by Mary Monroe
In less than an hour, Maureen had stripped Loretta’s bed and stuffed all of the bedding and everything else that was left in the room into boxes. Then she called Goodwill and scheduled a pickup. The next day, she drove the car that Loretta had purchased for her to a used car dealership and eagerly traded it for the first car that a stunned but happy salesman showed to her—a four-year-old Camry. She got screwed out of a lot of money, but she didn’t care. Driving a car that had been paid for with Loretta’s ill-gotten wealth had begun to increase Maureen’s pain.
A week after Maureen had disposed of Loretta’s belongings, she called Big Maureen. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you,” she began. “I got real busy.”
“Uh-huh. But tell me the truth—the real reason you ain’t called me is because you don’t have no good news for me about Lo’retta’s baby, right?” Big Maureen said, her voice trembling.
Maureen sighed. “That’s right. I tried. I tried real hard, but Lo’retta is determined to get rid of her baby.”
“I didn’t get my hopes up too high no way. If the adoption people don’t come through neither, I guess it wasn’t meant for me to be blessed with another child. I still got a lot to be thankful for anyway, praise the Lord.”
“You and Lukas still comin’ for another visit soon?”
“If God’s willin’.”
After a few more moments of mundane conversation, Maureen hung up. Virgil arrived a few minutes later, and Maureen was glad to see him.
“What’s up with Lo’retta?” he asked, easing down onto the living room couch. “You talked to her lately?”
“Yeah. I called her up last week, but that girl sure wasn’t too happy to hear from me,” Maureen replied with a puppy-dog face, handing Virgil a can of beer. “She even changed her telephone number so now I can’t call her at all.” Maureen popped open a can of beer for herself and sat down on the other end of the couch.
“My goodness.”
“I’m so glad Mama Ruby didn’t live long enough to see the mess our family turned into.” Maureen sniffed and blinked back a tear.
“Me too, I guess.” Virgil took a long drink; then he set his beer can on the coffee table. He turned to Maureen with a frightened look on his face. “Mo’reen, how do you feel about . . . what I told you?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, wiping beer off her lips with the back of her hand.
“I mean, how do you feel about what I told you now that it’s had a lot of time to sink in? You still glad I told you about what Mama Ruby done to you?”
Maureen set her beer can on the table and shrugged. “I still think that kidnappin’ is a sin and a shame, but I’m still glad you told me what you told me. Just like Jay, I had a right to know the whole truth about my real mother and my background.”
“Uh-huh. Now, I don’t like to get in your business with Jay, but do you still think it’s better not to tell him?”
Maureen gave Virgil a long, hard look. “I still don’t think it would do any good for him to know about me. I still don’t think we should tell anybody else. Never. So you don’t need to ask me again.”
“That’s probably the best thing for us to do.” Virgil shook his head and blinked mysteriously, looking at Maureen like she had just entered the room.
“What’s wrong? You lookin’ at me like I just sprouted horns,” Maureen said, forcing herself to chuckle.
“Mo’reen, I hope you ain’t keepin’ no deep dark secrets from me. Somethin’ you might want to get off your chest.”
Without giving it much thought, Maureen nodded. “Yeah, I got a deep dark secret,” she told Virgil. “Somethin’ I wanted to tell somebody since I was a teenager . . .”
Virgil shifted in his seat, turning his head so he could see Maureen’s face better.
Maureen glanced toward the door, then around her living room. When she looked back at Virgil, there was an anxious and puzzled look on his face. “What is it?”
“I told Mama Ruby and everybody else that that albino we called Snowball was the one that took advantage of me after he got me drunk one night and got me pregnant. I didn’t tell anybody until after he died from that drug overdose so he couldn’t deny it.”
“You told me the same thing, remember? So was Snowball the real daddy or not?”
Maureen cocked her head and shook it. “You remember John French?”
Virgil nodded. “Old Man French’s boy? The one that got hisself killed tryin’ to rob that gas station? Yeah, I remember that boy. He was real cool, the blackest white boy I ever knew. You had a crush on him, and he had a crush on you when y’all was little kids. Why?”
