by Mary Monroe
CHAPTER 39
“This Jesse Ray sure enough sounds like a good man. And probably the best a girl like you can do.” Mama paused and looked me up and down, frowning, squinting her eyes, and shaking her head. “You ain’t no Janet Jackson, but you look better than some of these girls around here.” She turned her head but not fast enough. I caught a slight grin on her face. Neither of my parents had a sense of humor. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen either one of them laugh at anything. Mama looked at me again with that stern look back on her face. “Me, I say you better snatch him up before he gets away.”
This was one of the few times in my life that my mother had shown an interest in my social life. I was still in a state of shock over her and Daddy showing up at my graduation. But just like the smile she had not been able to hide from me, her true feelings were beginning to come through, anyway. That’s why I was able to ignore Mama’s “put-down” about my looks.
We stood side by side in the kitchen, where Mama spent most of her time when she wasn’t working for Mr. Bloom. She was chopping onions with a dull knife, ignoring the tears streaming down the sides of her face. The fumes from the onions were so potent, they made me cry, too.
“Too bad I can’t be as lucky as you,” I teased, not knowing how Mama was going to react to my statement. Every now and then, I tried to forget how bizarre my relationship with my parents was.
Mama gasped and wobbled against the counter. When she composed herself, she gave me a look that was so sharp, I felt it. My face actually stung. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked in a hoarse voice. Her breath, drifting into my face, was hot and sour from the onions and other exotic tidbits that she’d been nibbling on. With that and the sting of her sharp words, I almost wobbled against the counter myself.
“I don’t think I’ll find a man like Daddy,” I replied, looking away because I didn’t want to see what kind of expression she offered this time.
“You sure won’t,” she muttered. “Not on this planet. If this Jesse Ray boy is kind to you, be kind to him and you’ll be fine. Treat him the same way you would treat a dog you love, and he won’t complain. Happy dogs don’t complain or stray.” My mind flashed on that time I’d seen Mama in bed with another man. If my daddy had been a happy man back then, I could not imagine what he could have done for her to end up in the arms of another man. She must have read my mind. “Too bad it doesn’t go both ways. The only woman a man truly respects is his mama.” Mama lifted her chin and nodded at me, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “Always remember that.”
Mama gave me a quick nod, which usually meant the conversation was over. But I had more to say, and now was as good a time as any to say it. For the first time in my life, I felt important to somebody other than myself. I’d never felt important to my parents or the many fly-by-night boys I’d gotten high with and fucked for no other reason than them asking. Besides returning to school and getting my diploma, hooking up with Jesse Ray had been the best move I’d ever made in my life.
I didn’t like the direction that Mama had taken the conversation, so I took a slight detour. “Jesse Ray asked me to marry him last night,” I announced abruptly. “But there are a couple of problems,” I mumbled, wiping my eyes and face with the back of my hand. “He wants me to sign a prenuptial agreement.”
Mama’s mouth dropped open, and the knife almost slipped out of her hand. “How bad is it?” she asked, with a cough. She finally brushed off some of the tears on her face as she chomped on a wedge of onion.
I shrugged and blinked at Mama. “If I divorce him, I get a little money for a year. Not much.”
“You call that a problem? If I was a self-made man like he is, I’d want to protect my interests, too. Next?”
“Ma’am?”
“What’s the next problem?” Mama asked, turning her attention back to the onions on the counter.
“I might have a few problems with his family,” I said, frowning. “They have their own jobs and homes and stuff, but they depend on him for a lot. I don’t know if I can deal with that.”
Mama let out a heavy sigh and gave me a pitiful look. “Girl, that’s what some families do. Don’t worry about them until you have to.”
“There’s something else … I don’t even know if I love him,” I admitted.
“Love?” Mama threw her head back and laughed. No, she howled. She had to wipe tears and snot off her face with the tail of her apron. I gave her an amused look because I didn’t know how else to react. It was funny to see her laugh. The skin around her mouth and eyes looked like it was going to crack. But then she got serious again. “Look, girl, love is nothing but a four-letter word. Just like hell. Love can’t pay your bills.”
