I stopped sniffling long enough to take in his words.
He was right. I had earned a few things in that marriage with Ted. And I had earned them punch by punch.
“One thing, though,” I said, my words muffled by the tissue that I was using to blow my nose. “Can I add one thing to the temporary order?”
George’s eyebrows raised. “That depends. What do you want to add?”
“I want my name back. I don’t want my identity tied up with his anymore. I want to be me again. And I think that taking back my name will help.”
George smiled and started writing on his yellow pad again. “Plaintiff requests that she be allowed to regain the use of her maiden name: Sullivan.”
The temporary order went in the next day and the judge signed it. Opal Renee Sullivan was born again that day. Not like a river-baptized Christian, but it certainly did feel that way.
Ted called me at work the next week and started cursing at me. So much for the strength of restraining orders.
“Bitch, who do you think you are?”
I was so mad that I forgot to be scared. “Ted,” I said, “kiss my high-yalla ass.” My coworkers just stared. The “old” Opal would never have said that. I knew that it was like throwing gasoline on a campfire, but man, did it feel good.
Things would never be the same again.
That evening after dinner, I sat at Pam’s kitchen table, sipped coffee, read the classifieds, and thought about who the “new” Opal Sullivan was and what she was going to do next. It had been so long since I had been able to think without fear that even with the shouts and giggles coming from the bathroom where Pam was getting her little ones ready for bed, I felt as if I were sitting alone at the top of a mountain.
I called my family. Mother was so relieved that I had left Ted. She and Dad were after me to come to St. Augustine and live with them.
“Opal, now that you’re free of that jerk, you can start living like a normal person.” I could hear Mother’s concern despite the sharpness of her words.
“He’s not harassing you on the job, is he?” my dad’s voice piped in on the other extension.
“No, Dad, I have a restraining order.…”
“Well.” (When Mother says “well” it has two syllables.) “Opal, toilet paper has more lead in it than those damn things,” my mother responded. “You need to get a gun. I can show you how to shoot. I used to shoot squirrels when I was a girl.”
“Lena, for God’s sake!” Dad’s aristocratic sensibilities had been wounded. I smiled. He and Mother had been going at it for fifty years. Dad, the child of the black bourgeoisie of New Orleans, was refined and soft-spoken. He was a man of an era long gone, when men tipped hats and didn’t spit in front of ladies.
Mother was the opposite. When you put her into her Sunday church suit and pearls with her still nearly black hair pulled up into a French twist, she appeared to be a lady out for afternoon tea. Until she opened her mouth. ArLena Powell was from a “holler” up in the craggy hills of eastern West Virginia that was so small, it didn’t have a post office.
“Martin, a pistol is a great equalizer. If she puts some lead in his ass I bet he’ll leave her alone.” Mother’s words were truer than she realized, but now was not the time to raise her blood pressure more.
I left them to it. Besides, I had already had that conversation with my brother, JT, long-distance from Oakland.
“Opie, are you sure that you should stay there? Is it safe?”
“JT, I’ve made up my mind,” I told him. My much taller and larger but younger brother had been acting like my protector ever since he could walk. And, to answer his question, no, it wasn’t safe. It would never be safe. I could move to California. But what good would that do if Ted followed me there? Where would I go next? Tahiti?
“What about Imani?” JT asked.
“She’s still in India; she won’t be back until September. I’ll have my own place by then,” I told him, hoping that my lack of confidence wasn’t transmitting over the telephone lines.
“OK,” my brother said in a voice that was sweetly reminiscent of the little boy who had been my shadow over forty years ago. “But you keep in touch, all right? I worry about you.”
I finally got a connection to Imani’s dorm in a small town outside of New Delhi. The static was so bad that I had to practically push the telephone receiver into my ear in order to make out Imani’s words.
“I hear you fine.… Momma, can you hear me?”
“Yes, sweetie, I can hear you. Are you all right?”
The static cut off the first part of her reply.
“… left Daddy!… about time! I was afraid that he would kill you, Momma. And I couldn’t do anything about it.”
“That wasn’t going to happen,” I lied to her. Of course, it could have happened. It had almost happened many times and we both knew it.
“Don’t worry about me, Imani. Everything will be fine. I’m staying with Pam, Ron, and the boys, but I am looking for a house or apartment. I’ll be moved in and situated by the time you come back in the fall.”
“Momma, do you want me to come home now?”
“Absolutely not! You stay there and finish your classes.”
The static must have drowned out my answer.
“What? Momma, I can’t hear you!”
I screamed out again that she should stay where she was and that I would be all right.
This time she did hear me. And I heard her.
“… love you, Momma. A bunch.”
It was what we had always said to each other ever since she was little.
“I love you, Imani.”
“How much, Mommy?”
“A bunch.”
I had to wipe my eyes after I clicked off the phone. Throughout the years of terror and numbness, I had forgotten how much I had been loved. And how much I loved in return.
