by Mary Monroe
I thought Rachel or her mother would respond to what Janet had just said, or to the fact that I could see her private parts, but they didn’t. They resumed their conversation about sick people, funerals, and whatnot. I made a few obligatory comments throughout the conversation, but during that whole time, Ernest continued to stare at his magazine and Janet didn’t say another word.
“Uh, Rachel, baby, don’t you think we should unpack?” I suggested. I was so uncomfortable by now; my butt was throbbing almost as hard as my head. I couldn’t wait to get out of the living room so I could have some space and reorganize my thoughts.
“I already did that. I’m going to help Mama get dinner ready. Why don’t you sit here and chat with Ernest?” Rachel said, wobbling up off the couch. She and her mother left the room again.
I took a deep breath, rubbed my forehead, and forced myself to talk again. “So, Ernest, do you play football or fish . . . or anything?” I began, fumbling with my words. Silence. I cleared my throat and looked at Janet. “Janet, what do you like to do?”
She gave me a thoughtful look, and then she scratched the side of her neck and remained silent.
“Okay.” I cleared my throat and took a very deep breath. “I guess I’ll go outside and admire the scenery.” I didn’t wait for a response. I went out to the porch and looked around the area. I liked the rustic splendor I saw, but I could not figure out how people could be happy in a place like Coffeeville. Rachel’s family had a fairly nice house, but the neighbors on both sides and the one directly across the road lived in double-wide trailers. I couldn’t understand such a thing in a region known for its devastating tornadoes. Some of the trailers looked so flimsy, I was surprised that a strong wind had not blown them down already.
Squirrels scurried back and forth in the yard and on the porch. A hoot owl perched on a branch of the pecan tree in the front yard stared at me, and a large, dusty lizard crawled up the porch steps toward my feet. I jumped out of the way in the nick of time. A three-legged dog wandered into the yard and up on the porch and stopped in front of me. When I leaned down to pet it, it growled and ran away.
I noticed the neighbors gazing at me from a window in the trailer across the street, so I went back inside. Janet and Ernest were still sitting in the same spots, looking as inanimate as statues. With a heavy sigh and a groan I didn’t even attempt to hide, I sat back down in the same chair I had left a few minutes ago.
I spent the next fifteen minutes staring from Ernest to Janet, and they never said a word.
Dinner was agonizing. Rachel and her mother did most of the talking.
“Is Seth always this quiet?” Mrs. McNeal asked Rachel, giving me a sly look as she dumped more fried okra onto her plate.
“Mama, this man talks a blue streak! He’s just tired,” Rachel answered.
“Cat got his tongue,” Janet finally said. That made everybody at the table laugh, even me. But I had nothing to laugh about.
When Rachel and I finally excused ourselves and went into her old bedroom, I closed the door and turned to her. “Woman, you’ve got some explaining to do,” I told her, shaking a finger in her face.
“Oh.” She let out a heavy sigh and started undressing. “You mean about my brother and my sister?”
“Yes!”
“Well, Ernest is autistic, and Janet is a paranoid schizophrenic. I think she’s bipolar, too. They were born that way,” she said. And in the most casual voice I’d ever heard her use, she told me, “They have their good days and their bad days.” That was all she said. From the way she sat down on the bed and removed her shoes and started massaging her toes, I had a feeling she had nothing else to say on this subject. But I had more to say.
“Why in the world did you let me find out this way and after I asked you to marry me?”
She looked up at me with a surprised expression on her face. “I probably should have said something sooner, but I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. I mean, no family is perfect.”
“Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” I sat down on the bed next to her with my hand on her knee.
“Like what?” she asked with an indifferent look and a shrug.
“Do you have any more family secrets?” It was a loaded question, but I couldn’t think of a more politically correct way to ask it.
“My uncle Albert is gay,” she said.
“What . . . I knew that already. That’s nothing to me! I have a lot of gay associates,” I said. “I don’t have a problem with homosexuality.”
