Should Have Known Better

by Grace Octavia

  “What?”

  “I’ll return the books.”

  “You’ll return the books? But that’s my thing. That’s what I do. You handle these crazy-ass customers and I do the floor work.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said firmly. I was getting tired of sitting there in the darkness and thinking of Reginald being gone. I kept looking at my phone. Waiting for a new text. Reading the old text. Trying to decipher it again. I’d responded, asking what he meant by “time” and reminding him that I needed him to come home to pick up the children so I didn’t have to pay for after-school care again—he didn’t answer.

  Sharika’s hand went to her hip. Her lips pursed together the way they do when she’s about to read into something.

  “What crawled up into your ass and died?” she asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yesterday I thought something was wrong with you. I didn’t say anything. I just knew and let it go. Didn’t want to be all nosy, you know?” she pointed out. “But today, I know—”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Let it go.”

  “If that isn’t the weakest defense, I don’t know what is.” Sharika stepped away from the cart and stood right beside my seat. “You know you can talk to me, right? We aren’t close, but I do consider you my friend. Hell, you listen to all of my problems.”

  “There’s no problem.” I got up and pressed past the little bit of space she’d left between us. “I figured I’d get used to pushing this cart around when you leave. And you need more experience with the customers.” I began pushing the cart out to the floor.

  “Dawn Johnson, you stop that cart right there and right now!” Sharika demanded.

  And I stopped. Not because I had to, but because something in me wanted to. But I rolled my eyes anyway. Pretended Sharika was just wasting my time.

  “You and I both know something is wrong. You came in here all scary-faced, looking like somebody stole your soul, and expect me to sit here and pretend nothing’s wrong? That ain’t me! That ain’t where I’m from. Now, that might be how it is where you’re from in the south side of Atlanta, but here, in these woods, we look the devil in the face and tell him he’s a liar.”

  “Drama. Drama. Drama. What do you want from me, Sharika?”

  “What’s wrong?” She came over and pulled the cart from me. “I know it isn’t the kids, because you’d be someplace else dealing with your babies. Is it Reginald?” She paused. “Is it that woman from TV who was here looking all funny?”

  I grabbed the cart back.

  “Hell no,” she said. “Hell fucking no.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder. Tears came crawling up my back.

  There was a slam from the front hallway where the bathrooms were.

  Everyone looked up from their squares on the tables.

  Sharika and I rushed to the hallway to see Mr. Lawrence stomping toward us in a rush.

  “—tired of this,” he said.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Everything OK?”

  He walked right past us and out of the library, slamming the door behind him.

  I looked over at Sharika, but she was still looking down the hallway.

  I turned to see Mrs. Harris heading toward us. Her head high. Her arm holding a book. She walked past our puzzled eyes and to the help desk.

  “I’ll be checking this out,” she said with a forced air of sophistication.

  Sharika and I went back to the desk, leaving the cart in the middle of the floor.

  I took the book—The Great Gatsby—from her and held out my hand for her card without a word.

  Mrs. Harris went looking in her purse, tossing things around and talking to herself.

  Sharika, who was now right over my shoulder, looked at me.

  A tear fell into Mrs. Harris’s purse.

  “Can’t ever find anything in here,” she said, her sophisticated voice broken. “Can’t find nothing.”

  “No one’s waiting in line,” I pointed out. “You can have more time—”

  “I don’t need more time. I’ve had enough time!”

  Sharika and I looked at each other again.

  “I’ve given time and I’ve had time and I can’t do this anymore.”

  She shut the purse suddenly, with no card in her hand and just looked up toward the ceiling.

  “Everything OK?” I asked.

  Sharika handed her a tissue from her desk.

  She wiped her tears.

  “I am not sleeping with that man,” she said tightly.

  “OK . . .” Sharika said. “Well, what are you doing with him?”

  I nudged her in the ribs.

  “What?” Sharika asked. “She brought it up.”

