Charlotte were downstairs in the living room, slumped in front of the TV watching reruns of
The Jeffersons
.
When I had come into the house, Pee Wee had mumbled something about Jade being upstairs. There was nothing unusual about that. The older Jade got, the more time she spent at our house. She even had her own key and as far as she was concerned, she could occupy our guestroom any time she felt like it and that’s just what she did. And the reason she came and went as she did was because we’d always let her. Well, that was more my doing than Pee Wee’s. He wouldn’t even allow his relatives to get that comfortable when they came to visit.
“What are you doing in my house?” I stood by the side of the bed with my arms folded. I was horrified at what I’d walked in on. But I was even more disturbed by the fact that Jade and the girl she was with glanced at me and kept right on doing what they were doing! I snatched an
Essence
magazine off the nightstand and swatted the other girl’s naked butt.
“Auntie…can’t you see I’m busy?” Jade panted, pausing long enough to moan.
The girl was unbelievably bold! I had expected her to jump up, grab her clothes, and run, apologizing profusely to me.
The look of ecstasy on Jade’s face frightened and embarrassed me. Nobody had ever seen that look on my face. Not even when I had worked as a prostitute and did everything I could to make my tricks think I was having a good time. I usually made love to my husband in the dark. But even when we did do it where he could see my face, he never saw me make faces like the ones Jade was making now. In addition to being horrified and frightened, I was jealous!
“This is the last straw! I told you my house was not a motel! You can do whatever you want to do with your girlfriends or boyfriends, but not in my house!” I hissed, yelling loud enough to make Jade think I meant business. I leaned over the bed and lowered my voice. From what I could tell, these two hussies had no desire to leave that bed until they were good and ready. I swatted the other girl’s butt again. This time harder. When that didn’t get a reaction, I grabbed her arm and pulled her around to face me.
“What?” the girl squeaked. The entire bottom of her face was covered in Jade’s joy juice. “Lady, what is your problem?”
I could not believe that a stranger could talk to me like this in my own house—
“How dare you two nasty little things come into my house and behave this way?” I snarled.
Jade stopped moaning, squirming, and panting long enough to speak. “Auntie, what are you doing? I never knew you could be so…so rude! I know you like to get your pussy eaten just as much as the rest of us,” Jade said in a serious tone of voice.
“Look, girl, you, your little friend, and your nasty language need to get up out of my house. I told you I wasn’t going to be a part of this.”
“Auntie, what is your problem? If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear you were not getting enough loving yourself these days. You need to talk to your man about that.” Jade let out a deep sigh and rubbed her girlfriend’s shoulder. “This won’t happen again,” Jade said.
“You are damn right it won’t,” I yelled. “I want both of you to get up and get your little nasty-ass selves dressed and go home. Lickity split!” I immediately wished that I had not used that particular phrase. Jade giggled, her friend gave me a thumbs-up sign.
“Lickity split, lickity split,” Jade said in a singsong manner, slowly sliding her tongue across the top of her bottom lip. The longer they stayed, the more horrified I became.
“I’m sorry, Auntie,” Jade finally said with her head bowed. Looking up she added, “I really am. Can you leave us alone so we can get dressed?”
I left the room stomping, but as soon as I reached the landing at the bottom of the steps, I tried to act as normal as possible. Pee Wee and Charlotte glanced up from the television as soon as I entered the living room.
“Is Jade all right? She said she had real bad cramps and couldn’t find her key to her own house and wasn’t nobody there to let her in,” Pee Wee said, his back to me now. I was glad he couldn’t see the disgusted look on my face.
“Uh, she’s fine now. I gave her some Advil,” I lied.
“I hope she don’t make a mess up there in that room,” Pee Wee snapped.
“She won’t,” I said, plopping down on the sofa next to Charlotte. I immediately started tapping my fingers on the top of the coffee table. When Pee Wee noticed, I stopped and gave him a nervous grin.
Every few minutes I looked toward the stairs, hoping to see Jade and her lover. But when another ten minutes passed and they still had not come downstairs, I went back to the guestroom and flung open the door again.
This time I was even more horrified. Jade and her girlfriend were still naked and still stretched out on the bed. But this time it was Jade’s head bobbing up and down between the other girl’s thighs.
CHAPTER 36
I
stood in the doorway of my guest bedroom for just a few moments, trying to adjust to the spectacle on the bed. Again! I blinked and rubbed my eyes.
But other things were going through my mind at the same time. Things that had been even more painful than what I was looking at now. This room had a history that I had tried to put behind me. It was too disturbing. Mr. Boatwright had slept in this same room and he had raped me more times in it than in any other part of our house.
For several years after his death I had used this room to store some of the items that most people stored in their basement or garage. I kept the door shut at all times and the curtains drawn until the room got so gloomy and musty I didn’t want to go into it unless I had to.
