Читать книгу Red Light Wives - Mary Monroe - Страница 11

As mad as I was with Larry, I still had feelings for him. One of my problems was that I loved too hard and I suffered because of that. Because everybody I loved eventually deserted me.

Mama was the first.

I don’t remember much about Mama’s family. I hadn’t seen them since I was six. My grandfather was a huge, red-faced, wild-haired, fire-breathing preacher of whom everybody was afraid. When he preached his sermons, the older sisters danced out of their shoes and fainted. The church even shook. Other kids were afraid of him, but I just laughed and hid when he yelled at me for misbehaving. Because as fierce as he was, he was also a gentle and loving man. I would end up being sorry that I had not appreciated him when I had a chance.

My grandmother was a petite, attractive, but overbearing woman who was always telling Mama how she was going to go to the devil and take me with her if she didn’t “get right.” There were other relatives on my mother’s side, just as judgmental and sanctified as my grandparents, but they all stopped coming around because Mama embarrassed her family by fooling around with married men.

Mama was only sixteen when she had me, but she had been fooling around with my daddy since she was fifteen, and that’s something her folks reminded me of every day. We lived with her parents and half a dozen other relatives in an old house in Barberton, Mississippi. Barberton was a sleepy little farm town known for its cotton fields, fishing creeks, churches, juke joints, and peanut patches. People had to drive all the way to Biloxi, fifty miles away, when they wanted to experience the “big city” life.

My grandparents’ house on Pipe Street looked like a wide, sad face at the front from the outside. The windows had shades that were always half drawn, looking like half-closed eyes, and the front door looked like a grim mouth. There was a big peach tree with a crooked trunk in the front yard shading two lawn chairs. That’s where Mama and I could be found most of the time, sipping from glasses of lemonade (half of hers was vodka) as we basked in the sun.

I could play with the other kids in the neighborhood, but I didn’t do that much because I got tired of defending my mama’s name. Which was Maxine and not “that slut” or “that tramp” like the other kids called her. The thing about all that was my mother was not the only “shameless hussy” (another name the people called her behind her back) in our neighborhood. But most of the other loose women tried to hide what they did. My mother didn’t.

For Mama, life was all about having a good time, and she did that in three shifts. She would leave me alone with my grandparents for days at a time. Then she’d stagger into the house looking like she’d been mauled by a grizzly bear.

“Lula Mae, don’t you be lookin’ at me like you crazy, girl. I’m young. I’m goin’ to enjoy myself while I can. Help Mama to bed, baby.”

When Mama was home, she spent most of her time in the bedroom she shared with me, lounging up under one of Grandma’s goose-down quilts or getting dressed to go back out again. I got used to her shenanigans fast. Some nights I’d even help her put on her makeup then I’d lie awake most of the night waiting for her to come home.

When my mother’s behavior got to be too much for her family and their constant put-downs got to be too much for her, Mama found us an apartment across town on St. James Street next door to a convenience store.

“Now we can worry about your whorin’ behind day and night,” my grandmother said, crying hard as Mama ran around our bedroom, snatching our clothes out of drawers. As much as Mama and I irritated my grandparents, they didn’t want us to leave.

“Y’all ain’t got to worry about me and Lula Mae. I’ll be takin’ care of myself and my child by myself from now,” my mother shot back, adjusting one of the many headbands she wore to hold her unruly dyed brown hair in place. Like my grandmother, my mother was a petite and pretty woman. With her big brown eyes and dazzling smile, she didn’t have to do much to make herself attractive. But that didn’t stop her from wearing the tightest, shortest dresses she could squeeze her sexy body into. It was no wonder men couldn’t keep their eyes and hands off her.

“Ha!” my mama’s daddy screamed, stumbling into the room on his thick, crippled legs. “You mean that other woman’s husband’ll take care of y’all. This girl,” he pointed at me with the cane that he needed to get around with, “she’ll end up just like you, if you was to take her away from here where we tryin’ to set her a good example.”

