“I didn’t feel like being bothered with church folks. Lady Felicia cornered me and pulled my coattail. She wanted me to sit next to her so she could tap my leg every time the bishop said something she thought pertained to me. And Sister Glendora Mayfield almost made me cuss her behind out right there in the sanctuary. I just can’t do church folks, Stacy. I can’t.”
“So what does that mean?” she asked.
Anastasia couldn’t see me shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s time for me to find another church home. A place where nobody knows me.”
“Humph. You mean a place where nobody knows you so you can keep doing the crap you’re doing and no one can call you out on it.”
I didn’t respond. She was absolutely correct. I lived my life the way I wanted to live it, and what I did was between me and my God. I didn’t like when folks judged me, looked at me sideways, or tried to get in my business. God and I had an understanding. Nobody knew me better than Him. He knew I was a horny chick. He’d made me that way. So Anastasia, Sister Glendora Mayfield, Lady Felicia, and anybody else who had a problem with what I did really needed to stay inside their own glass houses.
“So, what are you and Malcolm doing tonight?”
“We’re gonna do what we always do.”
Anastasia sighed. “Girl, bye.” She hung up on me.
Chapter 20
Malcolm arrived with Chinese takeout in one hand and a huge overstuffed duffel bag in the other. In the kitchen I sat on his lap and fed him shrimp fried rice with chopsticks. Instead of using a napkin to wipe the corners of his mouth, I used my tongue.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked me.
“Uh-uh. It’s all about you, boo,” I said. I was in seventh heaven. I felt like June Cleaver. I wanted to do everything I could to keep my man happy.
When Malcolm’s belly was full, I stood and guided him to the bathroom, where a hot bubble bath with rose petals was waiting in my Jacuzzi tub. Along the ledge of the tub, I had lit spice-scented candles.
“All of this is for you,” I said to him. “I want you to take off your clothes, get in the tub, and relax.”
I didn’t have to tell him twice. Malcolm was naked and was leaning back in the tub in less than two minutes. He closed his eyes and exhaled loudly when the jets started beating his muscles. I knelt next to the tub, reached across him, grabbed the soap sponge, and lathered it with liquid soap. I caressed his body with the sponge, and Malcolm lay there, enjoying his bath. As I glided the sponge over his hairy chest, Malcolm looked at me.
“I ain’t never had a chick bathe me before.”
I smiled at him. “Do you like it?”
Malcolm took the sponge from my hand, then guided my arm to his pelvic area beneath the water. He moaned. “Can’t you tell?”
I stood and dropped my red satin robe to the floor, then stepped between Malcolm’s legs and sat with my back against his chest. It was my turn to moan and exhale as he caressed my body with the sponge.
“I’m loving the fact that we’ll live together for a whole week, Malcolm.”
Without saying a word, Malcolm reached in front of me and drained the tub. He stood and grabbed my hand to stand me up, and we both stepped out of the tub. Malcolm dried my body, then lowered the toilet lid and laid the towel over it and sat me down. He grabbed my bottle of baby oil from the sink and massaged a handful on every inch of me. After I watched him dry his own body, he led me to my bedroom. He switched on my boom box, and we heard Rick James and Teena Marie singing the heck out of “Fire and Desire.”
Malcolm instructed me to lie on my stomach. Moments later he straddled me and massaged my back and shoulders while Rick and Teena serenaded me.
“You turned on, you turned on, you turned on my fire, baby.”
I felt hypnotized. Almost like my equilibrium was off. Malcolm worked his magic on me that night. “Fire and Desire” was the appropriate song for the mood I was in. An hour of total bliss was very much needed and very much appreciated.
When I woke up on Tuesday morning, Malcolm was standing at my dresser, looking in the mirror and tying his tie. I sat up on the bed, with my hair strewn all over my head.
In the mirror, he looked at me and said, “Now, you know I gotta be at work in thirty minutes. Why you gotta wake up lookin’ like that?”
“Like what?” I asked.
“All sexy and stuff.”
