The Honey Well

by Gloria Mallette

  Kesley suddenly stood. “Why did you stop visiting, Esther? Was it because I couldn’t give you any more money? Or was it because we couldn’t sneak behind your husband’s back anymore and fuck anywhere we could find some privacy?”

  Esther had a sour taste in her mouth and it didn’t help much that she was smoking on an empty stomach. She had never wanted to relive the night that Bryant came home early and caught her and Kesley in the garage making love in the backseat of Kesley’s car. Kesley had never been to her house before and had stopped by, impulsively, after being out of town for a week. They didn’t hear the garage door open—they had been engrossed in their lovemaking and the loud music from the car radio filled their ears along with their own breathless panting.

  Bryant yanked open the car door. “What the—”

  Sweaty, breathing hard with Kesley still inside her, Esther had started to say, stupidly, “It’s not what you—”

  Bryant snatched Kesley out of her with one mighty tug on Kesley’s collar. Kesley had fallen onto the garage floor but he was younger, faster and bigger than Bryant. While Kesley zipped up his pants, Bryant had called him all kinds of low-life bastards. If Kesley hated anything, he hated being cursed. His fist was lightning fast. The punch in the face slammed Bryant back into the car. It was on. Bryant charged at Kesley. They started to fight and Kesley’s martial arts skills were immediately apparent, but Bryant was so angry, he wasn’t letting Kesley’s deadly blows stop him. Every time Kesley kicked or knocked Bryant down, he’d get back up on wobbly legs and lunge. Esther tried to catch hold of Kesley’s arm to stop him from hitting Bryant, but in his rage, Kesley flipped his arm and fist back and slammed her in the forehead, knocking her out cold. When Esther came to, Bryant was sprawled out on the garage floor. Blood oozed from his mouth. He was barely alive. Kesley was sitting on the floor with his back against the car—his head was in his hands.

  Bryant died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Esther had a knot the size of an egg on her forehead so it looked to the police like Kesley had attacked her also. She said nothing to dispute that belief or to defend Kesley, choosing instead to say that she couldn’t recall anything. It helped that she had been knocked out. Kesley’s attorney brought up their affair, which she didn’t deny, but she let the prosecutor insinuate that she was trying to break it off. If anything, her testimony neither hurt nor helped Kesley. In the end, Kesley’s defense meant nothing—a search of his car at the scene that day uncovered a gym bag of illegal numbers money and a plastic food bag full of marijuana—he was going to prison no matter what.

  Remembering that day still saddened Esther. Bryant had been a good man. He was only thirty-seven when he died. He was trying to give her and Arnell a good life. She was the one that didn’t think that all he did was good enough, not to mention that she was more into partying than being a good wife and mother. Partying is how she met Kesley in the first place—at a club one Saturday night. She had told Kesley that she had a husband and a four-month-old baby at home, but he didn’t care and after they drank and danced all night, she didn’t care either. Neither did she care that he was younger than her and that he was a known numbers banker. He always had money, he was always collecting money, and he was always willing to give her some. She would have left Bryant for Kesley, except she knew Bryant would never let her take Arnell from him. He loved Arnell to death. She was his sweetie pie. Esther continued to see Kesley three and four days a week. Bryant never suspected and never questioned the money she had to buy the clothes and jewelry she openly wore. After all, she did have a part-time job as a secretary and her money was hers to do with what she wanted. She had been seeing Kesley for three years when she got careless and got caught that fateful day in the garage.

  “What do you want with me, Kesley? If you’re trying to use me as a front to sell drugs or to set up a numbers operation, you can’t. I won’t allow it. I allow no hustling of any kind in my house.”

  “You don’t think very much of me, Esther. I gave up numbers and dabbling in drugs when I went to prison. A man can’t trust people handling his money on the outside when he’s locked up on the inside. Besides, I’ve been walking the straight and narrow since I got out of jail.”

  Esther gave Kesley a skeptical look.

  “It’s true. I have ways to make money, maybe not as much as in the old days, but I make enough to get by on.”

  “I’m happy for you.” Esther lit another cigarette. Kesley wanted something from her and she knew it.