Mama snapped one of our suitcases shut and then folded her arms, looking from her mama to her daddy. “Well, it didn’t do me no good livin’ all these years with y’all. All them preachin’ sessions and Scripture readin’ about somebody in the Bible begattin’ this or that, and chattin’ with a God they couldn’t see just made me want to do the opposite. Lula Mae, go empty your bladder and your bowels, so we can get up out of here. I’ll go crazy if I stay in this house another minute.”

As I ran to the bathroom down the hall, I heard my grandmother say to Mama, “Lula Mae is gwine to end up just like you. Layin’ up with men for money. Mark my word.”

It would be more than twenty-five years before my grandmother’s prediction came true. But a lot of other things happened along the way that drove me to that point. Things that I had tried to do to make sure that I didn’t end up laying with men for money like my mother.

My daddy, George Maddox, was married to a woman named Etta. Etta was not a bad-looking woman. She had a nice body for a woman her age, smooth high-brown skin, bright hazel eyes, and thick black hair she always wore in a braid wrapped around her head. She read her Bible every day and had a few good qualities, but people overlooked all that because most of the time, she was mean and hostile to people she didn’t care for. Like me.

Etta Maddox knew all about my mama and me. But she left us alone as long as we stayed out of her way. I don’t know what she would have done if she had known that every time she went to visit her relatives in Philadelphia, Daddy brought me and Mama to the big white house she guarded like a palace.

I knew about some of the nasty things Etta said about me and Mama. One day I passed her and one of her friends on the street. I overheard Etta talking about me like a dog. “Look at George’s little jungle bunny…only thing missin’ is a spear.”

I liked going to my daddy’s house when Etta was gone. I rooted through her things like a thief. That’s how I got back at her for talking trash about me and Mama. My revenge included me snapping her necklaces in two, tying her belts and scarves into knots, ripping holes in her gaudy underwear, and peeing in her cold-crème containers.

The apartment that Daddy moved Mama and me into was furnished and in one of the best parts of town. For the first time, I had a room to myself. Daddy bought me my own television set and more toys than I knew what to do with. He also bought us new clothes, a stereo, and a nice little car for us to get around in. Mama had him wrapped around her little finger, but she didn’t let that stop her from adding more men to her collection. The old man who owned the store next door to our apartment was always giving us something free. And, as far as I knew, all Mama had to do for him was smile and flirt.

Our landlord, a blind albino man named Mr. Green, couldn’t even see how pretty Mama was. But that didn’t stop him from coming around grinning like a Cheshire cat, scaring me like a ghost with his white hair, white skin, and haunting eyes. Some months when Daddy gave Mama the money to pay our rent, Mama would spend most of it and give Mr. Green the change, and it didn’t even bother Mr. Green. He would still grin every time he heard her voice. I never could figure out why Mama’s mercenary habits didn’t rub off on me until after that fiasco with Larry Holmes.

That first year away from my grandparents’ house was all good. But one day I came home from school and there was an ambulance in front of our house. I found out later that Mama was already dead when I’d left for school that morning. During the night, she had had a brain aneurysm. My grandparents, my daddy, and our landlord’s wife, the woman who had found my mama dead, were all in the apartment weeping and wailing when I got home. Before that day, the worst thing that had happened to me was the car wreck that had damaged my grandfather’s legs. Mama’s death was ten times worse.

I don’t know how I got through Mama’s funeral. There must have been a thousand things going through my head. I sat there on that hard pew, my body as stiff as a tree, listening to Reverend Newton go on and on about what a “wonderful daughter and mother” my mother had been. As much as I had loved and was going to miss my mama, the main thing on my mind was: what was going to happen to me? I didn’t have to worry about that too long, because right after the funeral, my daddy packed up all my stuff and took me to his house.

It was a big house with four bedrooms and a lot of corners and closets for me to hide in when I wanted to get away from my stepmother. I had a bedroom to myself, but it was more like a well-furnished prison. Every time I misbehaved, I got locked in my room.

While Daddy was at work, his wife treated me the way I’d always heard that stepmothers treated their stepchildren. She gave me all kinds of chores to do, and when I didn’t do them the way she thought I should have, she slapped, pinched, bit, and even kicked me. The one time that I did tell Daddy, she attacked me for doing that as soon as he left the house.

