Читать книгу Gonna Lay Down My Burdens - Mary Monroe - Страница 16

Unlike me, Desiree Lucienne didn’t have any close friends. She was just as unpopular as Burl. Like with Burl, the only friend who ever called her was me.

She had a telephone in her room, and when I did call back that night, she answered on the first ring. “Carmen, you want to come over Saturday afternoon?” If red robins could talk, they would sound like Desiree. That girl had such a nice, melodic voice. It was one of the things I liked most about her. Especially compared to Regina and Crazy Mimi. They had the harshest voices I had ever heard coming out of teenage girls. More than one person had mistaken Regina for a man over the telephone.

“Uh…I don’t know. I might be going to the movies with Burl.” As much as I liked this new girl, I had to get to her when I could. It didn’t really bother me having to put her on hold. I knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Oh. Well, if you change your mind, let me know. I got some new patterns I want to show you. After that, I have to go down to my daddy’s office to help clean up. His cleaning lady has been sick for two days.”

Desiree had moved to town three months ago from Birmingham. She was in my homeroom and three of my classes. She was shy and kept to herself, but some of the other girls at our school mistook her for a snob. They picked on her until I took her under my wing. Knocking Chester to the ground that time had earned me quite a reputation. Nobody messed with me, so naturally the kids I befriended were safe. I liked hanging out with Desiree, even though we didn’t have a lot in common. She liked to read romance novels and she made most of her own clothes from patterns she created herself. She brought sandwiches to school made with bread that she made from scratch, while I ate lavish meals I purchased from the cafeteria. I rarely cracked open a book, and when I did it was a murder mystery or something by Stephen King. I certainly didn’t have the patience or time to fuss with patterns and sewing machines for myself, but I liked watching Desiree do it. She hinted that she wanted to be a designer when she grew up, or a chef. Mama and my grandparents and all of daddy’s relatives wanted Babette and me to be teachers. Daddy said, “I don’t care what y’all do as long as it ain’t illegal.”

A career was so far down the road, I didn’t give it much thought at the time. I didn’t know what I wanted to pursue, but it wasn’t teaching. For the time being, just being a teenager was enough to keep me occupied. It was a full-time job hanging out with my friends and trying to capture Chester.

I learned the rest of Desiree’s history by listening to Mama gossip on the telephone with Miss Mozelle. Desiree’s daddy, Dr. Andre Lucienne, was a gynecologist, a Creole, an alcoholic, and a brute. He had beaten his wife so much, she had run off with just the clothes on her back, leaving Desiree and her older sister, Colleen, with Dr. Lucienne. Now he was beating Desiree and Colleen. Even though I had heard a lot of negative stuff about the doctor, I liked him almost as much as I liked my own daddy. I never told anybody, but I often wished that my daddy was more like Dr. Lucienne. Daddy was younger and better-looking than Desiree’s daddy, but sometimes he embarrassed me in front of my friends by using bad grammar and wearing the greasy overalls and lopsided, outdated Afro he wore most of the time. Dr. Lucienne was a short, jowly-cheeked, lumpy man with a moon face and wiry gray hair. And even though everybody said he looked like Fred Flintstone, he had the kind of light skin and straight hair combed back like a duck that a lot of the women I knew liked. I looked forward to riding the bus with Desiree to her daddy’s downtown office. I watched in awe as he rolled around his office on his stubby legs, barking at his nurses and patients with the tails of his long white smock flapping like wings.

Mama didn’t like me going to the doctor’s office because she didn’t like his head nurse. Bertha Cross, called Nurse Bertha, had been on staff when Mama worked at the county hospital years ago. Very few people liked this woman. Each time Daddy worked on her truck, she complained about his prices and would only pay him with post-dated checks. Once she tried to pay him with food stamps that somebody had paid her with for an abortion she had performed. (I’d overheard that hot piece of gossip from Kitty, who had heard it from the pregnant girl’s mother.) Nurse Bertha was a good Christian lady, but nosy and manipulative according to Mama, and the main reason Mama had given up nursing to do hair. Ironically, Nurse Bertha was now one of Mama’s best customers.

The last time Mama did Nurse Bertha’s limp, dyed-black hair, Nurse Bertha complained about the style. “Sister Taylor, you got me lookin’ like one of them jezebels on Soul Train.” Nurse Bertha always wore too much expensive perfume, but she was a heavy smoker and had the breath of a moose. I could smell it from where I stood, peeping from around the doorway a few feet away.