“But Jesse Ray loves me,” I said. “That’s why he wants to marry me.”
“Phttttt!” Mama snapped, giving me a look that was a cross between pity and anger. “Security is what’s important in this life,” she insisted. A frightened look slid across her face and covered it like a mask.
“What about family?” I asked.
“What about it?” Mama looked away and started talking to me over her shoulder.
“Family is very important to me,” I said, hoping that I was opening a door for her to enter.
She turned to me, with more tears in her eyes. “Like I said, security is the most important thing in this life.” As if on cue, Daddy shuffled into the kitchen, already in his sleeping attire.
“This girl says that boy wants to marry up with her,” Mama told Daddy.
“What boy?” Daddy asked, looking at me like I was a stranger. He wore a drab floor-length housecoat over a pair of plaid pajamas with legs so long, they dragged on the floor. The years had not been kind to my parents. Deep lines ran the length of their faces, and large liver-colored spots covered their hands.
“Jesse Ray, Daddy,” I said. “Jesse Ray Thurman.”
Daddy looked from Mama to me and shrugged. Then he rolled his eyes and scratched the side of his head. It was obvious that he had no idea who we were talking about.
“Rosetta’s boy,” Mama said in a stiff voice. “He wants to marry this girl.”
Daddy shot me a hot look. Then he squinted and shaded his eyes with his hand and stared at me so hard, I squirmed. “Oh, do you have a boyfriend?” he asked, looking surprised. I was surprised, too. Jesse Ray had been to the house several times and had had conversations with both my parents. “Well, I hope you treat him good so he’ll stay with you.” As hard as my daddy tried to hide his feelings from me, he got careless every now and then. Like now. Just like Mama a few moments earlier. His eyes blinked a few times, and he tried to keep his lips together, but it didn’t work this time. Even though the weak smile didn’t stay on his face but a few seconds, that was long enough for me.
“I will, Daddy,” I said, glad to see a smile on my daddy’s face for a change instead of the usual blank expression. It was an awkward moment for all of us. Mama and Daddy stood in front of me like statues. When I lunged at Daddy and hugged him, he almost fell to the floor. Mama’s eyes got wide, and she moved back a step when I turned to hug her, but she opened her arms and hugged me back. As soon as that emotional moment was over, Mama went back to what she was doing, and Daddy snatched open the refrigerator and fished out a beer, then went back into the living room. And I got ready for my date with Jesse Ray.
Compared to Wade, Jesse Ray was a knight in shining armor. But on a warm afternoon in June, as I stood in front of a white-haired, red-faced preacher in a cute little chapel in Reno, about to become Jesse Ray’s wife, Wade was the one on my mind.
CHAPTER 40
As a married woman, I felt like a totally different person. I still visited and called Miss Odessa when I could, and I kept in touch with my parents. And that was not easy. I’d been married for two months before I was able to catch up with them and invite them to see the condo I’d moved into with Jesse Ray. Miss Odessa had already let me bring her over for a few visits, a
nd she’d been more excited than I was about me moving into such a nice building in a neighborhood with nothing but professional people.
“And you say you got a doctor and a lawyer in this building?” she’d exclaimed on her last visit, stumbling from one room to another in awe. Even though she’d seen everything more than once already, each time she visited, she acted like she was seeing it all for the first time. “Well, if I fall out up in here and bust up my hip, you run get the doctor downstairs and the lawyer upstairs,” she laughed, giving me another one of her bear hugs. “I am so happy for you, baby,” she added, with a sniff, looking around my spacious living room. She gasped when she saw my extensive library. One of the six shelves contained a set of encyclopedias. “And I am happy you keeping up with your reading. It’s one of the most enriching hobbies a girl like you can have,” she told me.
