Chapter Eleven
Goodman leaned against the side of the house watching as Paul led Krista not to his brother but to Carla. Carla laid a pair of tongs on the vast, chrome outdoor grill, wiped her hands on her apron, and shook hands with Krista. “Mom, this is Krista. Krista, this is my mom.”
“We’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Krista.”
As if Carla’s greeting was about as cool as she had expected, Krista didn’t smile. “Me, too. And I’m glad to know who you all are,” she said, then turned and looked at Peter, who rose slowly from his perch on the edge of the deck. “I’ve been especially anxious to meet my big brother. Hi, Peter. Can’t I have a hug?” She started toward him with her arms open.
Goodman realized that Peter had planned to be withdrawn, but when a smile formed around his lips and slowly worked itself over the rest of his face, he knew that Krista had won the battle of wills and captivated Peter, who hugged her and then kissed her cheek.
“Gee, you’re pretty, Krista,” Peter said, as he stepped back and stared at her. “This is weird; you look just like Paul and me.”
“That’s because you’re my brothers.”
“Where do you go to school?” Peter asked her, but Goodman didn’t hear her response, for at that moment, Paul moved close to him and said, “what a relief! Peter intends to be friendly. She’s nice, real nice, Dad.”
“I didn’t plan this, son, but this is the way it is, and I want the three of you to love and care for each other.”
“Shouldn’t cause any sweat,” Paul said, “especially not if Mom gets her hips off her shoulder.”
Goodman stepped back, staring at his youngest child. “What? What did you say?”
Paul lifted his right shoulder in a quick shrug. “You can’t clean the house by shoving dirt under the rug, Dad. The dirt’s still there. Mom will have to get used to the fact that, before you met her, you loved somebody else. I don’t see the problem, but I don’t understand females, either.”
Out of the mouths of babes! “I hope we can at least enjoy each other when we’re together,” Goodman said, in a tone more prayerful than hopeful.
Petra did not begrudge Krista her new family; indeed, knowing that her daughter would have a father’s love gave her not only satisfaction but a sense of redemption. She sat in her living room facing the television and staring at As Time Goes By, the British comedy in which she always found delight and escape, but on that occasion, she couldn’t concentrate on it. Her thoughts revolved around Winston. Maybe if she went back to Oakland, where he lived, and searched for him…. She dismissed the ideaas wishful thinking. She didn’t even have the price of a plane ticket. Besides, he had probably grieved for her for a few days and then moved on.
She looked at her watch and slumped down in the big old chair. She had other worries, including how Krista was getting on with Goodman’s family. She hoped none of them provoked a dose of truth from Krista’s sharp tongue. At about nine o’clock, the front door opened, and Petra scampered across the room to the hallway. “How’d it go?” she asked Krista, sounding as if she were out of breath.
Krista brushed a kiss on her mother’s cheek and breezed on past her. “Paul’s a dream. Real super. Peter’s older, and he was a little standoffish at first, but I kept telling him how nice it’s gonna be having a big brother and, just like Paul said, Peter shaped up. I like both of them. Carla was OK, but no more than she had to be.
“Paul wants me to go bowling with him, so I said OK, but I’d have to ask you. Can I?”
“Sure, and I think it would be better if you said miss Carla. You understand?”
“Yes, ma’am, but no way am I sucking up to that lady. I’ll be as nice to her as she is to me.”
“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, Krista.”
Krista let out a long breath. “Another one of Grandpa’s sayings? Well, I guess you can, that is, if you’re interested in catching flies.”
The next afternoon, Monday, Petra got home after an unusually stressful day at court—mostly because the same witness ogled her incessantly—and found two letters in her mailbox. She opened the one bearing Dr. Mark Hayes’s return address first, and her fingers trembled so badly that she failed in repeated efforts to unfold the paper. Please God, don’t let him have any bad news, no more misdiagnoses, for me. She dropped the letter to the table, sat down, closed her eyes, and tried to relax. After about half an hour, she went to the dining room table and flattened out the sheet of paper.
