by Mary Monroe
“What is your problem?” I yelled, grabbing an opened can of Diet Pepsi out of her hand and taking a sip.
“I have a lot more experience with men than you,” she reminded.
“Tell me about it,” I hissed, finishing her soda with a loud burp.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and I’ve learned from my mistakes. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.” Inez started dragging a broom across the floor, her eyes still on me.
“Then stay out of my business,” I said casually, tossing the empty soda can into a trash can by the door.
Inez stopped sweeping and placed one hand on her hip, shaking a finger in my direction. “You make it my business when you ask me to lie for you when Robbie or your mama calls looking for you, girl. You make it my business when you have Leon pick you up from my house so your nosy neighbors won’t see you crawling in and out of another man’s car so they can run and tell Robbie.”
“Let me make one thing clear. When I want your advice, I will ask for it. In the meantime, stop wasting your breath. Leon wants to be with me, and I want to be with him,” I said, holding up my hand. I guess my girl didn’t want to talk to my hand, because she dropped the subject.
Inez was the only one who knew about my relationship with Leon so far. But it wasn’t long before the neighborhood busybodies saw me and him out together and started blabbing.
The following Saturday morning, my telephone rang at six a.m. “You just like your Aunt Denise!” To my everlasting horror, it was Mama. I’d grabbed the phone on the first ring, hoping that it would not disturb Leon. He looked like a man who didn’t want his sleep interrupted. I had never seen a person sleep the way he did. His face was frozen in a frown so extreme that his lips looked like a horseshoe. He was curled up in my bed, with his arm around my waist. I preferred to be with Leon at his house. There was no comparison between his nice place and my tiny apartment, which I’d furnished with odds and ends from thrift stores, yard sales, and dollar stores.
“Mama, is that you?” I asked, whispering. I was so groggy, I could barely see.
“What’s wrong with you, girl?” Mama asked, her voice full of her usual impatience and nerve. She stopped talking long enough to suck on her teeth. “You know doggone well who this is, gal!” Mama hollered loud and clear. My mother hollered a lot, but I overlooked it because I knew that all the hollering she did was out of love and concern. She had made it clear that no matter how old I got to be, to her, I’d always be one of her babies.
“Good morning, Mama,” I muttered, rising. I was not comfortable talking to my mother while I was naked and lying next to a naked man. I pulled the sheet up to my chin.
“You are going to end up just like your aunt Denise: old and as lonesome as a micky ficky. You can’t clown men like you doing, girl! Robbie ain’t no fool. He ain’t going to settle for whatever nasty hind parts you got left when that IRS scalawag takes off.”
“I know, Mama,” I said, trying to keep my voice low enough for Leon not to hear.
“It’s just a matter of time before Mr. IRS realizes all he’s got by having you is a woman who cheats on her man. And poor Robbie! He’s going to ball up and die when he finds out he’s being played.”
“Mama, may I call you back later? I can’t talk right now,” I said, sitting up on the side of the bed, my feet dangling. I could hear Mama and my twelve-year-old sister, Frankie, mumbling in the background.
“You better get yourself sorted out girl. I am telling you that that Dunbar boy ain’t no fool. Poor Robbie! It would serve you right if he came up to you and snatched that nice engagement ring off your finger. And you setting a bad example for your baby sister.”
“You’re right, Mama. Like you always are.” There was nothing like agreeing with Mama to calm her down. “Mama, I will call you later, and we can talk more about this,” I insisted. “I love you, Mama.”
“I love you, too, baby,” Mama said, her voice much softer. She sounded like a totally different woman now. “Do you want me to come over there and cook up a mess of greens? I ain’t got nothing to do today.”
“That’s all right, Mama. I’ll call you back later,” I replied, hanging up.
“What’s up, baby?” Leon asked, sitting up. His arm was still around my waist. He placed his long, muscular legs on top of mine. “Who was that on the telephone?”
“My mama. You know how old people are,” I replied, with a heavy sigh, waving my hand.
