by Mary Monroe
Vera sniffed and shrugged as she swiped her nose with a tissue. “I don’t care. We hardly ever use the condo anymore and most of your out-of-town associates prefer hotels.” She gave me a weak smile as she tossed the tissue onto the nightstand. Then she pulled me down on top of her. “Kenneth, I think we can get beyond this intact,” she whispered. “We’ve put too much into this marriage to give up on it now.”
“I’m so sorry, baby. I promise I will never cheat on you again,” I whispered back. “Thank you for being such an understanding woman.”
We made love that night like we’d never made love before.
CHAPTER 13
VERA
I’D BEATEN AND BITTEN KENNETH AS MUCH AS I COULD MANAGE without breaking one of my nails. After we had both stopped crying, I allowed him to pull me into his arms and tell me how “sorry” he was several more times as we lay on the bed.
I had acted appropriately for a woman who had just been told by her husband that he’d fathered a child with another woman. That much I already knew, but I was appalled that he had already decided to take care of that child and her grandmother before even discussing it with me.
After I had calmed down and composed myself, I “forgave” Kenneth. I even allowed him to fuck me so that he would think everything was going to be all right. And it would be for me. I was going to make sure of that. From the moment he told me that I was going to have to put up with his whore’s child, I started planning my future. And it was not going to include Kenneth or his bastard child if I could help it!
Ten minutes after Kenneth had rolled his sorry ass off me, he was snoring like a moose. He was the only person I knew who could sleep through a tidal wave. I covered my ears so I wouldn’t have to listen to the annoying way he ground his teeth in his sleep. A few more minutes later, I took a long hot shower. After I’d reapplied my makeup and fixed my hair, I slid into a pair of pants and a blouse. I left him a note on the nightstand to let him know that I needed to be away from him for a day or so. Then I crept downstairs.
I could hear Delia in the kitchen cleaning up after the lavish dinner she had prepared and served. She was humming some silly-sounding song in Spanish, the way she always did when she was in the kitchen alone.
“Delia, my cousin and his wife are coming to stay with us for a while. Get one of the bedrooms on the second floor ready for them.”
“Sí, Senora Vera,” Delia replied with a puzzled look on her face as I left the room.
I eased out the front door and ran to my BMW that I had parked in the driveway.
It was around eight o’clock when I arrived at Tony’s place, a couple of hours after Kenneth had dropped his bombshell in my lap.
“I am going to make him pay through his asshole! I will never let him forget this!” I started hollering as soon as Tony opened the door for me and waved me into his living room. He cleared off his cluttered couch and trotted to his kitchen with me following close behind him, stepping on dirty clothes on the floor. No matter how often I tidied up his apartment when I visited, it always looked like a train wreck when I returned. Dirty clothes, dirty dishes, fast-food containers, and empty beer bottles were everywhere. There was no place to sit in the kitchen, so I stood in the middle of the floor waving my arms and stomping my foot. “I can’t believe that man! He’s going to pay for this!”
“Calm down, baby,” Tony said. He lifted a shot glass off the counter and handed it to me. “I just poured this for myself, but it looks like you need it more than I do.”
I snatched the glass out of his hand and gulped down the tequila in less than three seconds—and I didn’t even like strong-ass alcohol like this shit unless it was in a margarita.
“Now tell me what the problem is? I have never seen you this upset before.”
“He’s got a daughter!” I screeched. “He’s going to parade her to the world, making me look like a fool!”
“Who’s got a daughter?”
“Kenneth. He fucked some little hoochie coochie bitch from the hood and got her skank ass pregnant. Oh, it would have been one thing if the bitch had had some class, some education, some breeding. I could have gotten over that a lot easier and sooner. But he had to get him some of that nasty Hunters Point pussy! It’s a wonder he hasn’t given me AIDS!”
“How did you find out?” I was glad to see that Tony had poured himself another drink. And I was glad to see that he was already half naked. He had removed his shirt, so all he had on were his pants and they were already unzipped. His crotch had such a huge bulge it looked like he had stuffed a large fist down his pants. I was glad to see that too. I was going to need a vigorous workout to let off all the steam I had in me.
