Authors: Mary Monroe
CHAPTER 45
I
could not believe how fast my life had begun to unravel. And all in just a matter of weeks!
I took a long, hot bath right after I got off the telephone with Rhoda. Surprisingly, as much as I loved food, I couldn’t eat any dinner. As a matter of fact I had not eaten much in the last few days and my clothes felt looser. I knew I had lost a little weight. I didn’t know how much and I didn’t want to know. I had stopped hopping onto a scale years ago after my weight had rolled up to two hundred and eighty-five pounds.
I wallowed in the bathtub for at least an hour with hot water and bubbles up to my neck. Pee Wee had not come home by the time I went to bed and I was asleep when he did come home. Actually, I wasn’t even sure that he did, because I didn’t see him when I woke up the next morning and his side of the bed didn’t look like he’d been there. One minute I convinced myself that he had slept on the couch or in the guestroom that Jade seemed so fond of. The next minute I decided he had spent the night with Betty Jean Spool, fucking her brains out.
Charlotte was already up by the time I made it downstairs to the kitchen.
“Mama, I already ate some Froot Loops,” my daughter told me, as she hovered over the kitchen table making a mess with a coloring book.
“That doesn’t look like homework to me,” I said weakly, grabbing a jar of instant coffee from the cabinet over the counter.
“Oh,” Charlotte mumbled, snapping the coloring book shut.
Her crayons rolled to the floor. I was glad to see that she was dressed and ready to go to school. She looked like a little doll in her bright red jumpsuit, with her long hair in a ponytail that she had fixed herself.
“Mama, where’s Daddy?” she asked, looking around the kitchen. She tossed her head so that her hair swung, one of the many habits that she had picked up from Jade.
“Huh? Oh…um…He had to go open up his barbershop early this morning,” I said.
“Why come? He never done that before.”
“Some man he knows has to leave to go out of town early this morning, and this was the only time that the man could come get his hair cut.”
I didn’t like lying to my child, but I didn’t know what else to tell her. Just as I looked at my watch the telephone rang. Other than Muh’Dear and Daddy, or some of Pee Wee’s folks in Pennsylvania, nobody else called my house so early in the morning. My face froze as soon as I heard the familiar voice.
“Good morning, bitch.” It was the voice of doom: the same raspy whisper as before that had come to interrupt my peaceful life again.
I turned so that Charlotte couldn’t see the horrified expression on my face.
“Is that Daddy?” Charlotte asked with an excited voice, making a move toward me.
“No, sugar,” I replied, covering the telephone mouthpiece with my hand. “You go play with your coloring book,” I said, waving my hand toward the table.
Charlotte ignored me and rushed over to stand next to me. My legs felt as heavy as logs as I leaned against my refrigerator. The heat that my refrigerator was generating gave me a rush, but it was the telephone in my hand that had my jaw twitching.
“Is that Grandma, or Grandpa, or Uncle Fred in Pennsylvania?” Charlotte continued, her voice more excited than ever.
I gently thumped the side of her head and she ran from the kitchen howling like a hyena.
“Did you send me that blacksnake, too?” I asked calmly, shifting the telephone to my other ear.
“You asked me that already and I told you I did! I sent a blacksnake to a blacksnake. As soon as I find a place that sells big black baboons, I’ll send you one of those, too. But knowing you, you might try to fuck it.” The voice laughed.
As hard as I tried to place the voice, I had no luck. I prayed that my tormentor would get careless and speak in her regular voice.
“I feel sorry for you,” I said, still speaking calmly. I couldn’t believe how polite I was. The truth of the matter was, I wanted to coldcock the bitch on the other end of the line. The strange thing about what I’d just said was, I truly did feel sorry for this sick person. But I still wanted to coldcock her.
“
You
feel sorry for
me
? Now that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life!”
“Well, you got some serious problems, honey. You are not well and you need to get some help,” I said firmly. “I just hope you don’t have any children that might suffer because of you…”
“Don’t you worry about me, you black-ass bitch. You worry about yourself and that little creature of yours that you squirted out of your nasty-ass cunt. That little brat sounds like she’s as hardheaded as you are,” the caller said with a chuckle.
That did it! I couldn’t believe my ears. I could no longer be polite and feel sorry for this warped individual. “Listen, you crazy-ass slut! Don’t you drag my child into this fucked-up game of yours!” I hissed.
I glanced out the window over my kitchen sink, admiring the beautiful day outside. It was almost as beautiful as the day that this mess had started.
