God Ain't Through Yet

by Mary Monroe

  Their silence, and the fact that they couldn’t look me in the face, was the only confirmation I needed.

  “Like I just said, I’m sorry, baby,” he mumbled, looking at me and pulling his lover even closer to him.

  I appreciated a joke as much as the next person, if it was good. This was one of the lamest, most ridiculous jokes I’d ever heard. “This has to be a joke, and it’s a bad one at that,” I mouthed, glaring from Pee Wee to Lizzie. “Pee Wee, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” I scolded, giving him a dismissive wave and a slightly contemptuous look. At the same time, my mind was reeling, trying to find some reason for my husband to be standing in front of me telling me such a stupid joke….

  “Look, lady—this is no joke!” Lizzie had the nerve to say. And I knew she was not joking. I think I had known from the moment I’d heard this unimaginable news that it was not a joke. I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it right away. I didn’t know why then, and to this day I don’t, but for some reason I’d thought that if I prolonged the conversation, it would ease the pain. It didn’t. By then my stomach was churning like a volcano about to erupt.

  I had to rub my stomach before I could speak again. As soon as I opened my mouth, tiny drops of puke shot out with the words. “Bitch, you’d better talk to me with some respect. You and your funky ass are in my house now. And you do not come up into my house talking to me like I am just another aging ghetto skank—like you! Not unless you want to leave here in a body bag,” I warned, wiping vomit off my lips and chin with the back of my fist.

  “You don’t have to get so nasty, Annette! I’m trying to talk to you in a civilized manner! You are the one acting ghetto!” Lizzie shrieked like a shrew. In spite of her bravura, she seemed to shrink before my eyes. Even though she was about the same height as I was, she suddenly looked about four inches tall. I didn’t know if that was because I had reduced her to almost nothing in my mind or because I was hallucinating. If I was hallucinating, then what I was seeing and hearing was not what I thought.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  “I’m taking Pee Wee,” she told me with a snort and a smug look.

  My hand was already in a fist and I was one step from sucker punching that smug look off of her face. “Taking him where, BITCH?”

  Instead of answering my question, she turned to him and said, “I told you we should have told her in a letter! We both know how unstable this woman is. There’s no telling what she might do….”

  Those words hit me like a cannonball. A sharp spasm attacked my leg, almost making me drop to the floor. “You got that right!” I told her, raising my fist.

  Lizzie gasped and reared back on her legs, like she was about to run or duck. But instead of running or ducking, she clung to my husband even harder and looked at me with her eyes narrowed into slits. The expression on her face was so intense I could feel it. It felt like she was shining a flashlight in my face, a big one with a lot of heat and a painful glare like the kind cops used. Even though that hateful look she was giving me made my eyes burn, I refused to blink or rub them as long as hers were still on me. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing any more discomfort on my part than she was already seeing. It was a small gesture, but each time I managed to “hold my ground,” so to speak, it made me feel better.

  “Baby, let’s get your things and get the hell up out of here!” Lizzie bellowed into my husband’s ear. His eyes got big as he looked from her to me. This was one man who didn’t know how lucky he was that he was still alive. In all of the days of my life, I had never seriously thought about committing homicide until now. It didn’t take me long to dismiss that thought. If I was going to spend the rest of my days in jail, it was not going to be because I’d killed a man for dumping me for another woman. I was glad that I was still lucid enough to realize that no man was worth that.

  However, I was not about to let them down gently. No matter what happened now, my name would remain on their lips and minds for a long time.

  “Is my suitcase still in the bathroom closet?” Pee Wee asked me in a meek voice.

  I ignored him as I turned to Lizzie. “Woman, I hired you to work for my husband. Are you standing here telling me that you are fucking him, too?” It was no secret around Richland that Lizzie had led such a sheltered life she was still unattached at the age of forty-seven. “You’ve never had a boyfriend or a husband before in your life, but you are willing to settle for…for my leftovers? You think so little of yourself that you will settle for licking the jar, scraping the bone?”

