by Mary Monroe
“What did she say?” Jade asked, squinting her eyes to look at the door.
“She denied everything,” I said, my eyes on the ground. “Her brother and her man were standing there so I didn’t expect her to do anything other than that.”
“She works the night shift at the Red Rose tonight. We can catch her when her brother and her man are not with her,” Rhoda said, leading the way back to her SUV.
“Rhoda, I’m through with this mess. I’m going to talk to Pee Wee and then I’m through with him, too. That’s all I can do. That’s all I want to do now. I am…tired. I want some peace back in my life. Whoever Pee Wee’s whore is, she’s won.”
“So you’re saying that you don’t believe it’s Betty Jean now? You don’t think she is the one sending you that stuff and fooling around with Pee Wee?” Jade hollered, almost sounding disappointed. “You know it’s her, and I know it’s her. Even if her brother and her man hadn’t been standing there with her, she would have denied it.”
“I don’t know what to believe, Jade. I just know I can’t put up with this shit any longer.” I glanced around the neighborhood. “And I won’t,” I vowed. “Not for Pee Wee or any other man.” There was a hot, sour taste in my mouth and my stomach was churning. For a moment it seemed like the ground was moving. “I just want to go home now,” I said. “I am so through with this,” I said, looking from Rhoda to Jade. “If you don’t mind, I don’t even want to talk about it anymore. At least, right now. Please take me home.”
CHAPTER 50
The ride back to my office, where I had left my car, was silent all the way. But I could tell that Jade and Rhoda were itching to resume the conversation about my situation and Betty Jean’s involvement. I was in the backseat again and every time I looked up at the rearview mirror Rhoda was looking at me. Jade turned around to gaze at me so many times it looked like she had her head on backward.
“Don’t you want to talk about it?” Rhoda asked, walking me to my car. “I can go home with you. You might need me to be there in case Pee Wee tries somethin’ crazy.”
“I can handle Pee Wee,” I assured her, holding up my hand in her face.
She seemed surprised and disappointed. Rhoda was still standing in the middle of the parking lot as I drove off, still looking surprised and disappointed.
Pee Wee was not home when I got there, and it was just as well. He was the last man in the world I wanted to see. There was a note from him on the microwave oven that said he had taken Charlotte to my mother’s house. I called Muh’Dear immediately.
“Muh’Dear, don’t ask me any questions. Just say yes or no,” I said as soon as my mother answered the telephone. The television was on, but I could still hear Daddy grumbling in the background, as well as Pee Wee and Charlotte chattering like magpies.
“Where you at, gal?” Muh’Dear asked, sounding just as grumpy as Daddy.
“Can you keep Charlotte over there for the night? I’ll come by early in the morning to bring her some clean clothes to wear to school. Just say yes or no.”
“Yeah,” Muh’Dear said with hesitation.
I knew that it took a lot of effort for her not to badger me. “I will call you later and I will tell you everything when I feel like talking about it. I have to go right now because I have something real important I need to do.”
“What in the world is goin’ on with y’all?” Muh’Dear whispered. “You done lost your mind?”
“I said, I can’t talk about it right now, Muh’Dear. I will call you later tonight. You could send my husband home, though.” I hung up before my mother could say another word.
It took me just twenty minutes to pack two suitcases. About five minutes later Pee Wee stumbled in the door, looking confused and weary. I was glad to see that he was alone. I was standing in the middle of the living room floor when he walked in the front door. Right next to me on the floor were the two suitcases I had packed.
With his face hanging like a rope, Pee Wee stopped in his tracks. The dark circles around his eyes were so profound it looked like they had been tattooed to his face. He blinked, looking from my face to the suitcases.
“Annette, before you start up again, let me say what I have to say,” Pee Wee informed me, a hand in the air. “I done had enough of this shit,” he said, moving toward me with his hand still raised. “Runnin’ away ain’t goin’ to do you no good!” he yelled, motioning toward the luggage at my feet.
