by Angela Henry
I started to leave when I heard voices at the top of the steps. I put my ear to the door and heard Mr. Hathaway telling someone his theory about Inez’s spirit and the strange noises. I then heard what sounded like several people walking down the steps towards the apartment. I panicked. It must be the church sisters from Holy Cross. How would I explain what I was doing here? I looked around frantically for a place to hide and dove under the kitchen table just as the door, which I’d forgotten to lock, opened.
“I don’t know anyone named Cleopatra Jones from the church, do you guys?” I heard one woman ask. The woman’s companions indicated that they didn’t, either.
“Hello,” someone called out.
I held my breath.
“There ain’t nobody in here,” declared yet another voice.
“Poor old man. He must be senile,” said a third voice. I heard murmurs of agreement.
“Either that or he’s been watching too many old movies. He probably thinks Cleopatra Jones is down here having tea with Foxy Brown and Shaft.” The woman’s companions laughed.
I peeked out from beneath the tablecloth and saw three sets of feet. My heart was beating furiously. My plan was to stay under the table until they left but I had no idea what I would do when they decided to pack the tablecloth.
“Come on, y’all, let’s get this over with.” I heard the sound of boxes being dropped on the floor and settled myself into a more comfortable position.
After about five minutes of listening to them pack and comment on Inez’s effects, I detected movement to my left. I turned and came face-to-face with the source of the scratching noises Mr. Hathaway had been hearing. And it certainly wasn’t any spirit. It was a rat. Now, I have no problem with spiders, and I actually think reptiles are cute. But, Kendra don’t do rodents of any kind, especially rats. The rat was standing on its hind legs twitching its nose at me. It was probably a standard-sized rat. But at that moment it looked the size of King Kong.
I could feel the scream welling up in me all the way from the tips of my toes. When it finally reached my lungs, I let out a high-pitched shriek that left my chest burning. I tried to stand up at the same time, lifting the heavy kitchen table several inches off the ground, and banging my head hard in the process. I felt myself start to lose consciousness. Before I was completely out, I heard the sound of feet hitting the floor as the church sisters fled the apartment.
I woke up under the table with a throbbing headache. I lay there for a few minutes feeling dizzy, looking around slowly. I was alone under the table. My rat friend was gone. But I wasn’t alone in the apartment. I could hear someone walking around. I figured the church sisters must have come back or maybe Cecil Hathaway had decided to brave the stairs. I could only imagine what those poor women must have thought, seeing the table rise up off the ground to the soundtrack of my scream. They must have thought that not only was Inez’s spirit in the apartment, but she was pissed as hell. I checked my watch and was surprised that only fifteen minutes had passed.
The dizziness finally subsided and I sat up and peeked out from under the tablecloth again. This time it wasn’t the church sisters or Cecil Hathaway. It was Shanda Kidd and Vaughn Castle. Shanda was still in her funeral clothes but Vaughn was dressed in a red-and-black silk tracksuit. I could smell his lemony cologne from across the room. Now that I knew what kind of a person he was, he wasn’t nearly as handsome to me as he had been. They were standing together in front of Inez’s open closet. Vaughn was rummaging through the closet, looking for something.
“Let’s go, V. We’ve done enough with the phone call and the tissue. The police are already looking for Timmy,” whined Shanda. She looked like a sulky child with her arms crossed and her lips poked out.
“I wanna make sure they got enough shit on that muthafucka to send him away for life. This might do it,” he said, pulling a blue silk scarf out of the closet. I could see the initials I.R. stitched into one corner of the scarf.
“What are you going to do with that?” Shanda asked warily.
“I ain’t doin’ shit with it. You’re gonna go to Milton’s crib to console his mom. Then when she ain’t lookin’, you’re gonna plant it somewhere. That way if the cops search the place again they’ll find it and connect Milton to Inez.” He was looking smug like he was some kind of a criminal mastermind. What a loser.
Shanda looked doubtful but she took the scarf and quickly stuffed it into her pocket like she didn’t want to touch it.
I was stunned. Not because Timmy had been right about being set up, but because Shanda was in on the plot, too. How could she? They finally left and I waited about ten minutes to make sure the coast was clear before emerging from under the table. I looked around, hoping not to see Mr. Rat and quickly locked the apartment and left. When I walked out onto the porch, Mr. Hathaway was sitting in his chair, asleep and snoring softly. I quietly placed the key on the table next to him, hopped in my car, and didn’t look back.
Timmy still had not returned by the time I got back home. I popped a couple of aspirin and looked in my refrigerator for something to eat. It was even barer than Inez’s. I ordered a pizza and lay down on my couch. When my phone rang I quickly picked it up, hoping it was Timmy. Instead, it was Mama, the last person I wanted to talk to. I love my grandmother dearly. I’m certainly much closer to her than anyone else in the family and she’s my only other relative besides Alex who still lives in town. My parents and sister reside in California and Florida, respectively. However, Mama has this knack for making me feel like a misbehaving child. My own mother doesn’t even have the power to make me feel as guilty as Mama does.
“I was looking for you at the church. Where’d you disappear to?” I asked, trying to counteract her annoyance by acting annoyed myself.