“Dear Ms. Fields,” she read. “By now, you should have healed completely. However, as your surgeon, it is my responsibility to be certain. Please call my office for an appointment as soon as possible. Yours, Mark Hayes, MD.”
Petra breathed deeply, as if she hadn’t done it for a while, folded the letter, and returned it to its envelope. She would telephone him, but as for going to Atlanta, she figured she’d get back there about as soon as she’d find herself in Oakland, California.
The second letter came from Dr. Reginald Barnes. She considered not opening it, surmising that it probably contained the bill for his services. She did not need anymore bills.
“Open it, Mom,” Krista chided. “Even if it’s a bill, you gotta pay it.” Petra opened the letter and stared at the words written there in black and white. Suddenly, she jumped up, hitting her knee cap on the corner of the table, although she barely felt it.
“What is it, Mom?”
“I can’t believe it. Dr. Barnes is suing the laboratory that misread my tests, and his lawyer says I should join the suit.”
“What are you going to do?” She heard the anxiety, or was it hope, in Krista’s voice. “If you got some money out of it, Mom, maybe you wouldn’t have to work so hard.”
“I love my work, honey, but at least I’d be able to pay my bills. You know, that trip I took sank me into the worst financial hole I’ve ever been in. Right now, I can’t see my way out of it. You want to go to school, and so do I. So, if anything comes of this, maybe it’ll be the answer for both of us.”
“Yeah, but if I were you, Mom, I’d get my own lawyer. Dr. Barnes is not exactly squeaky clean in this.”
“You’re right, and before I answer Barnes, I’m going to talk to one. I see lots of lawyers at court every day.”
The next morning, she walked into the courthouse an hour before her shift began, intent upon finding the lawyer who’d won a large judgment in a suit settled the previous week. She located him as he was rushing out of the building.
“I’m in a bit of a hurry just now, Ms. Fields. Call me in a couple of days.”
“I have to make a decision today, Mr. Lyons. I’ve been working here as a court stenographer long enough to know I have a case.”
His left eyebrow rose just enough to let her know that he questioned her temerity. “Sum it up in two minutes.”
She did. “Barnes wants me to join him in a suit. Should I do that or get my own lawyer?”
“Absolutely do not join him. He’s got a smart lawyer. If you join Barnes in the suit, you can’t sue him, and you damned well should.”
Her hands shook so badly that she put them behind her where he couldn’t see them. He represented people of status and wealth; maybe he’d be insulted if she asked him to take her case.
“I was…” she began. He looked at his watch. “Would you…er…take my case?”
He studied her for a minute. “Yes. All right. Be here tomorrow morning at about a quarter of eight, and we’ll discuss it.”
She didn’t want to sue Reginald Barnes. Although she knew he was not a struggling brother, she didn’t believe he was a wealthy man; she told the lawyer as much. “Then you restrict the suit to the lab,” Lyons told her, “and let’s not get sentimental about this. A brain tumor can cause a lot of problems, including blindness, and you were told that it was inoperable.”
He pulled his glasses up off the tip of his nose and sucked his teeth. “You really ought to sue the bastard. He says he’s a
doctor, so he should know his stuff. This is a clear-cut case. This lab company’s incompetence caused you a lot of heartache, fear, distress, and financial loss, and if you hadn’t encountered a doctor with sense, you could have died. Barnes may want you to witness for him if he has to go to court, but avoid that unless you get a subpoena. I’ll be in touch.”
“What are we asking for?”
“Plenty. Every dime they’ve got. It will take a while, but you ought to clear a few hundred thousand. I will need an affidavit from your surgeon.”
She had hoped for thirty or forty thousand, enough to pay her bills and get Krista started in college. “I’ll call him today,” she said, shaken by the prospect of paying off her mortgage and sending both herself and Krista to college.
“Don’t count on it, yet,” he warned. “These things take time, so it may be a year or more before we settle.”
She thanked him for taking the case and went to her office where she picked up an envelope that someone had pushed beneath the door. “What’s this?” She didn’t recognize the handwriting.
