by Mary Monroe
“Now that’s a damn shame,” Jeanette said to me in a low voice, moving to the edge of the sidewalk as we strolled down Shattuck Avenue. “With all these programs available to women like that these days, there is no excuse for a sister to be out in public looking like a refugee. She reminds me of my trifling folks back in Philly—four generations of women in the same house and every single one on welfare! Whew!”
“It is a shame,” I mumbled, turning my head toward the street. I didn’t want to see Tina, and I didn’t want her to see me. We passed one another like strangers, which was pretty much what we had become.
I didn’t like to spend too much time thinking about the people I used to know, but I continued to think about Wade whether I wanted to or not. Other than his mama, the only connection I still had to him was his porn movies. One night when I was home alone, I shoved one of the X-rated movies that Wade had starred in into the VCR. Not only did I find it disgusting to watch, I ended up feeling so sorry for Wade. Even though it was a porn movie with not much of a story line, Wade did display some talent. I sincerely believed that with his determination and ambition, he could have made it as a legitimate entertainer if he’d tried hard enough.
I destroyed the video after I watched it. And, the only good thing that came out of it was the fact that seeing Wade fucking five different women inside out on film had turned me on. Jesse Ray saw a side of me that night that he had never seen before.
“Girl, if I’m not careful, you are going to wear me out. I’ve never seen you like this before,” he managed, almost out of breath. He was so tired and worn-out, he could barely get up out of the bed. “What brought all this on?”
My sex life with Jesse Ray was still just average compared to Wade. However, it was better than it used to be. Jesse Ray didn’t do that much in bed, even though he had the kind of equipment that most men would envy. But I never complained. I was so thankful for what I did have. I kept reminding myself of that. Besides, I’d already had my share of good sex before I met Jesse Ray.
As time went on, I continued to visit Miss Odessa on a regular basis. And, as uncomfortable as it was, I also visited Mama and Daddy as often as I could. But the communication lines between me and my parents were still weak. Months would go by without us speaking. They rarely called me up. And, after so many unsuccessful attempts to reach them, I bought them an answering machine. They never acknowledged or returned any of the messages I left. One night, four months after my last visit with my parents, I knocked on their door. Daddy, wrapped up in all kinds of dark clothes, like a Muslim again, cracked open the door.
“Can you come back some other time? We are not receiving company just now,” he told me, talking in a low voice.
“I just wanted to say hi and see how you and Mama were doing,” I said quickly. I stuck my foot in the door. “I want you and Mama to know you are always welcome in my house. And, you don’t have to call before you come to visit.”
Daddy looked at my foot, then back up at me. “Okay,” he said. “Go home now. You don’t belong here no more. You got that good man in your house, and that ought to be more than enough. Now git!”
Anybody who didn’t know any better might have thought that I was a bill collector or a peddler. I didn’t even speak again. Instead, I just nodded and slunk out the apartment building’s front door.
I had so much going for me now that it took a lot to get me down. But I could always count on somebody in Jesse Ray’s family to give me a run for my money. Or Jesse Ray’s money, I should say.
It didn’t take me long to realize that his family regarded him as a cash cow, which they milked like it was going out of style. Two months after Jesse Ray and I had moved into the new house, Jesse Ray’s brother, Harvey, started making regular trips to the house. Harvey had never married, but he’d been living with the same woman for fifteen years, and he’d been working as a baggage handler at Oakland International Airport for twelve years. That told me he was stable in some areas, despite his financial problems. But knowing that he had a job and a woman who had a job made it that much harder for me to sit back and keep my mouth shut. I got so used to gritting my teeth that I started doing it in my sleep. When Jesse Ray told me about it, claiming it woke him up, I just laughed.
“J.R., I need a little favor,” Harvey would say, almost every time, five minutes after he’d entered our house. Then he and Jesse Ray would disappear into an unoccupied room. A few minutes later, Harvey would make a hasty getaway. It was not that I didn’t like my brother-in-law, but I did not like the way he treated Jesse Ray. Jesse Ray had told me how jealous his siblings were of his success. His being the baby of the family made his position even worse.
“When we were kids, I was always the one that Mama and Daddy used to brag about. I was born with an enterprising spoon in my mouth, they would say. And, if there is one thing parents should not do, it is to brag about one child in front of the others,” Jesse Ray said. “And, anyway, what good is money if it can’t be enjoyed.”
“I agree with you on that. But why should other people benefit from all your hard work? It’s bad enough you don’t get paid back most of the time.” No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep my thoughts to myself any longer.
Harvey was enough of a pain in my ass, but Jesse Ray’s sister, Adele, was a real piece of work. Not only did she and her husband, Mel, and their two kids stop by the house at least once a week around dinnertime, now they “borrowed” money on a weekly basis, too. It had been bad enough when it happened once in a while, but this was too much. Adele and Mel both had jobs, but when it came to money, they were the most irresponsible people I knew. These people had nothing on Wade’s mama. Miss Louise borrowed money like it was going out of style, but she always managed to pay back her loans. Even if it meant borrowing from one person to pay back another. Jesse Ray’s relatives rarely paid back any of the money they borrowed from him. I had a major problem with that now, and I told my husband so.