“You’d have known where I went if you hadn’t been smiling and flirting with that married man.”
“I wasn’t flirting with him, Mama,” I exclaimed, sitting up and wincing with pain from my still sore head.
“Yes, you were. I saw you, girl. Blushing and giggling like some fool. You were raised better than that, Kendra.”
I could hear her suck her teeth in disgust, and I sighed.
“Don’t you sigh at me, girl. That man has no shame. Do you know why he left St. Luke’s to start his own church?”
“Why?” I asked casually, already knowing the answer.
“Because in the two years that he was assistant minister he managed to get several women in the congregation pregnant. He was married to Inez’s mother, Jeanne, at the time, and Inez was a little girl.”
Everyone in town knew Morris Rollins had illegitimate children. No one knew exactly who the children were, since Rollins was rumored to have offered financial support to the mothers only if they kept quiet about paternity. Inez was the only child he publicly claimed as his own.
“Mama, I have a man and I would never mess around with someone else’s husband. It really hurts my feelings that you would think that about me.” I tried my best to sound hurt.
“Kendra, I’ve seen too many good women lose their religion over that man. He’s got some kind of power. He knows just what to say and do to get what he wants.”
The power Mama was referring to was called sex appeal. I wondered if she remembered what that was. I wasn’t going to ask her, though. I let her vent until my pizza arrived, then politely got off the phone for my date with pepperoni and extra cheese.
The next day I was at work bright and early, lying in wait for Shanda. She showed up looking tired and acting distracted, even snapping at a student who’d asked her a simple question. Framing an innocent person for murder can do that to you. Before I had a chance to pull her aside for a heart-to-heart, Noreen started in on me about some trivial nonsense that only she seemed to care about.
“Kendra, while you were out yesterday, I was looking for the master copies of the grammar and punctuation worksheets. I couldn’t find them. Please show me where you keep them,” she said primly.
“I looked in there yesterday and couldn’t find them. Don’t you keep your files in alphabetical order so that others may find them when needed?”
“Yes.” I could feel myself tensing up. I hated the fact that this annoying old biddy had the power to piss me off so completely.
“Then why aren’t they filed under W for worksheets?”
“Because I file them under G for grammar and punctuation,” I replied, slamming the drawer shut a little harder than intended.
“I suggest that you type up some instructions so the rest of us can navigate through this mess when you’re not here and we need to find something.”
She walked off before I could reply. I felt a firm hand holding me down in my seat before I could leap out of it onto Noreen’s back. It was Rhonda.
“Steady, girl. She’s not worth it. Now, take a deep breath and shake it off.”
She was right, of course. I took some deep breaths and chilled.
“See, that’s better, isn’t it?” she asked. I nodded in halfhearted agreement.
“And for the record, I‘ve always been able to find whatever I needed in that drawer,” Rhonda said, and headed off to help a student. I sat fuming and wondering why the hell Rhonda didn’t speak up when Noreen was making her snide comments.
Since I already had an attitude, I decided to use it to my advantage and talk to Shanda. I had her meet me on the playground. She didn’t seem pleased. I decided not to accuse her outright. I really wanted her to tell me about it on her own.
“Shanda, what’s going on? I can tell something is very wrong.” We were sitting side by side on the swings. She wouldn’t look at me and didn’t answer.
“Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Trouble? What kind of trouble would I be in? I’m not allowed to do anything, Kendra. You met my parents. All I’m allowed to do is go to class, church, and the library. I can’t even live on campus. They make all of my decisions. They’ve planned my entire life out for me.” She held her head down and I saw tears running down her face.
I felt sorry for her, but her unhappiness didn’t give her the right to ruin someone else’s life. “Well, you must be doing something. I saw you with that guy at the funeral. Wasn’t he Inez’s man?” Her head snapped up and I was again treated to one of her nasty little looks.
“Vaughn is my man now, okay? Whatever he had going on with Inez was over when he met me. He loves me.”
I could see that I was getting nowhere fast, but pressed on. “Shanda, I haven’t heard good things about him and what he’s into. I —”
She held up her hand, cutting me off before I could finish. “You sound just like Inez. She told me lies about Vaughn, too. She was just jealous and wanted him back.”
“I thought you told me you hadn’t talked to Inez in a long time. Is Vaughn the reason you two weren’t close?” I thought about her behavior at the funeral and how she wouldn’t even look at Inez’s casket. Unless, of course, there was an even more sinister reason for her behavior, like if she killed Inez herself. I knew from past experience what women were capable of doing over the love of a man.
“Look, this is really none of your business.” Shanda got up from the swing. “I’m sure Noreen wouldn’t be happy to know you’re harassing me like this. Maybe I should tell her about it.” She started walking back towards the center. Now was my chance.
“And maybe I should tell the police about you and your drug-dealing boyfriend setting up Timmy Milton for a murder he didn’t commit.” She stopped dead in her tracks. I expected her to break down and confess. Boy, was I wrong.
She turned to stare at me with a strange little smile. “Prove it,” she said, and walked back into the center, leaving me stunned.
