by Mary Monroe
“Drink some green tea when you get home. That’ll help your cramps. You need to be feeling your best so we can get to the mall and spend some of this money.” Lola was so hyped up, beads of sweat dotted her forehead and it was not warm enough in March for anybody to be sweating at all.
Chapter 9
Joan
I TRIED TO REMOVE THE DISTURBING THOUGHT OF SOMEBODY SCAMming a member of my family out of my mind, but I couldn’t. I was only able to push it to the back behind my other thoughts. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear a bunch of teenage boys wrote these letters, but I know they didn’t. No sane young dude would ever claim to be a senior citizen.”
Lola and I locked eyes, giving each other dumbfounded looks. “I’m glad we sent Elaine’s picture with the second batch of letters. It sure got the ball rolling!” she whooped. “Just think if we had sent pictures with the first batch. We’d probably have twice as many letters to answer. This turned out to be a piece of cake.”
“A ‘piece of cake,’ my ass, Lola. This is an eight-layer cake with icing. I had no idea getting rich was going to be this easy.” Making light of the situation helped keep things in perspective. We were not doing anything bad or wrong; we were just having fun.
“I didn’t either. Uh, I’m going to go to the bank after school and cash my check before Bertha ‘accidentally’ snoops around and finds it. I already have a joint savings account with her at Wells Fargo. I think she’s forgotten about it because she hasn’t mentioned it in three years.”
“You’re going to deposit your money into that account?”
“Heck no! With my luck, Bertha would open a statement one month and see the balance. I’m going to cash the check and hide the money in my room.”
“I have a Christmas club account in my name only, but I don’t know if they’ll let me cash a check like this.”
“If they don’t, maybe I can cash it for you.”
“Okay. We’ll go to the bank together then. I’ll wait for you out front by the bus stop after school.”
“Cool!” Lola exclaimed with her eyes sparkling like diamonds.
Had I known it was going to be this easy to get Lola on board this gravy train, I would have shared everything with her sooner. I was about to say something else when I noticed a worried look on her face, and it had not been there a few seconds before.
“What’s the matter now?” I asked. “Why do you have that puppy dog face all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know. I just had a weird thought. I feel kind of strange about what we’re doing. Like a, uh, con artist.”
I glared at Lola. I knew that if I confessed to her that I’d had a similar, disturbing thought a few moments ago, she probably would have freaked out. I decided to play it off. In a very casual tone of voice, I said, “So, what else is new? Look, you need to make up your mind. Are you into this or not? Why did you wait until now to start feeling strange? And if you don’t want that money, you can give it to me.”
“No, I’ll keep the money, but I’m still a little worried. I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“I haven’t either, so we’re even,” I snapped. It was always hard for me to hide my exasperation with Lola, but I didn’t even try to do it this time. I was in too good of a mood. I didn’t want my elation to go away too soon, especially for a stupid reason like Lola being a little worried. “Exactly what is it you’re a ‘little worried’ about? All you need to be thinking about is how we’re going to spend all this fucking cash!”
“I don’t know. Maybe I should have snuck out of church with you during that sermon before that visiting pastor started talking about deceit and the love of money and whatnot. The way people were talking after the service, he’d made a lot of them feel guilty. Thinking about that just now made me think all of a sudden that this might not be such a good idea, after all. It’s too good to be true.”
“Look, Lola, it’s fine with me if you don’t want to get more involved now. You don’t have to write any more letters, you know. That’d be more men for me to write to.”
Lola still had that puppy dog look on her face and it was really getting on my nerves. She took a deep breath and suddenly perked back up. “I can sure use the money. Maybe I’ll stick with this for just a little longer. Are you going to respond to all of the letters we received from the new men?”
“I can’t think of one good reason not to. Those men sound so pathetic, I feel sorry for them. Just think how happy we can make them just by writing to them and . . . and—”
“Conning them out of their hard-earned money?” Lola tossed in.
“There you go again! That’s not what I’d call it, so please don’t say that. And how do you know they’re not crooks themselves? For all you know, they could have made their money by conning people! With all the scams and Ponzi scheme stories we see on TV and read about in the newspaper, I’m surprised that hadn’t already occurred to you.”
“That’s besides the point, Joan. What do you call what we’re doing? If this isn’t ‘conning,’ I don’t know what is.”
“Well, yeah, we are conning them, if you want to split hairs. But this is different from a real con. For one thing, our new men friends probably don’t see it that way. They were the ones who offered us money.”
“But that’s only because we told them we had financial problems and because they think we’re a gorgeous woman in her twenties who will eventually hook up with them in person. Almost every single one either wants a serious relationship or a wife.”
How a superfly girl like me ended up with a wishy-washy BFF like Lola was beyond me. “Look, if they didn’t want to give away their money, they wouldn’t have bragged about how prosperous and generous they were when they sent their information to be listed in that magazine. These men want some attention. We want some money. You can back out if you want to, but I . . . I’m going to get more prints of Elaine’s pictures because I’m going to write to a few more men. I’m going to tell them all about how poor I am and how my mother needs an operation.”