“Unfortunately, I do,” Leon said, rolling his eyes. “I hide when I see my mama and daddy coming up on my front porch.” He laughed. “I hope we don’t end up like them with our kids,” he added, giving me a playful tap on my chin.
His last comment opened the right door for me to reveal what was on my mind. “Uh, Leon, I don’t know where this relationship is going, but I think it’s something we need to talk about,” I said in a tentative voice. I held my breath and stared straight ahead. He was taking too long to respond, so I looked at him.
“Where do you want it to go?” he asked. Leon didn’t look half as good when he was just waking up as he usually did. Without his neatly combed hair and suit, he was a fright. His hair was matted and full of lint that had rubbed off of my cheap bedspread, and his breath stank like horse shit. I didn’t even want to think about how I looked, or smelled, after the long night we’d just spent drinking and fucking.
I shrugged. “I am engaged to marry another man. I’ve told you about Robbie Dunbar. If he doesn’t know about you and me already, he will soon enough. If I lose him, and I wouldn’t blame him for calling off the engagement, I’ll be alone again. That is, if you decide to move on, too. And that’s not where I want to be.” I paused and turned my head slightly to the side so that I didn’t have to see Leon’s face. But I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him. I looked at him again and blinked.
“Why don’t you tell me where you want to be?” Leon held up his hand. “Do you want to be with me?” His eyes were looking directly into mine.
“Of course. But are we going to take this to the next level, or is this it?”
“Girl, if you want me to marry you, just come out and say it.” He laughed.
“Is this a marriage proposal? You didn’t say anything about love.” I looked away again, talking now like I was talking to myself. “I love you, and I’ve told you so, repeatedly. But you’ve never said it to me.”
At this point, Leon placed his hands on my shoulders and gently spun me around. “I love you, Renee. I would marry you in a minute if I thought that was what you wanted—”
“It is what I want!” I boomed.
“Well, before we do it, maybe I should at least meet your mama,” Leon decided. I had already met most of his family. I liked all of them, and as far as I could tell, they liked me, too. I knew that once Mama met Leon, she would come around. He was the most charismatic man I’d ever met.
Inez had made it clear that she would probably never accept Leon. That bothered me, but I ignored it as much as I could. Other than the fact that Leon had once been best friends with one of her thuggish relatives, I couldn’t figure out why she didn’t like him. But it was just as well, because Leon hated Inez just as much as she hated him.
And that was one thing that didn’t seem like it was ever going to change.
CHAPTER 10
As hard as it was to believe, I still had feelings for Robbie. But I knew in my heart that I could not spend the rest of my life with him. It wouldn’t have been fair to him, and it wouldn’t have been fair to me. He did next to nothing to excite me, and if that was already bothering me, I couldn’t imagine how high I’d be climbing up a wall ten or fifteen years down the road. Compared to Leon, Robbie was from another planet.
There was never a dull moment with Leon. In addition to a regular weekly night out at the movies, Leon took me to dinner at least twice a week. Not to any of the greasy rib joints and cheap Ponderosa Steakhouses that Robbie used to take me to with coupons, but to five-star restaurants where th
e menus didn’t show any prices. Then, to show off, I started cooking Leon’s favorite foods for him. We both had ties to the Deep South, so we both loved greens, beans, corn bread, neck bones, ham hocks, and candied yams. Robbie was so indifferent, he didn’t care if I fed him cold hot dogs or mud pies. And getting honest compliments from Robbie was as difficult as pulling a hen’s teeth. The few times that I had tried to pry comments out of him about a new outfit or a new hairdo, he’d always said the same thing, “Baby, you look great!” Even when I knew I didn’t.
I had never felt like I had a whole man with Robbie. He seemed more like a half. Because of that, I felt like I had to be a woman and a half just so we’d make a complete couple! I didn’t have that problem with Leon.
I didn’t have the heart to break off my relationship with Robbie in person. I took the coward’s way out and called him up on the telephone. I had played it safe and waited another month, though. I felt badly about it, but I didn’t want to let go of one man until I was sure I had the other one securely hooked.
