“We’ve been seeing each other for almost six months now, Terrence.”
He let go of her arms and shook his head. “I told you, it’s simple. I can’t leave my kids now. OK? Laura’s not strong like you. She’ll fall apart if I split while the boys are growing up, and I can’t do that to the mother of my boys. They need her. I was the first man Laura was ever with, and—”
Jolene smacked her lips. “Oh, please, give me a break. What about me? What about my feelings? I don’t want to have to wait that long for us to be together. You said this house will be finished in another six months, right?”
He nodded and frowned at the same time, clearly wondering what was coming next.
“When it is finished, I want us to move in here together and be a family and—”
He pointed to the floor. “Here?”
“What’s wrong with that? Patrick won’t want to have anything to do with this house if I ask him for a divorce. He barely wants anything to do with it now.” She chuckled wryly. “He thinks I get carried away and that it’s much too big and expensive. You and I had more to do with building this house than he did. We’re good together, sweetie, and you know it.”
Terrence smiled with pride as he looked around what was the future great room, with its soaring two-story-high ceiling and a spiral staircase leading up to a second-story balcony. “It is going to be one hell of a showpiece when it’s done. One of the nicest homes in Silver Lake.”
“Damn right it is,” she said. Better than just about anyone else’s in Silver Lake, including the white folks’. Unlike the house she lived in now on the southern edge of Silver Lake, this one was being built on the north side, where the Bentleys and all the other big-money folks in Prince George’s County lived. If she’d had her way, their new house would have been even bigger than the Bentleys’. But Patrick could be so tight with a buck she sometimes thought she could see blood dripping out of his damn wallet.
Terrence smiled at her. “Look, don’t you have a wedding to attend this afternoon? Isn’t Bradford Bentley’s daughter getting married?”
Jolene turned her back to him and folded her arms. She knew that he was changing the subject on her, just as he always did when she brought this up. Well, he wasn’t going to get away with it this time.
“I can’t do this anymore, Terrence. I’m tired of having to sneak off to meet you and … and screwing in the backseats of our cars and in hotel rooms and now here. If you love me as much as I love you, you’d leave her.”
“I keep telling you, sugar, it’s not that simple. I—” He reached for her but she stepped out of his grasp.
“It is that simple. It’s me or her. And I mean it this time.” She bit her bottom lip.
He bent down and snatched his shirt off the floor. “Fine. If that’s how you want to be. Fuck it.”
“Fine with me, too,” she shouted at his back as he walked toward the doorway. “Go on, then. Run away. Just like you always do. And don’t expect me to call you this time. I’ll find me another damn architect.”
He waved his arm nonchalantly. “Whatever.” He took the stairs two at a time.
“Shit!” She kicked a Budweiser can left by the construction workers across the floorboards. Bastard. Why did she have such rotten luck with men? First Patrick, now Terrence. No. The first was that Jonathan Parker. She shook her head. She’d been married to that asshole Patrick for so damn long, she’d almost forgotten about that prick Jonathan. But not quite. She could never forget someone who had caused her and her family so much pain and humiliation. She was only seventeen when it all came down, and to this moment, that had to have been one of the worst days of her life.
“Tell me who the father is, Jolene,” Daddy had demanded after church on that Sunday long ago, his voice booming across his big mahogany desk. He was wearing a navy suit with a patterned gold tie, and Jolene thought his brown face looked so handsome.
But she nearly choked trying to get the boy’s name out, she was so scared of what her daddy might do. Especially in that dark den. It was Daddy’s favorite room, with its thick Persian carpet and leather-bound books lining the walls. But the room always gave her the creeps.
“Answer me, Jolene,” Daddy scolded. “Who is the father?”
“Um … um … Jonathan,” she murmured.
Daddy narrowed his eyes the way he often did from the bench of his courtroom when questioning an attorney or a witness. “Jonathan Parker? Isn’t his father an attorney?”
She nodded.
