by Mary Monroe
“Well who wouldn’t be? He’s cute, he’s smart, and his folks are well-off. They run an orange grove in Florida. That’s what he’s goin’ to do after graduation. Go back to Florida and run the family farm with his grandfather. He really likes you. He asks about you all the time. He thought maybe we could all go out together sometime.”
“Why?” I gasped, my heart fluttering. I refused to let her see my face. I couldn’t hide my disgust. I looked toward the street and started counting cars.
“You’re my best friend, and I’ve told him all about you—”
I looked at her fast and hard. “I hope you didn’t tell him about me and Mr. Boatwright.”
“Heck no. I promised I would never tell anybody about that, and I won’t.”
“I don’t think I want to go out with him. What kind of fun do you expect to have with him breathing down out necks?” I said, shaking my head and giving Rhoda the most serious look I could.
“Oh come on. He wants us to go to the drive-in movies. Him and me and…you and Jock.”
Horrified, I stopped in my tracks. “Jock? What’s wrong with you, girl?” I roared. I had never raised my voice to Rhoda until then. “You must be out of your mind! Next to Mr. Boatwright, Jock is the meanest, nastiest male alive! I wouldn’t be caught dead in a car at a drive-in movie at night with Jock!” I noticed people in passing cars looking at me. I lowered my voice and wiped sweat from my face. Rhoda’s face was a mask of incredulity.
“Buttwright wouldn’t have to know. I won’t tell anybody,” she said tiredly with great sadness in her voice.
“It’s not just Mr. Boatwright. You of all people know I hate boys—especially Jock. Him with his tattoos and nasty ways and beer and gang friends. He sasses grown people, he passes gas in church just to be funny, he cusses—”
“I cuss. Pee Wee cusses. I’ve even heard you cuss.”
“You and me cussing is different. We only do it when we get provoked. Pee Wee, well he’s not a real boy anyway, so he doesn’t count. Let’s change the subject.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Anything. Anything but boys…” I replied.
CHAPTER 23
The first time I went to the movies with Rhoda and Otis I felt uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as they looked. Otis kept clearing his throat, and Rhoda kept shifting her body in her seat. We occupied a back row at the Mt. Pilot Theater watching a Hells Angels movie. I hated biker movies so much I didn’t even know the name of the one we were watching. I was with Otis and Rhoda because I believed that my presence was important to maintain the relationship I had with her. It was not long before they stopped inviting me to go out with them, but that didn’t matter—I just invited myself.
Otis was nice to me at all times, no matter how much my presence annoyed him. When he didn’t think I was looking, out of the corner of my eye I saw looks of exasperation on his face. His parents gave him plenty of spending money and he spent as much of it on me as he spent on Rhoda.
It was then 1967 and Vietnam was a household word. Jock was threatening to join the army. The Nelsons, especially Rhoda and Mrs. Nelson, were horrified. Three boys from Richland had already died in that war. Uncle Johnny was the only one who supported Jock’s plan. “The military makes men outta boys,” Jock announced with an exaggerated salute one evening in the Nelsons’ kitchen in front of Rhoda, me, and Uncle Johnny. “Yeah. Look at me,” Uncle Johnny hollered, raising his fist. Rhoda had told me that Uncle Johnny had been dishonorably discharged from the army for sexually harassing WACs on several occasions, then punching an officer in the nose when he confronted him.
For the past few weeks, Jock had been trying to teach Rhoda how to drive. She was having a hard time learning, and it drove him crazy. She told me, “Oh I can get the hang of it if I wanted to. I’m just fuckin’ up so that Jock will be around longer. At least until that damn war is over. It would kill Muh’Dear if he did end up in Vietnam and somethin’ happened to him.” Each time after Jock and Rhoda returned from the Pine Street cemetery where he took her to practice, she called me up. “I almost hit a tree, I almost knocked over a headstone, and I backed into a truck on the way home,” she complained to me one Saturday evening. Otis and Uncle Johnny, who had his license, didn’t want to be bothered trying to teach Rhoda how to drive. She had a learner’s permit and could drive as long as there was a licensed driver in the car, which was usually Uncle Johnny or Pee Wee. One Saturday a few days before Labor Day, she invited me to join her for lunch. I got in the front seat of the Ford with her and Uncle Johnny got in the back.
