by Mary Monroe
“All right. Uh, I don’t think I can make an appointment for today. I have an important engagement that I can’t reschedule,” I said, glancing at my watch. I could have kicked my own ass for not calling up Tony to let him know that I was going to be a little late. I was horny as hell, and I didn’t think I could go another day without the kind of loving I needed. “I’ll check my calendar when I get home and I’ll call your secretary before the end of today.”
I hung up and galloped back to my car. I was in such a hurry to get to Tony’s apartment on McAllister Street I ran two red lights and drove down a one-way street to save time.
He was naked when he opened the door. I was pleased to see his enormous erection dangling in my direction. Because of the grueling workouts my personal trainer put me through four times a week, I was in better shape than most women my age. Tony had a fabulous body, too, but he was not that good-looking. His head reminded me of a globe, and his eyes looked like they belonged on a fish. His lips were so big one of his could cover both of mine. And he had bad teeth, so I rarely kissed him. But he made up for all his flaws in bed. He was the best lover I’d ever had so far.
“Where’d you park?” he asked, running his ashy reddish brown fingers through my hair. I turned my head to the side so that the kiss he aimed at my lips landed on my cheek.
I dropped my purse onto his living room coffee table next to an empty container from Taco Bell and several empty beer cans. “I left my car in a lot downtown. I took a cab over here,” I replied. “Baby, this is going to have to be real quick. I have a lot of things on my plate today.” I kicked off my shoes and began to unbutton my blouse.
He glanced at my hands and frowned when he saw all I was holding was my purse. “I see you didn’t make it to Neiman Marcus.” There was a disappointed look on his face. “Or did you leave the shopping bags in the car?”
“I didn’t have time to go there, so I’ll have to take a rain check.” I grinned, wiggling out of my pants. “I really need to get back home soon. I have a situation with my husband that I need to take care of.”
“All right, then. This won’t take long.” Tony took my hand and kissed it.
“Good! We’ll make up for it the next time. Let’s get down to business, baby,” I said, almost out of breath. I slid my panties off, not taking my eyes off his.
CHAPTER 10
KENNETH
I HAD NOT BEEN INSIDE A CHURCH SINCE THE LAWSONS’ DAUGHTER’S wedding four months ago. I had been feeling out of place and uncomfortable since I walked in the door of the Baptist church on Third Street to attend Lois’s funeral.
Her mother’s cold reception had made me feel even more uncomfortable. I couldn’t wait to leave, but I couldn’t do that until I completed my mission.
The old woman, who looked like an elderly version of Lois, gave me a guarded look before she adjusted the wide-brimmed hat she wore, which looked like a cross between a cowboy hat and a sombrero. The wig she had on must have been sewed into the hat because when the hat moved, the wig moved with it.
She grunted and began to talk in a slow controlled manner. “Look, Mr. Lomax. I don’t know what’s so important for you to discuss with me that we need to set up an appointment. Before today, I ain’t never even laid eyes on you except on them TV commercials. Now, if Lois owed you some money, that’s too bad. I didn’t sign nothing, so I ain’t responsible for nothing she left behind. I got enough bill collectors coming after me for my own bills. I ain’t got no money, so I ain’t about to pay nobody else’s debts. Not even my daughter’s.”
“Your daughter didn’t owe me any money, ma’am,” I said quickly. “But the sooner we can discuss our business, the better.”
“Well, you need to tell me what business you need to discuss with me and you need to tell me now.”
I exhaled loudly and looked around some more. More people had entered the dining area. There were now almost twice as many mourners present as the number who had actually attended the service. Apparently the latecomers had come to get a plate and, I hoped, to offer their condolences to Lois’s family.
Lois’s daughter, Sarah, had joined some other young people near the exit. For a brief moment, she glanced at me. There was a puzzled expression on her face.
“This is about your granddaughter,” I finally said, still looking around the room. “Ma’am, this is kind of sensitive. If you really need to talk about it now, I suggest we go to a more private location.”
Mrs. Cooper shook her head. “I ain’t going no place with no strange man. Now, either you tell me right here and now what you need to talk to me about and what it’s got to do with my granddaughter, or you can get up out of my face.”