Mama told her, “Didn’t I tell you that style was too young and wordly for you?”

Nurse Bertha, a petite woman with delicate brown eyes that looked out of place on her leathery bronze-toned face, glared in my direction as I said, “Patti LaBelle wears her hair like that. Those flat bangs make you look younger, too.” My comment made her smile.

“Well, if Patti LaBelle can wear a do like this, so can I!” Nurse Bertha hollered happily.

Mama sprayed the kitchen with pine-scented Glade after Nurse Bertha left. Then Mama advised me not to pass out compliments to people who didn’t deserve them. “Lying only leads to more lying. A girl like you has no reason to go around telling lies,” Mama added.

“Yes, ma’am,” I muttered, crossing my fingers behind my back.

I rarely told Mama about my trips to the doctor’s office, and I certainly did not tell her about all the nosy questions Nurse Bertha asked me about our business every chance she got. After the time I blabbed to Nurse Bertha about the man from IRS paying Daddy an unexpected visit—which made Daddy maul my head—I usually kept quiet around her. Desiree was probably the only young person I knew who liked Nurse Bertha. However, she always tried to gather up a posse to escort her to her daddy’s office so she wouldn’t have to face Nurse Bertha and her daddy alone. Everybody knew that Desiree was terrified of her daddy. I would be too if he lit into me the way he lit into her. I had witnessed him bounce a coffee cup off of her head one day because he said the coffee she had just served him was too cold. His attacks on her bothered me more than they bothered Desiree. While I’d get mad at her daddy after one of his rampages, she’d pick herself up off the floor, dress her wounds, then trot off to the bar in their living room and fix him a highball. I wondered how I could fit Desiree into my schemes. I was glad she was on the other end of the telephone. I didn’t want her to see the look on my face.

With so many people around me doing so many strange things, sometimes I felt like I was the only sane person left. At least all I was guilty of was being a fool over Chester Sheffield. He was the highlight of my life. But my life was about to change dramatically. “I promised Burl I’d go to the movies with him on Saturday,” I said with my fingers crossed.

“You can come over here after the movies,” Desiree pleaded. “You can bring Burl if you want to. He can help us clean my daddy’s office. Daddy has to go out to the hospital to deliver a baby by C-section on Saturday.” Desiree continued. “Poor Daddy. I feel so sorry for him. It’s not easy for him to be prodding around with his fingers inside women’s stinky pussies five days a week. No wonder he drinks.”

I cringed. “We don’t have to clean up nothing real nasty, do we?”

“Oh, no! I just go by to like straighten up magazines, check on the plants, stuff like that. Nurse Bertha and the cleaning lady take care of the real nasty stuff. We can make Burl rearrange the furniture in the waiting room. Daddy would be so pleased,” Desiree said breathlessly.

“Uh…I’ll have to ask Burl. You know how boys are,” I replied. As soon as I got Desiree off the phone, I called Burl. “You wanna go to the movies Saturday afternoon?” I had no desire to help clean up Dr. Lucienne’s office and field his nosy head nurse’s questions, and even without asking I knew that Burl didn’t want to either.

“With who?” Burl gasped.

“With me,” I said.

“I ain’t got no money.” He laughed. I could hear Miss Mozelle’s muffled, plaintive growls in the background. “I gotta get off the phone. Mama needs for me to scrape the dead skin off her feet,” Burl said excitedly.

Burl was such a fool for his mama. It was bad enough that Burl’s mean uncle in Detroit had such a toehold on him, but the things he did to keep his mama happy crossed the line. I felt sorry for the girl who ended up marrying Burl.

“Okay, I’ll pay your way,” I snapped. “But you can’t tell nobody.” Paying a boy to spend time with me was a level of disgrace so low, I had a hard time believing my own words. As soon as Burl agreed to go to the movies with me, I forgot all about calling Desiree back.

That Saturday, I took my walk of shame to Burl’s house right after lunch, reminding myself that Burl was really a nice boy to have for a friend. Besides, he could pass for seventeen, so I needed him to get me into the R-rated movie I wanted to see.

If things didn’t work out between Chester and me, I’d still have Burl to fall back on.