  Kesley glanced around the room. “I see you’ve found a way to make money for yourself, too, huh?”

  Esther blew smoke in Kesley’s direction.

  “I think running a classy joint like this is smart. Do the cops bother you?”

  Holding her cigarette, Esther glared at Kesley. She clinched her jaw. She wasn’t about to dignify his question with an answer. Her business was none of his.

  “Aren’t you curious about how I know what you’ve been up to or even about how I found you?”

  Esther didn’t bat an eye. She spread her left hand out and pretended to study her well-manicured nails. Yes, she was curious, but she would never let him know that.

  “Fine,” Kesley said casually. “Then I won’t tell you, but in the future, if you don’t want to be found, tell your clients to keep their mouths shut. Word of mouth travels with people who travel and seek the same pleasures in other states.”

  Damn! It must have been that big-mouth, horny toad Garrett. He said he was going to Jacksonville a month ago. Esther again blew smoke in Kesley’s direction.

  Kesley went and sat next to Esther. “I’ve been wanting to see you for a long time.” He put his arm around her. “You got a real nice place here.”

  Warning bells were sounding in Esther’s head. She pulled back from Kesley. “Don’t fuck with me, Kesley. Whatever reason you’re here, forget it. I have nothing to give you. It took me a long time to get on my feet after you took my child’s father from me. I will never forgive you for that.”

  “So how is your daughter? Does she know how her daddy died?” Kesley asked. “What was her name again?”

  Esther narrowed her gaze.

  “By the way you’re looking at me, Esther, I’m beginning to think you’ve never told your daughter all there is to tell about that day.”

  Esther stubbed out her second cigarette. What the hell is this? Is Kesley here to blackmail me? She took hold of his hand and removed his arm from around her shoulders. She had always heard it said that bad things happened in threes. Well, her three was now four and the fourth had barreled in too fast and too furious for her to see him coming. Tony was dead, Arnell had stolen Trena away, James had punked out on her, and now, Kesley had risen up from the bowels of hell to make her pay for deserting him. If Arnell ever found out about Kesley being her lover and that he’d killed her daddy—

  “Tell the truth, Esther. Does your daughter know about me?” Kesley suddenly snapped his fingers. “I can answer that. She doesn’t. A mother wouldn’t tell her little girl about her lover or that her lover killed her daddy.”

  Esther’s sour stomach quivered. “Leave my daughter out of this, Kesley.”

  “Esther, what kind of mother—”

  “Cut the bullshit!” Esther sprang up. She took her cigarettes with her. “I don’t know what you want from me, Kesley, but threatening me with my daughter won’t get it for you.”

  “You got me wrong, Esther. I’m not trying to threaten you or use your daughter to get anything from you. I know how to get what I want without standing on your daughter’s shoulders.”

  “So if that’s the case, what the hell do you want?”

  “A place to stay,” Kesley answered. “Just for a little while.”

  “I have no room.”

  “In this big house, you have no room? I can’t believe that.”

  Esther said coldly, “I’m all rented out.”

  Kesley looked around Esther’s suite. “Seems like plenty o
f room in here.”

  “Plenty enough for me and me alone.” Esther lit another cigarette.

  “Come on, Esther. I’m an old friend, an old, intimate friend at that. You can put me up for a few weeks, can’t you?”

  “Not even for an hour.”

  “I see.” Kesley stood. He began to amble slowly around the room, looking at trinkets, looking at pictures. He stopped in front of a ten-inch picture of Arnell taken ten years back. “I guess this is that pretty little girl all grown up?” He touched Arnell’s nose with his fingertip. “This picture doesn’t do her justice.”

  Inside Esther bristled. “How would you know?”

  “I saw her yesterday, before and after you came back from that funeral.”

  A chill ran down Esther’s spine. “You were here yesterday?”

  “Your daughter sat out in the car, all by herself, for quite a while after you got back. She must have been really upset.”

  “You’ve been spying on me?”

  “Just getting a lay of the land. I flew into town Saturday and came by yesterday but I saw you were busy.” Kesley picked up the picture of Arnell.