Daddy walked around the desk and paced across the carpet. “What’s the matter with you two? What the devil were you thinking? Jonathan Parker comes from a fine, respectable family of lawyers. And so do you. You’re a Cooke. You two should know better than this.”
He turned toward Mama, sitting in an upholstered armchair. A wide-brimmed burgundy hat with black trim framed her ivory-colored face. Jolene had told Mama the news first, and Mama marched her right into Daddy’s den.
“Didn’t you talk to her about this, Camilla?” Daddy asked. “About boys and … and all that?”
“Of course I did, Charles. But she’s always been willful. You’ve spoiled her so. Her sister, too.”
Daddy grunted. “Well, they’ll have to get married right away. That’s all there is to it.”
“I agree,” Mama said. “We won’t have time to plan much of a wedding, but I’ll do the best I can.”
Jolene felt her cheeks go hot. She looked down at the floor. “Um …”
“Well, what is it, Jolene?” Daddy asked impatiently.
“Have you told the boy yet?” Mama asked.
Jolene nodded slowly.
“And?”
“And he … well … he … he doesn’t want to marry me.” There. She’d said it. She swallowed hard as a look of sorrow crossed Mama’s eyes. She wanted to run and bury her face in Mama’s lap and apologize. She never meant to shame the family like this. She knew how hard her mama and daddy worked to get all their nice things. They lived in a big Tudor-style house on upper Sixteenth Street, an area in Washington, D.C., that was so prominent it was called the gold coast. They had two Buicks and a cottage in Oak Bluffs, on Martha’s Vineyard. And her parents wanted their two daughters to marry into nice respectable families. But she was too big to run to Mama now. She was wearing two-inch pumps and pink lipstick.
“He said that?” Daddy asked. “He actually told you he won’t marry you?”
Jolene nodded. Jonathan told her that and a whole lot more that she would never repeat to anyone. Not ever. He said that he didn’t believe he was the father and for her to get lost. He called her a liar whenever she reminded him that he was the only boy she’d ever slept with. How could he say such mean things to her after he had made love to her only weeks ago?
Daddy scoffed. “Well, we’ll certainly see about that,” he said, going back around his desk. He flipped the cards in his Rolodex.
“What are you doing, Daddy?” Jolene cried. “Who are you calling?”
“The Parkers. That’s who. We’ll see what that boy’s parents have to say about this.”
Jolene ran up to his desk. “No, Daddy, don’t,” she pleaded.
“What do you mean, no? This is his responsibility, too. I’m not going to let him get away with this.”
“I … I don’t want to be married to someone who doesn’t want to be married to me. And … and”—she stomped the floor—“he said he would deny it if I said he was the father.”
“I don’t give a damn what he said,” Daddy said gruffly. “If he’s the father, then his parents need to talk some sense into his silly little head.”
Mama stood up. “Jolene, if you don’t marry Jonathan, no decent man will ever want to marry you once you have a child.”
“Did you think about that, Jolene, or anything else before you got yourself into this … this … situation?” Daddy sighed in exasperation.
Jolene blinked and looked down at the floor. No, she hadn’t thought about that.<
br />
“And college,” Daddy continued. “That will have to be put on hold, maybe forever. College is difficult enough without having a child to worry about. You don’t have to take our word for it. Ask your sister. Jackie would never have gotten herself in trouble like this before finishing at Spelman.”
Jolene clenched her jaw. Why did they always have to throw her older sister in her face? She wasn’t anything like Jackie. She didn’t get all A’s in school. She didn’t have long, wavy hair or a flawless near-white complexion like their mama. Her father had a little more color, but he was still fair enough to pass the brown paper bag rule. Jolene wasn’t.
“Charles. Maybe we should wait and discuss this later. There are other options we can look into. But you, well, we’re all too upset to think straight now.”
Daddy shoved his hands in his pockets. “Of course I’m upset. This could ruin her life. And how does it look for a judge’s seventeen-year-old daughter to be pregnant and unmarried?” He waved his arm at Jolene. “Go on. I don’t need to see your face now. But don’t you leave this house without our permission.”
