Читать книгу God Don't Play - Mary Monroe - Страница 13

Rhoda glanced toward her house again, clearly getting impatient with me. “Do you want to come inside and talk about it?” she wanted to know.

I nodded. “I tried to call Pee Wee but he had already left. I don’t know if he’s coming straight home and I don’t want to be in the house by myself. Not now,” I said. “I don’t know what this person wants from me. I don’t know what this person is capable of doing, and I don’t want to find out, until I know what kind of maniac I’m dealing with,” I snapped.

“That’s it! That’s it!” Jade said through clenched teeth. “I’m going to go inside and call the cops! We are not going to let this heifer do this to you, Auntie!” Jade yelled, her bottom lip trembling. “Are we, Mama?” Jade lowered her head and gave Rhoda a tentative look.

Rhoda pressed her lips together so hard that it looked like one had disappeared. There was a faraway look in her eyes before she blinked. Then she and Jade stared into one another’s eyes, like each was reading the other’s mind. That was one time that I was glad I didn’t have that ability myself. I didn’t really want to know what was going on in those two heads.

“What?” Rhoda spoke and shook her head like she was just coming out of a trance, and in a way I think she was.

“We’re not going to let this sorry skank keep this up. Are we, Mama?” Jade asked, rotating her neck so hard her hair fluttered.

“No, we won’t,” Rhoda said in a calm, easy manner followed by a quick smile. Rhoda’s smile disappeared when she looked at me and saw the exasperated expression on my face. “Don’t worry.” She tapped my foot with hers and offered another smile. Then her voice got deep, her eyes more intense as she glanced up and down the street.

“If this bitch is crazy enough to step onto my property, I’m crazy enough to straighten out this mess myself.” Even though I weighed more than Jade and Rhoda put together, literally, I felt safer with them than I would have with anybody else I knew.

One thing I could say about Rhoda was she would stop at nothing to handle her business. I had learned that early in our relationship. It had a lot to do with how important she was to me. She took no prisoners and didn’t have to because she had a shoot-to-kill attitude. I didn’t condone that attitude but I did feel that a person had to do what a person had to do, when he or she felt threatened.

When I couldn’t face one of my battles on my own, I always knew that Rhoda would face it with me. I was not proud of the fact that I was so dependent on her, but had she not been such a powerful crutch for me to lean on, I wouldn’t have made it this far. I didn’t know what I expected Rhoda to do about my present situation. But it meant a lot to me just to have her emotional support. And since I didn’t even know who or where my tormentor was, confronting her face-to-face was not an option. At least not yet.

I held up my hand, looking away from Rhoda to Jade. There was no smile on Jade’s face. She looked as grim as I felt. “I don’t think this is a police matter, Jade. I don’t have all the evidence anymore and I can’t even prove that this person called me up and threatened me,” I said, trying to sound strong. The truth of the matter was, I felt as weak as a kitten.

“She threatened you?” Jade and Rhoda yelled at the same time. Rhoda replaced her smile with a look of horror.

I nodded so hard my neck ached.

“Come on. Let’s get you inside and have a few stiff drinks,” Rhoda said. “I’ve been waitin’ for an excuse to pop open a bottle of the brandy my mother-in-law sent me for my birthday.” She picked up her shopping bags and beckoned me to follow her and Jade, but my feet still felt so heavy that I couldn’t move right away. Rhoda and Jade started to inch toward their house, the sharp heels of their boots click-clacking on the concrete sidewalk.

“Can I spend the night? Or will one of you come spend the night with me?” I begged, dragging my feet, with my flip-flops sliding every which way, as I moved toward Rhoda and Jade.

“Well,” Rhoda began, giving me some of the same looks of pity that I received from my mother. “My husband’s friend from London is still here and he’s straight-up nosy. If you don’t mind him askin’ you all of your business, you’re welcome.” Rhoda leaned toward me and rubbed the side of my arm. “You remember Ian Bullard?”

I nodded. “The one we call Bully,” I said, wiggling my nose because the man in question was also Rhoda’s former lover and had fathered one of her children. It had been years since Rhoda and I had discussed her indiscretion and I wanted to leave it that way. But this was one time when I didn’t care who I had to deal with to get what I needed. And right now, I needed to be with Rhoda. “I just don’t want to be alone tonight,” I whined, blinking like an owl.

“And you won’t have to be alone,” Rhoda assured me.

Being that I was such a big ox and Rhoda was so dainty and petite, it seemed like I should have been the motherly one in our relationship. Rhoda couldn’t even get her arms all the way around me whenever she wanted to give me a hug. Instead of hugs, she usually just rubbed the side of my arm, like she was doing now. She opened her mouth to speak again but Jade cut her off.

“Spend the night with us, Auntie. Nobody will bother you in our house. Will they, Mama?” Jade asked. “And I can tell Uncle Bully that you have the cramps, or you’re going through menopause or some other female thing, so he’ll leave you alone.”

There was a smug look on Jade’s face. One of the few things that I didn’t like about this child that I loved so much was the fact that she never let me forget what I was: an obese, middle-aged Black woman who had nothing that anybody would be jealous of. Well, I had something at least one person was jealous of. So much that she took the time to type up a note and send it to me through the mail, call me up and talk crazy, and send me a blacksnake!

“Whoever it is that’s giving you a hard time won’t bother you while you are in our house. Huh, Mama?” Jade asked, anger flashing in her eyes. She shifted her weight to one slim leg and pressed her lips close together.

I didn’t like for Jade to be caught up in this mess that somebody had dragged me into, but she and Rhoda were like a package deal. A lot of the things that I shared with Rhoda, she shared with Jade. I had never had such a close relationship with my mother, which had a lot to do with me getting raped for ten years by one of her best male friends. But I did have a close relationship with my own daughter, even though she was only nine years old. As soon as she had learned how to talk and walk, I’d made it perfectly clear to her that she could come to me with any problem, no matter what or who it was.

“No, they damn sure won’t bother you as long as you’re in my house,” Rhoda sniffed. She lifted her chin and let out a loud breath. Then she spoke so calmly you would have thought she was ordering a pizza. “Jade, sugar, I want you to run into the house and put your bags away. Give yourself that egg facial you wanted to rush home for. Then I want you to go down to the basement and get one of your daddy’s guns. Load it up, and bring it to me.”