“I know that,” I said coldly. “And I am not going anywhere. At least not yet.”
“It don’t look that way to me.”
“This is your shit I packed up, motherfucker. I want you out of my house and I want you out of here now.”
Pee Wee stopped and stumbled back a few steps.
“Annette, this is my home, just as much as it is yours, and I ain’t goin’ no place. I am your husband.”
“Correction: this is my house. My mama left this house to me. And unless you want to be carried out of here on a stretcher, you best get to stepping right now. Take these bags and go wherever the hell you want to go.” I calmly walked to the door and snatched it open. “Out,” I said, dismissing him with a wave of my hand. “Before I throw you out!”
With a slack-jawed expression on his face, he picked up the luggage and started to move toward the door, lifting his feet like they weighed a ton each. “I done had just about enough of this shit. I will give you some time to come to your senses. But I tell you—”
Pee Wee didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. I slammed the door in his face while he was still talking.
It turned out to be one of the longest nights of my life. I was glad that I had left Charlotte with Muh’Dear and Daddy for the night. Daddy was doing so much better and he and his granddaughter were best friends. He was the only other person who fawned over Charlotte more than Jade.
For the next few hours I wandered from room to room. I cleaned things that didn’t need to be cleaned, I rearranged the furniture in the living room, and I ironed two baskets of clothes. When I couldn’t find anything else to do to keep myself busy, I took a long, hot bath. By midnight I was still wide awake.
I finally stretched out on the living room sofa with a blanket. I couldn’t sleep and there was nothing on television that I wanted to see, so I turned on the radio next to the sofa. I dozed off and on for about an hour, listening to my favorite local jazz station. The next thing I heard was Anita Baker’s melodic voice waking me up. A few minutes later the telephone rang. As I wobbled into the kitchen to answer it, I glanced at the large round clock on the wall facing me. I wondered who could be calling my house at six in the morning, but no matter who it was, it had to be somebody I didn’t want to talk to. Like Pee Wee or that bitch who’d been calling me up. I didn’t expect it to be Rhoda, but it was.
“Did you hear the news?” she asked in such a high-pitched yell I almost didn’t recognize her voice.
“What news?” I asked, yawning. I had already decided to call in sick and to keep Charlotte home from school. I didn’t know what I was going to do next, but whatever it was, I needed to be alone so that I could come up with a plan.
“There was a big mess at Lester Spool’s place last night.”
“So? What do I care? Especially after the way him and his sister talked to me yesterday,” I said, sounding as harsh as I could at the moment. “There is always a big mess happening at Lester’s house.”
“Somebody drove by and shot up the place.”
“That’s not the first time that’s happened. Lester has a lot of enemies. He has double-crossed so many people, it’s just a matter of time before he double-crosses the wrong person. Sooner or later. After all, he is a drug dealer,” I reminded Rhoda with a bored sigh.
“He was a drug dealer,” Rhoda said, her voice cracking.
CHAPTER 51
Hearing that Lester Spool had been killed affected me in a way I didn’t understand. All of a sudden I felt unbearably sad.
“Oh. Well, I guess i
t happened sooner than later,” I said, surprised that I felt some sympathy for a man who had caused pain to so many people. He was still somebody’s child and that was the first thing that came to my mind. Neither of us spoke for a moment. “Do they know who did it?”
“Annette, there is more to this story. Betty Jean was at his house when the shootin’ started.”
“What? Did she…”
“Yes! She and Lester and one of his flunkies. They all got hit! Whoever it was meant business. Lester’s house looks like Swiss cheese. It’s all over the news. Scary Mary made it her business to drive over to the crime scene. She said that not only did they shoot up the house, Lester’s car looks like a sieve. The windows are all shot to pieces. The tires. Everything. Girl, they even shot out the streetlights in front of Lester’s house. And poor old Mr. Middleton in that green house next door, a few bullets even ripped into the front of his house. It’s a damn good thing that that old man was visiting his grandchildren in Akron.”