Back then, Daddy and his wife didn’t have any kids together, but Etta had a daughter from her first marriage. Verna was ten years older than me, and in some ways she treated me more like a daughter than Etta.

Even though Verna was her real daughter, Etta was often mean to her, too. It took me a while to figure out why. Verna was a lesbian, but that was not the word I heard. Both Daddy and Etta always referred to Verna as being “confused.”

“Confused hell! I ain’t confused. I know what I am. I just like to eat me some pussy,” Verna said to her mother, with me standing right there in the living room listening. It was my ninth birthday. The way Etta’s eyes bulged out, with her mouth open, I thought she was having a stroke. But all she did was shake her head and stomp out of the room, dropping pieces of my birthday cake all over the floor. “Lula Mae, the sooner you learn about life, the better off you’ll be. I ain’t never goin’ to hide nothin’ from you, girl. You done already seen more than a child your age should anyway,” Verna told me, a serious look on her face. Even though I was still a child, sassy and disruptive most of the time, Verna treated me with respect and affection.

She was a gentle person. But with her big moon face, beady black eyes, shaved head and barrel-shaped body, she looked like a truck driver. As a matter of fact, Verna was a truck driver. Daddy co-owned a trucking company with another man and Verna worked for them. Most of her jobs only took her across town to help somebody haul something to the junkyard, every now and then, she had to drive out of the state or to some other city in Mississippi to haul fruit or live chickens. I hated the days when Verna had to go out of town overnight.

Daddy was old, almost as old as my mama’s daddy. So, like most other older people, he slept a lot and was out of touch with a lot of things. Verna was the only person in my life at the time with whom I felt comfortable. When she was gone, I felt like I was all alone in a world that was so big and unfair, I never knew if I was coming or going. Attention seemed to be the one thing of which I could never get enough.

As old as Daddy was, he still had enough juice in him to get my stepmother pregnant with twin boys.

I was fourteen when Etta gave birth to Logan and Ernest. She wasn’t so young herself, so when her health started to fail, she took me out of school so that I could stay home and help her with the twins.

“Lula Mae needs a education,” my daddy said weakly. “I want her to be able to fend for herself.”

“Like her mama did? Either Lula stay home and help me with them babies, or you hire me a full-time nurse,” Etta told Daddy, from the bed she rarely left anymore.

“I can always go back to school, Daddy,” I said, peeping around the door to the bedroom he shared with Etta.

With a surprised look on her long, evil face, Etta lifted her head off her pillow and glared at me. “You so triflin’ you don’t care nothin’ about no school nohow,” she insisted with a smirk. “I got a lot of things for you to do around this house,” she declared, laying her head back down on her pillows so hard the bed’s headboard shook.

I hated school, and as far as I was concerned, I’d learned as much as I could anyway. As bad as it was being in the house with Etta and her two squawking brats, it was better than being in the school I attended. Barberton had a lot of small-minded people with big ugly attitudes, and I suffered because of that. Etta was on the school board so she knew every one of my teachers and had managed to poison most of them against me. I was glad to be away from mean old Miss Windland. That heifer used to make me stand in a corner just for having a “stupid look” on my face or for being disruptive. I got violent when kids said something nasty about my mother, so I had to get “disruptive” a lot. And Miss Windland never failed to remind me that when she’d taught my mother, my mother had been just like me.

Every time a teacher punished me and sent me home with a note, Etta made me snap a switch off a tree for her to whup me. But there was more to it than that. When she whupped me, it was for a lot of reasons. The worst one was, I was a constant reminder of my daddy’s infidelity and weakness for younger women. She couldn’t take it out on him, so she took it out on me. Even though I knew I would suffer, I was glad when the rumors started flying around the neighborhood about Daddy’s relationship with yet another sweet young thing over in Meridian. I was even happier when Verna told me that it was more than a rumor. She’d seen Daddy with his new piece.

“I love my mama, but she can be a bitch,” Verna said, right after she’d told me about Daddy’s newest mistress. I was perched on a pillow in the passenger seat of the eighteen-wheeler she was driving to deliver some live chickens to a poultry store in Alabama. “She ain’t never goin’ to accept me for what I am, and I ain’t never goin’ to accept her for what she is. You, Lula, you keep your eyes and ears open and don’t let nobody make a fool out of you. Not even my mama.”

