The phone rings. I move to the receiver attached to the wall and check the caller ID. Shayla Douglas flashes across the screen. Huh? I’m not even sure how she got my phone number. What could she want? I bite my bottom lip and decide not to answer it.
“Are you going to get that?” Preston calls to me.
“It’s Crystal,” I lie. “Not in the mood for her drama, baby.”
After four rings it stops. I’m not used to lying to my husband, but I’m not about to go into who Shayla is tonight, or ever, for that matter. I hope she doesn’t think that lunch means that we are back to being instant friends. I carry the meal into the living room. Preston has taken off his dress shirt, socks, and shoes and is watching Storage Wars on A&E. I place the hot bowl in front of him with a napkin and spoon.
“What do you want to drink?”
He looks up at me. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I see the anxiety all over your face.” He slips his spoon in the soup.
“Nothing.” I walk into the dining room and start busying myself with putting away forgotten toys.
When you start with a lie, you have to keep lying to cover your tracks. It never ends.
“Foxy, what are you doing?” Preston pats the seat next to him. I put the stacking cups in the basket. “Come sit. Stop moving all the time.”
“You know I hate a mess.”
“Just relax. The food is delicious.”
I lower myself next to him.
“How was the audition?”
“Oh, yeah.” I fold my legs under me as I recall my moment in front of the camera, happy to switch to something pleasant.
“And I started writing my monologue for the Dames.” I tell Preston the ideas that I’ve sketched.
“Sounds like you’re on fire.” He smiles and I love having his full attention. Often our time together is nothing more than a quick toss of information revolving around the kids. It feels good that just for a few moments, it’s about me.
NINE
The Weeds Need Pulling
Two days have gone by. No more calls from Martin. I hope he doesn’t ring me again. If he calls I’ll tell him point-blank that he needs to stop contacting me. My husband is one of the good ones, and I can’t chance what we have by keeping in touch with a ghost from my past.
It’s finally Friday. My favorite night of the week. Friday nights mean no rules, no home-cooked meals, no begging kids to eat vegetables and to clean up. It’s pizza and movie night and I am all too happy not to have to uphold the law. Tonight the kids won’t get baths, stories, or songs. Toys can stay wherever they are abandoned, the children can pick out mismatched pajamas or sleep in their clothes. I don’t give a shit, and that feels good. While we wait for the pizza to be delivered I pick up the remote to pull up a show on the DVR.
“I want Dora.” Two bounces on one foot with her hands folded in the prayer position. I kiss the tip of her cute little nose and grant her wish.
“Not fair,” Rory says with a pout. “That show is for babies.”
“No, it’s not,” protests Two.
“Yes, it is.” He pushes her.
“Hey, no hitting, Rory. Don’t let me see that again or you won’t get to pick the next show.”
The telephone rings and I feel that nervous ripple in my chest. I take it in the kitchen.
“Hello.”
“There’s my girl.”
“Martin.” It comes out breathless. My breasts get that heavy feeling and he hasn’t even said much.
You’re supposed to tell him to stop calling.
“How are you, Young Sister? You are all I’ve been able to think about. Having a good week?” He purrs in my ear. His voice makes me lose my senses. I glance at the clock. Preston shouldn’t be home for an hour so. I’ll talk to him for a few minutes and then tell him to stop calling.
“Yeah, things have been okay.”
My tongue starts moving like I’m a child at Christmas, sitting on Santa’s lap. I tell him about my audition this week and the monologue I need to write for the Dames.
“Wow, an actress. I should have known. My Faye, all grown up.” His voice drops to silkiness and it unravels my female core. “I always knew you’d take the world by storm with your gorgeous self. You probably just make them television people fall deep in love, don’t you?”
My face presses closer to the phone to absorb every word. I’m fifteen again, wrapped up in his arms in the back of the Hog.
“I’m getting out soon and I want to see you.”
“Martin.” His name feels way too delicious on my tongue. “I’m, I’m married now.”