But after I had finally told my mother—and everybody else who had worshipped Mr. Boatwright like a saint—what he had done to me, my attitude about the room changed. I refused to let it control me any longer. Hell, the room was part of my own house and I was in control. I had already had the room painted several times, each time hoping to cover another painful memory. With the new queen-size bed and the bright new furniture, which had taken me so much time to choose, it looked like a new place. And it really was. It was the perfect guest bedroom. We allowed everybody who used it to treat it as they would a room in their own home and that’s exactly what Jade did whenever she felt like it.
Jade glanced around at me and kept right on doing what she was doing! I stared at her in slack-jawed amazement. I had to rub my eyes because it was hard to believe that I was seeing what I was seeing for the second time. The floor on the side of the bed was littered with cute, pastel-colored bikini panties, padded bras, and a pile of other clothing. Jade’s ever-present yellow backpack was on the small blue wing chair facing the bed. The bed was shaking so furiously, both nightstands on either side were rattling. I was not surprised to see two beer bottles rocking back and forth on one of the nightstands, clicking against the side of the little white lamp that I’d purchased just a few weeks ago.
Jade’s lover, a honey-colored girl with reddish brown hair, and a small, upturned nose, winked at me as she wrapped her long, slender legs around Jade’s shoulders. Instead of wasting any more of my time protesting, I just shook my head and shut the door. Pee Wee and Charlotte were surprised but pleased when I rejoined them in the living room and insisted on taking them out to dinner. I rushed them out the door so fast they had to put their jackets on in the car.
Two hours later when we returned, Jade and her friend were gone. I was still furious. I planned to let Jade know that I didn’t appreciate the stunt that she had pulled in my house, with my husband and my young daughter right downstairs! Jade was too self-centered and brazen for her own good, and something told me that it would be her downfall. I just hoped that it didn’t involve me.
The bed had been made up and they had had the good sense to spray the room with pine-scented room deodorizer. But even that didn’t hide the fact that they had also smoked weed in the room. Well, I wouldn’t say anything to Jade about her and her friend smoking marijuana in my house. That little indiscretion was a little too close to home. That was one skeleton in my own closet that I wanted to keep there.
I didn’t condone the use of drugs, but when I was young I never turned down a chance to share a joint with Pee Wee, a habit he had picked up in Vietnam. Unfortunately, Jade had walked in on us indulging on more than one occasion. I was proud of the fact that I had not puffed on a joint in over five years. And everybody knew that I had given up that particular habit. I couldn’t speak for Pee Wee. I didn’t want to think about how many joints he smoked when he hung out with Otis.
According to Rhoda, who despised smoke of any kind, Otis had relatives in Jamaica who lived the Rastafarian lifestyle and they smoked marijuana on a regular basis, from the grandfather on down to the kids still in grammar school. Pee Wee never turned down one of Otis’s frequent invitations to accompany him to Jamaica for a few days. And now that I thought about it, Jade always went with them.
I didn’t particularly like being a middle-aged woman, even though the people my mother’s age still called me “young lady.” But I was glad that age had rewarded me with a little more common sense. There were some things that I’d done when I was younger that I would never do again. However, there were things I did now that I wished I could stop. Being such a pushover where Jade was concerned was one of them.
Jade didn’t come to my house for two weeks after the incident with her and the girl in my guest bedroom. As a matter of fact, I saw very little of her during those two weeks. I missed her frequent visits, but I wasn’t about to do anything to bring her back any time soon. Pee Wee seemed relieved not to have Jade underfoot so much.
“That girl spends too much of her time up under you. She got a home and she need to stay in it more,” he insisted.
I could tell that he was trying not to sound too harsh because he knew how much I doted on Jade.
“She’s not really happy at home,” I defended. “You know how boring Rhoda and Otis are these days. He spends most of his time at his job or propped up in his La-Z-Boy with a beer in his hand. Rhoda spends most of her time at the mall and the beauty parlor. Jade is at that age where she needs more attention. Her grandparents on both sides live too far away, and her brother doesn’t want to be bothered with her coming down to Alabama to pester him to death.”
“That ain’t our problem. It ain’t our responsibility to make Jade happy. And if she ain’t gettin’ enough attention from Rhoda, how come every time I look up, that fast-ass Jade is taggin’ along to that mall and that beauty parlor with Rhoda? Maybe the girl’s problem is she is gettin’ too much attention.”
I gave Pee Wee a thoughtful look. “Well, I don’t really mind paying ‘too much attention’ to Jade. She keeps me young,” I said with a hesitant smile.
“Well, she don’t do nothin’ for me but get on my nerves. She is still a child, she ought to stay in a child’s place. And to tell you the truth, I don’t want her comin’ around this house when you ain’t here. Especially when I got my cousin Steve and the rest of my boys over here watchin’ a game. She can’t stay out from underfoot, prancin’ around us with them short shorts of hers cuttin’ into her behind like a ribbon. It ain’t healthy.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Annette, you ain’t stupid. You know how men are. A woman throw somethin’ at a man long enough, he’s goin’ to catch it sooner or later…You know what I mean.”