by Mary Monroe
“Listen, the very first thing we need to do is stop writing letters to all those men immediately. I had been thinking for a long time, anyway, about stopping this shit. I guess we don’t have a choice now.”
“Oh, really? As if I hadn’t already come to that conclusion,” I sneered.
“Did any new letters come today?”
“All the mailman delivered this morning was a bunch of bills.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear that. Now I know it was Mr. Blake’s wife who came looking for me. He would never let a whole week go by without sending me his usual two or three rambling letters on the same day. Look here . . .” Joan paused and sucked on her teeth for a few seconds. “When the mailman brings some new letters, shred them. Uh, but open the envelopes first and make sure they don’t have any money or checks in them.”
I agreed with Joan, but I didn’t agree when she suggested we write Dear John letters to all of our pen pals and tell them we’re in love with somebody else and couldn’t write to them anymore. “I don’t think we should write any more letters, period,” I argued.
“Look, we have to write to them one last time. We’ve been writing to some of them so long, if we stop without giving them an explanation, they will probably keep writing for God knows how long. And if that one woman had the nerve to come to your house, some of the men or some of the other wives or girlfriends might do the same thing. Now we need to write to them all today—except for that lying-ass Mr. Blake—and tell them we’re going off with another man to, uh, someplace far away, where they won’t come looking for us.”
“All right, then,” I muttered.
“How do you spell ‘Cairo,’ one r or two?”
“Cairo, Egypt? Be serious. Those old men are not stupid enough to believe some crap like that. American women who fall in love and run off with men do not go to a dangerous place like the Middle East, where Americans are so unpopular. Mexico would make more sense.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that. Mexico sounds more believable, I guess. So does Canada,” Joan said. “As long as we pick a foreign country. Nobody would be fool enough to look for us if they think we’ve left the States.”
“What if they don’t believe us and come here to look for us, anyway? We used our real names and sooner or later they’ll run into somebody who knows us.”
“You’re not making this easy, Lola.”
“This was never ‘easy.’ It was wrong from the get-go, and you knew it.”
“You knew it was wrong from the get-go too! Don’t you put all of the blame for this shit on me! I didn’t twist your arm to get you involved. You came into this with your eyes wide open, so don’t you dare go there with me!”
“I’m sorry.” I sucked in a mouth full of air and rubbed the back of my neck, which had begun to ache. So had other parts of my body. My head was still throbbing and my stomach felt like it had turned upside down. “I’m just as guilty as you are, I guess.”
“Is ‘Bertha Butt’ home?”
“Joan, I wish you wouldn’t call my stepmother that. Her butt is not even as big as your mama’s. . . .”
“I’m sorry. I keep forgetting. Anyway, I need to come over there so we can get busy writing those letters so we can mail them all today.”
“Bertha’s having lunch with Reverend Bailey’s wife. You’d better get over here real quick so we can get as many letters written as possible before she comes home and starts breathing down my neck.”
“It shouldn’t take long to write ‘breakup’ letters with a few sentences telling each man basically the same thing. Cool?”
“Cool,” I agreed with a heavy sigh. Even though I had just apologized to Joan for putting most of the blame on her shoulders, I was still mad because most of the blame did belong on her shoulders. “Let me tell you one thing right now, Miss Proctor, don’t you ever suggest something like this to me again! We should have stopped this nonsense a long time ago. That angry woman coming to my house could be just the tip of a very big iceberg. Some of these old fossils have gotten so pushy there’s no telling what they’re cooking up. That retired banker I’ve been writing to in Spokane has been badgering me to move up there and marry him. That’s all he’s been talking about in his letters for the past three weeks. He even suggested coming down here so we could drive over to Reno and get married! I had to make up some more bogus stories real quick. He backed off when I told him about my mean stepfather, who is also a cop, and my violent ex, who is still trying to get me back. But from the way that old goat’s been whining about how lonely he is without me, and how anxious he is to be with me in person, my stories about a mean stepfather and a violent ex are not enough to hold him off too much longer.”
“After today we won’t have to worry about any of them anymore, I hope. All of mine have gotten pushy! They were all so nice and sweet and easygoing in the beginning. ‘Honey’ this and ‘honey’ that. I don’t know what this world is coming to. Have people gone completely crazy?”
“We must have gone completely crazy, Joan. Other than cheating on a few tests in school, gobbling up a few swiped grapes in the supermarket, and shoplifting a few items from the department stores, I had never done anything too dishonest before this lonely hearts thing. We need to get back on the right track.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, we are so done with this lonely hearts thing. By doing so, we are back on the right track already. I’m going to read the Bible before I go to bed tonight so God will know we are seriously repenting.”
“I will too, but I don’t feel so good right now. My stomach and my head have been hurting since that woman left.”
“Take an aspirin with a glass of warm milk. Now, let me get off this phone. Mama’s going to have a fit when I tell her I don’t want to go to the mall with her after all the fuss I made about going. I’d better come over to your house right now so we can get started on those letters. I’m not even going to take the time to put on my makeup. And, uh, I’m sorry I got you involved in this. I didn’t mean any harm. I was bored, and I needed a little spending money. Other than us getting money from those horny, silly old men, nobody got hurt.”