  “But it’s not our place to—”

  “I’ve been married fifty-three years,” Mrs. Harris said as if we hadn’t said anything and she wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular. “Left my mother’s house when I was twenty-two years old to be with Eldridge David Harris, a boy from my high school who was in Germany shooting guns and wanted to take me around the world. I was a new woman. Had nice shoes and long fingernails.” She looked down at her wrinkled hands and I saw that her wedding ring was on her right hand. “And I was ready to see the whole world. And I knew he could show me.” She paused. “The farthest we made it was Augusta. Right into his mother’s house. I hated it. I started to hate him and that house. It wasn’t what I wanted. Where was my world? Where were his promises? I felt like he’d tricked me with all of his big talk. Instead of the world, he gave me three babies and a broom. I wanted to leave so many nights. But I stayed. I made a life with him, because that’s what I said I was going to do. I guess I’m too old to see the world now.”

  I slid the book down onto the counter.

  “But that man”—she pointed to the closed doors Mr. Lawrence had just slammed—“he reminds me of that woman. How she smelled. How she walked. How she could tell a joke. Keep all eyes on her. With all of his faults, he does that for me. He brings me . . . joy.” She looked into my eyes and shook her head. “But I can’t put him through this anymore. I can’t continue to lie to him or lie to myself. I’m too old to love again like that. Fifty-three years? I can’t leave my husband. If I walk away, it’s like I’m leaving my life”—she paused—“for him.”

  She slid the book back toward me.

  “You girls are young—”

  “Girls?” Sharika stopped her.

  “Yes, girls,” Mrs. Harris said again. “You’re young. You still have a whole life to live. If there’s something you want, you go out and get it. You see the world and don’t wait for nobody to show it to you. You can do it. Don’t let that be a mystery you discover when it’s too late.”

  She picked up her purse and placed it gracefully on her forearm before pursing her lips to find some part of the composure she’d always had. She nodded to us and began walking to the door.

  “But what about the book?” I held up The Great Gatsby.

  “I’ve already read it,” she said. “Keep it.”

  I told Sharika everything. From the blond curls on my white bedsheets, to Goodnight Moon and begging Reginald to stay. As I got sad, she grew mad. Mad like she was me. Mad like she’d been the one haunted in her nights and ignored in her mornings. I’d expected her to try to calm me down. Stop me from crying and say I was exaggerating. She’d tell me everything was probably fine. I’d go home and Reginald would be there waiting. But no. She just wagged her eyes from side to side as she considered the awful series of events.

  “So this whore came up in your house and flaunted her bony ass in front of your family and now your husband hasn’t come home?”

  I nodded.

  Sharika’s eyes wagged some more. Her hand went to her hip again.

  “Now why was this whore here again?”

  I hated the way that word sounded. Like Sasha was a thief. Or a murderer. Someone no one in her right mind would allow in her home. But, you know, looking back now, I think mayb
e that speaks to the nature of a whore. Of a thief. Of a murderer. They’re skilled. They don’t show up in some T-shirt branding who and what they are. They just go to work and leave you to figure out the direction of the assault.

  “She was at a conference. Some journalist’s conference downtown. I don’t know. I didn’t ask,” I replied.

  “How’d she know how to get in contact with you? You said you hadn’t spoken to her in years.”

  “I don’t know, Sharika,” I said. “Maybe she looked it up online. Maybe someone in the sorority—I don’t know. I mean, why are you making it sound like I did something wrong?”

  “I never said such a thing. I’m just trying to get my facts straight. You should, too. Look, if—and I’m not saying she did—but if this whore has somehow convinced your husband to up and have a rendezvous or whatever this is with her, then you need to know the truth of the matter, the beast you’re up against. I knew that chick was trouble the moment I smelled her. Had that sugary-ass perfume on. Smelling like a stripper.”

  “You think she took Reginald from me?” I asked.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Sharika said. She cocked her head to the side suspiciously and put both of her hands on her hips this time. “But I do know you need to figure out what your next move is.”

