Читать книгу Gonna Lay Down My Burdens - Mary Monroe - Страница 15

Burl decided not to accompany me to Kitty’s house even after I told him about the candied apples Kitty had brought home from our home economics class. With his eyes sparkling, he licked his plump lips hungrily and explained with regret, “I gotta stay home to scratch and grease Mama’s scalp.”

Why in the world a woman who was practically bald paid so much attention to her head was a mystery to me. A wig would have solved all of Miss Mozelle’s problems.

“How come your mama can’t scratch and grease her own scalp,” I asked, forcing myself to keep the anger out of my voice. “She got two hands.”

“She got grippe,” Burl explained with a heavy sigh.

“Oh.” All I knew about grippe was that it was one of the many things my grandmother complained about having. And that was all I wanted to know.

Since it was a school night and I had to be home in time for dinner, I knew I had to work fast. I made a quick phone call from Burl’s house to Mama and told her a bald-faced lie about having to give Kitty a homework assignment she had accidentally left at school. I grabbed my books off of Burl’s front porch and sprinted across his lawn, leaping over a lawn mower in the Sheffields’ front yard.

Thank God Kitty’s parents were still at their store. I didn’t feel like answering a bunch of questions about my family’s health, and everything else they discussed with me was just as dull. Unlike most of the people who came to our house for Mama to do their hair, Mrs. Sheffield didn’t have a lot of juicy gossip to entertain us with. The only good stuff I had picked up from her was that there were some fast, brazen women hanging around the store, grinning and flirting with Mr. Sheffield right in front of her. Mr. Sheffield often brought his shiny black Lincoln over for Daddy to work on, but he never revealed anything worth repeating. Like Miss Mozelle, the only places Mr. and Mrs. Sheffield usually went to were church and work. When they were home, all they did was sit around and read dull books and watch dull TV programs. I guess they were too wrapped up in their books and TV shows to see all the fun Kitty was having right up under their noses.

Not counting Crazy Mimi, Kitty was the only friend I had who had already given up her virginity. A year earlier, she had spent the night with me one Saturday. To keep Mama and Daddy from asking too many nosy questions, Kitty and I had volunteered to do the dishes after dinner. Right after that, we announced that we were going to my room to study Scripture so that we could be prepared for church the next morning. Mama was busy winding herself around the house, straightening up things in case unexpected company showed up. Daddy was still in the garage, doing whatever it was he did in there. My sister, Babette, was taking one of her hour-long bubble baths. While my family was occupied, I helped Kitty slide out my bedroom window. She had agreed to meet up with a boy that her brother had warned her about because the boy had just been released from a reform school. Against my better judgment, I often conspired with Kitty even though I knew it was wrong. Knowing about my crush on her brother, she kept me under her control by telling me on a regular basis how much prettier I was than the girls Chester dated.

“Girl, I’ll be glad when you and my brother hook up. We’ll be real sisters then. Chester’s hotter than a six-shooter, see. I hope you can handle him,” Kitty told me with a wink, adding the obligatory “Shit.”

“I hope I can, too,” I said with nervous apprehension. I didn’t have a clue as to how I was going to keep Chester once I got ahold of him. Though the thought excited me, it frightened me at the same time. “Shit, girl. You think he likes me?” I didn’t really like to cuss, but I had done it enough to where I was used to it by now. “Should I wear my blue denim dress when I come over to your house next time so he can see me in it?”

Kitty nodded eagerly. “Uh-huh. He likes pretty girls with long legs. And blue is his favorite color.” I watched in awe as Kitty sprayed her crotch with Charlie cologne.

Kitty was as dark as I was and almost as tall. She had a nice, curvy body, but she still stuffed her bra with toilet paper. Her long black hair was always in neat cornrows, complete with beads. She was pretty enough, but she was not nearly as good-looking as her brother was. Her face was too long and her nose and chin were too sharp. She minimized her flaws with makeup tips she learned from my sister. Kitty had braces on her teeth and she complained about that all the time. “Girl, I have to stand on my head to give blowjobs so this damn metal in my mouth don’t scratch nobody’s pecker.” I admired Kitty for knowing what she wanted and going after it. She didn’t let anybody or anything stop her. She was my role model and I was working on being just like her. Her role model was Alexis Carrington, the ball-breaking character that Joan Collins played on Dynasty, our favorite nighttime soap opera at the time. Kitty’s bedroom walls were covered with pictures of Joan Collins that she had torn out of magazines.