“I…I don’t know what to say.” I couldn’t believe my ears. It sounded too convenient to be true! Even Shakespeare couldn’t get away with such a plot! As much as I resented Betty Jean, I didn’t want the woman dead! She was somebody’s child, too. I just wanted her out of my life. “Rhoda, we just saw her. Are you sure she was involved?”
“Annette, I know what I am talkin’ about. I saw the news, but I got a full report from Scary Mary. She’s more reliable than the news any day.”
“Betty Jean is dead?”
“No, she’s not dead, but she might as well be. Lester is, but according to the news report, Betty Jean is in critical condition at the city hospital. Scary Mary just left here and you know she knows everybody and everything that goes on in this town. One of her contacts at the hospital called her up and told her that Betty Jean’s just lyin’ there with a bullet in her head. They had to put her on life support! You couldn’t have done a better job of gettin’ her out of your life.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with this!” I shouted.
“Girl, I know that. I am just sayin’, this couldn’t have worked out better in your favor. I mean, after what she did to you and hangin’ out with her drug-dealin’ brother and his thug friends, what did she expect? What goes around, comes around. God don’t play.”
Of all the people in the world, Rhoda was the last one I expected to make such philosophical comments. We rarely talked about the heinous crimes that she had committed. But for the last five years, on the anniversary of each of the five murders Rhoda claimed to have committed, she would slip into a deep depression and stay that way for days. I avoided her during those times. The anniversary of her stroke was the only other time that I went out of my way to avoid her. Each year, on that anniversary, she slipped into a crippling depression that no one could bring her out of.
“You reap what you sow,” I stated flatly. I figured that if Rhoda could get philosophical, so could I.
“So what are you goin’ to do now? Are you goin’ to try and work things out with Pee Wee now that Betty Jean’s out of the picture?”
“I don’t think it’ll be that easy. Pee Wee’s out of the picture, too.”
After hearing the news about Betty Jean I changed my mind about staying home from work. I didn’t go back to sleep after I got off the telephone with Rhoda. And since I couldn’t find any more chores to do around the house, I called the barbershop. I didn’t know what I wanted to say to Pee Wee.
“I guess you heard the news about Betty Jean,” I said when he answered.
“I heard,” he told me in a low, detached voice.
“I went to see her yesterday,” I said with caution. “I know it was a stupid thing to do. She and brother were expecting some trouble and advised me to leave. If I had gone over there later, the people who followed them to Lester’s house might have…” I paused. “I don’t want to think about it. I’m just glad I got away from them before the trouble started. Going to Betty Jean’s place was really a stupid thing for me to do,” I admitted.
“I am surprised to hear you say that. You been doin’ a lot of stupid shit lately.”
“I just tried to talk to her. That’s all. I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to her last night. I just wanted you to know that.”
“Well, I didn’t think you did. Listen, I want to come to the house and get some more of my shit.”
“Oh?” My breath got trapped in my throat and I couldn’t speak for a few moments. “Uh, what do you plan on doing now?”
“I don’t know, Annette. I’m goin’ to spend some time at my cousin Steve’s pad. I don’t know what I am goin’ to do after that.”
“I just want to know one thing.” I paused and braced myself. “How did Betty Jean get a pair of your shorts, Pee Wee?”
“Didn’t you ask her that when you went to see her?”
“She didn’t give me a chance!”
“Well, I can’t answer that either. Listen, I’ve been doin’ a lot of thinkin’ lately. I don’t know what else to do about what you been goin’ through. I ain’t havin’ no affair with Betty Jean or no other woman, but you can believe what you want to believe. What I do know is, I am tired of this shit. Right about now, I think I need some space just as much as you do.”
“You want a divorce?”
“I don’t know what I want. Let’s cool off and talk later.” Pee Wee hung up.
