Changing Faces

by Kimberla Lawson Roby

  “Then why didn’t you just wait and come over here this afternoon?”

  “Because Marvin was planning to have them out most of the day and I didn’t know when they’d be back.”

  “Then why didn’t you just wait until tomorrow after church the way you did a few weeks ago?”

  “Because you said you didn’t want another day to go by without me coming over here.”

  “But you knew I wanted to see my grandbabies.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Mattie Lee scanned her daughter from head to toe and Charisse could tell her mother wasn’t happy.

  “Come on in here and sit down. There’s some things I need to talk to you about.”

  “What is it, Mama?”

  “What’s goin’ on with you and that jerk Marvin?”

  “Nothing. Everything is fine.”

  “You sure about that? Because somethin’ just didn’t seem right the last time you was over here. I can always tell when there’s a dead cat on the line because people like you start acting all nervous.”

  “I swear, Mama, everything is fine. Marvin and I are doing better than ever and—”

  “Hi, baby doll,” Roy said, walking in and hugging his daughter.

  Mattie Lee looked as though her skin was starting to crawl. She couldn’t stand seeing her husband or anyone else show gestures of affection, and Charisse moved away from him quicker than she wanted to.

  “Roy, I need some ice water,” Mattie Lee said, and Charisse watched her father move on demand, acquiescent yet cowardly.

  “So, why are you lying, Charisse? If Marvin is still giving you problems, you may as well just go ahead and tell me.”

  “He’s not.”

  Charisse wondered why her mother kept questioning her about the same thing every week. She wondered why her marriage to Marvin was so important to Mattie Lee and why her mother just wouldn’t mind her own business. But she didn’t dare consider saying what she was thinking to her face.

  Roy brought his wife a glass of ice water and prepared to sit down on the sofa.

  “Did you take those clothes out of the washer and put them in the dryer?” Mattie Lee asked him without even looking in his direction, and Roy stood back up and headed toward the laundry room.

  “Now, what was I saying?” Mattie Lee continued.

  “We were talking about Marvin.”

  “Well, all I know is that Negro sounded awfully cocky that day I called and both of you answered the phone. I don’t even ’low Roy to answer the phone around here unless there’s no way I can get to it. Men are like children and if you ’low them to dip into grown folks’ business they’ll start getting beside themselves.”

  Charisse sat at attention, because while there was no way she could relax, she tried to appear dignified. She tried to convince her mother that there wasn’t a thing to worry about.

  “So, how’s Taylor doing?”

  “She’s still sore but she’s good.”

  “Now, that’s one smart girl. She’s got a good head on her shoulders and any mother would be proud to claim her. Which is why I never understood how she became friends with the likes of you,” Mattie Lee said, laughing. “And the same goes for big Whitney. She might be a little thick, but she’s got a lotta personality. And she’s got that pretty face, too. Even prettier than yours, Charisse.”

  By now, Charisse wanted to dash out of there. She wanted to leave and never come back, not for as long as she lived. But instead, she smiled like she agreed with her mother and then smiled at her father when he came back into the room—a third time.

  “So, baby doll, what you got up for today?” Roy said, preparing to sit down again.

  “Not much, Daddy.”

  “Fool, don’t you see me and Charisse sittin’ here havin’ a conversation?” Mattie Lee barked. “And last I checked, there weren’t any men in here whatsoever.”

  “Mattie Lee, I just wanted to talk to the child for a few minutes.”

  “Well, not right now. Because right now, I’m talking to her.”

  Roy stood and walked out in a deflated manner and Charisse wanted to cry her eyes out. She wanted to cry because her father looked eighty and not the sixty years old that he was and because her mother was downright abusing him. She was treating him no better than a slave and her father just took it.

  “What I think I need to do is pay you and ole Marvin a family visit. Either that or I need to call and invite him over here to see me.”

  “That’s really not necessary, Mama,” Charisse said, remembering all that Marvin had been threatening to tell Mattie Lee. “You know that you and Marvin have never really gotten along all that well, so please don’t do that.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I’m just sayin’, Mama.”

  “Girl, don’t you ever tell me what to do. Not as long as my name is Mattie Lee Freeman. You hear me?”

  “Yes, Mama. I’m sorry.”

  Mattie Lee shook her head and drank some of her water. “Sometimes I don’t know why I ever had you. What I should’ve done was had me one of them abortions, because it’s not like you’ve done any good on this earth anyhow. And while I know this ain’t probably natural, I’ve never really loved you. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved your brother more than my own life, so it’s not that I didn’t want children, but when you came along I never got used to it. But then, your brother was the kind of baby everyone fell in love with.”

  Charisse felt her eyes filling up. “Mama, how can you say that to me? I mean, what did I ever do to make you hate me so much?”

  “I only wanted one child and then you came along and messed things up.”

  Charisse stared at Mattie Lee in a daze. She hadn’t heard her mother speak these words before, at least she didn’t think she had, but they were the same words she’d been thinking about Brianna for years. It was the same reason she’d given all of her love and attention to Brandon but barely a kind word to her daughter.