“Where are we going?” I asked. Rhoda was treating me, and I was hoping she would say we were going to Antonosanti’s or one of the other nice restaurants. It was warm and I had on a sleeveless blouse and jeans. For some reason my weight had remained the same for more than a year now, 254, even though I ate as much as I normally did. Muh’Dear said it was because my hormones were changing. Rhoda said it was the stress I brought on myself over her and Otis. I didn’t know and I didn’t care what it was that was keeping my weight at bay.
“I feel like some soul food today,” Uncle Johnny yelled, his arms on the back of the front seat, his hot foul breath on the back of my neck.
“Sounds good to me,” Rhoda chirped, wrestling with the steering wheel. It seemed like the car was all over the road. She stopped so abruptly to avoid hitting a man riding a bike on the sidewalk, my head barely missed the windshield. Uncle Johnny’s head hit the back of my seat.
“Girl, pay more attention to what you’re doin’! I ain’t ready to die yet,” Uncle Johnny yelled at Rhoda, rubbing his forehead.
She pulled into the parking lot of the Buttercup restaurant located in the same run-down neighborhood I had moved from in 1963. There were several Black-owned soul food restaurants in Richland, but everybody said that the Buttercup was the best one. Some Black people insisted that it was just as nice as Antonosanti’s, even though they had never been inside Antonosanti’s. I didn’t know what to expect. The owner, a man named Robert King, had relocated the restaurant from Cleveland years before Muh’Dear and I moved to Ohio. Unlike some of the soul food restaurants I’d seen, with paint falling off the building and boarded-up windows, the outside of this restaurant was impressive. It was a small well-cared-for gray building with large clean windows and a big black sign out front printed in fancy script, THE BUTTERCUP. Once inside, I realized that the Buttercup was nothing more than a glorified rib joint and could never compete with Antonosanti’s. The brown tables and chairs were cheap and plain, the maroon carpet was so old it had rips and holes and the smell of assorted barbecue sauces was overwhelming. On the wall facing the door were autographed pictures of obscure Black entertainers who had eaten at the Buttercup while passing through Cleveland. It was a clean and organized place with friendly waiters, and I knew that the food was good because on several occasions Mr. Boatwright and Judge Lawson had brought take-out platters to the house.
Uncle Johnny and I ordered combination plates that included pork ribs, pork links, beef, chicken. The only meat Rhoda could order was chicken or beef. She steadfastly refused to eat pork no matter how much Pee Wee, Otis, and I tempted her.
“Annette, you the closest to the cigarette machine. Go yonder and get me a package of Camels,” Uncle Johnny told me, dropping a pile of coins into my hand. I had never bought cigarettes before and wasn’t sure how to operate the machine a few feet from our table. Almost all of the dozen or more tables were occupied. Surprisingly, most of the other patrons were white. Even in a Black establishment, white people and a few Blacks turned and stared at me and Rhoda accompanying Uncle Johnny just like they did when Muh’Dear, Mr. Boatwright, and I went to Antonosanti’s with Judge Lawson. While I was standing in front of the machine, feeling stupid and confused, my stomach growling, a tall Black man in his fifties wearing a pair of bibbed overalls and a blue-flannel shirt walked up and stood next to me.
“You havin’ a problem?” he asked.
He had a receding hairline and more than enough wrinkles, but I could tell that he had once been a handsome man.
“I don’t know how this works,” I told him, assuming he was Mr. King, the Buttercup’s owner.
“What do you want?” the man asked, taking some of the coins out of my hand.
“A package of Camels,” I replied. I watched him simply insert enough money and push a button under a picture of the Camel cigarette package in the display. The cigarettes popped out right away. “Thank you, sir.” I smiled, backing away. He nodded and proceeded to select his choice. When I got back to the table, Rhoda and Uncle Johnny were staring at the man with cold, hard, trancelike looks on their faces. They didn’t even notice when I placed the Camels in front of Uncle Johnny on the table. They were looking at the man at the cigarette machine. “Y’all know him?” I asked, dying to get my hands on my four-way combination plate. When neither of them spoke, I waved my hand in front of Rhoda’s face. “Wake up.” Their eyes followed the man out the door. “Who is that?” I wanted to know. Just then, the waiter rolled a tray over to our table that contained our orders.