  Esther rushed at him and snatched the picture from his hand. “I don’t want you here! Get out.”

  Kesley grinned knowingly. “You were always so crazy about that daughter of yours,” he said, ignoring Esther’s demand that he leave. He sat on the arm of the love seat. “I guess you’re pretty close to her, huh?”

  Esther put Arnell’s picture back on the table with a firm thud. “Kesley, if you think you know me well enough to fuck with my daughter, then you don’t know me at all.”

  “Damn, Esther,” he said, pulling back, feigning fear. “You sound like I oughta be afraid of you.”

  Cooly, Esther took a slow drag on her cigarette. “I think, perhaps, you should consider it.”

  “I guess I should. But then, I think you should consider what your baby girl would think of her mommy if she knew her daddy was killed by her mommy’s lover.”

  Esther’s thoughts turned to Tony. What would Tony do in this situation?

  Thirty-Four

  Seven days passed and James still had not returned Arnell’s calls, whereas Esther had been calling ceaselessly to the point of ad nauseam. Arnell let her answering machine screen her calls—she wasn’t taking any of Esther’s calls no matter how desperate she sounded—and she wasn’t the least bit concerned that Esther would show up on her doorstep—Esther rarely left The Honey Well—she was a micromanager. The only calls Arnell took were from Sharise and Trena. Sharise, Arnell spoke to every day and, in fact, she had just ended a two-hour conversation with her about James’s mysterious disappearance. She had not been able to find out a thing about his whereabouts. If he was going to work, she wasn’t able to catch him there. Sharise had called James’s mother, pretending to be on the City Council, and was told that James was away on business. What business? Where? No one seemed to know.

  Arnell couldn’t understand why James had not called her, had not written her, or even sent word to her by carrier pigeon. She found herself worrying whether he had found out about her past. That would explain his not wanting to talk to her, but she needed to talk to him to explain why her life had taken that path through the doors of The Honey Well.

  Stretching, Arnell tried to relieve the achiness in her neck and shoulders. She needed a speakerphone in the kitchen. That two-hour conversation with Sharise with the telephone held in the crook of her neck while preparing a dinner of fried flounder fillets and steamed broccoli for herself and Trena had been brutal on her neck. Trena had called, just before Sharise, asking if she could come by—all the way from Brooklyn—to talk. Arnell didn’t want to tell Trena not to come—she knew how it was when she was sixteen and wanted to talk to someone about what she was going through, and there was no one. She’d invited Trena to dinner.

  Trena said very little as she picked at her broccoli. The most she’d said in the thirty minutes she’d been there was, “This fish is good.” Arnell agreed. The flounder was tender, sweet and, best of all, boneless, which was why flounder was Arnell’s favorite fish. She hated picking the bones out of fish. There was just something so barbaric about picking bones out of a carcass. Trena said that she liked the flounder, but Arnell noticed she was not eating it. Arnell devoured her meal. She was hungry. She loved going to the health spa, but for weeks afterward, she could never get enough to eat so she countered her ravenous appetite by trying to eat right. Of course, drowning her steamed broccoli in thick, creamy French dressing wasn’t exactly eating right, but it certainly tasted good. She offered the bottle of French dressing to Trena.

  Trena didn’t take the salad dressing. Even before Arnell saw the first tear drop from Trena’s cheek onto her plate, she sensed that Trena was crying. The tears didn’t surprise her: Trena had looked like she’d been crying when she got there.

  Arnell decided to not try to console Trena with the lie that everything was going to be all right, because it would be a while before Trena got to a place where she could get over the shame of prostituting herself. She handed Trena a napkin. “Has it been rough at home?”

  Drying her eyes, Trena shook her head.

  “That’s good. How are you and your sister getting along?”

  Trena blew her nose and pulled a line of snot away with the tissue, skeezing Arnell out, but she said nothing. She just pushed her plate away.

  “She don’t bother me,” Trena said, wiping her nose. “She’s getting married.”

  “That’s nice.” A feeling of sadness suddenly rushed over Arnell. It was her own wedding that would not come to pass that she was thinking about. Well, it was too late to dwell on that now. She watched Trena put her wadded-up napkin in her plate on top of her uneaten flounder. “So, how’s summer school?”