By this time, Verna had moved into her own place, and I spent as much time there as I could. Even when I had to drag my two knotty-headed half brothers along with me, with them kicking and screaming all the way. The twins were afraid of Verna and her big, hairy, husky female friends. Etta stopped me from taking my half brothers to Verna’s house when Logan came home one day and asked her why Verna looked and acted like a man. He also revealed the fact that Verna and her female lovers got very affectionate in front of him and his brother.

“Lula, if you carry my babies over there again, you better start lookin’ for you someplace else to live,” Etta warned me. Daddy had all but moved in with his latest girlfriend, so I had to deal with Etta by myself most of the time.

I was seventeen, but I felt more like somebody twice my age. I enrolled in night school and I got my diploma anyway.

“Lula, as soon as you turn eighteen, I advise you to get the hell up out of that house,” Verna told me.

When Etta found out that I was planning my escape, which meant she would have to take care of her own kids and her house herself, she finally started treating me like a human being. She would crawl out of her bed and drive me all the way to Biloxi to shop. She bought me things that I’d never been able to get her to buy me before. She even hired a woman from her church to come help with the twins and that big house. But it was too late. I had landed a job in the mail room at the Department of Motor Vehicles. With my first paycheck, and money from Daddy and Verna, I moved into my own apartment.

It was nothing to brag about, but it was my place, and I could do as I pleased. Daddy helped me furnish my apartment, and he came by a few times a week to give me money. I saw more of him after I moved out of his house than I did when I lived with him. But Daddy had his own motives. He had yet another young thing on his agenda. Honey Simms was just a couple of years older than me and still lived at home with her mama. When Daddy didn’t feel like taking her to a motel, they’d rendezvous at my place. And when that happened, I left them alone and I went to Verna’s where I slept on her living room couch. When she and one of her lovers wanted to let loose, I slept on a pallet on the floor in her garage.

I spent so much time at Verna’s apartment, I got to know all of her friends. Odessa Hawkins entered our lives and became my sister’s live-in lover and my best friend. She was a few years older than me, but we had a lot in common. We both liked the same movies, books, clothes, and food. One night after one of the monthly parties Verna and Odessa hosted, Odessa lured me to the kitchen and hugged me. It startled me so bad, I stumbled against the refrigerator.

“Don’t even go there. You are my sister’s…uh, friend,” I said, dizzy from drinking four beers.

“Girl, don’t you go there,” Odessa said, guffawing. “I know you don’t swing my way, and even if you did, you ain’t my type.” Odessa hugged me again and this time she kissed me on the lips. “See there. You don’t even taste good to me. Sour lips mean a sour pussy, and I ain’t goin’ there.” Even though I was horrified, I laughed with her when she pinched my cheek.

“Girl, you better not let Verna catch you actin’ like a bitch in heat,” I said, wiping my mouth off with the back of my hand.

“If Verna don’t like what I do, she can lick my pussy! And before the night is over, I hope she will,” Odessa said, swooning.

My first boyfriend dumped me for one of his mother’s friends. And the few after him, well, it didn’t take me long to forget them after they dumped me. I never considered myself a raving beauty, but people were always telling me how attractive I was. I was medium everything. Height, weight, color. I had enough hair to wear in some of the best styles, and I knew how to dress. Why I couldn’t get involved in a good relationship was a mystery to me. And then I met Larry Holmes.

Larry worked for UPS and delivered packages to the DMV two to three times a week. Working in the mail room, I saw him every time he came. His long legs, light brown skin and curly brown hair made me drool. He was the best-looking man I’d ever seen. There was only one other Black woman working in the mail room. But Emma Lou Hanks was in her fifties and all she talked about to anybody who would listen was her husband, her kids, and her grandkids.

I was thirty-two and managing the mail room, and I knew that Larry was younger than me. But I didn’t know just how young. As it turned out, he was five years younger, but that didn’t stop him from asking me to go out for a drink with him. It was to celebrate my promotion from the mail room to the front counter to process vehicle registrations. The pay was pretty good, but it was a boring job, and I hated it. Larry brought some long overdue excitement into my life.