With a little arm-twisting, Daddy had finally persuaded Jonathan Parker to agree to marry her. Jonathan even brought her flowers the following week, and Mama began to fuss over wedding details. Soon Jolene allowed herself to believe that things might work out, and visions of a pretty house with a white picket fence danced through her head.
But the day before the wedding, Jonathan backed out, and no amount of persuasion or even threats would change his mind. By that time she was almost six months pregnant, too far gone for an abortion. Daddy would barely look at her when he came home from work.
She had spent a week in bed crying over Jonathan when Patrick Brown came along. He was two years older than she and had just finished junior college and started work as an electrician when her daddy hired him to upgrade the wiring in their big old house. She hardly noticed Patrick as he moved from room to room, but when she did, he always smiled at her and asked after the baby.
Then one Saturday afternoon he caught her huddled in the laundry room crying over a pile of dirty clothes. He offered her a handkerchief, and after she calmed down some asked her if she wanted to go and see Trading Places, a new comedy with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. He thought it would cheer her up.
He seemed surprised when she accepted, probably because she was the judge’s daughter and he was only an electrician. But she was brokenhearted, unmarried and very pregnant. Her daddy barely spoke to her. Attention from a young man was just what she needed. A month later he proposed.
He wasn’t nearly as cute as Jonathan, but she agreed to marry him to give the baby a father and erase some of the shame she’d brought on the family. But she soon realized that even though her folks went along with the marriage, it was without enthusiasm. After all, Patrick was not a doctor or a lawyer, never would be, and his daddy was a mail-room clerk. Patrick wasn’t even the father of her baby. And the wedding was arranged hastily in the parlor with only the immediate family present.
Daddy was certain Patrick was scheming to get his claws on the family money, but her folks had come to believe that this was the best they could expect of poor Jolene. A couple of vows, a little champagne and she was Mrs. Jolene Cooke Brown, much to the family’s dismay.
A few weeks later she delivered a stillborn baby and fell into another crying spell.
Mama thought that bragging about Jackie when she came to the hospital to visit would lift Jolene’s spirits. Jackie had pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha at Spelman College in Atlanta. Jackie was dating a Morehouse Man. Jackie this, Jackie that. Yak, yak, yak. Jolene thought she had never been so fucking miserable in all her life.
She returned to their tiny apartment and stayed in bed for weeks. She cried and smoked a lot of marijuana. After a few months of trying to be patient, Patrick told her to stop feeling sorry for herself, to get up off her butt and get on with her life. Besides, all this grass was burning a hole in his wallet.
She knew he was right. At the rate she was smoking, she’d turn into a dried-up weed right between the sheets. And no amount of crying would bring her baby back or her earlier charmed life. As soon as she was strong enough, she hit the pavement and quickly landed a job as a secretary at HUD. She enrolled in night classes at the University of D.C. It wasn’t exactly Spelman College, but it would do.
She even managed to put a smile on her face when Jackie marched down the aisle to marry her precious Morehouse Man. Daddy spent thousands of dollars on the wedding. He kept saying that if he was only going to have to do this once, he might as well do it right.
Jolene had given up marijuana by then, so she knocked back a couple of screwdrivers before the ceremony. She was so tipsy that she tripped and nearly fell over her long bridesmaid’s gown on her way down the aisle and had fits of giggles throughout the ceremony. Mama and Daddy fixed her with steely looks of disapproval between their radiant smiles at Jackie, but Jolene didn’t care. She was used to it.
She picked her bag up off the subfloor of her unfinished house and took out her compact. She powdered her brown nose, flipped her shoulder-length auburn hair, courtesy of Imani Silken Hair Weaves, and brushed the sawdust off her skirt. No point dwelling on all that ancient history. That’s all it was. History. The past.
She was now the boss at work, a goddamned GS-15, Step 10 at HUD, the highest level one could reach in the federal government without going through a special selection process or getting a presidential appointment. A dozen people jumped when she barked.