“He told me to my face a couple of hours ago! I thought I would faint dead away! And I beat the dog shit out of his black ass!”
“Baby, you didn’t know nothing about him having a child at all?”
“No, I didn’t know!” There was no reason in the world for me to tell Tony that I had known about Sarah since before she was born. That was one piece of information I would take with me to the grave. That and the fact that I’d been supporting that child all these years.
“Shit! That’s some knee-deep shit, if you ask me. Is he still seeing this woman?”
“Oh no. That heifer died in a car wreck a couple of weeks ago.”
Tony froze. A profoundly sad look slid across his face and covered it like a veil. I knew that he was thinking about his four-year-old daughter who had died in a wreck with his ex last year. “What about the baby? Did she die with her mama?”
Unfortunately, she didn’t! was what I wanted to say. But because of Tony’s tragedy and the fact that I didn’t want him to think I was that insensitive, I said, “Thank God that child didn’t die with her mama. And now I’m going to have to deal with that child for the rest of my life! SHIT!”
“Uh, I know you’re upset, but you don’t have any reason to be mad with the child. She’s an innocent victim.”
I rotated my neck and gave him a hot look. “Whose side are you on?”
“I’m on your side, sugar,” Tony assured me with a hug. “At least you didn’t have to see that child all these years.” He snorted and cleared his throat. “But, uh, will you and Kenneth be taking her in to raise now? You’ve been telling me for the longest time how desperate he is to be a daddy.”
I almost choked on my tongue. “Hell no we’re not going to raise that child! She’s a teenager now and Kenneth will support her, but there is no way in the world I’m going to raise another woman’s child that she got by fucking my husband! She lives with the grandmother.”
“Oh. Well, I’m glad to hear that. That’ll lighten your load, I guess.”
“I don’t know about that. Just knowing about it is a load that’s way too heavy for me. He’ll be bringing her to the house and I’ll have to look at her, talk to her, and act like I care about her! And on top of that, Kenneth is moving her and the grandmother into the condo on Davis!”
Tony’s face looked like it had suddenly turned to stone. “I thought you told me I was going to move into that Davis condo eventually. I’m ready to get up out of this pooh-butt shoebox I’m in now.”
“I was going to let you have the condo, baby. You know I don’t lie to you. But I’ll hook you up with another place. One even nicer and bigger than the one on Davis! I’m going to make that motherfucker sorry he was born. By the time I get through spending his money, he’ll be panhandling.”
I slept at Tony’s place that night. I was still too angry to be around Kenneth, and I was too drunk to get behind the wheel.
I got home on Monday afternoon, after I’d treated Tony to a shopping spree in several upscale men’s clothing stores and signed a year’s lease on a three-bedroom, lavishly furnished apartment for him near Fisherman’s Wharf. Except for our housekeeper, the house was empty.
“Did Mr. Lomax go into his office today, Delia?” I asked as I limped into the kitchen. I immediately went to the refrigera
tor and poured myself a glass of tomato juice. I had a hangover that wouldn’t quit and I was aching in several places throughout my body. After fucking Tony a few hours after I’d fucked Kenneth last night, the insides of my thighs felt like they were on fire. When I was twenty-one, screwing more than one man within hours of each other didn’t bother me as much as it did now at the age of fifty.
“Yez, yez, senora. Senor Lomax go to office early in morning,” Delia said in her heavy Salvadoran accent. “I fix you a lunch?”
“No, I’m not hungry. And when you get the room ready for my cousin and his wife, make sure you put all new linen on the beds,” I ordered.
“Sí. Right away, senora,” Delia said, no questions asked. As soon as she left the kitchen, I called up my cousin Cash at work. He answered on the third ring.
“We need to talk,” I told him.
“What about?”
“Are you ready to move into a better location?”