I ran my hands through my tousled hair. “Malcolm, please. You know I look a hot mess.”
He turned and walked toward me while untying his necktie and unbuttoning his shirt. “I got about five minutes to spare. Lay back down.”
After the quickie, something dawned on me.
“I thought Tuesdays were your regularly scheduled days off.” I remembered going to Burger World last Tuesday morning, after our first night together. The cashier had told me it was Malcolm’s day off.
“No one gets the same schedule every week. My days off rotate.”
“Oh,” was all I said before sighing. “Well, I guess I better get on up and get ready for work myself.”
Malcolm kissed my lips lightly. “I’ll see you after work.”
I couldn’t wait to come back home and continue to play house.
Chapter 21
At noontime Malcolm was summoned to his superior’s office. He knocked on the slightly opened door before poking his head inside. “You wanna see me, Mr. Wright?”
“Yes, Malcolm. Come on in and have a seat.”
Seated across from Mr. Wright was a Caucasian male who looked to be the same age as Malcolm. Malcolm took the seat next to him.
“Malcolm, this is Jesse Aikens. This is his first day on the job. I want you to show him the ropes and make him feel comfortable. Jesse is a team player. I’m sure he’ll fit right in.”
Malcolm shook the young man’s hand. “Welcome aboard. It’s nice to meet you.”
“You too,” Jesse responded.
“Okay, first I’ll introduce you to everyone, and then we’ll get you started on French fries,” Malcolm said.
Immediately, Jesse looked across the desk at Mr. Wright, who swallowed hard before speaking to Malcolm.
“Uh, Malcolm, I want you to take Jesse under your wing and show him your skills as restaurant manager.”
Without knowing it, Malcolm frowned. “What?”
Jesse felt that this was his cue to leave. “Uh, I’m gonna visit the bathroom. Excuse me.”
“What the heck is going on?” Malcolm asked when Jesse shut the door behind him.
Mr. Wright leaned back in his chair and exhaled. “Malcolm, his last name is Aikens. Can’t you put two and two together?”
Malcolm thought about the question and realized Jesse was related to the chief executive officer of Burger World, whose name was Dominick Aikens. “Who is he? A son or a nephew?”
“A grandson.”
“But this is my store, Mr. Wright.”
“I know that Malcolm, but it’s out of my hands. You’ve got to train him.”
Malcolm sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. “Man, this is some bull.” He looked at his boss. “I gotta train somebody to become my boss?”
“You’re right, Malcolm,” Mr. Wright said. “It is some bull.”
Chapter 22
At 2:45 p.m. I got a call over my walkie-talkie radio from the control center. The operator stated that in the Loop area downtown, on State Street, a man had been hit as he stepped in front of an oncoming bus.
“Is he dead?” I asked the operator.
“No, but he’s banged up pretty ugly.”
That was an oxymoron if I had ever heard one. How could something be pretty and ugly at the same time?
I got pissed ’cause it was the beginning of rush hour and just about time for me to go home to my pretend husband. Now I had to go and redirect traffic because some hopeless bastard had thought he had bumpers on his butt. I hoped the bus driver had torn the man’s leg completely off. It would serve him
right for walking in front of a big rig that was going at least twenty miles an hour. I couldn’t stand a dumb fool.
By 6:00 p.m. I was frustrated as heck. I was still downtown, rerouting passengers who were fit to be tied at having to take an alternate route home. To be honest with you, I understood their anger. Just like me, the passengers would get home two hours later than usual, all because of one blind fool. But one particular woman got on my nerves so bad. She complained and complained and complained. I was gonna slap her for real. Everybody was mad and inconvenienced, but she behaved as though she had been singled out to have a bad evening.
“This just doesn’t make any sense. The CTA should be prepared for something of this nature,” I heard her say.
I didn’t say anything that time, because my boss, Mr. Duncan, had instructed me to always be cordial and considerate to the passengers, as they paid our salaries. But the fat broad kept going on and on like a Duracell battery. She, along with about twenty-five other passengers, was waiting for the next bus to take her over to Michigan Avenue and head south.