“He was the one that got me pregnant.”
“Lord have mercy.” Virgil scratched the side of his neck. The puzzled look was still on his face. “Well, if he was the one that did it, why didn’t you say so? He died too.”
“He didn’t die in time. I was runnin’ out of time and I had to blame it on somebody. It had to be a man with real light skin in case my baby came out with light skin. Which she did. I mean, they did. Loraine and Loretta came out lookin’ so white there was no way I could have blamed them on any of the tar-baby black boys I knew back then.”
“Excuse me for sayin’ this, but didn’t you think John would have been a better choice than Snowball? John’s folks had money, and Mama Ruby doted on him. That albino didn’t have a pot to piss in, and he was a drug addict.”
“John caught me in the blackberry patch and raped me. When I told him I was pregnant, he got real mad.” Maureen shivered and swallowed hard, hoping to dislodge the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. The bad memories left a nasty taste in her mouth, so she finished her beer before continuing. “Anyway, I asked John for five hundred dollars so I could go to that abortion doctor in Miami that all the girls in trouble went to. He slapped the daylights out of me and took off, so I assumed he wasn’t goin’ to help me get out of the mess he’d gotten me into. Then when I heard that he got killed tryin’ to rob that gas station and that he had asked the gas station attendant for just five hundred dollars, I knew he had been tryin’ to get the money for my abortion. Since he was dead, and Mama Ruby had been like a mammy to him, I didn’t want to ruin his memory. That’s why I told everybody that the albino was the one.”
“Damn! Did you tell Catty or Fast Black?”
“Oh goodness gracious no! They would have blabbed my business all over the state by now. I ain’t told nobody else until today.”
Virgil dropped his head. “Not even Lo’retta?”
“I’ll never tell her!” Maureen said quickly.
She moved closer to Virgil and rubbed his arm. He laid his head on her shoulder. “Virgil, I hope you can keep this a secret too.”
Virgil let out a strange laugh. Then he looked up at Maureen and told her, “If I could keep that great big secret about you for thirty-six years, I think I can keep this one.”
Maureen had finally removed a beast off her back that had been holding her hostage like a wrongly convicted prisoner. She felt better than she had felt in a long time. She felt like she was finally free.
And so did Virgil.
CHAPTER 64
LIKE MAUREEN, JAY NO LONGER FELT COMFORTABLE IN HIS OWN home. Mrs. Freeman was gone, but she was still a very strong presence in the residence. Despite the large wraparound front porch where Jay liked to sit and read his newspaper, the fruit trees in the spacious front yard, and the small statue of an angel peeking from behind a rosebush, his home for the past ten years now felt like a haunted house.
There were sad memories in each room, especially the bedroom that Mrs. Freeman had occupied. Jay had just donated her clothes and bedroom furniture to Goodwill a week ago. She had been the kind of woman who hoarded things that she had collected from yard sales, thrift stores, flea markets, and Goodwill. Over the years she had collected so many useless items, it took Jay a whole month to sort it all out before he could dispose of it. By the time he was done, the only things he h
ad left of the criminal who had claimed to be his mother were a few pictures and the shabby Bible that she had made him study every night after dinner.
The one thing that disturbed Jay the most was her smell. It was still in the house. She had always loved the scent of roses—perfume, lotion, scented candles—and she had even used rose-scented room deodorizer. No matter how often he sprayed every room in the house with a different fragrance, he could not get rid of the smell of roses. After a while, he gave up.
Since he no longer liked to spend too much time in his house, and Maureen didn’t like to spend too much time in her apartment, they spent a lot of their time in other places as much as possible. They enjoyed long, lingering dinners in their favorite restaurants. They took long drives along the coast. They even spent an occasional weekend in a beach motel. Anything to avoid his or her residence. However, in spite of all the painful memories that Maureen had to endure in her apartment, she had stopped thinking about moving. There was a lot she still liked about where she lived: the cheap rent, the convenient location, and her nice neighbors. The only thing she didn’t like now was that it had been the scene of Mel and Loretta’s blatant betrayal.