“I need to think about this a little more,” Lola said, her voice cracking. “I’m glad I got this money, but . . .”
“But what? You feel guilty? If that’s the case, like I said, give me the money you received.”
“I don’t feel that guilty,” she said, and chuckled. If she was laughing, she couldn’t be too concerned about being a “con artist.”
Chapter 10
Joan
I LOOKED FORWARD TO EACH NEW DAY BECAUSE I WAS ON A ROLL. Thanks to my elderly pen pals, cash was coming in faster than I could spend it. Just last week, a real nice man—a retired oil executive in Dallas—sent me a thousand dollars in his second letter! In the last couple of weeks, I purchased all of the latest CDs by my favorite rappers and a few I had just discovered, half-a-dozen new novels, and some very expensive new clothes. Last Monday after school, I got my hair and nails done for the first time at a salon that catered to local celebrities. I didn’t know what to spend my money on next! As long as nobody noticed all the new stuff I had acquired, I wasn’t worried. I was over the moon. I had just begun to flirt with the idea of buying myself a set of fake D-cup titties, until my busybody cousin Too Sweet said something that brought me back down to earth.
“Joan, you been looking mighty spiffy these days. New clothes, fresh hairdo every week—what’s up with all that? Where you getting all this money from? I know you ain’t making much by babysitting now and then, and you ain’t doing nothing else to be getting paid.”
I sat at my desk with my back to the door. Too Sweet had entered the room so quietly that I didn’t even know she was present until she started talking. I whirled around, with a lie ready to slide out of my mouth. “I’ve just been borrowing money from Lola,” I said, ignoring the suspicious look on her pig face.
“Lola? Hmmm . . .” I hated when my cousin sucked on her teeth and looked at me out of the corner of her eye. She reminded me of a mighty oak tree standing there
with her hands on her hips. “She ain’t got no job. Where is she getting money from, all of a sudden?”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you? Her daddy had a real big life insurance policy with the bus company he drove for, so he left her a pretty penny when he died. Her stepmother just recently allowed her to start spending some of it.”
“I see,” Too Sweet said with a skeptical look. One thing that had always been in my favor was that she didn’t have much authority in our house. Right after she moved in, she tried to throw her weight around and boss me and my siblings. With her old-school notions, she assumed she could give us whuppings the way Mama and Elmo did when we misbehaved. My brother Chet was thirteen at the time. After being a resident for only three days, Too Sweet attempted to whup him with one of her double-wide, extra-long leather belts for sassing her. Not only did he cuss her out so bad it brought tears to my eyes, he hauled off and sucker punched her in the chest and knocked the wind out of her. She never attempted to whup him again, nor any of the rest of us. Not even me. And she had seen me do a lot of things that normally would have gotten me whuppings from Mama and Elmo at the same time.
As far as I was concerned, Too Sweet was even lower on the totem pole than I was. Normally, I wouldn’t even worry about anything she had to say in my case. However, I didn’t want her to say anything that would arouse Mama’s or Elmo’s curiosity and make them start paying more attention to me and all the new stuff I had purchased.
“Well, that ‘pretty penny’ must be a mighty big penny too for Lola to be lending you the kind of money you’ve been spending.. . .”
“I don’t know exactly how much her daddy left her, and I know it’d be rude to ask. But she told me that whenever I need a few extra dollars, to just let her know. I know you’ve noticed how nice she’s been looking lately too.”
“Now that you mentioned it, yeah. But Lola is a real cute girl, anyway.” My miserable cousin gave me a hopeless look. For a moment, I thought she was going to cry. “Life is so unfair. If somebody had died and left me a bunch of money, I would have been able to fix myself up better and have a husband and some kids by now. I never thought I’d still be single in my late forties Too bad you and Elaine got all the looks in this family. I bet if I looked like you or her, or Lola, men would be throwing money at me with both hands and I’d have to beat them off with a stick, huh?”
“Yep! You sure would!” I chirped. “You don’t have to be a beauty queen to get a man’s attention. There are other things you can do.” I spoke with caution. My cousin was the nervous type who could burst into tears and expel silent farts at the drop of a hat when something spooked her. And with a gas problem that could bring down the house, I had to handle her with extreme care.
Too Sweet dipped her head and looked up at me with her eyebrows raised. “Where are you going with this conversation?”
“Cuz, have you ever thought about joining a lonely hearts club?”
Too Sweet gave me an incredulous look. “Like them nutcases listed on the back pages in my Modern Love magazines?”
“Uh . . . yeah. I glanced at that list one time and some of those men sounded real nice. And rich . . .”
“What’s wrong with you, girl? For one thing, those men don’t want a woman my age—and I don’t want no man my age. And for another thing, when somebody stoops low enough to advertise in a magazine for a wife or a husband, something’s got to be wrong with them! I ain’t about to waste my time on that kind of nonsense! I done waited this long for my soul mate—I can keep on waiting. I think any woman that gets involved with strangers through the mail, or strangers any other way, period, is asking for a heap of trouble. They’ll end up with an ax murderer, a she-male posing as a full man, or worse. Uh-uh, baby girl. That New Age dating mess is for people with a straight-up death wish.” Too Sweet paused and stared at me with a look on her face that was a combination of disgust and disbelief. “Promise me, you will never bring up some foolishness like a ‘lonely hearts club’ to me again.”