“I know, Young Sister. It’s just been so long. You know?”
“What do you want?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No, it isn’t.” I twirl the telephone cord.
“You like making a man beg, don’t you.”
Us fogging the windows of the Hog. My knees pressed against his chest. He liked when I wore the red panties.
Hotness flares my skin.
“You were something else. Our time together was precious.”
A girlish giggle passes through my lips.
“You left the church so abruptly I never got to give you a proper good-bye.”
“Yeah, well … things happened.”
“I know all about it.”
I fan.
“Where’re the kids now? Mighty quiet today.”
“They’re watching television.”
“The oldest one?”
“He’s in the living room watching Dora with his sisters.”
“How old again?”
“Rory is six.”
“Not that one, Young Sister.”
The heat in my blood runs ice cold. There is an echo thumping in my ear. “Wha, what do you mean?”
“Come on, Young Sister, don’t play games with me. I know what we made together.”
Saliva fills my mouth. No words travel from my brain to my lips for a full thirty seconds. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, don’t be like that, pretty girl. We really need to talk and get things straightened. Don’t you think it’s time for me to meet my child? Boy or a girl?”
Our front door drags when it opens. The children scream “Daddy.” I slam down the telephone. I move away from it like it’s got bird flu and open the refrigerator so that Preston can’t see me shaking.
You should have told him that you were married and to stop calling you the moment you answered the phone. Always looking for attention. Now look at your new mess.
“Hey, Foxy Mama,” Preston calls, opening his arms to me.
I emerge with two containers that need to be cleaned out and give him my cheek.
“Who was that on the phone?” He’s on me, arms at my waist, pulling me close. But my body resists.
“It was Gran. My mom isn’t doing well.” The lie is slippery on my tongue like a tadpole.
“You think you should drive down to see her?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
He looks at me. I look away.
“Is that all that’s bothering you?”
“Headache. I’m going to run to CVS. We’re out of Advil.”
“I’ll go for you.”
“No. Thank you, Preston, but just keep an eye on the kids.”
He steps back from me but I don’t care. My sandals are on my feet and I call over my shoulder that I’m going to leave out the back door. Before I go, I slip into the basement and take the phone off the hook.
Inside the car my body is shaking and my fingers curve like they are cupping a cigarette. I haven’t smoked in seven years, not since I met Preston. He doesn’t even know I’m an ex-smoker. My neighbor across the street is doing something in his front lawn and I give him a tight wave before pulling onto the street. I pass the cleaners on Liberty Avenue and instead of stopping at CVS on the right, I make a left onto Long Avenue and park the car in front of the neigh
borhood bar, Tanky’s.
Preston and I have come here on occasion for a quick drink. I’d sit at the bar and pop my fingers to the jukebox while he got up a game of pool. The place isn’t date night material; it’s more a hangout for neighborhood degenerates and full-time drunks. I’ve come out in yoga pants and a tank top again, and the men stare as I make my way to a corner seat like I’m a virgin maiden looking for a sailor to take me home.
“What can I get for you, doll?” The bartender cocks her overpermed curly head at me.
“Jack and ginger.”
Across the bar a man puffs on a Marlboro Red. I watch him pull it in and breathe it out. I can almost taste the nicotine curl between my jaws.
“You want a cigarette, doll?” The bartender puts my drink in front of me. “We sell loosies for fifty cents.”
“I thought smoking in bars in the State of New Jersey was illegal.”
“Drinking at ten A.M. should be, too, but that don’t stop no one ’round here.”
I put my quarters on the counter and she brings me a Newport 100. There is no hesitation as I place the filter between my chapped lips and light the match. The amber roars against the tobacco and like a lover rediscovering its first crush, I pull. The intimacy goes straight to my head, loosening the crust around my memories. They come like a flood.