“What’s taking this bus so long to get here?” She kept on. “I knew I should’ve driven today. This is what I get for foolin’ with the CTA, anyway. Now my whole evening is screwed up.”
That broke the camel’s back. That was when I lost it. She had drilled the last nail into her coffin. I turned to her and laid my job and my salvation on the line. “Trick, what the heck is you complaining about? You think you’re the only one standing on this bus stop? All of us out here is having a jacked-up evening.” I knew I was out of line, and I knew God was gonna get me, but at that time I didn’t care.
The passengers standing close to me all moved inches away. They probably thought that a fight was about to break out.
The complaining broad looked at me. Her neck danced as she spoke. “I’m running late for bingo. I’m supposed to call out the numbers.”
She was trippin’ because of bingo? Really? “Well, can’t somebody else holler out B seven, N twenty-two, or G forty-five?” I asked her.
She didn’t respond.
Humph. If anybody had a right to be mad, it was me. I was the one missing out on something. I had a young tenderoni with plenty of energy at home, waiting on me.
I arrived home and saw Malcolm’s Navigator parked in my driveway, and I started singing a song by Chanté Moore, substituting my name for hers. “Rhapsody’s got a man at home.”
I found Malcolm sitting on the living room sofa, looking like the evening I had had. I could tell that he was miserable.
“Hey, boo. How was your day?” I asked.
He exhaled. “You don’t wanna know.”
I kicked off my work boots, sat next to him, and rubbed his bald head. “It can’t be any worse than the afternoon I just endured.”
Malcolm kissed my lips softly. “You wanna bet?”
“You wanna talk about it?”
He leaned back on the sofa and patted my hand. “Tell me about your day first. Why were you late getting home?”
For years I had been waiting for a man to ask me that. To ignore his own problems and focus on me. To ask how my day was. I thought it was a shame that not one of all the thirty- and forty-year-olds I’d dealt with had cared more than twenty-one-year-old Malcolm. I laid my head on his shoulder and explained my afternoon step-by-step to him.
“Rhapsody, why didn’t you just redirect the passengers to the number six bus to take them over to Jackson? That way they could’ve caught the number twelve and headed south. It would’ve saved you and everyone else an hour.”
Malcolm had just turned what was supposed to be a pleasant conversation into an unpleasant one. I’d been successfully rerouting passengers for three years without a complaint from anyone.
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, Malcolm. Do I run over to Burger World and tell you when to flip the hamburgers?”
“I don’t flip hamburgers. I’m a manager, I think.”
I cocked my head to the side and look at him curiously. “What do you mean, ‘you think’?”
“A young white dude was hired today. He’s the grandson of the owner, and I’ve got to train him to be a manager. There’s only one manager per restaurant on the day shift.”
“Maybe you’re training him to work at another location,” I said.
“Nah. I didn’t get that impression from Mr. Wright.”
“You think your job is in jeopardy?”
Malcolm nodded his head slowly. “I’ll probably be demoted to cashier.”
I rubbed his arm. “I’m sorry, boo. I wish there was something I could do.”
Malcolm looked at me. “Can you hook me up with the CTA?”
“What do you wanna do?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Heck, anything at this point.”
“I’ll give my girl Audelia a call. She works in personnel, and she owes me a favor.”
I reached for my purse, which I had sat on the cocktail table. I pulled my cell phone out of it and searched for Audelia’s name in my contact list. I hadn’t spoken with Audelia in over three months. She and I had been hired together as car servicers and had cleaned the interiors of rail cars on the midnight shift during our first four years with the CTA. We’d been assigned to work on the brown line, in the garage located at Kimball Avenue and Lawrence Avenue. That was where I had met Miguel, a Mexican and also a car servicer. Miguel was a mad cutie, but he was a little too rough for me. He’d told me that while growing up, he had seen how his father dominated his mother, and that was how he treated his women.
Audelia had thought that Miguel was cute, so I had introduced them, and they’d been together ever since. They had produced two children, who were gorgeous. Hispanics made beautiful babies. I was Audelia’s maid of honor at their wedding, and she’d told me that she would always be indebted to me for introducing her to Miguel. I hoped she hadn’t forgotten what she’d said.