“I’ve been ready to move into a better location since the day I got back here from the military. But I’m barely able to pay the rent where I’m at now. Why?”
“With Kenneth gone so much, I get real lonely over here sometimes. How would you and your wife like to move in with Kenneth and me? This mansion is way too big for just two people and . . . I’d like to have you closer to me, cuz. I did promise your mama I’d keep an eye on you when you moved out here.” Poor Cash. He was the family fool. Without me looking out for him, there was no telling where he would be now. He looked like a frog and I was the only family member who made him feel special and he did the same for me. I rewarded his allegiance by making it possible for him to enjoy some of the benefits of Kenneth’s money. In turn, he did whatever I told him to do. Last month when I lost control of my car and knocked over a mailbox, Cash climbed behind the wheel and took the blame. His license got suspended for thirty days, but I bought him a brand-new Ford Bronco for helping me out.
“It took you long enough to ask me. I’ve been in Frisco for almost twenty years.”
“Don’t get cute with me! It’s better late than never. Now do you want to move in here or not?”
“Would I like to live in that palace? Woman, do a bear shit in the woods? What the hell is going on, Vera? I’d give my left ball to live in a mansion like the one you and Kenneth live in!”
“I’m going to get one of the bedrooms on the second floor ready with my own hands—and you know how much I hate doing housekeeping of any kind.”
“Vera, you kidding me, right? What brought this on? When we asked you to let us rent a room in the mansion last year, you almost had a heart attack.”
“Forget all that. I want you and Collette to move into the mansion as soon as possible. Start packing up your shit tonight.”
Cash mumbled something unintelligible under his breath. “You trying to get back at Kenneth for something,” he accused. “What’s going on, Vera?”
“That motherfucker had a child with that Lois Cooper, that bitch who used to be his secretary. Now he’s moving the child and her grandmother into the Davis Street condo we own.”
“Holy shit!”
“Did you know about him and that bitch?”
“Who, me? Hell no, I didn’t know a damn thing! You know I would have put a bug in your ear.”
I knew my cousin was probably lying, and I didn’t blame him. He was not about to jeopardize his relationship with Kenneth and lose his job. Just like I had not been stupid enough to blow up my marriage when I first found out about Lois and forced her into that arrangement. For all I knew, if I had handled that situation wrong, Kenneth might have left me for her!
“I know you would have told me if you knew, Cash. I can count on you.”
“That’s right. I don’t get involved in nothing but what Kenneth tells me to do on this job. I need my job,” he stated emphatically, proving my point. “What the brother did was some stupid shit.” Cash was my mother’s oldest sister’s only child. I’d taken him under my wing when he was still in grade school. He had learned a lot from me. When it came to the art of deception, he was almost as devious as I was. Like me, he worked both sides of the street at the same time. And right now it was to his advantage for him to remain silent about his role in the mess Kenneth had created. He knew that as long as he respected me and did whatever I told him to do, I would never “encourage” Kenneth to fire him.
“Don’t be no fool, cuz. Don’t do nothing stupid. Not with the prenup you signed. I’d hate to see you going back to work for another one of them fly-by-night temp agencies like you did back in Houston. Please tell me you won’t be divorcing Kenneth.”
I hesitated for a few moments. “Divorce my foot! What’s wrong with you, man? I’m pissed as hell for sure. But like they say, my mama didn’t raise no fool. I’ve got a damn good thing going for myself and I want to keep it going.”
“That makes two of us,” Cash agreed.
CHAPTER 14
SARAH
THE DAY ME AND MY GRANDMOTHER MOVED INTO MY DADDY’S CONDO was the happiest day of my life since my mama died, and it was also the saddest. Some of my friends were happy for me; some were not. I couldn’t believe how the people I’d known all my life could do so much hating.
“I guess you think you better than the rest of us now, huh?” Debbie Martin asked, looking around the spacious living room in the condo. She and her brother Marcus had taken the bus over that Saturday morning in February just to be nosy.