“This is getting way out of hand,” I insisted. “They are not going to stop until they bleed you dry, honey.”
“Baby, as long as you got everything you want and need, don’t get too excited about what I do for my folks. I was doing this way before I met you, and I plan to keep on doing,” he told me. “You’ve just got to remember that there’s enough for all of us and you. You are the one getting the biggest piece of the pie.”
I didn’t like to complain, and I tried to control my tongue when my in-laws got on my nerves. It took a lot of willpower for me to do that.
Harvey was always cordial to me during his brief visits, but Adele eventually made it clear that she had no use for me. I hated answering the telephone when she called.
“Put my brother on the phone,” was how she usually started, as soon as she realized it was me on the other end of the line. And, when she came to the house, she’d strut right past me without saying a word. The only time that bitch spoke to me was if I spoke to her first. One of the reasons I tolerated her behavior was because I adored my mother-in-law. Miss Rosetta was one of the sweetest people I’d ever met. She had a warm, round face, with a smile that could lighten even the darkest mood. She still lived alone in a little cottage not far from us that Jesse Ray had purchased for her. And she limited her visits and phone calls. She led a very active social life and preferred spending most of her free time with her friends from church and bingo.
When I didn’t feel like shopping or spending time with any of the people I’d met through Jesse Ray, or anybody else, I visited Miss Rosetta.
“I appreciate your spending so much of your free time with me, but don’t you think you should pay a visit to your own mama from time to time?” Miss Rosetta asked me during my last visit. She knew from conversations with Jesse Ray that I had practically no relationship with my parents. “I’m sure they would enjoy seeing you more often … before it’s too late.”
I didn’t answer Miss Rosetta’s question. As far as I was concerned, it was already too late.<
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CHAPTER 42
I was so happy that I didn’t even notice how fast time was passing. Jesse Ray and I had been married for eight years when things began to really unravel. For one thing, I had begun to wonder if we’d ever have a family of our own. I loved children, but I had mixed feelings about becoming a mother. And, the reason for that was the fact that my childhood had been so bleak. But for some reason, I felt that I still had to prove to myself that I was incapable of being as cold and remote to my children as my mother was with me.
Jesse Ray had told me on several occasions that it didn’t matter one way or the other to him if we ever had children. But it mattered to my mother-in-law. “Maybe if I’m lucky, I will have some grandbabies that I can be proud of,” Miss Rosetta told me, half serious. “I have very little use for those two heathens of Adele’s,” she added. As much as my mother-in-law complained about the only two grandchildren she had so far, she treated them like gold. I got sick of hauling her back and forth to the mall to buy gifts for those two, which they never even acknowledged or thanked her for.
Last year, when she didn’t send them a personal check for five hundred dollars each, like she did every year on their birthday, Adele jumped on the telephone the next day and called up Miss Rosetta. Adele told her that the twins had been counting on that money and that it was a damn shame that their own grandmother was “clowning” them in such a mean way. Like Jesse Ray, Miss Rosetta was too generous and kind for her own good. I drove her to Adele’s house to drop off the checks because neither Adele, the twins, nor their daddy had time to come get them. The only way she knew the kids got the money was when she received the cancelled checks in the mail the following month.
The more I observed people in general, the more I wondered if I really did want to reproduce. I was afraid that I would repeat history in more ways than one. There was the situation with me and my parents, which was the oddest relationship between relatives that I’d ever known. Then there was Miss Odessa and her no-good, grown-ass kids, who didn’t have time for her. Now I had to deal with the in-laws from hell. Had it not been for Miss Rosetta, it would have been a lot easier for me to make up my mind. But she made me happy because she was so kind to me, and I thought that if my having children would make her happy, it was the least I could do.
The next two years, I fucked Jesse Ray inside out, and nothing happened. I was examined by three different doctors, and each one assured me that everything was in working order. I was fertile and healthy. The problem was not with me. Jesse Ray was always too busy with his work to go get checked out himself, assuring me that his equipment was in tip-top shape, too.
“Well, somebody’s love juice is too weak,” Jeanette told me over coffee in one of the mall coffee shops one Saturday afternoon. “I get pregnant if a man looks at me hard enough,” she said, rolling her big brown eyes. Jeanette, the real estate agent who’d sold us our house, had two daughters and three sons by her current live-in boyfriend, and she’d had two miscarriages with her ex-husband.
“And you don’t have to rub it in,” I told her, turning to Nita Talbot, who had six rusty-butt boys, all under the age of twelve. “Do you think I should take some of those fertility drugs like you did?” Nita’s husband was an officer in the military, stationed in Guam. She was a stay-at-home mom and loved every minute of it.
Jeanette and Nita were cousins who were about as different as night and day. Nita had never worked a day in her life. Her days revolved around car pools, bake sales, and PTA meetings. Jeanette was a career woman. She was almost thirty-five but looked more like twenty-five. Nita had just celebrated her thirtieth birthday. Jeanette dressed like a fashion model, even for a casual trip to the mall. Nita lived in sweats, jeans, and T-shirts. I fell somewhere in the middle. Today I had on jeans and a plain white silk blouse.