I turned back to the real estate classifieds. Next Friday afternoon I was supposed to pick up my things from the house. Ted had been ordered to stay away, and the court had arranged for a sheriff to escort me. It all sounded very safe and dramatic. And it made me nervous. What made me more nervous was the fact that I didn’t have a place to live. I took the pink highlighter and went to work. A half hour later, when Pam joined me, the newspaper was covered with pink marks. But I was discouraged. Nothing appealed to me or to my bank account.
I didn’t know whether I needed to look close by or far away. Change my name, get another job? It all sounded as if I were joining the Federal Witness Protection Program. It didn’t sound like much of a life to me.
“Having any luck?” she asked.
“Nope. Either too far away, too expensive, or too small.”
Pam poured some coffee into her cream. “What are you looking for? An apartment? What about a condo or a small house? That might give you a little more room and privacy. The walls of most apartments are pretty thin. You can hear everything that’s going on with your neighbors. It gets old after a while.”
“Yeah, I know, but I just don’t think that I can afford to buy anything right now. Ted’s screwed up his credit and mine, too. And a house … well, that’s probably out of the question.”
Pam frowned and then reached for the huge backpack that she called her purse. “You know,” the sound of rummaging interrupted her train of thought, “I met a woman at Tré’s school a few weeks ago. A realtor. She gave a seminar on women and finance. Investments, insurance, stuff like that. She really had it going on—ha! Here it is!”
The card was red, white, and blue and had a wad of pink bubble gum stuck on the back, but I could read the name.
“Bette Smith … Realtor Extraordinaire …” There was a tiny picture on the card of a woman with daffodil-colored hair and bright red lips. Hmmm.…
Pam giggled and handed me a butter knife so that I could scrape off the gum.
�
�Sorry about that.… The boys have been in my purse again.” Noticing my expression as I gazed at the rather flamboyant-looking woman, she smiled. “I know what you’re thinking, and she’s even more extraordinary-looking in person. She started the lecture with some background on herself. Her family was dirt-poor and moved around a lot. West Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky, places like that. She said that she was the first person in her family to graduate from high school. That really impressed me. Maybe she could help you find something that you can afford.”
I wanted a haven, a sanctuary.
What was the going price for paradise these days?
I called Bette Smith, the extraordinary realtor with the very ordinary name, the next day and arranged to meet with her.
Pam was right about one thing.
Bette was quite extraordinary.
She picked me up in a fire engine red Cadillac with white leather seats and zebra-striped faux-fur floor mats. The vanity license plate read: BETTE. She was wearing a red knit suit (very expensive; I recognized the designer from the buttons), two strands of quarter-sized pearls, a diamond bezeled watch, and a pair of three-inch-high mules that she walked in as if they were sneakers. She caught me staring and grinned, her perfectly made-up face beaming with pride.
“Manolo Blahnik,” she said. “I have ten pairs of these things. They’re more comfortable than my house slippers.”
I had to wonder what kind of house slippers she wore.
Her hair was no longer the color of daffodils. She’d just had it colored, she told me, because she needed a change. It was now the color of ripe cantaloupe. I hope that’s what she wanted. Her cell phone was attached via an earpiece, and a red beeper was clipped to her purse strap. The Louis Vuitton bag that she carried was larger than my suitcase.
“How are you!” she exclaimed in a crisp, sharp voice that blended the best elements of West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and a little taste of northern Tennessee into one. “I’m Bette Smith!” What she really said was, “Ahm Bettay Smith!”
Her beautifully manicured fingers clasped mine in a warm handshake and her green eyes twinkled. “Now, I took the liberty of running some numbers so that I can prequalify you for a house of your own. You don’t need to be payin’ out rent money when you can have a deed in your hand.”
I slid across the smooth white leather and sank into the plush seat. Wonderful.
“Um, Bette.” My nose began to itch. I am allergic to some perfumes and I’ve found that a little bit of L’air du Temps goes a long way. “I, uh, think perhaps a lease option deal might work better for me. I don’t have much of a down payment. Prob’bly won’t until my divorce goes through.” I was being optimistic. I’d be lucky to get out of this soup with my life, much less extra cash.
The Cadillac moved like a panther on tiptoe through the streets. She raised her bejeweled hand with its scarlet-tipped fingertips to silence me.
“I know my business, hon,” she said in a tone that would quiet a crowd at a football game on a Sunday afternoon. “You may not know this, but I’m called the ‘James Brown’ of the real estate business. I am the hardest-workin’ realtor in four counties. If I can’t get you into a house, no one can!”
It was a statement of fact, not a sales pitch.
Her sideways glance at me was steely and determined. I had seen that look before—on my mother. And I knew that Bette Smith had pulled herself up over thirty years from nothing to red Cadillacs and designer suits. This was not a woman to mess around with.
“OK,” I said, acquiescing. “I am in your hands.”
She patted me gently on the arm. “That’s a girl. I will not accept ‘no’ as an answer. My first husband says that I am a force of nature.”
I heard that.