“I’m sorry if I irritated you yesterday,” she read, “but I don’t remember ever having been so strongly attracted to a woman. Can’t we talk for just a few minutes? I’ll wait for you at the donut shop at the corner of Court and Park when you leave work this evening. Please!” She ran back to the lounge and breathed deeply in relief when she saw that the lawyer remained where she left him.
When he saw her, he didn’t move his pen from the paper on which he’d been writing. “Did we forget something?” he asked.
She handed him the note. “That man is a witness in a case I recorded yesterday. He followed me to my office and left only when I threatened to call a court officer.”
Lyons took the note, read it, and looked her in the eye, scrutinizing her. “Did you tell him it was illegal for you to speak with a witness during the trial?” She told him that she had. “Do you know his name and the case in question?” She wrote it on the back of the letter. “I’ll see that he gets a warning and that you get a ride home each evening,” he said. “Doesn’t look wholesome to me.” Nor to her, and she feared she might have to leave the best job she’d ever had.
Later, at home, Petra changed into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and went out to her back garden. She hadn’t worked there much since returning from her vacation, and neither Krista nor her mother paid the garden any attention during her absence. Her mother wanted nothing to do with gardening; Lena claimed that she had worked enough in the fields for less than minimum wage before she moved from Alabama to Maryland, and that she couldn’t eat a strawberry without remembering the times she picked them for three cents a quart while crawling on her knees in the hot sun.
Petra expelled a long breath. Her mama didn’t have pleasant memories about many things or, if she did, she kept them to herself. A few drops of rain splattered her back, as she tugged at a deeply-rooted milkweed that choked a rose bush. She pulled harder, fell backward, and wiped the rain from her face. As she pulled herself up, she noticed Ethel, her neighbor, sitting on her steps. Why would Ethel sit outside in the rain unless she couldn’t get inside?
She walked to the fence and called her neighbor. “Ethel, what’s wrong? Can’t you get in the house? It’s pouring rain out here.”
Petra stared as the woman began to cry. “Ethel, for goodness sake. What’s the matter?”
“You have to ask? I can’t find my keys, and if you had been the neighbor you claimed to be, I could have gone over to your house.”
“For goodness sake, Ethel, you don’t have to talk to me. Come on over and get dry. You’ll catch your death of cold sitting out here in the rain.”
“I’m not going in your house, Petra. Not after you screwed my husband.”
Nearly soaked and experiencing a renewed bout of guilt, Petra stamped her foot and didn’t bother controlling her temper. “Oh crap, Ethel. You been over here dozens of times since I did that. Besides, I didn’t screw Fred; it was the other way around. He’d been telling me for months what he wanted to do to me and how good it would be. Heck, I’d never felt anything like he was offering, and I just laid down, opened my legs, and let him do it. It wasn’t worth the time it took me to lie down, and especially not worth the case of guilt it gave me. Come on over here out of the rain.”
She opened the gate at the back of her property and waited. Ethel took her time getting there, as if she wanted Petra to get a thorough soaking.
“I’m still mad at ya, Petra,” Ethel said. “It’s bad enough to lose your husband, but if your best friend’s the cause of it, that’s really rough.”
Petra opened the kitchen door and waited until Ethel entered it. “Sit down in the kitchen somewhere, Ethel, while I find you one of my caftans.”
“That’s right. Rub it in. I know I can’t get into your clothes. Mind if I turn on the oven and stand in front of it? These wet clothes feel awful.”
Petra handed Ethel a dark blue caftan, took her wet clothes, and put them in the dryer. “I’m hoping we can get past this, Ethel,” she said. “I know you said you’d rather not have known.” She related to Ethel the reasons why she told her about her one sexual encounter with Fred. “But Reverend Collins insisted that I’d go to hell if I didn’t ask forgiveness of everybody I’d ever wronged.”