  “Excuse me, ma’am . . . ma’ams,” a thin boy with thick glasses whispered. “Do you know where the most recent anthology of stories about the Star Trek series is located?”

  “What?” Sharika shifted her weight from one hip to the next in her seat and shot her eyes at him. “Can’t you see we’re talking here?”

  “But I—”

  “It’s out right now. It’s usually in PN1997. It’s due back next week.” She turned back to me casually as if she hadn’t identified a call number off the top of her head.

  After a few confused stares, the boy gathered his things and went back to his seat.

  “So?” she asked.

  “I’m not going to do anything. I can’t. I have to wait for him to call,” I said. “What, you think I should call her?”

  “Call her for what? So some whore can have the pleasure of telling you where your husband is? Hell no!”

  “So, what?”

  “So . . . I don’t know . . . I don’t know.” Sharika shook her head worriedly. “You . . . you’re always talking about love and what people do for love. You have to do something.” She stopped and looked at the picture of Reginald and me floating on my computer screen and then looked back at me with wild eyes. “You have to get him.”

  “Get him?”

  “Yeah. Go to her house and get him.”

  “I can’t go to her house. I don’t even know where she lives. Just the street name,” I said, remembering Lover’s Lane. “And even if I do find the house, what am I supposed to do? Drag him outside and make him come home?”

  “No. You need to go there to stare this man you love in the eyes and demand that he tell you what’s going on. Because something is going on.”

  “Yeah, that all sounds really good, but I’m not some teenager confronting her boyfriend. I’m a woman. A mother. And going to her house for any reason sounds irrational. It sounds crazy.”

  “No. That’s love,” Sharika said as delicately as a poet. “Doing nothing is crazy.”

  “Sharika, you don’t understand. I let her in. I did that. I told him to like her. I wanted her to like him. I made this happen,” I cried.

  “Look, Dawn, I know you’re older than me. And a little smarter than me. But I just can’t believe you believe that. You didn’t do anything wrong. If something was happening, your husband needed to stop it. But he didn’t. Let’s stop speculating and say what this is. Call a spade a fucking spade. He didn’t stop it. Whatever it is. For whatever reason. And I know you want to be sad, but right now isn’t the time for that.” She took my hand and balled it up, placing it over my heart. “You take all of that blame you have in your heart and you get mad. You do something with that.”

  “Hi, Mrs. June,” I said as pleasantly as I could, standing in the main office at R. J. and Cheyenne’s school. “I’m here to get the twins.”

  “Oh, is something wrong?” she answered, getting up from her desk in a loud fuchsia dress that was nearly red and definitely too small. Her nails were the same color and as long as her pinkies. She’d been working in the office at the school since Reginald was a student and prided herself on looking young and staying in everyone’s business.

  “Yes. It’s an emergency.”

  “Emergency?”

  “Emergency,” I replied tightly, so she wouldn’t bother to ask me another question, and not only because I didn’t want her in my business, but also because I didn’t know the particular state of my business myself. Moments before, Sharika was stuffing me in my car and promising to back me up at the job by telling everyone at the main library that she was sure I had the flu and certain I’d infect the entire library if I didn’t stay home for the rest of the week.

  Mrs. June pulled a stack of papers from her desk and spit on her hand to thumb through to Johnson.

  “Will you be needing any—?” she said, looking down at the pages.

  Frustrated and frantic, I slammed my hand on the papers and she looked back up at me, afraid.

  “I’ll be needing my kids. R. J. is in Mrs. Nettle’s class—room fifteen. Cheyenne is in Ms. Fern’s class in room nine. Do you need me to go and get them myself ?”

  “Mama, where we going? To a basketball game?” R. J. asked, still giddy that he was leaving school early and, according to his teacher, missing an afternoon math quiz.

  “No, R. J., and put your seat belt on,” I said, watching him squirm around in his seat from the front of the car.