  Pee Wee gasped so hard he stumbled, like he was the one who had just been pushed into an abyss by two of the people he trusted most in the world. “Annette, is that the way you saw me? The bottom of a jar? A bone?”

  “Yes! And not a very tasty bone at that!” I roared. “I stayed with your black ass because I thought you were a good man!”

  “I was—I am a good man!” he defended, whimpering like a wounded puppy.

  “Well, if you don’t get the fuck out of my house, you’re going to be a dead man, too!” I warned. “Go get that suitcase, pack up all your shit, and get the fuck out of my face!” I dismissed them both with a vigorous wave, but they didn’t move.

  “Annette, be reasonable. This man deserves to be happy,” Lizzie said, words oozing out of her mouth like syrup. “He needs me,” she whimpered. I could not believe that she was talking to me like we were discussing a recipe or a yard sale.

  “Look, bitch, a good ass-whupping is what you need! And that is exactly what you are going to get if you don’t get the hell out of my house,” I warned. With my arms folded, I clip-clopped across the floor like a stallion. I stopped with my face so close to Pee Wee’s, I could feel and smell his sour breath. “You better tell me what the hell is going on here, and you better tell me now!”

  Pee Wee’s mouth dropped open and he stood still for several seconds, looking at me in slack-jawed amazement. It seemed like he was stalling for more time, more time to make me even more miserable. I kept my eyes on his, and for the first time I noticed how dead his eyes had become. The pupils were no longer a sparkling shade of brown. They were now a shadowy shade of black, with deep, dark circles above and below. When did that happen? I wondered. And why? Well, whatever the reason was, it was too late for me to fix.

  “What the—how many more times do I have to tell you? Are you deaf! Do you want me to spell it out on a piece of paper or what? I’m leavin’ you,” he boomed.

  I shrugged and muttered some gibberish under my breath like a lunatic. “Then go,” I advised in a voice that was so calm it scared me. I didn’t remain calm for long. My voice took on a life of its own, flying out of my mouth like a missile. “Get out before I throw you out!” I yelled, shaking my head and both fists.

  He just stood there staring at me. The longer he stayed in my presence, the more danger he was in.

  CHAPTER 6

  “I…I tried to let you down easy,” Pee Wee told me.

  “I don’t believe what I’m hearing.” I shook my head again; then I rubbed my ears with both hands as if that would change what I’d just heard. “I thought you were leaving,” I quipped, waving toward the door.

  “I am. But I just want to make sure you’re all right before I leave,” he said gently.

  “What makes you think I won’t be all right?”

  He gave me a pitiful look; then he spoke in a slow, clear manner, as if he was addressing an idiot. And maybe he was. Something had to be wrong with me, because even after what he’d already told me, I still couldn’t believe what was happening. “You don’t seem to understand what’s goin’ on. You look a little…delirious. And just now you were talkin’ some kind of gibberish. If you want me to call you a doctor, or Reverend Upshaw, I will.”

  “If you do call somebody, it won’t be for me, because there is nothing wrong with me. I can take care of myself. And you of all people know me well enough by now to know that if you see me wrestling with a b
ear, you’d better help the bear.”

  He flinched when I shook a warning fist in his face. I had mauled his head with my fist before, so he knew what I was capable of doing if I got mad enough. Lizzie whimpered and moved closer to the door.

  “I just…I just want to make sure you realize what I’m doin’,” he told me.

  The fact that he was taking his time leaving confused me. And the way Lizzie was shifting her weight from one foot to the other and glancing at her watch, I could see how impatient she had become.

  Since this particular act of betrayal was a first for me, and the most devastating, I honestly didn’t know what I was supposed to say or do. That was one reason I kept asking the obvious. “I got the message. You’re leaving me.” I sniffed. “But can you tell me WHY?” Now that was one of the dumbest things I’d said so far. I was handling this nightmare in such an awkward manner that it made me almost as angry with myself as I was with Pee Wee and Lizzie. “Well, I won’t stop you!” I hollered, rotating my neck and grinding my teeth. I was surprised that he was still standing, because I was giving him looks that could have brought down a giant. “But before you leave me for this—this enema bag, let me tell you something! I won’t have any trouble replacing your sorry-ass dick with a good vibrator!”