“Fuck you!”
“I know who you are,” I said, my voice shaking. “If I were you, I would stop this shit right here and now. If you do call me again, or send me anything else in the mail, I will go to the police. Do you understand me?” I was about to speak again, but I didn’t know what else to say. It didn’t matter because the caller had hung up.
I was so stunned I sat staring off into space for half an hour. As soon as I came out of my trance, I called Rhoda’s house.
“Hi, Auntie,” Jade said, answering in her cheerful voice. “You coming to work today?”
“Yes, baby. Uh, can your mama come to the telephone?”
“She just walked in the room. Hold on a minute. Lunch is my treat today,” Jade added. “Here’s Mom.”
“This is Rhoda.”
“That wench just called me again.”
“Betty Jean?”
“I think so. She was whispering, but it could have been her,” I said with extreme uncertainty. The only reason I had some doubts was the fact that I knew Betty Jean was not the type to play games. If she wanted something, she didn’t care who knew about it. But then I had to admit that most people changed their MOs as they got older. One minute I truly believed it was her, the next minute I didn’t know what to believe!
“What did she say?”
“The same old nasty shit as before. Listen, I told her I knew who she was.”
“Well, did she deny it?” Rhoda wanted to know.
“She hung up right after I told her that.”
“Annette, you really need to talk to the phone company. There must be somethin’ they can do to help catch this bitch. They have all kinds of ways of tracin’ phone calls now.”
“Rhoda, I told you already that I’ve thought about that. And I also told you that a telephone tap and caller ID would be a waste of my time. I don’t even think that adding *69 to my service would do any good. This woman is not stupid enough to call me from a number that can be traced or called back if I hit *69. A fool would know that she’s calling me from pay phones.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“And if it is Betty Jean, I know she would have thought about something like that already. I just know it’s her. It’s got to be her, Rhoda.”
“You still want to pay her a visit this evening? I got a large can of mace you can use.”
“Rhoda, I don’t plan to do anything violent. I just want to talk to her. I just want her to stop calling me and sending me shit. That’s all I want.”
“What about Pee Wee?”
“What about him?”
“If he’s the reason she’s doing this shit, you need to talk to him, too.”
“I tried to talk to him about her last night and he ran. He didn’t come home and I don’t even know where he is.” I paused and glanced toward the door. The last thing I wanted now was for Charlotte to know that I didn’t even know where her daddy was.
“He could be with that cow right now as we speak, for all we know,” Rhoda suggested.
Her words made me seethe. “If he’s still with her when we get over there this evening, that’s exactly where I plan to leave his black ass,” I said, the words oozing out of my mouth like bad breath.
CHAPTER 46
I
tried to keep my mind off my problems during my drive to work shortly after I got off the telephone with Rhoda. I tried to concentrate on the things that were still pleasant in my life. It was a nice, warm day and there were a lot of things outside of my car that made me feel good. Like all the cute little kids running to get to school on time, the traffic lights that only stayed red for a few seconds, and birds chirping out a concerto. Even the trees, which showed patches of yellow and brown streaked with green, made a positive difference in my mood.
By the time I got to work, I felt more relaxed. It was a bonus to see that Jade had already arrived at the office. She looked so sophisticated and focused, sitting at her neatly arranged desk. I couldn’t figure out how she found the time to go out and buy fresh flowers for her desk every workday. With all of her youthful faults, I was still proud of her.
“There’s a fresh pot of strong coffee in the break room. I made it myself,” Jade said, greeting me at the door. “I am sure you could use it.”
“That and something even stronger,” I managed, stumbling to my office. I had to pass Gloria’s cubicle and for once it didn’t bother me to see her annoying scowl. “Good morning, Gloria,” I greeted.
She gave me a surprised look. As a matter of fact, she looked downright startled. She was the only person in the office that I didn’t speak to unless she spoke first. The chip on her shoulder was so huge, even a simple greeting could set her off. She hesitated before she returned my greeting.
“Uh…Good mornin’, Annette. That’s a nice muumuu you got on today.”
“It has been for years,” I sighed. I went to my office and shut the door so fast and hard that I had to hop forward to keep from catching the tail of my dress in it. Jade appeared in my office less than two minutes later with a large mug of coffee.
“I am going with you and Mama this evening,” Jade announced, looming over my desk like a warden.
My lip brushed the lip of my coffee mug, but I pulled it away without drinking. “Jade, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I don’t want you to get involved in this mess any more than you already are. I don’t know what to expect.” I sucked in my breath and took a long swallow of my black coffee. “You know how rough some of those Spool family members are. Things could get ugly.”