She stuck a folder in my face. “Now, inside you’ll find your financial profile, the prequalification amount, a list of recommended lenders that I’ve personally worked with, and, most importantly, the profiles of fifteen properties, including the five that we’re going to look at tonight.”
She had outlined and inventoried my entire financial life in less than five hours! The only thing she left out was my shoe size.
“I just called you today at one! How on earth did you get all this done in so short a time?”
“Hon, I told you. I’m the hardest-working woman in the real estate business!”
For three evenings straight, I looked at houses and condos. I discussed lease options, buy-back options, land contracts, lease-purchase programs, and mortgage rates. My head was spinning with all the details.
But nothing appealed to me in an emotional way. I was trying to find that something special. Maybe it was going to take longer than I thought. Even with the prequalifications, preapprovals, low interest rates, and budget utility plans, I wasn’t comfortable with the numbers that were thrown at me. And I wasn’t ready to go out on a limb where money was concerned. The restraining order was holding so far, but as LaDonna had warned me (and my mother had confirmed), it was only as binding as Ted thought it was. I felt as if I were watching granules flow through an hourglass. How long before Ted began a reign of terror and I had to escape again? Maybe across-country? I wrestled with the rent versus buy scenarios until my head hurt. Finally, as we started toward the fifteenth house (and this was only the third day of looking) I made up my mind.
“Bette, this is it. If I don’t like this one, I’ll just shelve the house hunting for a year or two and get an apartment over at Hill Run.” I could rent on a month-to-month arrangement there. That way, if I had to leave again in the middle of the night, I wouldn’t be left tied up financially.
“Hill Run!” Bette’s yelp was more like “He-yull Runn!” “Opal, you simply cannot equate rentin’ with buyin’; they just don’t match up. Now let’s stop here and look at this house, and if you don’t like it, we’ll go over to the Starbucks and get a cup of coffee and I’ll see what else I can pull outa my inventory. I hate to see an independent woman rentin’.”
Seven-forty South Mitchell was a Victorian-era Italianate painted light gray with purple, charcoal, and burgundy trim accents. The little house had been completely renovated, and the current owner had done an exquisite job of decorating. The period furniture in the cozy parlor was picture perfect, the dining room was stately, and the upstairs “morning room” was something out of an Edwardian novel. There was just one little problem.
The house was haunted.
I wandered up to the third floor while Bette checked in at her office. After seeing the lavish furnishings on the first and second floors, I was a little surprised to find the third floor completely finished but nearly empty. There were a few boxes stashed in a corner—CHRISTMAS marked prominently on one of them—and an old bureau that looked ripe for refinishing. That was it.
Here on the top floor of the house, there wasn’t any air-conditioning and the windows were closed, so it was stuffy and the air was stale. I walked over to the front window and looked out, not thinking of anything more particular than the fact that we were probably in for another hot summer if this early May heat kept up.
I thought I heard something behind me. Thinking that Bette had decided to risk climbing the steep narrow stairs in her high heels, I turned and caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. But there wasn’t anything there, not even a bug. My stomach muscles tensed. I blinked. Something had floated past me. Where was it? What was it?
Then the room got cold. Freezing, bone-chilling, west wind–blowing cold.
I stood completely still. My fingers went numb and I shivered. My nose started to run.
And so did I.
All the way down two flights of stairs and out the front door.
I stood in the beautiful little English garden, rubbing my arms. Bette followed me, her stiletto heels clicking on the old slate sidewalk.
“You didn’t like the house?” She dropped the cell phone into her huge purse
and returned the key to the lockbox.
“I, uh … No. That house … I didn’t get a good feeling about that house,” I stammered.
Bette looked at me for a second, then sighed. “Let me guess,” she said, her lips hardening into a straight line. “You think you saw somethin’ on the third floor.”
I cocked my head sideways. “Yes.”
“Then the room got cold?”
“Yes. Do you know something about that?”
“Hold on a moment.” Bette dug the phone out of her purse and tapped out a number with the tip of one long scarlet nail.
“Deb?” she barked into the tiny phone with the warmth of a marine drill sergeant. “I thought you told me that Father McEachern did the exorcism last week.”
Exorcism?
“Ah see. Well, that doesn’t hold any water with me, Deb. If you want me to sell this house, then you’ll have to get the spirits out. Nobody wants a house that has non-payin’ guests even if they don’t eat anything.”
I wanted to hear the other side of this conversation.
“Exorcism? Spirits?”
Bette looked at me as if I had just landed from the moon. “Now, Opal, in an area like this, with all these old homes, they’ve seen a lot. Folks have been born, died, killed, burned up, and anything else you can think of in the two hundred years that these structures have been standing. You’re bound to have one or two with resident ghosts that don’t want to leave. Believe me, darlin’, before I sell any of these old homes, I always have Father McEachern do a ‘spirit sweep.’ ”
“A spirit sweep?”
“Of course! I can’t very well go round sellin’ haunted houses to people!”
She was right about that.
“What happened here exactly?” I asked.
The Shade of My Own Tree Page 3