TEN
The Blasted Past
George H. W. Bush is just days away from being sworn in as the forty-first president, Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative” is number two on the Billboard charts, and Toni Morrison entered the year having won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved. I know this because my tenth-grade English teacher loves Toni Morrison and read parts of the winning book to us in class.
I’m fifteen. It is a bitterly cold New Year’s Day in Philadelphia. Four weeks have passed since I’ve seen Martin at church. It’s like he just disappeared. I’m sick with worry over what we’ve made and I need him to help me sort things out. Besides that, I miss him. My body won’t breathe without him and it feels like I’ve punctured a lung. According to the pamphlet Shayla brought me from Planned Parenthood, I am too far into the pregnancy to have an abortion. I have missed four periods and my pudgy belly sticks out.
Gran has been stalking me. In my face, walking in my bedroom without knocking, asking questions about my every move, picking up the phone line, and eavesdropping on my conversations with Shayla. Since Crystal and the baby moved around the corner to Big Derell’s, Gran ain’t got nothing better to do than study me. It was Shayla’s idea for me to go to Martin’s house.
“I know you have his address.” She popped her gum.
I did. Gran was a willing worker at the church, so on the last Saturday of each month I helped her clean. I was dusting the church office when Miss Doris, the secretary, handed me the new members’ files and asked me to put them away. I filed Lorna Dickerson, and two files behind hers was Martin Dupree. Whenever I got to missing him I sucked on the sweetness of his address—1783 Ellsworth Street—like it was saltwater taffy.
New Year’s Day provided the perfect escape plan. Shayla and I said we were going to the Mummers parade on Broad Street, but she was going to her boyfriend’s house in West Philly and I was going to mine.
“I hope that nucka don’t act a fool when he finds out. If he don’t handle his responsibility I’ll—”
“It’ll be fine, Shay,” I replied with false confidence. In reality, I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The last thing I needed was to be stepped on or crushed. I dressed up for the trip to South Philly in a pair of kitten heels Crystal left in the closet, and the only jeans that still fit with a palazzo shirt, and my red Michael Jackson leather jacket with the zippers. The look wasn’t warm enough to make it to the subway, and Gran let me know it on my way out the door.
“You gon’ freeze and catch pneumonia all in your hind parts, goin’ out there half dressed.”
Shayla and I agreed to meet at the McDonald’s on Broad Street and head back home together to make our stories believable.
* * *
When I looked up Martin’s address on the bus map Gran kept in the kitchen drawer, it seemed to be about six or seven city blocks from the church. I decided to catch the bus there and walk the rest of the way. Bad choice. It was January and cold as the dickens. By the time I reached Martin’s house, my thighs were stinging and the balls of my feet felt like I had trotted on needles. Daddy’s Hog was parked a few doors down, so I knew I had the correct address. The row house was red brick with a mud-colored trim. The drapes were drawn and the banister tilted from years of service. From across the street I stood behind a parked Pontiac, staring, having lost my nerve. What was I thinking coming all this way? By the time the front door to his house opened, my fingers were like Popsicles. I heard Martin’s laugh before I laid eyes on him. His laughter was loud and infectious. Even at the church in the midst of the Holy Ghost’s hallelujahs I could identify that hardy, deep-belly cackle. It rocked through me and warmed my chilly spots.
Then I saw her. She was curvy in the hips with big breasts, like a woman who had given birth a few times over. A long wig hung from her pear head, and she wore platform heels so high I willed her to trip and die. Her cheap perfume slithered toward me on the opposite side of the street and assaulted me.
Martin emerged with his beautiful mouth shaped in a smile. He was dressed in navy, a color that looked good on him, and I felt myself lean forward, craving my name on his lips, in my ears, on my neck, talking that mess that made me do anything for him. Martin was the master of my universe and now he was wizard to someone else’s.