One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was in a committed relationship. Larry took me to bars and to parties where he introduced me to some of his friends, so I knew our age difference didn’t bother him. Since my experience with men was so limited, a lot of the things he did didn’t seem odd to me, but they did to Odessa and Verna.

“Girl, that brother is hidin’ somethin’, if he don’t even want you to know where he lives,” Verna told me. “If he’s as crazy about you as you think he is, he’d take you to his place at least once.”

“Well, I’ve asked him to plenty of times. I can’t keep naggin’ him and run him off,” I protested. I never liked discussing Larry with Verna or Odessa. When his name came up, I usually changed the subject or made myself scarce. That kept the peace, and it kept me happy.

Daddy had slowed down a little and didn’t need to bring his girlfriends to my apartment as much, so every time Larry asked to come over, I said yes. Even though he often spent the night, I never questioned him about why he showered and left so early every morning.

Working for the DMV, I had access to a lot of confidential information. All I had to do was nose around on a computer. I was surprised when I found out that Larry lived in the low-income Noble Street Projects on the outskirts of town. Even I found that odd. The man made decent money and he had several roommates. He could have afforded something better. Again, that was just another mystery about Larry that I didn’t spend much time thinking about.

For Larry’s twenty-eighth birthday, I arranged for a singing telegram to go to his apartment and sing “Happy Birthday” to him. It was a Saturday morning and he had just left my apartment. When he spent the night with me, he always left the next morning at exactly the same time. He’d call me as soon as he got home to tell me how good I’d made him feel. He always called at the same time, whispering into the telephone so he wouldn’t disturb his roommates. He called me when he got home on the morning of his birthday, too. But not to whisper sweet words in my ear.

“Girl, what’s wrong with you? You crazy? What the hell do you mean sendin’ some fat-ass, white-ass bitch to my house?” Larry was sizzling with rage.

I was stunned. “It’s your birthday,” I said, pouting.

“‘It’s your birthday,’” he mimicked. “Who gave you my address? You been followin’ me?”

I could not believe my ears. I was in such a state of shock, it was a struggle for me to speak. “I got it off the computer at work.” My voice was so low and squeaky, I could not believe it was me talking.

“Well, you better lose my address and I mean you better lose it quick. That fat-ass, white-ass bitch, screechin’ like a owl, woke up the whole building with her bullshit singin’!”

“Well, excuse me. It won’t happen again,” I barked, my teeth grinding.

“It better not.” Larry hung up on me.

He didn’t come around for two months. Since I no longer worked in the mail room, I didn’t see him when he made his deliveries. Then like nothing had ever happened, he showed up at my door one night with whiskey on his breath. I was glad to see him and he was glad to see me, but he was not glad about the news I had to share with him. Since he was already tipsy, I fixed him some coffee, as he stretched out on my couch. He waved the coffee away and ordered me to get him a beer.

“Where yours at?” he asked as I handed him his drink.

“I don’t think I should be drinkin’ in my condition,” I said sweetly. “It wouldn’t be good for the baby.” I held my breath and stood back, bracing myself for his reaction.

Larry stood so fast he dropped the bottle of beer, spilling it all over the carpet I’d just steam cleaned the day before. “Pregnant? Girl, I ain’t ready to be no daddy!” he hollered, rotating his arms like a windmill.

I gasped and rubbed my stomach. “What are we goin’ to do then? I’m pregnant and I can’t get unpregnant.”

When Larry got nervous, he raked his fingers through his hair. With both his hands working his hair, he looked at me, raking and blinking. “I know this doctor over in Gulfport. He’ll fix you up….”

I sucked in my breath so hard, my tongue flapped. “You want me to have an abortion? I thought you loved me.” In addition to telling me that he loved me, Larry had talked like we had a future—even though he had never mentioned marriage, unless I brought it up. But since he loved me, I thought that things would fall into place sooner or later. Some of his clothes were at my apartment, he borrowed money from me, and he did things for me that some of the women I knew couldn’t get their husbands to do. What else could I think?

He started to talk with his back to me. “Listen,” he began. He stopped and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lula Mae, I do love you, girl. It’s just that…well, a baby is a big responsibility. And I’m still a young man.”