It didn’t take long for me to realize that I didn’t have a choice, so I took a deep breath and formed the words in my head before they slowly rolled out of my mouth. “I think I’m Sarah’s father.”
Mrs. Cooper’s mouth dropped open and she looked at me like I had just insulted her. “It was you? You the one that done it?” she asked, rotating her neck.
“Ma’am?”
“Some horny devil drugged my child and took advantage of her at a party one night. She passed out and when she woke up the next morning she was naked to the world. A few weeks later, she found out she was pregnant. Did you do it?”
Hearing the news that someone had drugged Lois and raped her horrified me. For one thing, it made me angry to think that someone would commit such a vile act. “Ma’am, I didn’t drug your daughter and I didn’t take advantage of her. She was over eighteen and more than willing to have a relationship with me.”
Mrs. Cooper blinked and looked me up and down, frowning and shaking her head. “You look old enough to be her daddy. What in the world did she see in a geezer like you? Why did you fire her?”
“Ma’am, I told you I didn’t fire Lois. One day she didn’t show up for work and she didn’t call to say why. I tried to call her, but the number she’d listed on her application had been disconnected or changed. I don’t know which. She called my personnel office and had the clerk mail her last check to a post office box, and I never heard from her again. I never did find out why she suddenly quit her job without giving me any notice. I didn’t even know she was still living in the Bay Area. I didn’t know she was married, and I didn’t know she’d had a daughter. Now, your granddaughter looks exactly like my late brother’s daughter. Because of that, my affair with Lois, and the time frame, well, what else can I think?”
“You telling me that my daughter lied to me? She lied to me all these years?”
I nodded. “I’m afraid so, ma’am.”
“Why should I believe you? Where you been all this time? How come you never paid a dime to help support Sarah? You just another nigger to me, so why should I believe anything you say?”
“Ma’am, I swear to God I didn’t know about Sarah until I saw her picture in the newspaper. Had I known about her before now and even suspected that I was her father, I would have taken care of her.”
Before Mrs. Cooper could respond, Sarah returned. “Grandma Lilly, you all right? You look upset,” she asked, a scowl on her beautiful cinnamon brown face as she looked at me. She reminded me of a doll with her big brown eyes and pert nose. Her thick black hair was braided and wrapped around her head like a finely woven basket.
“I’m . . . I’m fine, baby,” Mrs. Cooper said. “Sarah, uh, me and you need to talk.”
“We need to talk about what?” Sarah asked, looking from her grandmother to me. “I ain’t done nothing!” Her voice was so loud, a huge man in a black suit and dark glasses walked over and stood in front of Mrs. Cooper.
“Everything all right over here, Sister Cooper?” the man asked, looking at me like he wanted to bite my head off.
“Everything’s fine, Jimmy. Go on back to what you was doing,” Mrs. Cooper said, waving Jimmy away. Then she turned to Sarah with a weary look on her face. “I ain’t said you done nothing, gal. But, uh, this gentleman here, Mr. Lomax, he got
something important to tell you.”
“I don’t think we should discuss this here,” I insisted, my hand in the air.
“This man might be your daddy,” Mrs. Cooper blurted out. She placed her hand on Sarah’s arm and began to rub it.
“Nuh-uh!” Sarah hollered. Then she gave me a hot look and stated, “My mama didn’t fool around with old men!”
“Well, she fooled around with me,” I said firmly.
“Mama told me my daddy died in a plane crash!” Sarah snapped. The hot look on her face suddenly looked cooler. “Didn’t he? She gave me a picture of him, and he didn’t look nothing like you.”
