Читать книгу God Don't Play - Mary Monroe - Страница 6

My worst nightmare began with a blacksnake and a cute envelope. I had no way of knowing that my life was about to fall apart on the most beautiful day that we’d had all year.

The bold morning sun was shining down on my freshly painted house like a lighthouse. I had just had some of the best sex that I had had in years, and there had been no one else in the same room with me.

“You give good phone sex. You should call me up more often,” I teased my husband, Pee Wee, as I’d struggled to catch my breath before hanging up the telephone on the wall next to the refrigerator in the kitchen. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d enjoyed sex standing up, and nibbling on a Pop-Tart at the same time.

“Well, it is the next best thing to me bein’ there,” Pee Wee told me, whispering so that his cousins in the next room at his cousin’s house couldn’t hear him. “Did you get naked like I told you?”

“Uh-huh. Naked as a jaybird,” I lied, smoothing down the sides of my muumuu. There was no way I was going to shed my clothes in the middle of my kitchen floor. It was hard enough for me to get naked in my own bedroom. But I did remove my shoes.

“Did you stick your fingers where I told you to stick ’em?” Pee Wee asked with a moan.

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, lying again. The only thing that I’d stuck my fingers in was in that Pop-Tarts box. However, I had massaged a few other spots on my body like Pee Wee had instructed, and that had been enough for me.

I had enjoyed my passionate telephone tryst with my husband, but I was glad when it was over. Not only did I feel downright ridiculous doing some of the things to myself that he’d ordered me to do, but I had started getting cramps in my legs. And I wanted to clean myself up and put on some fresh underwear.

With a satisfied smile on my face, I stepped out on my front porch to retrieve the mail. A large butterfly that had wings every color in the rainbow landed on my hand.

The sun felt good on my face as I clutched my mail and shook the butterfly off my hand. I waved to the friendly, good-looking White couple from down the street as they walked by, pushing their homely toddler in a creaky stroller. Everybody on our block, except for the husband, knew that the homely toddler’s daddy was the homely insurance man who made house calls.

A large, light-skinned man that I didn’t recognize, with his black hair in large pink foam rollers, waved to me from a shiny black Lincoln that was cruising down the street. I yelled at a stray dog who had decided to lift his crooked leg and water the prizewinning rosebush in my front yard.

My biggest concern that day was trying to decide what to do first: get my nails done, go shopping, do the laundry, or treat myself to lunch at one of my favorite restaurants. I was in a frivolous mood so I didn’t want to do anything that was too serious, like go pay bills or visit my fussy parents. But the bizarre uproar that I was about to face would cancel everything else that I had planned to do on that beautiful Saturday. From that point on, my life would never be the same again. What happened to me on this day would haunt me for the rest of my life, because it was the beginning of the end for me in some ways. And it all had to do with a blacksnake and a cute envelope.

There was nothing that unusual about the cute envelope that had arrived in the mail that morning in late August. I had almost missed it among the usual stack of bills and other unwanted junk—like the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue with the picture of a beautiful young blonde woman in a white negligee on the cover.

I laughed when I saw the catalogue, wondering what the world was coming to for my name to end up on the Frederick’s of Hollywood mailing list. I had to give them credit for advertising muumuus, waist clinchers, capes, bras with cups large enough to hold forty ounces of beer, long flowing nightgowns that looked more like parachutes, and other inducements every now and then to appease us full-figured gals. But almost everything else that the mysterious Mr. Frederick—who probably looked like Buddha or worse himself—sold was for women half my size and even smaller. On the first page inside the catalogue were some “one size fits all” panty hose. Yeah, right. The see-through gowns and low-cut blouses were outrageous enough, and I had absolutely no use for crotchless panties. I’d probably be wearing diapers again before I broke down and put on a pair of crotchless panties.

I was not surprised when I flipped the catalogue over and saw that it was addressed to Jade O’Toole, my best friend’s sneaky teenage daughter. Some of the clothes that the girl wore every day showed just as much skin as the frocks she ordered from Frederick’s that she hid from her parents, so I didn’t know what the big deal was. But I didn’t have a teenager yet, so I couldn’t really judge the behavior of the “in your face” music-video generation. They had their own culture and Jade kept it in my face. I had allowed her to take too many liberties with me so it was too late for me to revise my position in her life. I was no more of an authority figure to her than a cat was. She had started using my address without my knowledge or permission. I shuddered when I thought about what that girl might do next.