I didn’t like it when age came up in our discussions. “Well, yes, you are still young and I am, too, compared to some people. But I am in my thirties and that’s pretty old to be havin’ my first baby or gettin’ married.” Larry gave me an exasperated look but that didn’t shut me up. “Havin’ a baby won’t change things between us. I mean, you can still live where you live, if you don’t want to get married.” I let out a mild sigh and looked at the floor. When I looked back up, Larry was still standing there, his hands on his hips, looking at me like I’d just flung a dead bird at him. “I’ve already looked at a bigger place, and it would be fine for me and the baby.”

With a hiss, he moved closer to me, his eyes looking as hard as ice and just as cold. “What’s wrong with you, girl? It takes a whole lot of money to raise a baby!” His hands were on my shoulders, gripping me so hard I could feel the tips of his fingers pressing against my shoulder blades. I pried his hands off and stepped back.

“It’s not like I don’t have a good job. I can take care of my baby by myself…if I have to,” I said wearily. Confrontations tired me out, and that was why I avoided them whenever I could. That was hard to do with a man like Larry.

He sighed real long and hard, shaking and scratching his head on both sides. “Double shit,” he muttered.

“Look, Larry, I don’t have much family and there ain’t much love there anyway. At least not for me. I want this baby.”

He shook his head some more.

“What about a name for…it?” he asked gruffly, narrowing his eyes.

“If it’s a boy, I’m goin’ to name him Richard.”

“That ain’t what I meant.” He waved his hand so hard, it made a swishing noise. “What you goin’ to put on the birth certificate?”

“What?”

“If you put my name on the birth certificate, the man’ll come after me for child support,” he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

I gave him an incredulous look. “Why would I have to go to the man on you? You sayin’ you won’t help me support this baby?” I touched his arm, and he promptly snatched it away, wincing like I’d jabbed him with an ice pick. “I want this baby, Larry.”

He threw his hands up in frustration. “Look, if you want this baby, go on and have it. I-I can’t promise you nothin’. Things could change any day. Uh, I…my cousins want me to move up to D.C. and help them run their limo business.” This was the first time I’d heard of cousins in D.C. with a limo business. “Now, if I was to move to D.C….”

“You could take me with you. I’m desperate to get out of Mississippi anyway.”

The look on Larry’s face went from frustration to absolute horror. “Girl, you workin’ both sides of the street, ain’t you? I can’t take you with me, if I do decide to go.”

I slid my tongue across my teeth and backed over to my couch. I plopped down with a thud. By now I was really worn out, physically and emotionally. “Well, why don’t we worry about that if and when it happens. Like I said, I want my baby, and I’m havin’ it, no matter what you decide to do. While you in Barberton, if you still want to be with me, fine. If you don’t, well, that’s fine, too. I got along without you before I met you, I can get along without you if you leave me. We Black women are used to bein’ deserted by our men anyway…”

After a deep sigh and a reluctant smile, Larry held open his arms.

“Aw, now you makin’ me feel real bad. My mama used to say that same shit after my old man took off. I ain’t nothin’ like my daddy. I’m a real man. And, girl, you know I’m crazy about you. Come here, baby…”

It made me feel good about myself, knowing that I had the patience and insight to recycle a hardheaded man like Larry. I felt sorry for the women I knew who didn’t. He continued to come around, and we went on with our relationship. He even brought over some clothes for the baby.

“Uh, these ain’t new. My nephew grew out of these things. Ain’t no use in buyin’ too many things for no newborn since they grow out of everything so fast.” He sniffed as he handed me two shopping bags of freshly washed items. “Now you better be carryin’ a boy. I put too much into this thing to end up with a girl,” he teased. It was so nice to see him in such a good mood. He had gone from one extreme to the other, proving to me that just about any man could be turned around.

I didn’t tell Daddy and Etta that I was pregnant until I could no longer hide it. Daddy slowed down from his numerous affairs long enough to give me a hug and a pat on my stomach.

“And you better do everything that doctor tells you to do. I don’t want my first grandchild to come here with no water head or nothin’,” Daddy told me, a proud look on his face, glancing at his watch before he dashed out the door less than a minute later.