  Trena shrugged. “I couldn’t get in, I was too late. But I’m glad.”

  “Understandable.” Arnell took both their plates to the sink. She dumped Trena’s uneaten food and snotty napkin in the garbage. She almost wanted to dump the plate but didn’t.

  “Trena, I have raspberry sherbet, would you like some?” From the freezer, Arnell took the container of sherbet she had bought earlier in the day. She was taking her large coffee mug down from the cabinet when she realized that Trena hadn’t answered. Trena was again crying.

  Arnell went to Trena and gently pulled her head up against her stomach. “It’ll get easier,” she said. “You’ll see.”

  “No it won’t,” Trena cried. “I’m pregnant.” She threw her arms around Arnell’s waist and buried her face in Arnell’s stomach.

  “Oh, God.”

  Trena cried harder. “I can’t have this baby, Arnell. I can’t.”

  “This may sound stupid, Trena, but are you sure you’re pregnant?”

  “This morning I took a home pregnancy test. It was positive.”

  “Oh, boy,” Arnell said. When she was sixteen and seventeen she had gotten pregnant twice herself. Esther had gotten her abortions right away with no admonishments except, “Make those fools use condoms,” and “take your pill on time.” Thoughts of those days sickened Arnell. “Trena, you may have to tell your parents. You—”

  “I can’t!” Trena pulled away from Arnell. “Arnell, if my mother found out I was pregnant, she would kill me. This morning she said last night she dreamed about catching fish. Do you know what that means?”

  “The question is, Trena, do you know what that means?”

  “I do now. My mother said dreams about fish meant that somebody was pregnant. Arnell, she asked me if I was pregnant. I almost died. I had just finished throwing up in the bathroom before I came downstairs.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “I denied I was pregnant. I couldn’t tell her I was.”

  “That had to be scary.”

  “It was. And what about my father, Arnell? He’ll hate me . . . he’ll hate me.”

  “Oh, honey, he won’t hate you.”

  “Yes,
he will! He told me before he left that I better not make him have to come off the road again. He’ll hate me for that. Arnell, I can’t have this baby!”

  “Trena, your parents might surprise you again. They didn’t scream at you when you went back home, right?”

  “No, but this is different. If I tell them that Andrew Peebles got me pregnant, they’ll have a stroke. They’ll want to know who he is. I can never let them know who he is. I can’t have his baby. If I do, my parents will find out I was living in that mansion and that I was having sex with different men. Arnell, I can’t tell them that. I can’t. And what about my sister? Cheryl will never let me live this down. Oh, God,” Trena cried.

  Trena’s crying shook Arnell’s body. She understood the dilemma Trena was in, but she didn’t know how she could help her beyond trying to speak to her parents for her. But who was she to speak for anyone when she had lived the life she lived? Then it came to her.

  “Trena, stop crying. Maybe we can take care of this problem ourselves.” She gently pushed Trena off her. “I’ll help you.”

  Hopeful, Trena asked, “How?”

  “I’m not quite sure—yet. You’re not that far gone, but too far gone for the Morning After pill. Of course, an abortion is the ultimate solution, but we’ll need your parents’ permission and medical insurance for that.”

  No longer hopeful, Trena fell onto her folded arms and cried.

  Arnell let her cry. There wasn’t much she could say or do. Unfortunately, she wasn’t having any insightful flashes of brilliance to remedy Trena’s problem. Arnell went back to the counter and began scooping out big spoonfuls of frosty raspberry sherbet into her oversize coffee mug trimmed with colorful hearts. James had given her the mug last Valentine’s Day with a tiny white teddy bear sitting inside holding an armful of chocolate kisses. That day seemed a lifetime ago, but she liked the mug and enjoyed eating sherbet out of it. When the sherbet melted, she drank it. Too bad Trena’s pregnancy wasn’t going to simply melt away. Maybe she should not’ve offered to help Trena until she knew for a fact that she could. Unless . . . maybe she could pass Trena off as her daughter and pay for the abortion herself, with cash.