“Those old men got hurt, Joan. We lied so they’d feel sorry for us and send us money,” I reminded. “I feel like shit about it now and you should too.”
“Um . . . I guess you’re right. I do feel like shit too. My parents raised me right so I can’t blame my foolishness on anybody but myself.” Joan snorted and remained silent so long it made me wonder if she really felt the way she just said she did. Before I could speak again, she took a deep breath and continued. “I’ll go by the post office before it closes and pick up some stamps.”
“We don’t need to bother with the men who never sent us any money or the ones who stopped writing to us on their own. So we’ll need a whole pack of stamps, right? That’s twenty.”
Joan didn’t respond right away and that made me even more nervous. “Well, it’s like this . . . ,” she started, then paused. I didn’t care what she decided to do; I was done! If she wanted to continue this scheme, or start up a new one, I was not about to let her continue using my address. It took her a few moments to tell me, “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly what, Joan? We don’t need exactly that many stamps?”
“Uh, no. Thirty would be more like it. . . .”
Chapter 5
Joan
“JOAN, WHY DO WE NEED THIRTY STAMPS? I HAVE ONLY TEN MEN on my list. And I thought that’s how many you had? One less now because Mr. Blake is on your shit list so you don’t need to send him a breakup letter. Please tell me you’re kidding.” Lola was talking so fast she almost lost her breath.
“I’m not kidding. I was writing to a few more guys that I didn’t tell you about. I was going to tell you, but I kept forgetting.”
“I thought I was your best friend. How come you’re keeping stuff from me?” I hated it when Lola pouted because of something I’d said or done. It made me feel guilty.
“I didn�
�t mean to,” I eased in. “And yeah, you are still my best friend. . . .”
I had a lot of friends, but Lola had been my number one girl since second grade. That was when she’d helped me beat up the Baker sisters, Patty and Jean, two of the meanest human grizzly bears ever born.
One day during recess, Patty lunged at me because I had refused to pay her a dollar each week to “protect” me from other bullies. She pummeled me with her fists until I hit the ground. Then Jean kicked me a few times while I was down. I had endured the wrath of those two bitches since kindergarten and I’d finally had enough. I leaped up like a frog and lit into Patty. She went down in no time. Before Jean realized what was going on, I sucker punched her in the stomach and knocked her to the ground. I knew that once they got up, they’d beat the crap out of me, but I didn’t care. None of the other kids jumped in to help me. That was the day I found out who my real friends were. Lola was the only one who came to my defense. She used her shoe to beat the Bakers. By the time the fight was over, blood was spurting from their noses and lips, and they were bawling like babies. Lola and I had no injuries at all. The Bakers never bothered me or Lola again.
I knew then that she and I would be best friends forever. I’d take a bullet for my BFF and I knew she would do the same for me. Even so, there were things I didn’t tell Lola. One thing I did know was that it was not smart to let everybody know everything about yourself. My own mother, who was always telling me she knew me better than I knew myself, didn’t even know the real me. As far as I was concerned, what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. I felt the same way about Lola. For one thing, I didn’t want her to know just how greedy I really was. But since things had begun to fall apart, I saw no reason to keep certain information from her now.
“Why were you writing to so many?” Lola asked. “The way some of them were sending two or three letters at the same time, it was hard enough for us to keep up with the ones we had! Last Saturday it took me two hours to answer all the mail I had received in just three days.”
“A couple of mine were getting stingy and there were a lot of things I wanted to buy. When it comes to money, you know how stingy some black men can get after a while. That’s why I went after some of those lonely white dudes.”
“Oh, my God! And you thought I’d never find out?”
“You told me yourself you didn’t pay any attention to the names and the return addresses on the letters that came for me. Since some of them started sending several letters in the same week, I didn’t think you’d notice me getting a little more mail than before.”
“You should have told me before now. I thought we were in this together, and I’ve always told you everything,” Lola pouted.
“I didn’t want you to know I was so greedy,” I admitted with a pout of my own.
“You’ve always been greedy, so I don’t know why you had a problem with me knowing you had added more men to your list. When we first got involved in this stupid shit, we agreed not to get too carried away in case something happened to me one day and somebody else had to go to the mailbox to pick up the mail. It would be just our luck that that would happen on a day when ten or more letters came in!”
“You’ve got a point there. From now on, I promise I’ll let you know every move I make, no matter what we do.” Despite my promise, I didn’t plan to ever tell Lola about the Lee woman in Miami and that I’d been posing as a man. We had several gay classmates that we liked and respected, but I didn’t want her to think I had a lesbian thing going on.
“Joan, if you want me to continue having your back, you need to let me know everything you’re up to.”
“Didn’t I just tell you I would? Dang! Now let me get off this telephone and get moving. As soon as I go throw up again, I’ll come over.”
“Don’t forget the stamps.”
“I won’t. Do we have enough envelopes and writing paper?”