“I don’t know why you think that,” I snapped. I noticed how Marcus kept walking from room to room and looking at all the new stuff we had. He was nineteen and had been in and out of jail since he was fourteen. His specialty was breaking and entering. He had broken into half of the apartments in our old building. Last year he stole a blue suit from the man in the apartment next to ours. Then he had the nerve to wear the same suit to the man’s birthday party a few days later. But Marcus had a few morals. He didn’t rob elderly people, little kids, disabled people, or his close friends. When he knew of a good thing, he told his thug friends and they did the robbing. I didn’t have to worry about him setting us up to get ripped off. Our new building had a security guard on duty twenty-four hours a day, cameras everywhere you looked, and an alarm system. That’s why I didn’t mind him casing our place. We were on the eighteenth floor anyway and unless his friends could fly or crawl up the side of our building, I wasn’t worried. But I was worried about the way Debbie was talking.
“Girl, I can smell the money your daddy spent on all this stuff,” she went on. “I don’t even know how to act around you now.” Debbie didn’t try to hide the fact that she was jealous. The pinched look on her face and the way she kept rolling her eyes said it all. “I bet don’t nothing but white folks live up in this bitch-ass palace,” she added nastily, walking around the room, lifting pillows off the couch and feeling the drapes.
“So? I had white friends before. You and me both used to hang out with white girls,” I reminded her.
“Bah! The ones we used to hang with was rednecks. Living with the kind of muckety-muck peckerwoods that live in buildings like this is a whole different ballgame. The first time something get stole, they’ll be accusing you and calling you a nigger.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “I’ll worry about that when and if it happens,” I said with a laugh.
“Dang! Sarah C, you done come waaaay up in the world!” Marcus exclaimed, strutting back into the room. “That bathroom is hella cool! It’s so spick-and-span, smell so rosy, I was surprised my pee didn’t melt the commode!”
I was glad when Grandma Lilly came into the room from taking her bath in the bathroom connected to her bedroom. We had three bathrooms now. I was also glad my grandmother had on one of the fancy robes she had bought when my daddy took us shopping a few days ago.
“Debbie, Marcus, it’s time for you kids to get to stepping,” my grandmother advised, looking at her new watch. “You two don’t need to be out in this neighborhood past a cer
tain hour drawing attention. Especially you, Marcus. Look at all them tattoos up and down your neck! These white folks will call the cops for sure.”
“All right, Miss Cooper. Thanks for inviting us over here,” Debbie said in a wounded voice. “This is the kind of place I can get real comfortable in,” she added, looking around the room some more.
Debbie and Marcus shuffled toward the door, and I walked them out to the elevator. They gave me a hug and each one “borrowed” a hundred dollars from me. My daddy had already started giving me a huge weekly allowance, so my friends expected to share it with me. Every time I got with my friends now, they expected me to pay for everything and I did, from a trip to the movies to a shopping spree in all of the high-end stores in several different malls all in the same day. For one thing, I didn’t want them to think I was stingy. And for another thing, I didn’t want to lose my connection to the world I knew best. Of the few people Daddy had introduced me to so far, I didn’t feel comfortable with them at all. I’d met some of the people who worked for him, some of his friends, but I hadn’t met his wife yet.
“My wife is a lovely woman. But she still needs a little more time to get used to this,” Daddy had told me last night when I asked him for the tenth time when he was going to let me and Grandma Lilly meet his wife. “We’ll all sit down and enjoy a wonderful down-home dinner together at my house.” I noticed he always got a dreamy look on his face when he mentioned his wife.
I wasn’t really that anxious to meet the woman, but I knew that the sooner I did the better. I didn’t expect her to welcome me into her life with open arms after what my mama had done to her. But I was going to try my best to be nice and friendly. Anyway, I was a lot more interested in seeing Daddy’s big house than I was his wife. I think my grandmother felt the same way.
“I’ll be glad when your daddy’s wife is ready to meet us. I can’t wait to tell the folks at bingo about your daddy’s mansion,” Grandma Lilly had said more than once.