In Sheep's Clothing

by Mary Monroe

  Daddy wasn’t as strong as he thought he was. Three years ago on a Saturday night he had to go to the hospital with what he claimed was a heart attack. It had been brought on by a situation that a lot of people would have ignored. That morning, before we went to open up the store, a dusty moving van had pulled up and parked in front of the little beige stucco house next door to ours. Up until that point a quiet elderly couple had occupied the dwelling. They moved to Oregon, hoping to get away from the crime-filled streets of California.

  Just as Daddy and I pulled out of our driveway about a dozen loud Harley-Davidson motorcycles roared down our street and stopped in front of the moving van. Longhaired, rough-looking white men jumped off of the motorcycles and started unloading bulging boxes and battered furniture from the van.

  “Oh, no they ain’t!” Daddy hollered, his eyes bugged out like they were about to pop out of his head. “I know ain’t no bikers movin’ up into this neighborhood to finish drivin’ everybody crazy!”

  But that was the case. Lawrence “Spider” Smythe, a bona fide Hell’s Angel, became our new neighbor. Daddy was horrified. He raised such a fuss, he collapsed a few hours later. He stayed in the hospital overnight and came home with all kinds of pills. “If I got to live next door to them scalawags, I’m gwine to stay medicated until the day I die, or the day they move,” Daddy vowed.

  Within days bikers by the dozens invaded our neighborhood, parking their Harleys on the street, in the new neighbor’s driveway, and even on his lawn. People hung out of their windows, some peering through binoculars. Everybody was too afraid to say or do anything that might be interpreted as an act of aggression. Nobody in their right mind would do anything to provoke the Hell’s Angels.

  Spider, with a long stiff ponytail hanging off the back of his head like a brown snake, surprised everybody when he promptly went around the neighborhood introducing himself to anybody who was brave enough to open their door. Bikers were as common on our block as a flock of priests. I gave Spider a sincere welcome and I think it helped warm the chilly reception that Daddy had offered with a frightened and suspicious look on his face.

  Spider’s race was not an issue; there were White folks already in the neighborhood. What concerned Daddy, and other people on our street, was the fact that Spider was a member of one of the most notorious groups of people in the country. Tattoos that included a snake with its mouth stretched open, a big-breasted woman, a dagger with blood on its tip, and a skull covered Spider’s muscular, weather-beaten arms and hairy chest. “I hope we can become friends, dude,” Spider said in a gentle but raspy voice as he shook Daddy’s limp hand. I stood behind and off to the side of Spider, giving Daddy stern looks. I felt like a parent secretly encouraging a reluctant child to welcome and accept the new, but ugly, kid to the block.

  Spider’s friendly gesture caught Daddy completely off guard. “Well, as long as y’all don’t start no mess, won’t be no mess,” Daddy responded. To my surprise, and to Daddy’s relief, the bikers were a quiet bunch who kept to themselves. Instead of boasting about all the outlaw activities that the bikers were famous for, Spider bragged to Daddy about his job as a construction worker. But Daddy literally glowed when Spider talked about his grown daughter who was, of all things, a grade school teacher. The fact that a man like Spider thought so much of his daughter was all it took to win Daddy over.

  Daddy started bragging so much about me to Spider in my presence it embarrassed me to the point where I had to leave the room. Daddy even allowed some of Spider’s biker friends to park their Harleys in front of our house and in our driveway. There were days when our front yard looked like a scene out of a biker movie.

  A few months after Spider moved to the neighborhood, and before Daddy had the bars put on our windows, another lowlife decided to pry open one of our back windows and help himself to our belongings. This one got more than he bargained for. As he was crawling out of the same window he’d crawled in, clutching a pillowcase full of various items, Spider and six of his ferocious friends were waiting for him. They called the police after they’d given that punk a mild whupping. The news spread throughout the ’hood like wildfire. The break-ins stopped shortly after that incident, and Spider became one of Daddy’s closest friends. Cynthia, Spider’s “old lady,” had even asked me to cornrow her frizzy brown hair. It pleased me to know that once people of other races took the time to get to know one another, they realized how much easier it was to be friends than enemies.