Jade was already at the office when I arrived, and I was glad to see her. “What time is your appointment on Friday for that…uh…situation you need to take care of?” I asked her.
“It’s at nine. They like to do it first thing in the morning. You can drop me off and pick me up a few hours later.”
“I thought you wanted to do it in the afternoon, so we could get off work early and then go straight home afterward.”
Jade shook her head. “I changed my mind. I’d rather do it in the morning, then have you drop me off at a motel so I can rest up. You can go back to work and when you get off, you can pick me up and take me home. See, it dawned on me that if I got it done too late in the day, I might still be feeling weird by the time you took me home. You know how nosy Mama is.”
“OK.” I noted the date and time on my desk calendar, along with a cryptic message so that nobody but me would know.
“I will be so glad when this is over with! I can barely zip up my jeans,” Jade complained, waving her arms. I gave her a weak smile and an even weaker nod. “Uh, you want to talk about what happened to Betty Jean, Auntie?”
“Not really. I am sorry about what happened to her,” I told Jade. She looked like she wasn’t convinced that I really was sorry, but I was.
“You know something, Auntie, sometimes you seem too good to be true. Like those martyrs I learned about in school.”
“I’m a long way from martyrdom,” I laughed. “I might be a little gullible and too easygoing, though. I just don’t like confrontations and a lot of confusion in my life. I will go out of my way to avoid it.”
“Whatever. Well, at least Betty Jean won’t be bothering you anymore. Mama told me that you and Pee Wee are probably going to get a divorce.”
“I don’t know what we are goin’ to do yet, baby.”
“Are you going to stay with him after what he did? What if he does it again?”
“I don’t know exactly what he did, Jade. For all I know, the man could be telling the truth about not having an affair with Betty Jean.” I took a sip of my coffee.
“Maybe it wasn’t her after all,” Jade suggested, with a weak shrug. “But I still think you should have beaten her butt. I would have. Just for the way she talked to you.”
“I don’t want to fight any woman over a man, Jade.”
As it turned out, I didn’t have to. Betty Jean died from her injuries that Friday, around the same time that I picked Jade up from the abortion clinic.
CHAPTER 52
There were some Black folks in Richland who went to almost all of the funerals for other Bl
ack folks, whether they knew the deceased or not. As sad and bizarre as it was, funerals had become a social event in our culture. The last one that I attended was more like a New Year’s Eve party, with people dressed in designer knockoffs, grinning and hugging everybody all over the place. The only thing they didn’t do was dance.
Daddy was feeling much better now, but the doctor had warned him to limit his activities. However, even if he had been on life support, he would not have missed Betty Jean’s funeral for the world.
“That sister made a mean margarita and I’m sho’nuff gwine to miss her when I go back to the Red Rose Bar,” he lamented.
He got to the church even before Betty Jean’s own family, which included the wild side and the good side. Funerals were family reunions when it involved the Spool family. It was the only occasion when both sides of this odd family got together at the same time.
Muh’Dear didn’t go to Betty Jean’s funeral. “I done been to three funerals already this month. I’m sick of lookin’ at dead folks,” she declared. But she did send one of the most elaborate floral arrangements I’d ever seen.
Scary Mary spent more time around deceased people than did all the funeral directors in town put together. She went to everybody’s funeral. She made it her business to pay me a visit a few hours after the service for Betty Jean that Saturday afternoon around four.
“Can you believe that a lot of folks was surprised to see me at that church? They thought I was already dead myself,” she complained with a bitter laugh, pushing her way into my house before I could even open my front door all the way. “You’d think that by now these folks around here would know that I ain’t leavin’ this life until I’m good and ready. Some of them same folks that seen me at funerals last year and was surprised to see I was still alive then—they dead! And I went to every last one of their funerals.” Scary Mary paused and sucked her teeth. “I sure could use me somethin’ strong to drink. And I don’t mean no coffee.”