“Let’s get the hell outta here,” Uncle Johnny said, rising.
“Why? We haven’t eaten?” I cried, talking to Rhoda’s uncle, my eyes on the food the waiter had just set in front of me.
“That son of a bitch!” Rhoda seethed. The startled waiter almost dropped her plate.
Uncle Johnny whipped out a fistful of dollars and dropped more than enough to cover our lunch on the table. “Let’s get the hell out of here, I said!” he roared.
“What in the world is going on?” I had to run to keep up with him and Rhoda. We had not touched the food, and Uncle Johnny had left the cigarettes behind. Outside on the sidewalk, Rhoda started crying, and Uncle Johnny put his arms around her. “Will somebody tell me what is going on?” I asked, now angry, my hands on my hips. The same man they had been glaring at, who never even acknowledged Rhoda and Uncle Johnny, climbed into a white van at a parking meter a few meters ahead of the Ford. There were some fishing poles sticking out of his back window.
“That’s…the man who killed my brother,” Rhoda sobbed, wiping her face with a handkerchief Uncle Johnny had handed to her.
“Oh,” I mumbled. All of a sudden I wasn’t hungry anymore, and all I wanted to do was go home and roll this information around in my head.
“Let’s get the hell out of here before I kill somebody,” Uncle Johnny said angrily.
On the way home, Rhoda sideswiped a fire hydrant. The Ford had to go to a body shop to have the dent in the fender removed, which was the first of several dents Rhoda would be responsible for. Her daddy wouldn’t let her drive his Cadillac, and her mother was reluctant to let Rhoda use her car. One day Otis let Rhoda use his car, a shiny red Chevy Impala that he worshiped, to take me to the slaughterhouse, where she scraped the side of a parked bus. From that day on, he refused to let her borrow his car, but he was usually available to take us wherever we wanted to go.
“There is nutting I like better than seeing a girl enjoy herself,” Otis informed me. I shared the front seat of his Chevy at the drive-in movies with him and Rhoda one Saturday night, a week after the incident at the Buttercup. Rhoda’s seeing the man responsible for her brother’s death had upset her greatly. She was depressed for the next couple of weeks. Part of the excuse I used to continue going on dates with her and Otis was so I could be there to soothe her in a way only another female could. I could not help the fact that I was jealous of Rhoda’s relationship with Otis, and I did feel bad about it, but I still followed them around every chance I got. It had taken me years to find Rhoda and I was not about to let a boy take her away from me without a fight. I even encouraged Pee Wee to dig up gossip on Otis so we could tell her. He didn’t know that he was part of my plan to hijack Rhoda.
“He must be livin’ a clean life, goddammit! I can’t find out nothin’ juicy on that goddamn boy for us to talk about!” Pee Wee reported angrily after trying for weeks.
“Damn!” was all I could say. I followed Otis and Rhoda to the movies another Saturday afternoon. Because Otis’s car was being repainted after Rhoda’s accident with the bus, they had taken the bus. I’d taken a cab with money I’d earned from going to the Food Bucket for Scary Mary and arrived at the Mt. Pilot Theater ten minutes ahead of them.
A week after that I was in the kitchen peeling potatoes to make French fries. I’d only been home from school for about ten minutes. Right in the middle of peeling the potatoes, I remembered that Muh’Dear had left money for me to pick up some stew meat from the Food Bucket. “Shit!” Before I could make up my mind what to do about the forgotten stew meat, somebody knocked on the kitchen door. It was Jock, grinning like he’d just won the lottery.
“What do you want?” I was surprised, nervous, frightened, and suspicous. He had never come to our house before.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
I looked over my shoulder. Mr. Boatwright was taking a nap on the living-room couch, Muh’Dear was still at work
I let Jock in, and he followed me to the counter. I didn’t take my eyes off of him. “What is it?” I snapped, trying to appear more annoyed than I really was.
“I could see you from outside through the window—”
“Peeping in our window? That’s just like a man! You nasty buzzard.” I was annoyed, but not as angry with him as I wanted him to believe I was.