“Robbie, I have something I need to talk to you about,” I began, clutching the telephone in the teachers’ lounge. I had called him at his job at the gas station. Shirley Blake, a nosy busybody who taught first grade in the room right next to mine, walked in as soon as I got started. “Uh, Robbie, I might have to call you back,” I said, both my eyes on Shirley. As soon as she realized I was talking to a man, she came and stood right next to me. Like me, she was well into her twenties and had never been married.
“Ask your friend if he’s got a friend,” Shirley whispered in my ear, the garlic on her breath almost melting the side of my face. Shirley was one of the most attractive women I knew, and one of the most desperate. She was so anxious to get married that she had already purchased a wedding gown—and didn’t even have a steady boyfriend! Her beautiful shoulder-length black hair and soft delicate features had done her little good so far when it came to men. She had not had a date in over a year. Nobody knew what she did that turned men off. Robbie and I had had some interesting conversations, and a lot of laughs, about Shirley. I was going to miss that.
I covered the telephone receiver with my hand and gave Shirley a pleading look. “Do you mind? This is a private conversation,” I told her.
“Well, excuse me,” Shirley said in a loud, hostile voice, rotating her neck. She waved her hands, shook her head, and muttered under her breath as she rushed from the room.
I watched the entrance for a few seconds before I returned my attention back to Robbie. “Robbie, I need to tell you something,” I said, keeping my eye on the doorway.
“Was that Shirley Blake’s voice I just heard?” Robbie asked dryly, about as interested in her as I was.
“Uh-huh.”
“She still looking for a man?”
“Every day.”
“Well, I hope she finds her another one soon.” Robbie laughed.
“Um, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about,” I stammered, turning my back to the door. I no longer cared who heard what I had to say to Robbie. With all of the gossips I knew, everybody would know about the breakup sooner or later, anyway.
“Talk to me,” Robbie ordered in a firm voice. He had never sounded this assertive before, so it stunned me for a few seconds. “Well, are you going to talk to me or not?” he said, sounding even more assertive.
I cleared my throat. “Robbie, there is another man in my life. It’s pretty serious between us. Uh…and I wanted you to hear it from me,” I blurted.
“You are too late,” Robbie replied, now sounding as weak and passive as ever.
“Who told you?” I gasped.
“Who didn’t? Your aunt Vicki that runs the produce stand told me. Your cousin Fred, who buys his gas at my station, he told me. Your mama told my mama, and then my mama told me. Your baby sister even told me.”
“Oh. Well, I am really sorry that you didn’t hear it from me, Robbie.”
“So am I,” he said, sounding tired and disappointed.
“Robbie, I wanted to tell you myself way before now, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“You are a little too late for that, too. And to tell you the truth, I already knew about you and Leon before anybody else told me. I saw you and him coming out of that fancy restaurant on Price Street a couple of weeks ago, hugging, kissing and everything. I got the picture….”
“Oh. Um…I know you will find someone else,” I said quietly. “And I hope you will be happy with whomever that is. You’re a good man, Robbie.”
“But not good enough for you.” Robbie’s voice sounded so hopeless, I almost changed my mind.
“Robbie, don’t do this to me, or yourself. I didn’t plan to fall in love with another man. It just happened. But…I hope that…uh…you and I can still be friends.”
“I still love you, Renee. Whether I marry another woman or not, I will always have a place in my heart for you. You were my first love, and that’s something I won’t ever forget.”
“Robbie, I think we should end this conversation right now. You take care of yourself. Do you hear me?”
“You, too, Renee. And, uh, you tell that IRS henchman that if he don’t treat you right, I’m going to whup his black ass.” Robbie laughed again. “Bye, Renee.”
It would not have done Robbie any good to try and talk me out of breaking up with him. I was a little disappointed that he didn’t even try. Now I was glad that I’d severed the relationship. But I had no idea that my decision was going to come back to haunt the hell out of me.