  A tear dropped down Charisse’s cheek and she couldn’t have been more sorry than she was now. She was sorry that she’d treated Brianna so cruelly. More than anything, she was sorry for all the times she’d left her in her crib, screaming for more than an hour. She’d done it whenever Marvin hadn’t been home to witness it, and there had been way too many times to count.

  “The problem with you, Charisse, is that you’re weak like your daddy. And I can’t stand me a weak woman. Now, your brother, Johnny, on the other hand, he knew how to stand up for himself. He knew how to get people to do things, and that’s why that company he worked for made him vice president when he was only thirty-two. But you…you’ll never have a job like that because you far too simple-minded.”

  “Mama…why?” Charisse pleaded, her face flooded.

  “See, that’s what I’m talkin’ about. Sittin’ here cryin’ about nothin’.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Charisse asked, kneeling down in front of her mother. “What can I do to make things right?”

  “Ole stupid girl! There ain’t nothin’ in this world you can do. I just tried to explain things to you as best as I could but I guess you too silly to get it. I don’t love you, I’ve never loved you and it’s as simple as that.”

  “But why are you telling me this now?” she said, sobbing. “Huh, Mama? Why are you doing this?”

  Mattie Lee looked at her viciously and said, “Because I wish you had been the one who died and not my sweet Johnny.”

  Charisse gazed at her mother but she knew there was nothing to respond with. She knew, like every other time, it wasn’t even worth trying.

  Chapter 29

  WHITNEY

  I’D BEEN HOME FOR MORE THAN FIVE HOURS, but it was still taking everything in me not to call Marvin. I wanted so badly to call him up and tell him what type of woman he was married to. I wanted to tattle on Charisse the same way I had tattled on my sister to my mother, and I didn’t know how I was going to stop myself. In a word, I was consumed. I wanted
more than anything to get revenge on the woman who had ridiculed me. And why shouldn’t I give Charisse exactly what she had coming to her? Because it wasn’t like she didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t like she had ever spoken favorably about anyone I could think of. Not to mention some of the wicked things she had done that no one except me was aware of.

  So, yes, Charisse deserved whatever I did to her and then some. And if those words she’d called me didn’t stop playing in my head sometime soon, I was going to take action. I was going to snatch away Charisse’s lifelong disguise once and for all. Taylor, of course, wouldn’t be happy about it, but I couldn’t concern myself with that right now. I did care what Taylor thought, but my priority rested with paying back the person who had hurt me.

  I sat down on the sofa and picked up a fitness magazine that I had purchased earlier at the pharmacy. There was an article about a new weight loss program that I’d already started reading, and I definitely wanted to finish it. The program did sound strenuous, but the results that hundreds of women had already experienced were out of this world. The idea was that you needed to drink at least one low-carb protein drink for breakfast and then mainly healthy protein choices such as chicken or fish and vegetables for lunch and dinner. But the killer part of the regimen was that you had to work out a minimum of ninety minutes every other day, doing both cardio and resistance training. Not to mention you had to walk for at least a half hour on the days in between. Still, I was starting to believe I could do this, and now I knew why Rico had wanted me to increase my repetitions and number of minutes on the treadmill. I hadn’t wanted to hear what he was saying because working out was such a struggle for me, but now I agreed that it was necessary. I now realized that I would begin to shed a lot more pounds and certainly more inches if I followed his instructions.

  And why shouldn’t I listen to what he had to say anyway? Because the man was still showering me with attention and giving me the best sex I’d ever had. And I could tell he wasn’t being phony. He was really into me and he truly cared about the way I felt, and well, he cared about me as a person. I’d been so afraid that my weight issues would eventually diminish his interest in me, but after last night I’d decided immediately that he was being real. I’d decided that it was time I let my guard down and that I should finally go ahead and trust him.

  But the entire evening had sort of evolved without any planning, because when I’d called him from the hospital yesterday morning, he’d said that since I was going to be at the hospital most of the day, he was going to hang out with some of his friends. But as it had turned out, Cameron had come to see Taylor around seven and I had decided to leave. And when I’d arrived home, Rico had left me a message telling me he hadn’t wanted to interrupt my time with Taylor, but if I ended up coming home earlier than I’d expected, he wanted me to call him. Which I did, and he’d jumped in his car and driven right over.

  And oh, how it had been the night of my life! It had been so amazing that I could still picture everything in its entirety.

  “What made you change your mind about going out with the fellas?” I asked.

  “You,” he said, walking in and leading me straight to my bedroom.

  “Then I guess I should feel flattered.”

  “Why? Because no man has ever treated you like this before?”

  “If you want to know the truth, yes.”

  “Well, I really enjoy being with you. More than I was planning on. I mean, you know how it is when you meet someone. You start dating them so you can get to know them and usually it just doesn’t work out. But with you it’s different. With you, I feel really content.”

  “I feel the same way,” I said, and Rico started undressing me.