He threw up his hands. He had on a black-leather jacket, and I could smell beer on his breath. Just being alone with him made me feel faint. “I wasn’t peepin’. Your curtain is wide-open. That’s what I really came here for. To tell you that. One of them sex maniacs comin’ out of Scary Mary’s could peep in, see you, and bust down the door.”
I closed the curtain and turned to face Jock with my arms folded. I had on a thin green-cotton nightgown I had picked up at a yard sale. Because it was so old and I had washed it one time too many in water that was too hot, it had shrunk a lot and was now too tight and too short. I didn’t like the way he was looking me up and down at all.
“OK,” I said with a strong, impatient voice. “The curtain is closed.”
“One other thing,” he continued, his finger poised in the air. “You like Marlon Brando?”
“Why?”
He shrugged and scratched the back of his neck. “Um…I heard how much you like movies. I was wonderin’ if you would like to go with me to see Brando’s new—”
Before I knew it, I held the butcher knife in front of his face.
“Ai-yee!” he yelled. His hands went up in the air again, and he started to back away.
“What’s wrong with you, boy?”
“What the—?” Jock’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes got so wide I thought they would roll out of his head. I never expected somebody as tough as Jock to look as scared as he did at this moment. Especially with me.
He gasped and turned around so fast he fell. He left the house running at an incredible speed. My heart was beating and sweat appeared on my face within seconds. I started to cry. The thought of going out with a regular boy made me sick.
“That was real nice.” Mr. Boatwright entered the kitchen clapping his hands, his housecoat dragging the floor.
“I—I thought you were asleep.” I dropped the knife and folded my arms, then wiped my eyes and nose with the sleeve of my gown and took a deep breath. It had been over a month since my last sexual encounter with him. He had come to my room while I was still asleep that morning and was on top of me before I could wake up good enough to put up a fight.
“You thought wrong.” He walked over to me and ran his hand along the side of my face, then he kissed me on the lips.
CHAPTER 24
It had been an hour since I pulled a knife on Jock in the kitchen. I was still in a foul mood when Scary Mary barged in without knocking. With her was a tall, reddish brown–skinned girl with curly brown, shoulder-length hair, a crooked smile, and the strangest-looking eyes I’d ev
er seen. Her clothes were stylish and cute, but cheap. Scary Mary’s seventeen-year-old foster daughter couldn’t have arrived at a worse time.
“Y’all, this here is Florence Belle. My gal,” Scary Mary said proudly, brushing the girl’s hair off her face. “Florence, this here is Annette and Brother Boatwright. Now you better mind Brother Boatwright just like you would me. Don’t sass him, and do everythin’ he tell you to do. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” the girl said in a low voice. I could tell from the look on her face, she didn’t like hearing that.
“Johnny just left my place. I told this girl here to call him Uncle Johnny like all the rest of the young’ns around here do,” Scary Mary said, looking at me. “It makes him feel good.”
Mr. Boatwright was on one end of the couch with a can of Strohs beer in his hand and a scowl on his face that had increasingly become the demeanor he presented. I was on the other end wringing my sweaty hands because I had just argued with him long and hard enough for him to lose interest in fucking me a second time that night.
“Hi,” I managed, barely opening my mouth. I was too flustered to offer the girl a smile. I noticed Scary Mary’s eyebrow rise, and she gave me an exasperated look.
“God sure is good,” Mr. Boatwright stated, bobbing his head, jumping up from the couch. He strolled over to the girl and hugged her so hard she frowned. I just sat there glaring at him. “You ’bout our gal’s age, ain’t you?!”
“I’ll be eighteen in November.” Florence smiled shyly. Then she looked at me just sitting there like I was paralyzed. “I hope we can be friends.”
“Me too,” I muttered, still unable to smile. My peculiar behavior puzzled Scary Mary.
“Annette, you all right? You constipated?” she asked with concern. She was looking at me so hard I could feel it.
“I’m gwine to spoon her a dose of castor oil before she go to bed,” Mr. Boatwright croaked. “I bet it’s all them crunch bars she gobble up that that busy Rhoda be cookin’ up all the time.”