  A horrified look swept across Pee Wee’s face like a sandstorm; but that lasted only a few seconds. Before his face could relax, another miserable expression presented itself, making him look even more horrified. This one was so severe it scared me. In all of the years that I’d known him, I had never seen him display so much misery. Not even when he had to be medicated for some mysterious ailment called grippe, and a month later for gout. Or the time he fell off the roof and landed on his back on a rake. I had not met a man yet who didn’t get wild-eyed when a woman gave his bedroom performance a low rating. Especially when it was not true. His eyes looked like they belonged on a creature from a black lagoon. My comment had startled him that much. Pee Wee was the best lover I’d ever had and he knew it. “Now look, we don’t need to go there. I was a good husband,” he said, tears flooding his lying eyes.

  “A good husband doesn’t fuck his wife’s friend!” I boomed.

  “You can dog me all you want, but it won’t change a damn thing. I’m in love with Lizzie and I’m leavin’ you for her.”

  It felt like somebody had batted my head with a sledgehammer. The pain was so intense that I got dizzy and started to sway from side to side.

  When Pee Wee grabbed me by my shoulders to keep me from falling, I slapped his hands away. Then I pinched them. It was only then that I realized how much I hated the hair on the back of his hands. This was the first time that they reminded me of a monkey’s paws.

  I almost laughed when I thought about the fact that I was standing in my own kitchen making a fuss over a man who had turned into a creature right before my eyes. Within seconds, my mind was as sharp as a tack, but my vision was off the chart. For the next couple of seconds the only thing I could see in that kitchen was Pee Wee’s face. But it wasn’t the face of a creature. It was the face of the only man I had ever really loved. And I wanted to slap that face through the wall. If this situation didn’t justify a violent crime of passion, nothing did.

  I knew that if I got ugly, somebody was going to end up hurt.

  I took a deep breath. One so deep that my tongue felt like it was about to slide down my throat. As angry as I was, I was surprised that I was so composed. “You know what? You two deserve each other!” I yelled, shaking a finger in Pee Wee’s face, looking from him to her, then back to him.

  He nodded, “You’re right.” That was not what I expected to hear. He had already broken my heart. Now it felt like he was dancing a jig on it. “Me and Lizzie do deserve each other.”

  “So this is not just a little fling, huh?” I croaked, determined not to cry until I was alone. “Do you honestly think that you will be happier with her?”

  He nodded again.

  It took a few moments for me to get my next sentence out. “But—but why? We were doing so well trying to get back to where we were—”

  Pee Wee held his hand up and gave me a stern look. “We don’t need to go into all that now. The bottom line is, me and Lizzie have been in love for a while now, and we don’t want to keep on sneakin’ around.”

  “A while? Just how…how long has this mess been going on?” I asked, looking at Lizzie.

  “Mess? I don’t appreciate you usin’ such a tacky word,” he informed me. “We are all grown, reasonable adults up in here. You could show a little more respect. I am bein’ very civil about this, ain’t I? And so is Lizzie.”

  “Like I said, I want to know how long this…this mess has been going on?” I demanded through clenched teeth.

  “What difference does it make?” Pee Wee answered. I stumbled forward and I guess he must have thought I was lunging for Lizzie because he shielded her body with his. “I…uh…we already put a deposit on an apartment. Life is too short—”

  “And yours is going to be shorter than you think if you don’t come to your senses!” I threatened.

  Pee Wee gave me another wild-eyed look. “Me come to my senses? Woman, you got a lot of nerve sayin’ some shit like that to me! Especially after what you did with that punk-ass gigolo last year!”