A few moments after Daddy’s abrupt departure, Etta looked me up and down, shook her head, then let out a deep sigh. “I sure hope that baby don’t come into this mean world with them big boat-ass feet like you got,” she said, smirking. Her eyes were on the doorway that Daddy had just trotted through. Etta’s harsh words didn’t bother me as much as they used to. If anything, I felt sorry for her now. It had to be hard being married to a man who led so many women around town like the Pied Piper.

Larry got really excited when I told him that the doctor said I was having a boy. And even though he continued to drop off used clothing that his nephew had outgrown, I spent a lot of money and time at the mall, buying things for the baby. And that’s exactly where I was when my whole world came crashing down around me.

Dr. White released me on a Saturday afternoon, three days after I’d delivered my son. “Lula, I see you’re still just as tense as you were the other day,” he said, standing a safe distance away from me.

I didn’t even respond, even though I had cooled off a lot. I felt bad about being such a bitch to other men because of Larry. And I did manage to give Dr. White a big smile before I left the hospital.

My great big, baldheaded, fierce-looking stepsister, Verna, drove me home from the hospital in her huge truck. She fussed all the way about how I’d let Larry make a fool out of me. “If I didn’t love you so much, I’d drag you outta this truck and beat your brains out. I’m spendin’ the night with you, to make sure you all right—and to make sure that punk-ass Larry don’t show his face. ’Cause if he do, I’m goin’ to raise so much hell, they’ll put me on the cover of The Enquirer.” Verna sucked her teeth, glanced at me and shook her head. “I ain’t never understood you straight women when it comes to men. I didn’t even know Larry that well, but I had his number. All them fairy tales he told you about havin’ four roommates, no money, blah blah blah.” Verna paused and rolled down her window. “That shit makes me hot just thinkin’ about it,” she said, fanning her face with her hand.

I was too weak to argue with Verna. It never did me much good anyway. I was glad that she was looking out for me. I sat there like a mute, all the way home.

I returned to work a few days later, like nothing had happened. But Larry was gone from my life forever, and so was my son. Verna had taken care of the burial of my baby. She had arranged a memorial service at the funeral home and to my surprise, my mean stepmother, Etta, showed up with flowers. The word mean didn’t describe her on this emotional day. She cried almost as much as I did. That meant a lot to me, and it had a lot to do with my quick recovery. I knew then that not every “bad” person was all bad.

A day after I returned to work, I got a call from Odessa while I was on my lunch break. Even though Odessa wasn’t that much older than me, I’d allowed her to take on a maternal role in my life. The same as I’d done with my stepsister, Verna. My mother had not been much of a mother to me, and I’d ignored the rantings of my grandmother. Etta had shown me in more ways than one that she didn’t care anymore about being a mother figure to me than she would a duck. Her behavior at my son’s memorial didn’t make up for all the years she had mistreated me. But when I had to be around her, I treated her with respect. It took too much energy to be angry. Besides, I wanted to use it all on Larry and any other man who dogged me.

Even though I sometimes protested, I liked it when Odessa jumped into her position of authority with me. “Now you see here, Miss Girl, you been mopin’ around long enough. You comin’ to that party me and Verna’s throwin’ for my brother if I have to drag you by the feet.” Odessa blew her nose and cursed under her breath. She had a mild cold she had contracted while sleeping with her bedroom window open the night before.

Odessa worked for the welfare department, processing applications for people in need of welfare assistance. Like me, she hated her job. She had shared dozens of horror stories with me about irate welfare recipients calling her up and threatening her with physical violence every time their check was late. When her job got to be too much for her, she called in sick, whether she really was or not. Her recent cold had nothing to do with her taking off sick this time. She would have done it anyway, just so she could be on call for me if I needed her.

Even though Odessa was already my best friend, I still went out of my way to stay on her good side. “Party for your brother? All right. I’ll be there,” I said in a meek voice.

Odessa’s brother, Bohannon Hawkins, was forty-eight, twelve years older than Odessa, and almost old enough to be my daddy. But I liked him right away. Even though he looked his age, he was not a bad-looking man. He wasn’t that much taller than me, and most of the limp hair on his peanut-shaped head was gray. He had nice, shiny black eyes and a smile that seemed to light up the room. And since he was the only male at the party of more than a dozen folks, he really stood out.