“Yeah, we do. I just bought another batch two days ago.” Lola paused and sucked on her teeth for a few seconds. “Joan, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, don’t you ever drag me into some mess like this again. I would have never joined a lonely hearts club if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Well, you did, so get off my back. You’ve made your point, so stop bitching about it. Like I said before—and I’ll say it again—I didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do, so don’t be getting all ‘goody-two-shoes’ with me!” I rarely used such a hard tone of voice with Lola. She had just provoked me, so it couldn’t be helped this time, but I was immediately sorry. I took a few deep breaths and began to speak in a much softer voice. “Uh, I’m so sorry I did this, and even sorrier I got you involved. I can’t say it enough. We’re a couple of stupid kids and we could have gotten ourselves into a lot more trouble. I realize that now.”
“More trouble? Other than some man’s wife coming after us, or our folks finding out, what else could happen?”
“If one of our pen pals goes to the post office and files a complaint, we could even get in trouble for using the mail to defraud people out of money.”
Lola moaned and cussed under her breath. “‘Defraud’! That’s one of the scariest words in the English language!”
“So is ‘prison,’” I pointed out. “If the post office comes after us, that’s where we could end up.”
“I hadn’t even thought about that. If that happens, let’s hope they’ll go easy on us because we’re teenagers. We’ll fall back on that ‘stupid kid’ defense,” Lola said with her voice cracking. “We didn’t know any better.”
“That might be hard for people to believe. Stupid is one thing that you and I are not. I got all A’s on my last report card and you got all A’s and one B.”
“So? Smart kids do stupid shit all the time. Let’s try not to worry too much.”
I was going to worry and I was definitely going to be a lot more cautious in the future. But I wasn’t going to let this incident stop me from having a good time.
Chapter 6
Lola
I LIVED IN A NICE QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD WITH MY STEPMOTHER, Bertha. Our house was about half an hour’s drive from San Jose, California, in a Silicon Valley suburb called South Bay City, which had about forty thousand residents. Both of my parents had passed years ago and I had no other relatives to speak of.
When I was growing up, my father had cheated on my mother with other women, left and right, but the only one I’d ever cared about was a former hairdresser named Shirelle Odom. Daddy had moved her in with us and she had been very nice to me and Mama. I referred to her as “my other mother,” because she’d treated me like her own daughter and she helped take care of my mother when Mama had contracted terminal cancer. Shirelle had even bathed and fed my mother every day. But after a few months, that backbreaking responsibility and Daddy cheating on Shirelle with other women, got to be too much for Shirelle. She moved out and didn’t tell us where she was going. A few weeks later, Bertha Mays moved in with us. She was a retired elementary-school teacher and one of Mama’s best friends. Mama and Bertha had taught at the same elementary school I had attended.
Bertha took care of Mama until she died; and when Daddy got sick, she took care of him until he died. He’d made me promise him on his deathbed that I would “be nice” to Bertha and take care of her as long as she lived. I was only fourteen at the time, but I didn’t have a problem making that promise because I cared about Bertha. Her adult children, twins named Libby and Marshall, were not only selfish and greedy, but they were also mean to me and Bertha. Living with my stepmother was a real challenge. Sometimes I felt like I was in prison because she was so attached to me and I had so little freedom. It didn’t do me any good to complain. When I did, I only felt worse, because Bertha constantly reminded me about the promise I’d made to Daddy.
Next to Bertha, Joan Proctor was the most important person in my life. Her friendship meant the world to me. A visit to the big house three blocks from ours that she shared with her large, rowdy
family was always interesting. For one thing, her bedroom was so much cooler than mine. She had posters of all the best rappers and other big stars on her wall, a brass bed, and a bookcase that contained some of the best street lit that had ever been published.
When I knocked on Joan’s front door the first Saturday in March, around six months ago, her grumpy mother greeted me with a puzzled look on her plain, high-yellow face. “How did you manage to escape? I thought Bertha was sick with gout. She must be doing better,” Pearline snarled, waving me into the house. There was nothing ladylike or dainty about Joan’s mother. She was so big and scary that when she’d applied for a job as a prison guard ten years ago, they’d hired her right away.
“Uh, no, she’s about the same. My stepsister’s husband offered to stay with her so I could take a break,” I replied. “Joan is expecting me.”
Pearline rolled her tight black eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “She’s in her room. Go on up there and don’t y’all make a lot of noise. Too Sweet’s on a new diabetes medication, so she’s been real cranky all day and I just got her calmed down enough to take a nap before dinner. Do you hear me?”
“Uh-huh,” I mumbled.
When I got to the room Joan shared with Too Sweet, I was glad to see she was alone. She occupied a chair at the small desk next to her window, humped over the laptop computer that her real father had sent to her for her birthday.
“Get in here and come look at this,” she said in a low voice. “Lock the door first. You’re not going to believe what I’m going to show you.”
I locked the door and sprinted across the floor. I was so curious I could barely contain myself. “Joan, what are you up to?” I asked, stopping next to her. There was a pile of magazines on the desk. She had one in her hand and was waving it like it was a winning lottery ticket. “What’s up with that magazine?”
“I’m really going to have some fun now,” she announced. “Wait until you see some of the people I’m going to write to.”