  Cheyenne was sitting beside him, quiet and angry. I’d come before lunch and it was Natalie’s birthday and she didn’t get her cupcake and gift bag. She sucked her teeth and glared out of the window.

  I had nothing to say to her. Altogether, she was enveloping all of my doubt. Had already asked all of the questions that made me look crazy and deflated every ounce of courage Sharika had pumped into me.

  “Well, can we go to a basketball game?” R. J. asked excitedly.

  “No basketball, sweetie,” I answered. “Well, maybe.”

  “Then where are we going?” Cheyenne asked snidely.

  “I told you when we first got into the car. We’re going to get your father. To pick him up.”

  “But he has the truck. He can drive home.” She rolled her eyes again and looked into my eyes in the rearview window.

  Just then, I realized that I was lying to someone who knew the truth. She may have been young, but she wasn’t dumb. Her anger alone made her better understand mine. Maybe she was happy I was sad. Maybe she was happy Sasha had come and taken her father away. I remembered how she’d laughed at Sasha’s jokes, eaten her pancakes.

  “When are we coming back?” she asked as we cleared Augusta and I could see the city with the highway slipping through it in the rearview mirror.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Oh, a vacation!” R. J. exclaimed.

  “But what about our clothes?” Cheyenne asked.

  “I stopped at the house and packed some bags. They’re in the trunk,” I said to her reflection.

  “Yeah, a vacation! We can go to a basketball game. We can go to the beach. Is there a beach in Atlanta?”

  “No, baby.”

  “This is stupid. Next week is the last week of school. I want to be with my friends. Friday is Jayshanna’s birthday,” Cheyenne protested. “What about Daddy? What if he’s on his way home? What are we going to eat? Where are we going to sleep?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know!” I answered loudly and worn down. Her questions were like hot pokers, stabbing into my chest. “Look, we’re just going to Atlanta to get your father, like I said.”

  “But Jayshanna’s—”

  “Cheyenne, you shut up and be quiet,
” I yelled at her in a way I don’t believe I ever have before.

  I looked at the mile marker on the side of the road. We’d be in Atlanta in two hours. Reginald hadn’t answered my text asking where he was.

  6

  My eyes bounced from the odometer to the road to the trucks making afternoon deliveries and then back at the odometer again. I counted each mile, each long stretch of road I passed over like a red light flashing in my eye. First two, then ten, next twenty, and fifty. My chest tightened as if I was expecting something—a blow, a hit, a kick. I opened the window, all four and let the hot air come rolling around my neck. Back to the odometer, the road, the trucks, the odometer again.

  “Go on in and say good-bye to your father,” my mother had said after we alone managed to stuff my last box of clothes into the backseat of the car. It was late summer and it seemed like every car in every driveway on our street was filled with the boxes of my classmates leaving for college.

  I closed the car door and looked at my mother standing on the other side. The heat had her bangs wet and stuck to her forehead.

  “Go on,” she pushed. “He’s having his coffee. Just say good-bye and kiss him on the cheek. Tell him you love him.”

  “He ain’t tell me he loves me. He ain’t kiss me on the cheek and say good-bye,” I said. I was taller than my mom already. Too big to be stuffed into a closet. And every day that I stayed in that house I was becoming more loud and angry at all the closets she’d pushed me into, and all the reasons she’d had to do it. “Ain’t even taking me to school. I went to the school he picked. What more does he want from me?”

  My mother walked around to the side of the car where I was standing, limping carefully on a bad leg she’d worn down with work. She was still young. Still beautiful. But time was hard on her body. It creaked in places it shouldn’t and slowed far faster than my father’s.

  “He’s just scared,” she said. “You can’t tell when he’s scared yet?”

  “I can tell when he’s angry.”

  “You’re his only child. You’re leaving. He’s scared something might happen to you. That you’ll leave this house and forget your Bible. Lose your way.”