CHAPTER 11
The Sunday following my breakup with Robbie, I brought Leon to meet Mama after she and my sister, Frankie, got home from church. We’d arrived at the little one-story gray shingled house that Mama rented on Maple Street just as she and Frankie were getting out of Mama’s old Chevy, still clutching their hymn books. Mama had on a hat that looked like a small umbrella. She snatched it off and started fanning her face as soon as she spotted Leon and me walking toward her.
Frankie, who was as cute and as sly as a fox, stood behind Mama, with an amused look on her face. My sister had already made it her business to meet Leon. She’d come to my apartment several days earlier, interrogating him like he was a suspect. Once she realized how generous Leon was, she didn’t waste any time joining his team. She didn’t know that I knew she’d called Leon up at work two days ago and asked him for a hundred dollars so she could get her hair braided. I planned to speak to her about that later.
“That’s a nice suit you got on, Leon,” Frankie chirped, trying hard not to look at me. To a lot of people, a spoiled baby sister was a thorn in the side. Frankie was no different. “Where’d you get it?”
“Don’t be nosy and rude!” I snapped, glaring at Frankie, wondering why Mama was taking her time to speak. Especially since she was looking Leon up and down, shading her eyes with her hat.
Mama had told me more than once that she didn’t trust men who wore suits outside of a church or an office. “Young man, did you just come from church or work?” she asked, looking at Leon out of the corner of her eye.
“Neither, ma’am,” Leon mumbled, giving me a sideways glance. “I wanted to make a good impression on you, ma’am, so I decided to wear my best suit,” he added. I had told him how my mother felt about suits.
“Oh,” Mama said, obviously pleased to hear this. “Well, I hope you don’t spill nothing on it at my dinner table,” she told him, with a broad smile on her heavily powdered face.
Getting through dinner was tense. For a while, Frankie was the only one who seemed to be enjoying the turkey wings and greens that Mama had prepared earlier. After a few awkward moments, Leon really dug into the dinner, too.
Even though Mama was polite, she kept rolling her eyes at Leon and giving me suspicious looks. When Leon stopped the leaky faucet in the kitchen sink from dripping, Mama smiled for the rest of the evening.
“I done had two plumbers out here, and three of my nephe
ws. Nary one of them could stop that leak,” Mama said, looking at Leon like he had just walked on water. “You, you take a pair of pliers to it, and five minutes later, it don’t leak no more. Ooh wee, child!”
“And it won’t ever leak again,” Leon assured Mama, patting her shoulder. “If it does, I will buy you a whole new set of faucets.” He was as slick as a used car salesman.
Mama was beaming. “Renee, run in the pantry and bring out that bottle of wine I been saving,” she ordered, with a huge grin. “Leon, I hope you like white wine.”
“Yes, ma’am. I sure do,” Leon lied. Other than beer and rum, he didn’t drink any other alcohol. But it didn’t take me long to realize what Leon’s strategy was. He was the type of man who was willing to do and say whatever it took to keep people happy.
Everybody except Inez. The first time I saw him angry was when I told him that Inez wanted to be maid of honor in my wedding.
“No way! No way will I let that bitch be involved in my wedding!” he roared.
His words horrified me. “She’s my best friend. I know she doesn’t like you, and you don’t like her. But I love you both, and I don’t want to be in the middle of all this animosity. My wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime event, so I want what I want.”
“What about what I want? This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me, too.” Leon had never been married before, but he’d lived with the mother of his daughter for eight years.
“Baby, she wants to be there for me. Until now, she didn’t even want to be in the same room with you. If she can get to this point, can’t you?”
“Why are we even having a church wedding in the first place? Can’t we just go down to the courthouse?”
“We don’t have to have a big church wedding. I didn’t want that, anyway. That’s all Mama’s idea. And your mama’s, too. If you want us to go to the courthouse, that’s fine with me.”
“And anyway, every couple I know that had a big church wedding ended up getting a divorce,” Leon said.