“I don’t know anything about that. The picture your mother showed you was probably of a man she knew and he may have died in a plane crash. But he was probably not your daddy. All I know is . . .” I stopped talking and stood up, feeling more robust than I had in weeks. The thought that I had a child had brought out strength in me I didn’t know I still had. A lot of the people, who were still gnawing on fried chicken and snatching rolls like they were pearls, kept glancing in my direction, giving me menacing looks. That scared me. I couldn’t imagine what those people were thinking. Strange things often happened at black folks’ funerals. During the service for my brother, a process server had stormed the pulpit and interrupted Pastor Morris so he could serve him with a summons that one of his creditors had initiated. Two of my rough friends escorted the process server out to the church parking lot and laid open his lip with a well-aimed fist. I didn’t want that to happen to me. “I really do think we should go to a more private place to discuss this,” I said. Two more very large men in dark suits and dark glasses were staring at me now.
“There ain’t nothing to discuss!” Mrs. Cooper hollered, wobbling up from her seat. “Now, if you don’t get out of my face, I’m going to have you thrown out!”
Sarah held up her hand. “Wait, Grandma.” She turned to me with a pleading look. “If you are my real daddy, I need to know.”
“I need to know too,” I replied. The more I looked at this girl, the more I believed she really was my child. She even sounded like my niece and had the same slight gap between her two front teeth.
Another one of the dark-suited men strolled over and glared at me. “Sister Cooper, is this man bothering you?” he asked, removing his glasses. He made the first man look like a choirboy. I stared into the most evil-looking, bloodshot eyes I’d ever seen in my life. His huge hands looked like smoked ham hocks. I was no wimp myself, but this man was at least forty years younger and forty pounds heavier than me. He could have swatted me like a fly.
Before Sister Cooper could respond, Sarah piped in, “It’s all right, Brother Whigham. I think this man is my real daddy.”
“Say what?” Brother Whigham said, putting his glasses back on and looking me up and down.
“Can you leave us alone for a few minutes?” Sarah said in her gentle voice. “If this man is my real daddy, I want to know and I want to know now. Today’s been a real hard day for me, knowing my mama is in that coffin and all. Other than my grandma, she was all I had left in the world. Now, if this man is my daddy . . .” Sarah sniffed and looked at the floor. When she looked up again, there was a strange smile on her face. “Maybe I won’t be so alone in the world now.”
“All right,” Brother Whigham grunted. The hard look on his face had softened, but he was still a man I didn’t want to tangle with.
Right after Brother Whigham slunk back toward the rest of the mourners and the food, Sarah looked at me. “You can prove you’re my real daddy, you know. That DNA thing I keep hearing about on TV would prove it.”
I nodded. “I didn’t want to have this conversation here. Not right after your mama’s funeral,” I began.
“Then how come you didn’t try to find out sooner?” Mrs. Cooper asked.
“Like I told you just a few moments ago, I didn’t even know Lois had a daughter until yesterday when I saw last Friday’s newspaper. I came as soon as I could.” I placed my hand on Sarah’s, covering and gently squeezing it. “I want to do a DNA test as soon as possible. I’d like to get on it today if you don’t mind.” I was so anxious to find out the truth, I knew I would not sleep again until I had at least put the wheels in motion. “I’ll take you to a facility where we can have it done. One of my closest buddies is the head technician there, and I’m sure he’ll accommodate us without an appointment. It could take a few weeks or even months to get the results, but I’m going to do all I can to speed it up.” Then I turned to Mrs. Cooper. “If Sarah is my daughter, I will take care of her and I will make sure you are well taken care of too.”
“You still operate all them computer stores?” Mrs. Cooper asked dryly.
“Yes, I do,” I said proudly.
“Brother, you gots to be real rich, then. Where you live at? Not in the hood, I bet!” Mrs. Cooper hurled the words at me like rocks. “You probably live in the Marina district or up on Nob Hill or one of them other uppity neighborhoods with a bunch of white folks. You want your friends to know about us?”
“I live in Pacific Heights. And if Sarah is my child, I want the world to know about her,” I stated.
“You got any other young’uns?” Mrs. Cooper asked. “You got a wife? What about them?”
“I don’t have any other children—that I know of. Most of the family I have left still live in Houston where I grew up. I have a very beautiful wife. She’s very understanding and supportive.”