They walked down the street as close as two people could, with Martin’s arm wrapped around the women’s waist. He tucked her into the car. I made eye contact with him as he walked to the driver’s side. If he saw me he didn’t let it show; his cocky stride didn’t stumble a beat. Seconds later, the Hog pulled off without warning. Billows of smoke colored the air chalky. Frozen to the cement, I watched as the car headed down Ellsworth, and I would have testified before a judge and a jury that I saw him look back at me through the rearview mirror. But he didn’t turn back.
* * *
I didn’t even bother meeting Shayla at the McDonald’s. Couldn’t muster up the energy to tell her what happened. When I got home, I ran the bathwater with the intention of drowning myself. I figured it was the best way to go. I wasn’t one for a lot of blood, so I couldn’t slice my wrist and bleed out. We don’t have a gun in the house, and although Shayla’s brother could probably supply me with one, I didn’t want everyone in my suicide business. I thought about tying a noose around my neck and hanging from the ceiling, but that felt a little too Ku Klux Klan for me. Holding my head under the bathwater and letting my life go was the most logical thing to do. Nothing mattered now that Martin was gone.
With most of my body under the water, I said the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, and then blessed myself with the sign of the cross. I took a few deep sighs, and just as I was about to plunge my head under the water, I spied a cockroach crawling from a crack in the wall right beside the tub. I hated cockroaches and I considered whether I should just go for it or kill him first because I didn’t want him making his way into my water, messing up my death scene. That’s when I heard a rattle in the door. It sounded like a key. Unaware that the bathroom door even had a key, I was stunned silent when Gran burst into the room. The heavy belt that she whipped Crystal with was hanging around her neck. Her feet reached me before I could scramble for my towel and she saw. I know she saw because she started calling on her Lord and Savior to give her strength as she yanked my arm, forcing me to bang my knee trying to get out of the tub. Gran had never beaten me before, but on that day she brought the belt down on my body like she was the overseer and I the runaway.
That thick strap rained down on me so many times I lost count. Welts popped, skin tore, blood poured, everything ached, and I moaned and tried to protect my face. Maybe Gran would beat me to d
eath and that would be the end of it. That would stop the pain that had no words. Gran’s motions slowed to a stop. She was out of breath and dropped down on the top of the commode seat, sweat pouring down her face, tears from her eyes as she coughed out one sentence.
“How could you?”
ELEVEN
The Backwoods Baby
In June, Gran said it was time for me to go. It was my first time leaving the City of Brotherly Love. I’d been to Englishtown in New Jersey on a bus excursion with the church, but that didn’t count as real traveling.
I was supposed to leave in May, but Gran was waiting on some money that never came. So I stayed holed up in the hot house the first week of June. The neighbors couldn’t see me, but I saw the kids when they got home from school: playing in the water plug, jumping double Dutch, blasting Public Enemy and KRS-1 on the boom box, eating cherry water ices and salted pretzels, drinking grape soda. Anything to enjoy the time off and beat the heat.
Gran didn’t have an air conditioner because she didn’t want to run up her light bill. She put the fan in the window, but turned it backward so the hot air blew out of the room. Didn’t work, so I was as miserable as a nun in a whorehouse where only sin was for sale.
Gran’s friend Mr. Scooter came to pick me up on a Tuesday night when the sun went down and the block was quiet. When I waddled from the house, I placed my postage stamp suitcase in front of my belly, as Gran instructed. I wore her fancy church trench coat, the one she wore when her choir group, The Blessed Hearts, sang at their anniversary. It was blood red with a gold and magenta broach at the breast. Gran flattened her matching pillbox hat onto my head at the last minute. I knew she was trying to make me look respectable, so I didn’t say nothing. While I push myself across the backseat of Mr. Scooter’s car holding onto his headrest, Gran reaches in between her large breasts for her wallet and gives Mr. Scooter five dollars for gas. I hear her tell him what time my bus is leaving. She had already shoved the money for my ticket and three extra dollars into my pocket before I left the house. On our ride down, Mr. Scooter makes small talk while I work my finger into a tear in the vinyl seat, fumbling my fingers around the cottony filing.
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