One day Maureen got slaphappy and scrubbed Loretta’s growth chart markings off the kitchen wall. A few minutes after she had done that, she snatched some ugly drawings off the refrigerator of things that Loretta had scribbled in elementary school and ripped them to shreds. She even packed away all of the remaining photo albums that contained pictures of Loretta when she was a toddler. It was hard to believe that the same little girl grinning into the camera with her two front teeth missing and chocolate candy smeared all over her face was the same girl who had turned Maureen’s life upside down.
The last thing Maureen expected that Saturday, the second weekend in January, was a marriage proposal from Jay.
After lunch at McDonald’s, Jay drove to a section of town that Maureen was not too familiar with. It was the kind of neighborhood that she could only see herself living in in her dreams. The houses were large, three to four bedrooms at least. Each home had a two- or three-car garage, a large front yard, and an even bigger backyard. There were no homeless people in sight, like there was in the neighborhood that Maureen lived in now. Crime was almost nonexistent. Except for the time that a jealous doctor shot and killed his cheating wife ten years ago, the most serious “crimes” that the residents in this neighborhood had to worry about was littering, teenagers behaving badly, or somebody throwing a loud party.
“Why did you drive over here, Jay?” Maureen asked, shading her eyes to look at the large beige stucco house that he had parked in front of. “Do you know somebody out here?”
“Uh-huh. I helped install cable in almost every house on this block, ” Jay replied.
“Oh. Well, do you know who lives in this house?” Maureen nodded toward the beautiful house with a hopeful look on her face. Her dream to buy her own home someday was still just a dream, but it was one that she was determined to fulfill.
“I do.” Jay paused and cleared his throat with a loud cough. “I’ll be moving in as soon as the bank finalizes my paperwork,” he said with a proud sniff.
Maureen gasped as she whirled around to face Jay. “Oh, baby, I am so happy for you! I know you’ve been wantin’ to move out of Mrs. Freeman’s house ever since . . . well, for a long time. A change of scenery will do you a world of good.” She was about to lean over and kiss Jay until he held up his hand, which made her give him a surprised look.
“You think my wife will like it?” he asked.
Maureen’s chest tightened and a grimace slid across her burning face. Now she was not only surprised, but she was also scared. She knew that Jay’s ex had made one serious attempt to get him back, and it had not worked. Had that gold digger come after him again? Well, if that was the case, that heifer had picked a hell of a time! Maureen was so hopelessly in love with Jay; she knew that if he dropped her now, she would never recover. His “betrayal” would be the final nail in her coffin.
Then she would be alone again.
Suddenly, Maureen thought of every maybe that applied to her situation. Maybe it wasn’t meant for her to get too close to anyone anymore. Maybe she was supposed to be alone. Maybe she would have been better off if her real mother had raised her. Maybe she would be frivolous and carefree like her mother had been, with men coming out of her ears. Maybe Mama Ruby had been right when she told Maureen that the only person who would never leave her was Mama Ruby herself. Maybe she should visit a pet store and pick out a cat. Maybe she was destined to spend the rest of her life just sitting on a porch with that cat. . . .
“Your wife? Oh . . . well, I hope she’ll like it too,” Maureen said, brushing off her jeans and sitting up straighter in her seat. She pressed her lips together and gave Jay a hard look. “I guess I know what this means, Jay.”
“Do you?”
“You want to get back with your ex. Well, I hope things work out for y’all this time.” Maureen snorted and wondered how she was able to look at Jay with a smile on her face. “I’ll still be your friend if you want me to—and if your wife won’t mind.” She had to blink hard to hold back her tears. She couldn’t wait to get home so she could cry like a baby and guzzle alcohol like a thirsty sailor.
Jay laughed long and loud. “Come on, Maureen. You really don’t get it, do you.”
“I get it, Jay,” she snapped, her smile gone. Her jaw tightened and every muscle from her neck up began to ache. Why was disappointment so damn painful? She had been hurt and disappointed so many times that she was surprised she wasn’t dead by now.