“I promise you, I won’t,” I muttered.
Chapter 11
Lola
AS THE WEEKS PASSED, I BEGAN TO THINK LONG AND HARD ABOUT the person I had become—all in the name of greed. I experienced several different degrees of emotion. Those old men would never even meet me, let alone be with me and love me to the end. That made me feel even sorrier for them, but not enough to leave them alone or tell them the truth.
Now when I received letters, especially ones that contained money, I not only felt a little guilty, I also felt a little lonely. Those feelings never lasted that long. The easy money still gave me a rush. I had never been addicted to anything before, but I had a feeling I was now addicted to money. I couldn’t get enough. Not only was the cash rolling in like tidal waves, the old men thought they were investing in a future with a beautiful woman in her twenties. That was the part that really made me feel a little guilty from time to time.
About three months after we’d mailed the first batch of letters, Libby showed up at the house unannounced on a Saturday morning. She and our mailman arrived at the same time! I watched from the living-room window as she parked her car and got out. She pranced up to the mailman just as he was about to deposit a thick stack of envelopes into the box. In addition to all of the other negative things about my stepsister, she was a big flirt whenever she was in the presence of a good-looking man. I couldn’t hear what she was saying to the mailman, who was grinning like a fool as he handed her the mail! My heart skipped a beat and I held my breath as I watched Libby walk toward the porch. I was still holding my breath when she barged in. She dropped the stack of mail on top of the small bookcase near the entrance and I let out a sigh of relief.
“Rudy Jeeters sure is cute. If I wasn’t married and he wasn’t just a mailman, I’d sock it to him,” she said with a dreamy look on her pie-shaped face.
“He is cute for a mailman,” I said, shifting my eye toward the mail.
“I see Mama still gets a ton of bills. I hope you’re making sure they get paid on time.” Libby removed her white nylon windbreaker and draped it over her arm instead of placing it on the coatrack by the door, which meant she wouldn’t be staying long.
“I do. I mail the payments myself,” I said eagerly. I rushed over to get the mail before she had a chance to go back and look through it more thoroughly. I flipped through it as fast as I could. The utility bill was on top. The rest included more bills, junk, and a postcard from a retired teacher Bertha used to work with, who was on vacation in Italy. “Your mama is in her room,” I chirped. Since no new letters had come for me or for Joan, I dropped the mail back onto the bookcase.
Libby stood with her hands on her hips. “This floor looks like hell,” she complained, frowning as she stared at the floor.
“Hmmm. That’s odd. I just cleaned it two days ago.”
“I never would have guessed that. Not with all these dust balls and other shit.” She gave me a dry look and then she started to sniff and rub her nose. “Chitlins for dinner last night again?”
“You know how much your mama loves chitlins. She’d eat them every day if they weren’t so expensive. And the man at the meat market always cleans them for us for free,” I reminded. “Uh, do you want me to go tell her you’re here?” Libby’s visits rarely lasted longer than a few minutes, but even that was a few minutes too long for me. Her demeanor had become even nastier over the years. I couldn’t remember the last time she said something pleasant to me or asked any questions about how I was doing in school and such. I made sure she and Marshall knew that I was a straight-A student by posting some of my best test papers on the front door of the refrigerator. I’d won the annual citywide spelling bee last year, but they had never commented on it. They only mentioned me and school in the same conversation when they discussed how I had managed not to get pregnant so far and drop out of school like so many other girls we knew. I always assured them that I was not going to get pregnant, and even if I did, I would still get my diploma
and hopefully continue my education. Libby had such a bleak outlook when it came to me, she usually just gave me blank stares when I said something positive about myself. “Bertha is constipated again, so she had a rough time last night and didn’t get much sleep.”
“Humph! She’s going to have a lot more rough nights if she doesn’t stop gobbling up hog guts and all the rest of that mess you let her eat.”
“I can’t tell Bertha what to eat. She pays for the groceries,” I said firmly. “I do buy fresh veggies myself when I go to the store on my own, though.”
“From the size of your butt, I’m sure you’re eating just as much fattening pork as mama is,” Libby cackled. “Oh, you know I’m just playing with you. There’s nothing wrong with being your size, Lola.”
That remark didn’t even deserve a response. For one thing, I was still just a size eight. Libby’s butt was just as big as mine and the rest of her was even bigger. Apparently, she saw something different when she looked in the mirror or stepped on a scale. I had to look away to keep from snickering.
Just then, Bertha wobbled down the stairs, moaning and groaning. Her hair was all over her head and I could tell from the dried spit on her chin that she had not even washed her face yet or cleaned the dentures she’d been wearing for five years. “Libby, I thought I heard your voice,” she said with an anxious grin. She walked over and gave her a hug and a quick peck on the cheek. Libby stood there like a tree with no emotion on her face. “I’ve left you three or four messages and I was wondering when I’d hear from you, baby.”