“Then you won’t have a problem with Ernest and Janet, right?”
I honestly didn’t know what to say, so I said the first thing that came to my mind. “I’ll try not . . . uh . . .” I paused and gave Rachel a guarded look. “I don’t know.”
Chapter 4
Seth
I DIDN’T SLEEP MORE THAN THREE HOURS THAT FIRST NIGHT. THERE was enough on my mind to keep me awake, but outside the bedroom window, crickets and all kinds of other night creatures were making enough noise to wake the dead people in the cemetery a few yards down the road.
I finally drifted off to sleep around 2:00 a.m., but a rooster started crowing at the crack of dawn and woke me up. In addition to that, one of the neighbors was cutting wood using a chain saw. The second day was even more difficult to get through. I was in desperate need of some very strong drinks. The only way I was going to be able to survive this visit was if I got drunk and stayed drunk until we left. Unfortunately, the strongest beverage Rachel’s mother had in the house was buttermilk.
Rachel got up before me and went to help her mother prepare breakfast. By the time I took a shower around seven thirty, dressed in some casual clothes, and entered the kitchen, everybody was already seated at the table. By now, I didn’t even care if anybody noticed the tight look on my face. I had a feeling it was going to get much tighter before the visit was over.
“Morning, all,” I grunted, barely moving my lips. I plopped down hard on a chair with wobbly legs between Rachel and Ernest. He looked at me and blinked. Janet had already begun to eat. Her mouth was full of food, but she muttered some gibberish under her breath and gave me a blank stare.
“You look well rested,” Essie Mae told me. “I know you ain’t used to all this clean country air, but it’ll do more good for your health than anything y’all got in California. All that smog and them earthquakes would drive me crazy!”
“Seth, Mama sprinkled the bacon with a little sugar, the way you like it,” Rachel said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Eat up, because today is going to be real busy. The phone’s been ringing off the hook with folks calling who want to meet you.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. I managed to eat a couple of scrambled duck eggs, half a slice of toast, and a spoonful of grits.
Around 9:00 a.m., I joined the family at the kitchen table again. A few other relatives, neighbors, and friends started coming in through the front and back doors like nobody’s business. They all entered the kitchen. Aunt Hattie snatched a biscuit off the table and the rest of them just stood around talking. It seemed like the main thing each one was concerned about was the “cute and smart” children Rachel and I were going to have.
Irene Price, the elderly, beady-eyed woman who lived in the trailer across the street, said something that sent the conversation in a totally different direction. “Rachel, I just hope none of your young’ns turn out the way poor Albert did.” After shaking her head a few times, she turned to me and said in a low voice, “I guess you know about Albert’s mental condition. He likes men, and everybody knows that is not normal.”
Not normal? I couldn’t believe my ears. I couldn’t ignore Irene’s comment. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to disagree with you on that, ma’am. Where Rachel and I live, being gay is almost as ‘normal’ as being straight,” I defended, speaking in a deeper and firmer tone of voice than usual. One thing I didn’t want any of these people to think was that I was a wimp who was too meek to speak my mind. However, I had
to bite my tongue to keep from saying what I thought a real “mental condition” was. So far, not a single person had mentioned that Janet and Ernest had been sitting on the living room couch, staring off into space for the past hour, and that neither one had said a word the whole time.
“Harrumph! Ain’t nothing going on in a nutcase city like Berkeley—or should I call it Berserk-eley?—that would surprise me,” hollered a middle-aged cousin whose name I couldn’t remember.
I knew that if I remained at the table any longer, I’d say something I’d regret. I forced a smile and excused myself to go use the bathroom. As soon as I got inside, I took a few deep breaths to compose myself. I made sure the door was shut before I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and called my brother Josh in Berkeley. I was happy when he answered on the first ring, but he was not happy that I had disturbed him so early in the morning.
“Do you know what time it is?” he growled.