  I was glad to have the bikers next door. I knew that when I was not around they would look out for Daddy. James was somewhat skeptical and even paranoid about the bikers at first. “Those people will lie, steal, and attack Black folks for no reason,” James declared. After a few weeks when none of James’s predictions came true, he joined Daddy and Spider in our living room. And if James’s meddlesome mother had not interfered, he would have purchased a motorcycle of his own, as he had threatened to do more than once.

  When I got home from my visit with Freddie and LoBo, Daddy and Spider were sitting on the living room couch watching Cops. The coffee table was lined on both sides with beer bottles. Greens and neck bones were simmering on the stove in the kitchen. My cell phone started ringing just as I made it to my bedroom.

  It was Freddie. She immediately started to whisper into the telephone. “Trudy, LoBo just got off the phone with his connection. He said for you to get some pictures of yourself to him as soon as you can. You know the kind, the color type that they put on a driver’s license. The stuff you requested will be ready by Tuesday. If you still want it.” Freddie’s words made my ears buzz.

  On my way home on the bus from Freddie’s apartment I had given a lot of thought to what I’d asked LoBo to do. At first, I was not comfortable with him even knowing about how I’d already scammed Ann Oliver. A voice in the back of my mind had told me to cancel the deal. “Tell him to hold off for a while. Let me give it some more thought,” I replied. “I need to sit on this for a few days,” I said, easing down on my bed, my eye on the door to keep a lookout for Daddy.

  Freddie was quiet for a long moment. “If you are having second thoughts about this, you should say so now,” she advised me, sucking in her breath. “And if that’s the case, don’t do it, girl.”

  “What would you do if you were in my place?” I asked. I knew that no matter what Freddie suggested, I was still going to do what I wanted to do. That’s what I’d been doing so far anyway.

  “Trudy, you know what a fraidy-cat I am. I got three babies to raise, so I am not about to do anything that might send me to jail.”

  “What’s wrong with you, girl?” I yelled, with the muscles in the back of my neck aching from all the tension I’d brought upon myself. I rubbed the back of my neck, my head, and my face.

  “What?” Freddie asked with a gasp. “What are you talking about?”

  “Please stop mentioning jail! You said that if I was smart and careful, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught.”

  “That’s right,” Freddie hollered. “And I still think that.”

  “But you wouldn’t do it?”

  “I just told you why. I got too much to lose. My daddy and mama bent over backwards to raise us to do the right thing,” Freddie announced.

  “My daddy did, too. This has nothing to do with the way I was raised. I want you to know that now. My daddy did his job as a parent and he did it well.” I lifted my chin and rubbed it. For some reason I felt like I had to keep my hands busy. After I finished rubbing my chin, I started scratching the side of my neck. “This . . . this is all about me and my choices. I know my daddy would have a horse fit if he knew about this.”

  “Girl, we are getting way off the subject. Now if you want my man to help you with this scheme of yours, you do what I just told you to do. You get him those pictures and he will take care of the rest. Do you hear me?” Freddie hollered. I didn’t know how to respond to Freddie’s outburst. Crazy thoughts started to flash throughout my head. That kept
me silent until I heard LoBo mumbling in the background. “Trudy, LoBo says to tell you he is a businessman. You know him well enough to already know that, but I’ll mention it anyway. If you want to do business with him, you better say so now. He’s got other people waiting.”

  “Okay. Just tell him to give me a little more time to think this through.” I raked my fingers through my hair and glanced toward my bedroom door to make sure Daddy had not eased it open, which he often had a habit of doing at the most inconvenient times. He’d seen me naked more times than James and my doctor put together. It pleased me to know that, unlike some of the girls I knew, my naked body didn’t provoke Daddy to have even a slight bit of sexual interest in me.