“I want you to be my wife, Maureen. I’ve wanted you to be my wife for a long time. Your divorce from that asshole will be finalized soon. So . . . will you marry me?”
Maureen closed her eyes and shook her head. When she opened her eyes again, she looked at Jay like she was seeing him for the first time. Now that she had finally heard the words that she had dreamed of hearing most of her life, from a man she truly loved, she didn’t know what to say. “I . . . I . . . never expected you to . . .”
Jay covered her lips with his fingers. “You don’t have to tell me right away. You can take all the time you need to think about it.” He laughed some more.
“I didn’t know you . . . cared about me like that,” Maureen said, her voice so low Jay had to lean his head closer to her so he could hear her better.
“Well, I do. But after what Mel did to you, I can understand if you don’t want to rush into another marriage so soon. I’ll wait, but don’t make me wait too long, Maureen. I’m tired . . .”
“I’m tired, too, Jay. I would love to marry you!”
He hauled off and kissed her so hard, his shoulder fell against the horn. It blared the entire time his lips were on hers.
“I know that I’m coming to you with a lot of baggage,” Jay said after he released Maureen. “But that’s all behind me now.”
“What about my baggage?”
“What your daughter and Mel did was bad, but I think my baggage is much heavier than yours.”
“Yeah, takin’ on a new wife is a big step to be takin’ when you still have newspeople and greedy relatives comin’ at you,” Maureen said, stroking Jay’s arm. “Just how do you feel about what happened to you now that some time has passed?”
Jay didn’t respond right away. He stared straight ahead for about half a minute before he looked back in Maureen’s direction. “I haven’t had any nightmares in a while, but not a day goes by that I don’t think about what kind of life I might have had if . . . if Mrs. Freeman hadn’t run off with me. Anyway, I think marrying a woman like you might help me accept everything a lot easier.”
“Mrs. Freeman was wrong for takin’ you, but she deserves credit for the man you turned out to be,” Maureen reminded him. “I know exactly how you must feel. . . .”
Jay gave her a curious look and shook his head. “Thank you for saying that. I know you mean well. I was the victim o
f an unspeakable crime. Only somebody who has walked in my shoes could know exactly how I feel, Maureen. Right?”
“Right,” she agreed. If he only knew, Maureen said to herself.
CHAPTER 65
MAUREEN WANTED TO GET MARRIED NEXT MONTH, IN FEBRUARY. HER divorce from Mel would be finalized by then. But the main reason she wanted to wait until then was because Big Maureen was having a cluster of polyps removed from the lining of her throat next week and wouldn’t be able to travel for at least three weeks. Maureen wanted her big sister to be in attendance when Virgil gave her away to the only man she’d ever loved.
“What a damn shame Lo’retta won’t be here to see you get married,” Catty hissed. “That little wench is probably too busy prancin’ her high-and-mighty tail around New York tryin’ to be Miss Muck-ity Muck. Oomph! If she was my girl, I would lay her out next time I laid eyes on her.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing Lo’retta won’t be here. That shameless hussy might cast her rovin’ eye in Jay’s direction,” Fast Black spat.
“Lo’retta didn’t like Jay that much, so I seriously doubt she would latch on to him too,” Maureen chuckled. She had decided that the sooner she forgot about Lo’retta, the better. Apparently, Loretta had “forgotten” about her. But it was hard for Maureen to dismiss her only child. She prayed that someday they would at least be friends again.
So when Loretta called the last week in January, Maureen was happy to hear from her.
“How have you been, Mama?” Loretta asked as soon as Maureen picked up the telephone. “I’ve been prayin’ for you. I hope you don’t spend your time sittin’ around bein’ stressed.”
“I’m too blessed to be stressed,” Maureen claimed, forcing herself to sound as aloof as possible. “And you? I hope you don’t sit around bein’ stressed either.”
“You sound real giddy,” Loretta noticed, ignoring Maureen’s question about how she was doing. “You drunk?”