“I’m sorry. I forgot about the time difference, and I couldn’t wait any longer to talk to you. Man, you are not going to believe the mess I’ve stumbled into down here in these damn woods!”
“Oh, shit! Are you all right? Please don’t tell me you’ve already had a run-in with one of those racist peckerwood cops! I told you not to leave here with all those expensive clothes and shoes! They’ll make you out to be a criminal for sure—”
“Shut up and let me talk,” I ordered as I rubbed the back of my head and breathed through my mouth. “We haven’t had any trouble like that. This is much worse.” I had not shed any tears in years and didn’t want to now, so I blinked hard to hold back the ones that had just pooled in my eyes.
“What’s the matter? Is Rachel all right?”
“Rachel’s fine. Look, bro, this is a serious situation. Her . . . Rachel’s family is not what I expected. There’s some issues with, um, their bloodline.”
“Oh really? Hmm. That doesn’t surprise me. I didn’t want to bring up the subject, but some of those small-town Southern folks are like rabbits. They are known for inbreeding! When I was in the navy, I met all kinds of dudes from the South. Half of them had married first cousins, and one dude had the nerve to tell me that his own sister had been his first lover! Now tell me this. What are we talking about here? Clubfeet, harelips, cone heads, crossed eyes?”
“I don’t know about any of them having any of those afflictions. I’ve met only Rachel’s sister and brother and a few of her other relatives so far. Her brother looks like he’s in a continuous daze, and her sister acts like she’s been sipping on a strange potion that makes her say shit you wouldn’t believe. An old dude in a wheelchair named Cousin Woodie mumbled at a picture on the wall for thirty minutes straight a little while ago. He’s in his late eighties, so that could be his age. Aunt Hattie is a real piece of work, too. She’s so nosy, bossy, and crude, it would make your head spin. I’m telling you, man, this family is off the chart!”
“Oh. So we’re talking about some mental issues here, right?”
“Exactly.”
“Mental illness is quite common, you know.”
“Well, I don’t want to have anything to do with a bunch of crazy people!” I said in a low voice.
“Calm down, baby brother. You just met Rachel’s people. Do you think you’re being fair to them, Rachel, and yourself by dismissing them so soon?”
“Marrying into a family with problems this serious could be the biggest mistake I ever made. You know how hard I’ve been working these past few years to get my life in order. I don’t think I can deal with a load this heavy!”
“You’ve got a point there. I’d probably react the same way as you if I faced the same situation. What baffles me is that Rachel is so open and up front about everything. Two minutes after I met her, she told me her uncle Albert was gay. Didn’t she tell you any of this other shit about her family beforehand?”
“Not a word. All these years we’ve been together and she has not told me a damn thing about her family being full of nutcases. And guess what? It’s not just on her mama’s side! The mumbling old dude in the wheelchair I mentioned, that’s her daddy’s mother’s brother.”
“His problem could be related to his age. You just said that.”
“True. But it gets worse.” I paused long enough to catch my breath. “Rachel’s aunt Hattie told me that Rachel’s father’s brother died in a mental institution. So this shit is coming at me from both sides of her family tree! Marrying Rachel would be like moving into a burning house.”
“That’s not too cool. I still don’t think you should dismiss Rachel so fast. Uh, you haven’t noticed anything weird about her behavior, have you? Now, if she drooled and rubbed shit in her hair or something worse, I’d say you have something to be concerned about.”
“Rachel is practically perfect. You’ve been around her often enough to know that. That’s beside the point. These are her blood relatives we’re talking about. I don’t know how I’m going to deal with this issue in the future.”
“I advise you not to let any of those people know how you feel. You don’t want to set one off and end up coming back to California in a body bag.”
“I’ll tell you more when I get back home, and I don’t want you to mention this call to Mother. I called her last night to let her and Father know that we had made it to our destination all right, but I didn’t tell her anything about all this insanity that I’ve stumbled into.”