  “Time is money to LoBo, girl,” Freddie reminded. “You know how he is . . .”

  “Well, tell him that whatever he charges me, I will throw in a bonus for making him wait.”

  CHAPTER 36

  I spent the following weekend with James at his place. A lot of that time was spent in his bed, because that was one place where James and I seemed to get along, most of the time. When we were not in bed we spent our time in his living room watching TV.

  Most of the time I didn’t even know what show we were watching, and I didn’t care that I didn’t know. Even though this was something I’d been doing for ten years—and it bored the daylights out of me—it was a welcome distraction from my other activities. Of course, being as nosy as he was, James just had to comment on how preoccupied I was. “Trudy, your body is here, but your mind is somewhere else tonight,” he told me. I heard him, but I didn’t respond. My brain was working overtime trying to process some of the other things on my mind. I just blinked when James jabbed me in my side with his elbow.

  With all of the dramatic changes in my life, being with James now was like taking a break. The mild guilt that I did feel was more for what I was doing to James than it was for Ann.

  Identity theft seemed too mild a description for my situation. I was maintaining two roles with James and two with Ann; so in a way I was maintaining four different personalities. I couldn’t tell myself enough, but at times I thought I’d lost my mind. The reasons that I should have stopped masquerading as Ann Oliver just didn’t seem strong enough. At least not yet. Besides, I was having too much fun treating myself to things that I would not have had access to any other way.

  By Saturday I couldn’t even remember what James and I had eaten for dinner that Friday night. And I was the one who had done all of the cooking!

  “Trudy, will you please tell me what is bothering you?” James pleaded.

  “Nothing is bothering me, honey,” I said in a mechanical voice. I stood in front of his living room window peering through the cracked curtains like a guard dog. James was so close behind me that I could feel his body heat. I didn’t like the look that suddenly popped up on his face. His eyebrows shifted lower on his face, and closer together, almost forming a V above his eyes. This unattractive grimace did nothing for his face except remind me of an owl. His lips were dry and ashy, and on the verge of forming a scab. But I leaned to the side and kissed him on the mouth anyway.

  James reared back, his head touching the window that I’d steamed up with my own breath. He slid his tongue across his lips. “I feel like I’m having a conversation with a shadow. Now I want you to tell me what the hell is going on, and I want you to tell me right now,” he demanded. A deep sigh followed. His Adam’s apple expanded, looking like a large rock lodged in his throat.

  “Nothing. Why . . . why do you think that?” I blinked hard as I looked toward the television screen, trying hard to concentrate on yet another program I could not even identify.

  “Well, for one thing, your lovemaking has changed. And not for the better, I might add.” James blushed, and gave me a sheepish look, like he’d just told me that I had bad breath or a foul body odor. I had on one of his robes and a pair of his well-worn house shoes. His busybody mother had taken it upon herself to haul all of the lounging clothes that I kept at James’s apartment to her house to “give them the washing” she felt they needed. She’d accidentally tossed my old house shoes into the trash because she couldn’t believe that anybody would still be wearing house shoes that flapped so much. Especially a young woman with a good job.

  “Can you be a little more specific?” I snapped. I was the first to admit that I didn’t have that much experience in the lovemaking department. And since nobody had ever complained, until now, I had never had a reason to expand my sexual techniques. “You’ve never complained before and I am not doing anything now that I haven’t been doing.”

  James sniffed and let out a mysteriously long breath, rolling his eyes up at the ceiling, then around the room before returning his attention to me. That owlish look was still on his face. “That’s part of the problem. I had hoped that by now you’d do more than just roll around in the bed like a loose wheel.”

  I gasped. The sixteen-year-old boy who had charmed me out of my virginity with a bottle of pop and a moon pie when I was fifteen had told me that I was the best “piece of pussy” he ever had. His own virgin status had nothing to do with his opinion. “Boys are born already knowing a good pussy from a bad one. Girl, you the best . . .” he’d huffed right after his first orgasm had snuck up on him. With that validation, I had decided right then and there that there was nothing else I needed to do to satisfy my partner.