I didn’t have to remind Jade about all the violence that some of Betty Jean’s relatives had been involved in. Not only was her oldest brother, Lester, a drug dealer, she had other family members who had been involved in just about every other criminal activity you could think of. Her alcoholic daddy had run off twenty years ago with his male lover. Her youngest brother was in prison for killing his girlfriend. Everybody in Richland was familiar with the bad side of the Spool family. But the Spools were one of the oddest set of people I had ever met. Half of them were thugs, the other half were pleasant, law-abiding citizens that I was proud to know. One of Betty Jean’s brothers was a Boy Scout leader and another one was a teacher who worked with kids who had learning disabilities. Both of her younger sisters were nice, quiet women leading respectable lives. One was a nurse, the other one owned and operated a pet shop. The matriarch of the clan, Betty Jean’s mother, was a tiny, soft-spoken woman who went to church every Sunday and spent her spare time doing volunteer work at the homeless shelter right along with my mother and Scary Mary. But Betty Jean’s maternal grandmother was a sour-faced old crone who carried a gun, and was currently in jail for shooting at her landlord when he’d attempted to collect three months’ back rent.
I wondered how things would have worked out if it had been one of Betty Jean’s dignified sisters who had been involved with Pee Wee. It was a thought that had crossed my mind more than once. And it was a much easier thought to deal with than what I had to deal with now.
“I went to school with one of those she-devil Spool cousins,” Jade said in a gruff voice, interrupting my thoughts. “The bad Spools didn’t scare me then, they don’t scare me now,” Jade said in a slow, controlled voice.
She sucked in her breath and stuck her chest out, a menacing look took over her face. Jade was so much like Rhoda. It was hard to believe that petite women like them were so fearless. But I had figured out that when you snuck up on your enemies the way Rhoda did, size didn’t matter. I knew that old Mr. Boatwright would have put up one hell of a fight, had he been awake when Rhoda entered his bedroom to smother him with that pillow, that night so long ago.
“Mama said I can go, so I’m going.” Jade stomped her foot, then turned around and sailed out of my office, switching her shapely butt like she had a stick up her crack.
I made sure my office door was locked before I called my house, expecting Pee Wee to answer the telephone. He didn’t, so I called his barbershop and he answered on the first ring.
“It’s me,” I said stiffly.
“I figured that,” he grunted.
“I’m at work. You need to pick Charlotte up from school and keep her with you until I get home this evening.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I said so.”
“No problem.”
Every other married couple I knew had their share of arguments and a few had some knock-down, drag-out fights. My own father and mother still did—and they were both approaching eighty! But it took a lot to get a rise out of Pee Wee. And Lord knows I had been pushing him to the edge a lot lately. That man had more self-control than a monk.
A long moment passed before either of us spoke again.
“You still there?” I asked.
“I’m here. Is that all you wanted?”
“Where did you sleep last night?” I asked. “And don’t bother lying to me, because I will know. And that will only make things worse,” I warned.
Pee Wee kept a radio, a CD player, and a portable television set in his barbershop. I could hear voices and soft jazz playing in the background. I didn’t visit the barbershop that often, but next to our house it was one of the coziest places we had access to. There was a daybed with a goose-down comforter on it in the small back room that Pee Wee also used as an office and a retreat for Charlotte. Facing the daybed was another small television set, and a small refrigerator that was always stocked with snacks and beverages.
“I slept at the shop. Why?”
“I wanted to know.”
“And I slept alone, in case you want to know that, too.”
“You do whatever you want to do.”
Pee Wee let out an exasperated groan. He was still pissed off and I was glad. If I had to be miserable, I wanted him to be miserable, too. Had it not been for him I wouldn’t be dealing with the mess I was dealing with in the first place! I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be this upset with the only man I had ever really loved.
“What time will you be home?” His voice sounded hoarse and uncertain.
“I don’t know. I’ll get there when I get there!” I snapped.
“Then I will see you when I see you.”
It bothered me that he didn’t try to find out why I wasn’t coming straight home. Especially after the things I had said to him the night before. As far as I was concerned, if he was innocent, he should have stayed home and defended himself. At least, that’s the way I thought he should have behaved. If he was guilty, he still should have stayed and defended himself. Even if he had to do it with more lies. What confused me was the fact that he was not acting like an innocent man or a guilty man. I didn’t know what to believe anymore.