  There was a large plastic bowl on the counter by the sink. It contained cold water up to the rim. I had used the water the night before to wash some Chinese mustard greens that I planned to cook for dinner this evening. My fussy daughter, Charlotte, a spoiled child who regarded good old down-home soul food like it was a cancer, had screamed and bolted from the kitchen in terror when she saw the greens. A few minutes later, she returned and played in that same water, pushing a tiny sailboat with a little man in it that resembled a young John Travolta. What fascinated her about the water was that it was so clear she could see her face in it. I could see my face in it now, but it wasn’t a face I wanted to see, or one I recognized. There was so much anger in my eyes that it had sharpened my vision. I could see the red veins that had popped up in the whites of my eyes around my dilated pupils. My lips were twisted and my cheeks were trembling. I looked like some kind of wild-eyed creature from a black lagoon myself, just like Pee Wee. I felt like one, too. I knew that if Pee Wee and his bitch didn’t vacate the premises soon, they’d have to deal with my full-blown wrath. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t leave in time.

  I could no longer contain myself. My fist connected with the side of Pee Wee’s face so hard one of his teeth flew out of his mouth, sounding like a coin when it hit my freshly waxed linoleum floor. He howled and stumbled into Lizzie’s arms, moaning and rubbing his cheek with both hands.

  “Do you realize what you’ve just done?” she screeched, giving me a frantic look.

  “I realize you’re next!” I responded. She ducked when I swung my fist toward her face, but ducking didn’t help her. I grabbed a rolling pin off the counter and batted her head a few times before she crumbled to the floor, taking Pee Wee down with her. They looked like two mangled rag dolls lying there on my floor. When Lizzie spat out some blood onto my clean floor, I kicked her in the side for doing that.

  “Pee Wee, I knew you were going to bring that up! I knew you were going to bring up Louis Baines to make yourself look better!” I roared, standing over them with one hand on my hip and the rolling pin still in my other hand. “That’s over and done with, and you know why I got involved with another man! You had stopped treating me like a woman. You didn’t touch me in the bedroom for a whole year! What else could I do? But what’s your excuse? What reason did you have to go outside of your marriage?”

  “Annette, I told you I’m in love with Lizzie,” Pee Wee said with a heavy sigh.

  They wobbled up from the floor at the same time, holding hands like a couple of teenaged lovebirds. That pissed me off even more, and I raised my hand to let them have it again. But I didn’t. I was afraid that if I didn’t stop, I’d kill them both. Prison wa
s not where I wanted to spend even a minute of my golden years.

  Pee Wee continued, “I didn’t know it was going to come to this, but it did. And the sooner you get that through your head, the better for all of us. You and I have a daughter together, so I hope we can still be friendly enough so it won’t be hard on her.”

  Lizzie peeked at me from around Pee Wee’s shoulder. What I could not understand was how any woman in her right mind could enter the house of the woman whose man she was taking!

  “And I want you to know right now that when Pee Wee brings your daughter around, I will treat her like she’s my own,” Lizzie declared.

  I must have hit Lizzie harder than I thought. A bruise that looked like a bull’s-eye had already formed in the center of her forehead.

  Shaking my fist in her direction, I said, “Look, bitch. Do me a favor and go wait in the car. There is nothing you have to say now that I want to hear.” I swallowed hard and gave Lizzie the most menacing look I could manage. But she still didn’t move. I gave Pee Wee a sharp look. “I can’t believe that all this time—all of these last few weeks you were romancing me and talking all that trash about how important your marriage was to you, you were already planning this shit!”

  “It just happened, baby!” Pee Wee claimed in a small voice. For a moment I still thought that he was going to break into a grin and tell me that this was all a bad joke. If only that were the case—if only! But he didn’t. He gave me an indifferent look; then he wrapped his arm around Lizzie’s waist and squeezed her. “That’s life,” he added with a shrug.

  “That’s bullshit!” I screamed.

  Things were happening too fast for me. I had just made passionate love to this man a few hours earlier, and now here he was standing in my kitchen telling me he was leaving me for another woman? Oh, HELL no!