It was a big change for me to finally have some females in my life that I could be proud to know. Neither Jeanette nor Nita could ever come between me and Miss Odessa, but it was nice to have friends close to my age, too. And, as it turned out, they liked Miss Odessa almost as much as I did once they met her. They didn’t know what to make of my parents. They had only been in their presence a few times, and that had been enough for them.
“Honey, you can take all the fertility drugs, and every other kind of drug in the world if you want to, and it won’t help your problem. Your problem is Jesse Ray,” Nita informed me.
When my period didn’t show up when it was supposed to that weekend, I got hopeful. So hopeful that I went to the bookstore and bought a book with baby names. I was in Wal-Mart later that same day, picking out baby clothes, when I felt a familiar cramp in my side. A reluctant trip to the ladies’ room confirmed what I didn’t want to know: I was not pregnant.
I got so depressed, I could hardly eat. And, it was only because Jesse Ray got sick of seeing me moping around the house that he came clean.
“Baby, I know you want kids mostly to please mama, but I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to have kids,” he started.
“So? Are you telling me that you don’t want any?”
“I didn’t say that. If we have some, that’s fine. If we don’t, that’s fine, too. But what if you have kids and regret it? Mama would be happy, but Mama is not going to live forever. Any children you have will be our responsibility long after my mama’s gone.”
“I know all of that, but it means so much to Miss Rosetta. And, I can’t think of any other way to do something to make her happy. She’s been so nice to me,” I said, a sob in my throat.
Jesse Ray sucked in a deep breath before he continued. There was a look on his face that I didn’t know how to interpret. He actually looked scared. I knew that what he had to say next was serious by the way he took my hand in his and started squeezing it. “Baby, I lived with another girl before I got with you. She got pregnant and made me the happiest man in the world. I really wanted kids back then. But when she gave birth to a blue-eyed blond baby, I knew that she wasn’t the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.”
“The baby wasn’t yours?”
“I didn’t think it was. Not with blue eyes, blond hair, and skin almost as white as an albino. But she kept going on and on about there being a lot of white folks way up at the top of her family tree.” Jesse Ray shrugged and shook his head. “DNA testing was not around back then, so I got myself tested in other ways. My sperm count was, and is, so low, I could fuck every woman in this country from now on and probably not get a single one pregnant.”
A wave of depression covered me like a blanket. But that didn’t last long. Because the next thing I felt was a wave of relief. I was so emotionally confused, I didn’t know how to respond. I couldn’t even stand to look at Jesse Ray as I spoke. “So … so I’m never going to have a baby?” All of the things that went along with being a parent that I had feared seemed to float right out of my head. But a sharp pain shot through my side when it dawned on me that I’d never fulfill Miss Rosetta’s dream.
“I didn’t say that. Anything is possible. Think about it, baby. Do you really want to bring a child into this fucked-up world?”
“I don’t know what I want to do anymore,” I wailed, shaking my head so hard, my teeth rattled. Like doing something like that was going to help me make up my mind about what I wanted. “But why didn’t you tell me before now? How could you keep something like this from me for all these years?”
“Because I love you so much that I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you,” Jesse Ray mouthed, looking at me with tears in his eyes. “Baby, I have so many other things to offer you. And we can still be parents. There are thousands of babies out there that we could choose from. Will you at least think about that?”
“I could divorce you for this,” I said. I didn’t have the nerve to tell him that in the last few seconds, I had been more relieved than anything. It had been a while since my mother had told me her well-worn story about the forty-eight hours of labor she’d endured to have me, and th
at horror story was one of the things that had me leaning away from the idea of having children. I hated physical pain.
“Divorce?” Jesse Ray gasped so hard and sucked in so much air, I had to slap him on the back to keep him from choking. “Christine, don’t ever say that word in my presence. I love you more than I’ve ever loved any other woman in my life. Please don’t ever even think about divorcing me. Look, I will do anything and everything in the world to make you happy.”
I had never seen Jesse Ray look so desperate. However, he had no idea how desperate I was. I was angry and hurt by what he had just told me. But I didn’t want to cut off my nose to spite my face. I could still have a full and happy life without a child of my own. And, I wanted to keep the lifestyle that I had grown accustomed to. One thing I didn’t want to do was to look back, because I didn’t want to see if my past was trying to catch up with me.
I had no way of knowing it at the time, but my past was going to catch up with me, anyway.
CHAPTER 43
I never let on to Jesse Ray that I was more relieved than I was disappointed about us never having children together. The one thing that we did agree to was to not share this information with Miss Rosetta. And certainly not with the rest of my in-laws, because telling any one of them would have been like broadcasting it to the world. I decided that if I told anybody else, it would be Miss Odessa.
Thinking that I was depressed about the whole situation, because I walked around the next few days with a long face, Jesse Ray whisked me off to Hawaii a week after his confession. We had planned to spend two weeks frolicking on the beach in Waikiki and eating in all the best restaurants on the island.
The weather was so nice, I was tempted to walk naked up and down the secluded beach outside our window, like I’d seen a few other women do. But Jesse Ray didn’t like that idea, so I wore a wide sarong over my thong bikini.