“I hope you still think your ‘very beautiful’ wife is ‘understanding and supportive’ when you tell her about Sarah,” Mrs. Cooper quipped. “My husband left me for a girl who was working as his secretary almost thirty years ago. I’m still mad enough about it that if I ran into her on the street, I’d kick her tail from here to Timbuktu.”
I wondered just how understanding and supportive Vera was going to be when I told her I’d had an affair with a teenager and possibly fathered a child. I wasn’t going to say anything to her about it until the DNA test was completed. If it proved that Sarah was my child, then I’d beg Vera to forgive me. If she did, I would spend the rest of my life making this up to her.
CHAPTER 11
SARAH
I MISSED MY MAMA. SHE WAS ON MY MIND DAY AND NIGHT. AND WHEN she wasn’t on my mind, Mr. Lomax was. I liked him. I would have been proud to claim him as my daddy, even if he wasn’t.
Mr. Lomax had told me that it would take a while to get the results of the DNA test. We didn’t hear from him until two weeks later.
Grandma Lilly and I had just come home from church that Sunday afternoon about twenty minutes before he knocked on the door.
Our apartment was located in a twenty-unit building in the crime-ridden district called Hunters Point. We lived on the fourth floor, and every window in our apartment had bars. But that still didn’t stop the thieves. Our door had a dead bolt, but a thief had still pried it open one night when we were at church. He (or she) had walked off with a jelly jar full of coins, a camera that didn’t work, and two packages of frozen smoked turkey necks.
I was kind of embarrassed for a rich businessman who lived in a mansion in one of the wealthiest areas in one of the world’s wealthiest cities to see our tacky little apartment. The living room was only large enough to accommodate a couch and a few end tables. The small color TV we owned sat on the windowsill facing the couch. Our kitchen was just a corner by the door with a stove and a small refrigerator. Grandma Lilly had fried a catfish the night before. You could still smell it and the cabbage greens and pig ears cooking on a stove in our neighbor’s apartment next door.
Mr. Lomax had a big manila envelope in his hand when I opened the door and waved him in. He looked like a high-class banker in his navy blue, pin-striped suit and white shirt and red tie. He had a nice head of hair for a man his age, even though most of it was gray and he had a couple of bald spots on the back. There was a big smile on his face as he pulled a document out of the envelope and handed it to me. I read it a
s fast as I could and then I started smiling too. “This . . . this DNA report says that out of a trillion people, you are the only one who could be my daddy,” I said with a huge lump already forming in my throat. “Uh . . . I don’t know how many a trillion is.”
Mr. Lomax laughed. “It’s more than the number of people on this planet.” He laughed some more. “I’m very happy with this news.”
“I . . . I . . . me too,” I stuttered. I didn’t know what to say next. All this time I thought my real daddy was dead, so this was a moment I had never allowed myself to even think about. “I hope you’ll still be happy when you get to know me,” I said, looking at my feet. We hugged and then we both started to laugh and talk at the same time. “You know, we got the same eyes!”
“Sure enough,” he agreed, patting me on the back.
“Girl, what’s going on out there?” Grandma Lilly yelled from the tiny bedroom we shared across the narrow hall from our bathroom. Before I could answer, she came trotting into the living room. She stopped in the middle of the floor when she saw Mr. Lomax. “What’s going on out here?” she asked with her head whipping from side to side, looking from him to me.
“Mr. Lomax is my daddy!” I hollered, waving the piece of paper.
“Lemme see that thang!” Grandma Lilly yelled, rushing across the floor with her stroke foot and arthritic legs, stumbling like a drunken person. She snatched the document out of my hand and started to read. She moved her gnarled finger over each word and muttered under her breath, like a person who had just learned how to read. My grandmother was a real nice lady and all, but sometimes she acted real ghetto and mean. She had had a hard life and had to be a hard person in order to survive. Just like me. She looked at the paper for a couple of minutes, and then she slowly handed it back to my daddy. “Have mercy, Jesus,” she wheezed. “Uh, why don’t you have a seat, Mr. Lomax. I guess we need to talk.” Grandma Lilly nodded toward our lumpy plaid couch. “You want something to drink? It’s after the middle of the month, so all we got left is some Gatorade.”