  I looked at him shamefully, because I still didn’t feel good about him seeing me this way. It was true that I’d lost twenty-five pounds, but I longed to have him see me when I’d dropped so much more.

  But Rico kept insisting that he didn’t care about that, and to prove it, he sometimes asked me to lie across my satin sheets on my back with nothing on, just so he could admire me. Of course, I didn’t like that either, but I did what he told me.

  Rico slid my underwear, the last thing I had on, down to the floor and then undressed himself. I sat on the edge of the bed, but all the while he was removing piece after piece, he never took his eyes off of me. When he leaned me back, he kissed me and caressed my body in every place imaginable. For some reason, we were both extremely turned on. More so than usual, and we both realized that foreplay just wasn’t necessary. It was almost as if we’d been waiting all day to pleasure each other, and when he entered me I knew we were in love. Not just me with him but I could tell the feeling was mutual. And for the first time since I’d started dating him, I knew he was being genuine.

  When we came, Rico rested on top of me, both of us breathing like sprinters. But then, out of the clear blue, tears streamed down both sides of my face and I couldn’t hide them.

  “Baby, what’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I’ve never felt like this before,” I said, sniffling.

  Rico kissed me on the lips. “Believe it or not, I feel the same way.”

  “No, I don’t think you understand,” I said, sighing. “I’ve been in love before but never like this.”

  Rico raised his head and looked at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I can’t pretend anymore. I’ve loved you since the first week we started dating, but I never said anything because of what you said.”

  “Which is what?”

  “That we needed to get to know each other, and that if you decided to sleep with anyone else, you would have no problem telling me.”

  “And I guess I did mean that in the beginning, but that was before I started feeling the way I do now.”

  “So, how do you feel?” I took a chance on asking him.

  “Like I haven’t felt in a long time and it’s really caught me off guard.”

  I smiled at him.

  “The thing is, Whitney,” he continued, “I love you, too. I didn’t know it at first, but when I started thinking about you day and night, I knew what was happening.”

  I tried to say something, but now I was weeping again and couldn’t.

  So, Rico wiped my tears away and kissed me passionately. And then we made love a second time.

  When the doorbell rang, I snapped out of my daydream and hurried over to answer it. I wasn’t expecting anyone, but I got excited when I looked out and saw Rico. He wasn’t supposed to be here for another couple of hours, but I was glad he’d stopped by beforehand.

  “Hey,” I said, opening the door. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep,” I said, and we walked over to the family room and sat down next to each other.

  “So what were you doing?” he said, but his tone sounded sad.

  “Just reading an article and that was pretty much it.”

  “Is it a good one?” he said, seemingly a lot less enthusiastic than usual.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  Next, we just stared at each other until Rico dropped his head into the palms of his hands. And I knew that whatever he had to say wasn’t going to be good. I could see it in his facial expression as well as in his body language.

  “You don’t know how hard it was for me to come over here,” he said, and my stomach started tussling. “But there was no way I could go on without being honest with you. Not after last night.”

  “Rico…”

  “No, let me finish before I lose my nerve.” He sighed. “God, I can’t believe I did something like this.”

  “Like what?” I said, becoming more flustered by the second.

  “Remember the time we were at the health club and this guy Terrance came up and I introduced him to you?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, it wasn’t really his first time seeing you. He was there that first night I met you, but he’d left before you came over to the water fountain.�
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  “Okay.”

  “Well, when you first came in and got on one of the bikes, Terrance asked me if I had ever been with a woman as large as you and I told him no. So, then he said, ‘You should try it sometime, man…you know, just as an experiment.’ But I told him that big women just weren’t my type. And then he said, ‘I’m tellin’ you, big women sometimes give the best sex in the world, so you really ought to try it. I got me a couple of ’em on the side right now, and when my main girl won’t give me what I want, I have no problem calling either one of them with the quickness.’ Then he told me about some of the things these women had done to him, and when he kept going on and on about how good they made him feel, I guess I just got caught up. And then the next thing I knew, he left the health club, you came over to where I was, and I decided to go for it.”

  I heard what Rico was saying, but no matter how bad this got, I wasn’t going to cry over it. I wasn’t going to let him see how much he was ripping me apart—how he was tearing me to shreds with one word after another.

  “And Whit, that’s not even the worst part,” he continued, and I scooted a few inches away but didn’t take my eyes off of him. “My divorce won’t be final for at least another two months.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head and trying to register this catastrophic news flash of his. “Please don’t tell me that you’ve been sleeping with me, knowing that you have a wife.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry for doing this to you.”

  “Rico, just go, okay,” I said, with tears flowing because I could no longer prevent it.

  “Whit, please don’t do this. I’m sorry for what I did, but when I told you last night that I was in love with you, I meant it. Yes, this thing started out as some stupid experiment, but as time went on I really started to care about you. I mean, you have to know that from the way I’ve spent all my time with you.”

  “And that’s supposed to make everything okay?”

  “No. But what I’m saying is that I really want us to be together and that’s why I decided to come clean about my original intentions. I didn’t want what we have to be based on a lie.”