“I have you to thank for that,” I admitted. And it was true. Had she not been there across the hall from me when I was younger, with all those magazines and that incomplete set of encyclopedias for me to bury my head in, I might not have ended up where I was now. All that reading had a lot to do with me developing more constructive interests.
I was feeling so good after I drove Miss Odessa home that I slipped a note under my parents’ door and invited them to come for a visit. To my surprise, they showed up the following evening, coming by straight after Mama left work at Mr. Bloom’s house.
“We can’t stay long,” Mama told me as she and Daddy entered the living room, looking as grim as ever. It was warm outside, but they both had on long dark coats, and it looked like they had on several layers of clothes under the coats. Mama wore a flowered scarf wrapped around her head like a turban. Daddy had on a wide-brimmed black hat, with a stocking cap on under that. They both wore the same dark, severe-looking shoes with toes so pointed, they looked like missiles. With a few adjustments, they could have passed for Muslims.
They looked out of place in the living room, which I’d recently redecorated with new furniture, all in various shades of gold. Mama couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off of my thick brocade drapes and the thick carpets. As soon as I’d hinted to Jesse Ray that his place needed a woman’s touch, he’d slapped a credit card in my hand and told me to do whatever I wanted to do as long as it made me happy. “This place don’t even look lived in,” Mama remarked. I could never tell when she was making a rude statement, lodging a complaint, or paying a compliment.
“Oh, but there is a lot of life between these walls,” Jesse Ray said, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had followed Mama’s comment. “Now … I hope you two can stay long enough to have a few drinks,” Jesse Ray said, rising from the La-Z-Boy facing the sofa, where Mama and Daddy had dropped down, still bundled up in their coats. Despite the fact that Mama and Daddy seemed so indifferent toward Jesse Ray, he always greeted them with a smile.
“I was just about to fix myself and Christine some very large drinks, rum and Coke,” Jesse Ray said, dancing a jig. “What can I fix for you two fine folks?” he asked, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s get this party started,” he sang. He motioned toward the new entertainment center I had purchased, across the room, next to a television with a sixty-inch screen. “What kind of music do you folks want to hear? I got something for everybody, gospel, reggae, jazz. I’ve even got a few blues tapes around here.”
Mama looked at Daddy, and then they both looked at Jesse Ray. The expression on Daddy’s face remained the same. He looked as stiff as a tree. But Mama’s mouth dropped open, and she was clearly horrified. “I don’t know what kind of mess this girl’s been feeding you about us, but we don’t party,” she insisted. “But we’ll take them drinks. A beer for Reuben. Onion soup for me,” Mama said, with a sniff. I looked away when she shot me a look of contempt. “Girl, I hope you don’t spend your time partying. I think you done enough of that when you were younger.”
“My party days are over,” I muttered. “All I care about now is making my husband happy. Uh, we don’t have any beer in the house, and we certainly don’t have any onion soup, but we can sure get some for you,” I said, looking at Jesse Ray, with a pleading look on my face.
He didn’t hesitate to respond the way I wanted him to. “Well, it’ll take me just a few minutes to run over to Andronico’s to get some beer and the soup,” he said, already moving across the floor to get his car keys.
I waited until he left before I initiated a conversation. “I’m glad you both finally came over here,” I said, easing down on the wing chair facing the sofa. “Would you like to see the rest of the place?” I asked, looking around the room, beaming like a lighthouse.
Mama and Daddy looked at each other again. “Just lead me to the toilet,” Daddy said, with a cough.
“Me, I’d like to see where you cook and sleep,” Mama said, rising. She didn’t like the large bed in the master bedroom, whispering to me that it was proof that Jesse Ray was the dog she thought he was. “Men like a big playground to do their business,” she added. “But you can nip that in the bud by making him sleep on the sofa from time to time. After a while that’s the only place he’ll want to sleep. Your daddy, he won’t leave his sofa now to go to heaven.” I laughed, and as much as Mama tried not to, she did, too.
She thought the kitchen was too big, too, but she didn’t say why.
“Mama, I hope you and Daddy will come visit on a regular basis. You are the only family I have,” I said, getting misty-eyed.