Wonderful! Timmy had begged me to help him prove he’d been set up and now Shanda had challenged me to prove that she and her thug boyfriend had been the ones who’d done the setting up. Could my day get any worse? Yes, it could.
“Ah, I don’t think so,” said Lynette when I showed her the dress I’d put on hold at Déjà Vu. It had taken me a while to convince her to come see the dress. She was holding it up and looking at it like it was a dust rag. I wasn’t in the best of moods and didn’t bother hiding it.
“What’s wrong with it, Lynette? This is a much more flattering style for me and it fits in with your wedding colors.”
“Don’t get me wrong, girl. It was a nice dress back in the day when some chick wore it to her prom and danced to Donna Summer in it, but not for my wedding. It doesn’t even match the style of the bridesmaids’ dresses. Now, what’s the operative word here, Kendra?”
She was waiting for my reply. I knew it was her wedding. But, we’d promised each other since seventh grade not to make the other look foolish in our weddings. She wasn’t living up to her end of the bargain. I didn’t answer, so she answered for me.
“The operative word is my, as in my wedding. Why are you being so difficult? I was thinking about you when I picked out that dress. It’s cheap. I thought you’d like it. You like cheap stuff.” She was waving the blue dress at me as proof of my apparent cheapness.
I glared at her. “For the millionth time, I’m not cheap. I’m thrifty. There’s a difference. And that dress you picked is not cheap. It’ll cost me a month’s rent.”
“The one I had originally picked cost twice that much. I thought I was helping you out by picking something off the clearance rack. That’s right up your alley, isn’t it?”
“I may not like to pay a lot for stuff but I do believe in quality. What is that dress you picked out for me made out of anyway, steel wool?” I remembered how the dress made me itch around the neckline.
“It’s rayon, for your information. You know, my mother said to watch out for jealous females when I was planning my wedding. Don’t worry. It’ll be your turn one day, Kendra. Maybe.”
“Jealous? Oh, so now I’m cheap and jealous just because I don’t want to wear that ugly dress with the big bow on the ass? Friends don’t let friends look like Smurfs, Lynette.”
She busted out laughing, which pissed me off even more.
“So, are you gonna take the damn thing or what? I got someone else interested in it,” claimed Ruby Young, who wasn’t known for mincing her words. She’d been watching our exchange like a tennis match.
“I’ll take it,” I told Ruby, tossing my money on the counter and a dirty look at Lynette, who was still giggling. Even if I had to wear the thing out for Halloween, I was going to wear the dress someplace.
“You can buy it if you want to, Disco Queen. Just don’t show up to my wedding in it.”
“Now, there’s an idea,” I said, stalking out of the store to the sound of Lynette and Ruby’s laughter.
I headed home from Estelle’s after my shift later that night feeling like the biggest loser. My grandmother thought I was a potential home-wrecker, Lynette thought I was cheap, Shanda thought I was stupid, and Timmy probably thought I was a backstabber. So far, I’d accomplished not one thing to help him out. And what in the world did Harmon and Mercer want with me, anyway? I wasn’t up for that visit at all.
I was also sick over Shanda. Whether she was willing to admit it or not, she was in for big trouble over Vaughn. I wasn’t sure exactly what her role in setting up Timmy had entailed, but surely she’d broken the law.
While I drove, I fingered the blue dress that I’d tossed into my front seat. Every time I remembered Lynette calling me cheap, accusing me of being jealous, and that ugly-ass maid of honor dress, it made my blood boil. I put in a Sade tape and tried to mellow out. I started heading to Frisch’s drive-thru for some chocolate therapy, or hot fudge cake, as it’s listed on the menu, when a thought hit me. I looked over at the blue dress and suddenly remembered the blue scarf Shanda and Vaughn had taken from Inez’s apartment. What had Vaughn told Shanda to do with it? Plant it in Oli
via Milton’s house? I must have cracked my head on that kitchen table harder than I thought to have forgotten about the scarf.
I took a detour to Palmer Street and parked in front of the Miltons’ condo. Olivia’s car was parked in the driveway and the lights were on. I rang the doorbell.
She looked tired but genuinely happy to see me. I was relieved. “I’m just Miss Popularity this evening,” she said, stepping aside to let me in.
The Miltons’ condo had a warm and homey feel to it. The furniture was old but well-kept, and a shelving unit with plants and an abundance of family pictures, including some of Olivia and Alex from high school, took up one entire wall.
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Timmy’s little girlfriend, Shanda, just left about ten minutes ago. She’s as worried about him as I am. I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend, Kendra. But she seems like a real nice girl. She’s a college student.”
“I know Shanda. You’re right. She’s really something.” Exactly what she was, I would keep to myself. I tried to look around the condo on the sly, trying to figure out where Shanda could have hidden the scarf.
“You should have seen that little hood rat he was runnin’ around with back in Detroit. She’s the reason he got strung out on them drugs in the first place. I know God will get me for saying this but I’m glad she’s gone. Girl was bad news.”
I could tell she wanted to elaborate. But as much as I’d have loved to hear her reasons for being glad Timmy’s ex had gone to meet her Maker, I needed to find that scarf.
“I talked to Carl about finding a lawyer for Timmy. Did he call you?” I asked instead.