She worked out three days a week and was a shapely size 6. And she had a big, bad-ass, custom-designed house in the works in Silver Lake, North, where all the executive homes were located. Not even her sister Jackie, with her cattle-sized hips and little-ass colonial down there in Atlanta could top that.
And she would get her handsome, successful man sooner or later, one way or another. Jolene wasn’t about to let this little setback stop her. She took her cell phone from her bag and hit the memory buttons for Terrence’s number. It was time for them to make up.
Chapter 3
“Humph.” Pearl grunted again as she tried to wiggle into her black polyester skirt. She had gained so much weight, she couldn’t even get the thing over her hips. She had worn this skirt to a wedding just last summer. How on earth did this happen? When did it happen?
She knew exactly how and when—too many bags of Utz potato chips and Hershey candy bars keeping her company late at night after her son left home for college, that’s what. She yanked the skirt off and threw it on the bed.
She hated having to get dressed up and face this depressing joke of a closet crammed with cheap, ill-fitting polyester knits. But Barbara Bentley was one of her top clients. She came into Pearl’s hair salon every week and she tipped most generously. Pearl was flattered to have been invited to the Bentley home for the wedding reception.
Barbara was also filthy rich and lived in a beautiful house, and Pearl didn’t want to go to this affair looking shabby. A lot of rich black folks would be there. And if there was one thing rich black folks liked to throw their dough away on, it was clothes. They’ll be prancing around with Armani and Versace adorning their perfect, lean bodies, courtesy of private health clubs that she certainly couldn’t afford. They’ll be driving up in Benzes and Jaguars and Lexuses, and bragging about their Carribean vacations like they were auditioning for a production of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
Pearl would have bet her bottom dollar that half of them didn’t have a nickel to spit on after they paid their hefty mortgages and fat car notes at the end of the month. Some of them probably had credit card balances bigger than her annual salary. Still, they managed to walk the walk and talk the talk as good as anyone.
She stared in the closet and smacked her lips with utter disgust. She had way too much black and brown and could find only two skirts decent enough to be seen in. She usually just threw on a pair of slacks to work at the salon since they would be
covered by a smock anyway. She made decent enough money, but over the years she had spent most of it on her son, making sure he was raised right—not easy when you had to do it all by your lonesome self. There were music lessons, clothes for school and sports, doctor and dental bills. And don’t even mention college.
She even bought this town house for his sake. She had struggled for years, working twelve-hour days at hair salons and catering to save up for the down payment so they could move to Silver Lake and be near the right schools and playmates. Some of the folks in Silver Lake had tried to stop the developer from even putting up the town houses. They seemed to think that anything less than a mini-mansion would mess up their property values. Folks could be so snooty when they thought they had a little something. But that was OK. She could put up with snobbery and a whole lot more for the welfare of her son.
She reached into the back of the closet and finally found a loose-fitting beige polyester dress. At least it had fit loosely the last time she wore it a few years ago, and it wasn’t black or brown. She pulled it over her head and tugged it down over her hips. She just managed to squeeze into it.
She frowned at her reflection in the mirror above her dresser. It was getting so she hated to even pass by one of the contraptions for fear of what she’d see staring back at her. She could remember being a size 8 just before Kenyatta went away to college nine years ago. Now she was bursting out of a 14. She’d better do something about all these extra pounds she was putting on or she was going to find her fat butt on the doorstep of Lane Bryant.
She sighed, picked up a compact of bronze-colored blush and leaned over the Maybelline and Revlon bottles lined up on her dresser to dust her cheeks. Then she rubbed a dab of her homemade hair oil into her short natural hair. She spent so much time fixing other women’s hair, the last thing she wanted to do when she came home was fuss with her own.
The only thing she did was cut and color it a rich brown. Cut and color were the key, as she always told her clients. And long hair pulled the face—a no-no for most women once they hit their late forties and fifties. This short do suited her forty-seven-year-old caramel-colored face just fine.
P. G. County Page 2