“Hey, Rhapsody,” she answered.
“Hey, girl,” I greeted. “Just calling to see how you’re doin’. It’s been a while since we talked.”
“Yeah, it has. What’s going on?”
I exhaled. “Girl, it’s the same old, same old. Strugglin’ to pay these bills.”
“I know that’s right.”
“How’s Miguel?” I asked.
“He’s fine. He just left to go to work.”
“Is he still on the brown line?”
“Girl, yeah. Miguel ain’t going nowhere. I told him that I could hook him up with something better, but he claims he likes cleaning trains. As long as he continues to buy Pampers and pay this mortgage, I don’t care where he works.”
I laughed. “I heard that, girl. How are the kids? How old are they?”
“Adrina is three going on fifty-three, and I have to put my foot in her li’l behind almost every night. Miguel’s mother has her too spoiled. When she’s at her Nana’s house, Adrina is allowed to do and say anything she wants. My mother-in-law lets the kids eat candy for breakfast, and when they get home, Adrina feels that just because she’s the queen of Nana’s house, she’s queen of Mommy’s house also. And every evening I have to remind her flipped-mouth behind that this isn’t Nana’s house. It’s Mommy’s house.”
I laughed at Audelia. “Ooh, girl, sounds like you got your hands full.”
“I’m tellin’ you, Rhapsody, that li’l girl is something else. Last week Adrina asked for a Popsicle. I told her she couldn’t have one, because lookin’ at her ruby-red lips, I could tell that she’d had enough sugar. The li’l heifer screamed at me, ‘I want a Popsicle!’”
My mouth dropped wide open. “Oh, my God. What did you do, Audelia?”
“I grabbed her hand and tried to twist it off of her wrist.”
I chuckled. “Ooh, wee. These kids nowadays are gettin’ out of hand.”
“That’s right, they are. Now, Juan is six years old, and he’s only gotten out of pocket one time. He went through a phase about eight months
ago when he all of a sudden started shuttin’ his bedroom door whenever he’s in there. Whenever I’d walk past his bedroom and see the door closed, I would open it. Then he got into the habit of locking it from the inside, talkin’ about he needed his privacy.”
“Privacy?” I shrieked. “At six years old?”
“Yes, girl, privacy. He’s too young to be masturbating—at least I think he is—and there’s no television or telephone in his bedroom, so what kind of privacy does he need at six years old? Miguel told me to leave him alone and allow him to express himself, but screw that crap. Ain’t no six-year-old living in my house is gonna be closing and locking doors. For all we know, his li’l behind could be building a doggone bomb in there.”
I chuckled. “You’re sho right about that, Audelia. How did you get him to leave the door open?”
“I took the door off of its hinges, that’s how. At six years old, I gotta see every move and hear every peep Juan makes. I refuse to be on the ten o’clock news, saying that I didn’t know my son was capable of doing something crazy.”
I laughed out loud. “That’s that old-school upbringing, Audelia. More mothers should be like you.”
“I just can’t tolerate silly stuff, Rhapsody. The government already took prayer out of the schools, and now I hear they wanna remove ‘In God We Trust’ off of the dollar bills. People don’t realize that without prayer and God, we may as well lie down and die, ’cause we’re screwed, anyway. And personally, I think Jesus was a perfect boy who grew into a perfect man without sin because Mary beat his behind.”
I laughed at Audelia and hollered, “Girl, you’re crazy.”
“Think about it, Rhapsody. The Bible describes Jesus’s hair as being like sheep’s wool, which means some blackness ran through His veins. Now, you know li’l nappy-headed boys must get their butts beat daily to keep them on the right track. The Bible also says, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’ Jesus was absolutely perfect, without a flaw. You can’t tell me that Mary didn’t set that example. When I get to heaven, I’m gonna ask Jesus if his mom whupped his butt, and you know what His answer will be?”
The Ugly Side of Me Page 13