Ethel stared at Petra with her mouth agape. “In that case, I suppose he’s planning to ask Fred’s forgiveness. A bigger hypocrite never put on shoes. Don’t look at me like that; you’re not the only one who can be seduced. Rev has a great line and, unlike Fred, he can back it up.”
Well. Well. Who would have thought it? Petra made a pot of tea, toasted some biscuits, and put that on the table along with butter and raspberry jam. “That misdiagnosis really fouled up my life, Ethel. Imagine me running around the country spending money like I was the United States Treasury Department. I got debt up to the ceiling. I tell you, I don’t know what got into me.”
“I expect if I thought I was facing death, I’d’a acted the fool, too.” They settled into their former habit of gossiping over tea or coffee. “How’s Krista’s job at Dwill’s Department Store? I saw her working in the linen department a few days ago.”
“She’s head of the section now, and they recently gave her a raise. Krista’s smart, and I want her to go to college.”
“Yeah? You always was highfalutin. I’m glad to see our people getting ahead. I hope she makes it.”
They talked until Petra said, “I guess I’d better get supper together. When Krista comes, she can crawl through that little window on your back porch and open the door for you. You can eat with us.” She gave Ethel her clothing, which she had tumble-dried in her dryer.
“I sure do thank you, Petra. This has meant everything to me.”
Ethel’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, so Petra didn’t fool herself into believing that her relationship with Ethel would be as warm and sisterly as it had once been. Ethel may have been unfaithful to Fred, Petra reasoned, but she loved him and, considering his lack of skill in bed, it was hard to blame Ethel for finding relief elsewhere. Still, she didn’t feel comfortable with Ethel knowing that the woman hadn’t been able to forgive her.
Petra set about preparing supper for Krista, Ethel, and herself, nervous because thunder and lightning had joined the rain.
She closed the kitchen window a second before a flash of lightning nearly unnerved her.
“I’m sorry, Ethel, but I have to go in the living room and sit down. These electric storms scare me to death.”
“Don’t worry, Petra,” Ethel said, “I have one of those bodies that repels lightning. So nothing can happen to you long as I’m with you, and that’s the Lord’s honest truth.”
She walked over to Ethel, who sat hunched in a low-back kitchen chair. “Ethel, I guess you’re a better woman than I am. If you’d done to me what I did to you, I’m not sure I’d be as nice about it.”
Ethel glanced up at Petra. “Don’t lay no halo
on my head, Petra. I done my share of dirt before I was saved, and after, too. When I was young, single, and good-looking with my breasts standing out high and my stomach flat, I thought nothing of walking off with another woman’s man and doing whatever I pleased with him. I broke up Fred’s first marriage. He was hot stuff back then, but he’s fooled around so much that nowadays he ain’t worth the time it takes you to pull off your clothes. All the same, I’m used to him.”
Petra didn’t want to discuss Fred with Ethel, and she welcomed the sound of Krista’s key in the lock of the front door. “Hi, Mom. Hi, miss Ethel. Mom, can I invite Paul to have supper with us one night?”
“Of course. But you should invite Peter, too. You don’t want him to dislike you. And honey, would you please crawl through Ethel’s window and unlock her back door. She locked herself out. You can do that after we eat supper.”
“Yes, ma’am. Don’t worry about Peter and me. He won’t dislike me, but he probably isn’t going to love me, either.”
“How’re you getting on with Carla?”
“I’ve only seen her that one time. Paul and I talk on our cell phones. Say, remind me to talk to you about Jada. It’s too weird to tackle right now.” The phone rang, and Krista rushed to answer it.
“Hello.” She listened for a few seconds. “This isn’t Petra. This is her daughter, and you watch your mouth, lady.” She hung up.
“Who on earth was that?” Petra asked.
“I don’t know, but she sure was angry. Said you ruined things for her with Gail Somebody or other. How do you know anybody with a mouth like hers, Mom? Pure filth.”
“Jack fired her girlfriend because of something I said. I told her about it and asked her to forgive me, but she won’t. I was trying to do the right thing, according to Reverend Collins.”
A Different Kind of Blues Page 22