“I can understand that. I do want you to know that I’m in your corner. Once you marry Rachel—”
“Stop right there!” I exclaimed, cutting in.
“Huh?”
“What’s wrong with you, Josh? I can’t marry this woman with all these crazy-ass people in her family and risk having nutty children! And it’s not just because of the mental issues. Rachel’s family would never fit in with ours. They’re almost primitive. I didn’t know black folks in the South still lived like it was the dark ages.”
“That’s a pretty potent statement, and it’s a matter of opinion,” Josh said quickly.
“So what? It is what it is. Neither Mother and Father nor any of our family and friends would tolerate Rachel’s people.”
“That’s for sure. But keep in mind, Rachel’s family lives thousands of miles away. We would rarely interact with them.”
“I know that, but at some point things could change. What if Rachel’s mother decides to move to California? She’d have to bring those two nutcases with her! The thing is, I’ve already let Mother and Father down enough. You know how long it took me to get my life back on track, so I can’t fuck up again.”
“I understand everything you’re saying.” Josh paused and cleared his throat. “But Rachel is a wonderful woman. She’s been very good to you, so please let her down gently.”
“Listen, uh, I’m not going to break it off with her anytime soon. I did a whole lot of thinking last night. I couldn’t sleep, so there was nothing else for me to do but think. After running everything back and forth in my mind, looking at it from several points of view, I’ve decided that I’ll stay in the relationship for a while. . . .”
“I think the sooner you break it off with her, the better. Don’t lead that woman on and let her think everything is hunky-dory. She doesn’t deserve that. Besides, she could, uh, retaliate.”
“Josh, men break up with women all the time. There’s nothing unusual about me dropping Rachel. Do you think she’d do something violent or criminal to me?”
“I’ve prosecuted a lot of cases where one party in a breakup situation ended up injured, stalked, or killed by the other. I’m sure you remember the case last year, when that doctor’s wife shot and killed him when she found out he was planning to divorce her and marry his mistress.”
“Pffft! I’m not worried. I know Rachel would never do anything that extreme. She’s got way too much class. But just to be on the safe side, I’m going to let her think everything is fine for a while.”
“Why? From what you’ve told me so far
, I assumed you wanted to dump her as soon as possible.”
“Uh, I want to, but I can’t. I still need her financial assistance, that’s why! As soon as I’m out of the woods with my creditors, she’s history. Now let me get back into that . . . that madhouse so I can figure out the best way to survive this mess until I can get up out of here.” I paused and sucked in some air. I turned around and noticed that the door was now slightly ajar....
Chapter 5
Rachel
I FELT SO SORRY FOR SETH. I KNEW THAT THIS TRIP HAD TURNED OUT to be a real culture shock to him. We were all seated at the kitchen table when Aunt Hattie came to the house that evening for dinner with a covered casserole dish. When she set it on the table and lifted the lid, Seth’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head. The dish contained a baked possum with its head still attached, garnished with yam wedges. I thought Seth was going to bolt out the back door and keep running all the way back to the airport. He looked just that scared.
“Why you looking so surprised, Seth? You ain’t never seen no possum before?” Aunt Hattie asked, smacking her greasy lips. She looked like a blimp in the gray housedress she wore.
“No, I can’t say that I have,” Seth mouthed.
“Harrumph! I’m surprised a man like you, who grew up with folks eating raw fish and seaweed and whatever else mess they eat in California, gets squeamish just looking at a baked possum. This is real food,” Aunt Hattie said. “What piece you want? Breast? Thigh? The tail?”
“I think I’ll pass,” Seth whimpered with a grimace on his face. “I don’t eat much meat.”
“Aw, sugar, one itty-bitty piece won’t hurt,” Mama told him, already sawing at one of the creature’s hind legs with her Ginsu knife.
Seth shook his head. “I’m not that hungry.”
“I’ll pass on it this time,” I said without hesitation. One thing I’d promised myself when I left Alabama was that I would never eat possum meat again.