  My second lover had made a similar statement. He advised me to increase my desirability by adding blow jobs to my list of “things to do” to keep a man happy.

  By the time James entered my life, and body, I assumed that I knew, and did, everything it took to make a man happy in bed.

  It was a rude awakening to hear that I’d been wrong all these years. “What more do you want me to do, James? I’ve already said I’d marry you. And, even now, I do all I can to make you happy.” I cleared my throat. “Are you trying to tell me something else? Are you ready to move on?” As odd as my relationship with James was, I didn’t want to give it up. Not yet.

  Like Daddy, James had been like a life jacket for me for so many years, I didn’t know how I’d survive without him. However, the way things had been going in my life lately, I had gained some much-needed strength and confidence.

  “No, I am not ready to move on!” he exclaimed, an incredulous look spreading across his face. “I don’t want to move on. Not now, not ever. You are the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.” He leaned over and gave me a few sharp, quick, loud little kisses on my cheek, pecking me with his lips like a woodpecker.

  “Then what’s the problem?” I asked. I was as confused as I was disappointed.

  James held his breath for a moment. It seemed like he couldn’t control his eyes. He looked at the ceiling, his feet, behind me, and around the room before his eyes settled on my face. He shrugged and scratched his chin. “Your mind is definitely not on me tonight. You have totally ignored several things I’ve said in the last few minutes. I just asked you if you wanted to go with me to look at those new houses on Market Street.”

  “Huh? What houses?”

  “See what I mean?” James lifted his chin and flashed me an angry look. “I’ve spent the last ten minutes telling you about my meeting with that realtor. Three months ago when this subject came up, you told me to my face not to even think about buying a piece of property without you being in on it. You forgot that, too?”

  With a firm grip on my arm, James pulled me from the window back to the couch where we plopped down so hard and fast I was all but on his lap. I couldn’t remember going to the window in the first place. My memory lapses gave me something else to be concerned about. I promised myself that I would be more alert, no matter what I did. Losing my memory at the wrong time was dangerous and it could alter things for me tremendously. I had a flash of myself forgetting to use the right name at the right time. I even felt the imaginary shame, embarrassment, and fear.

  I spun around and rubbed James’s shoulder. “I
didn’t forget,” I said with an exaggerated grin, pulling him closer. I rubbed his chest, too, which was somewhat thicker and softer than I remembered. It was no wonder with all of the gourmet meals I’d been treating him to. Some I’d even served to him in bed. Unfortunately, our sex wasn’t vigorous enough to burn many calories.

  “Did you forget what I told you about Mama?”

  “What about your mama?” I peeled his fingers from around my arm, irritated just by him mentioning his mother during one of our most tense conversations.

  “She wants to sell her house.” There was now a guarded look on James’s face, and he still had trouble controlling his eyes. He stared at the wall as he continued. “She wants to be close to us when we get married.” His voice had dropped to a whisper.

  “What?” My words felt trapped in my throat. I coughed to keep from choking. “How . . . close?”

  “Well, I told her not to get her hopes up until I discussed it with you. But the thing is, she thinks it would make a lot of sense for her to move in with us once we get married.” James held his breath and scratched the side of his face, looking at me with wide-eyed anticipation.

  “That close, huh?” I said with a sneer.

  “Um-huh.” He nodded. His eyes seemed like they didn’t want to move. He kept his gaze on me, looking at me for a long time without a single blink.

  I blinked so hard an eyelash fell off and into my eye. “Live with Mavis?” I asked, rubbing my eye. “Honey, I love your mama to death, but I don’t know if I could live with her. You know how old people are.”

  James gently removed the lash from my eye with the tip of his shirttail. “I figured you’d feel that way and I told her just that. But will you at least think about it? Mama’s old. She shouldn’t be on her own too much longer.”