As volatile as Chester was, he adored his sister Kitty. He rode her around piggyback until she got too big, and he made furniture in his shop class for her dollhouses. Unlike a lot of the girls I knew, Kitty shared a lot of information with her brother about everybody but herself. That’s why, after she told me she was fooling around with a couple of boys, I told her about Burl, counting on her to share this information with Chester.

“Since when did your mama let you keep company?” Kitty wanted to know, walking me back to my house. Just ten minutes had passed since I’d left Burl’s house to visit Kitty. It turned out to be a wasted trip, anyway. Because just as I got there, Chester was leaving with that foul-breathed Sandy Baptiste, ignoring me completely.

“I can’t have a boyfriend until I’m sixteen, but what Mama don’t know won’t hurt her,” I said smugly. “Besides, Babette’s only fifteen and she’s got a boyfriend. And what about you?”

“Oh, I ain’t allowed to date yet neither,” Kitty said in a low voice.

Just as we reached my house, a rusty Mustang crawled down the street and stopped in front of us. A long, thin, hairy brown arm, decorated with cruel scars and a tattoo of a dagger, was hanging out of the window on the driver’s side. A wolf whistle came from the driver.

“That’s Buzzy. Listen, I left my mama a note that I was goin’ to eat dinner at your house,” Kitty told me, climbing into Buzzy’s old car. “Cover me,” she ordered.

Mama was busy in the kitchen fixing dinner as I floated into the living room and plopped down on the sofa. I could hear her fussing at Daddy about leaving some dirty car parts on the kitchen counter. My poor daddy. He was such a complicated man, drifting through our big house like a ghost. Sometimes all I saw of him was his shadow. He had been raised by a houseful of domineering women and now he had to deal with us. But Daddy had cooked his own goose by spoiling us. After every time he whupped Babette or me or got into an argument with Mama, he took us shopping and bought us something nice and expensive.

My sister, Babette, two years older than me, pranced into the living room wearing a shower cap and a new silk yellow bathrobe that Daddy had just bought for her. Like Mama, Babette was slightly plump and had light-brown skin. Babette and I had the same large dark-brown eyes, narrow-bridged nose, and lips that Mama’s white clients had to buy from a plastic surgeon. Babette had thick dark-brown hair worn shoulder length; mine was black and a few inches longer. I had Daddy’s smooth dark skin and height and his high cheekbones. Daddy’s parents had passed on before I was born, but he had two sisters in Florida and one in Huntsville that we rarely saw or heard from. Mama’s parents, both retired schoolteachers, lived in Montgomery. My grandparents sneaked into Belle Helene every now and then to make a fuss over Babette and me. Using bad grammar in their presence was the quickest way for us to get a whupping. Speaking properly was a small price to pay to avoid my grandparents’ wrath. However, I did sprinkle my speech with enough foul language when I was around my friends to let them know that I was still basically a homegirl.

“That new girl Desiree Lucienne, she said for you to call her,” Babette told me, sitting down on the love seat facing me, carefully smoothing the tail of that fancy housecoat. Babette had slapped my hand when I tried to touch the housecoat right after she slid it out of the neatly wrapped gift box it had come in. “Desiree said she wants to borrow your black leather jacket,” she added, crossing her legs with caution. I didn’t know that Daddy had given her new mules, which looked like fluffy yellow bushes, to match the housecoat. “Look how dainty my feet look,” Babette squealed, wiggling her feet. After my sister stopped admiring her feet, she turned to me with a serious look. “Carmen, go on and call that Desiree girl back. She sounded desperate.”

My choice of friends annoyed my sister. She should have been used to it by now because I’d always been drawn to the kinds of companions who needed a strong friend like me. Before I’d even started school, I had taken in a three-legged dog and a blind cat. I grieved for days when they died the same week. I felt like I had let them down in some way. I didn’t want to disappoint any of my human friends and lose them, too. Desiree was my newest project, and I couldn’t wait to incorporate her into my life.