“Pfft!” Mama replied, giving me a dismissive wave. “Your man is your family now. We are just part of your background. Point me back to that living room so I can sit down before I fall down.”
The beer loosened Daddy up a little. He smiled a few times, even laughed at some joke Jesse Ray repeated that he’d heard from his brother, Harvey. Mama sucked up her onion soup so fast and enjoyed it so much, Jesse Ray had to run out and get her some more. It turned out to be a pleasant evening. Even though Mama and Daddy never removed their coats.
The next few times I took it upon myself to visit my parents, they were as remote and distant as ever. Mama even suggested that I not come to the apartment unless I called first. I called a few weeks later just to see how she was doing, and the first thing that came out of her mouth was, “This is not a good time. Call back later.” After hearing that or something like that the last four times I called, I decided to stop calling for a while. When I visited Miss Odessa across the hall, I didn’t even bother to knock on my parents’ door.
CHAPTER 41
Being married to Jesse Ray was more than I expected. Much more. I was so happy, there were times that I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I didn’t have to work, and one of the things he put his foot down about during the first year of my marriage was for me to give up my job at the video store. “Baby, you know I can’t keep my hands off of you in public, so you’d be doing me a favor by terminating your employment,” he’d said, with a grin. I quit my job without hesitation. I was sick of being there, anyway, stocking movie videos and dealing with rude customers. I had much more fun spending my days at the mall, shopping up a storm with platinum credit cards with limits so high, I never had to worry about going over. Jesse Ray was the most generous man I’d ever met. Unfortunately, he was the same way with everybody. And, that turned out to be the first thorn in the side of my new life.
It seemed like people sat around waiting their turn to approach Jesse Ray with one tale of financial woe after another. I lost count of the number of his so-called friends who seemed to drop in out of the sky, but only when they needed some “financial assistance.” Given that I was one of the people in that line, needing this or that from Jesse Ray myself, I didn’t feel it was my place to interfere. But Miss Odessa thought it was.
“Girl, if anybody got a right to grab Jesse Ray and shake some sense into his head, it’s you. At the rate he’s doling out his hard-earned money, he’s going to end up in the poorhouse and take you with him,” she told me in a stern voice.
“I can’t tell him what to do with his money,” I wailed, sorry now that I’d shared this information with Miss Odessa.
“The hell you can’t. He’s your husband, and I don’t care about no prenup or nothing else. What’s his is yours as long as you stay with him!”
I’d been poor most of my life, and it was a condition I never wanted to experience again. Even though I didn’t like all the money Jesse Ray was handing out like candy to other folks, I decided to keep my mouth shut for as long as I could. I didn’t want to start up something that might backfire. If I talked him out of being so generous to everybody else, there was a possibility that he’d eventually include me in that sweep. I was not ready for a smackdown like that. It had taken me too long to get to where I was.
I was on a long-ass gravy train, and I was enjoying the ride. And, the best part of the ride on that train was that I was in the first car, in a seat next to the conductor. I had more credit cards than I knew what to do with. Within a year I had everything I’d ever wanted: a beautiful four-bedroom house in the affluent Berkeley Hills, a wardrobe fit for a film star, and my own vehicle. Jesse Ray had a lot of friends, both male and female. And, it was not long before I had a whole new set of girlfriends to hang around with. And, these were respectable women with good jobs and strong values.
One day I went to finish my Christmas shopping downtown with one of my closest new female friends. Jeanette Harrison was the ex-wife of Jesse Ray’s financial adviser. Walking toward us, moving like she was in pain, was Tina from the old neighborhood. Girlfriend had on some wrinkled, soiled, ill-fitting clothes and a coat that I wouldn’t put on a scarecrow. Not only was Tina pregnant, she had two children, both in diapers and howling like wolves, clinging to her. She looked so dowdy, I almost didn’t recognize her. And, with my expensive clothes and chic hairdo, she didn’t even recognize me at all.