“Baby sister tells me you lookin’ for a new friend,” he said, talking loud enough to be heard over Grace Jones blasting from the CD player.

“I wouldn’t mind that at all,” I replied, following him to the corner in the small living room where we could have more privacy and a better view. We watched Odessa, Verna, and their husky female friends party their butts off. They danced, drank, and smooched like it was their last chance. It was entertaining, and I was glad to be present. I had the best time that night than I’d had in years. And I had Bo Hawkins to thank for that.

Bo was likeable. There was no doubt about that. His cross eyes, wandering all over the place when he looked at me, didn’t bother me at all. It was a while before I noticed his other flaws. Like his crooked mouth and stained teeth. Still he had a nice smile. After a few dates, I knew I could never love Bo Hawkins. At least not the way I’d loved Larry. And, I think he knew that. But he was the nicest, most charming man I had ever met. I felt bad about my mild feelings for him. However, I made up for that by always being available when he wanted to see me. I had nothing else to lose but time.

Bo was a convenient man to have around. He offered to do my laundry, buy my groceries, and clean my apartment when I had cramps or was too lazy to do it myself. He worked on my car when it needed to be worked on and he cooked for us when I didn’t feel like doing it. Larry had done the same things for me. There were times when I wished that Bo wasn’t so quick to do so many nice things for me, because it reminded me of Larry. And sometimes when I was with Bo, I found myself wondering what Larry was doing. Even when I was in Bo’s arms.

I felt kind of bad about wallowing in the same bed with Bo that I’d been in with Larry. It didn’t help when Bo served me breakfast in bed one Sunday morning, but I appreciated it.

“Bo, you spoilin’ me,” I told him, feeling sad, but forcing myself to sit up and smile. He handed me a tray with grits, bacon, and toast on it. When I was with Larry, I served him breakfast in bed. I would have done it for Bo, too, but serving me pleased him more.

“I’ll spoil you sure enough, if you let me,” he offered, plopping down on the side of my bed, giving me looks of love no man had ever given me. Not even Larry.

“Uh, you still thinkin’ about movin’ back to California?” I asked, stirring the overcooked eggs with my finger. It had been a month since I’d given birth. I had made love with Bo a few times. I didn’t know if it was because my mind wasn’t in it, or because what I felt for Bo was more pity than passion. But making love with Bo was even more boring than my job. If he hadn’t made so much noise while he was on top of me, I probably would have slept through it. One thing I had learned after my disaster with Larry was, there was more to a good relationship than good sex. As much as I hated to admit it to myself, that was all I’d really had with Larry. I tried to force myself to be passionate with Bo, but it was no use. He couldn’t turn me on with twenty thousand volts.

Bo was not rich and he didn’t have much of anything to offer. But he offered me the one thing I needed the most right now: a chance to escape. Oh, I knew that I could have done that on my own eventually. All I had to do was save up the money. But on my salary that could have meant staying in Barberton at least another six months. I had to get out of town before I ran into Larry or his wife. I was angry with them both, and I knew that if I encountered them again in public, I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions.

“Just as soon as I get that muffler fixed on my car,” Bo told me, snapping off a piece of bacon and chewing it so hard his cross eyes were straight for a minute.

I gave him a surprised look. “You drivin’ all the way to California?”

Bo nodded. “I don’t travel no other way no more. Not after them lunatics of Bin Laden’s started blowin’ up planes and buildin’s that September.”

I laid my fork down and looked in Bo’s wandering eyes. “If you take me with you, I can help you drive.”

Bo had never refused anything I asked for and this time was no different. I quit my job, sold my car to one of my half brothers, gave Odessa and Verna all the stuff we couldn’t squeezed into Bo’s Ford station wagon, and just like that Bo and I left Mississippi.

With both of us driving, it took three days to get to San Francisco. Our only major stop was Reno, Nevada. That’s where I married Bo, even though he admitted to me when he proposed that he knew I didn’t love him.

“It takes more than love to make a relationship work, Bo,” I told him. “You’re good for me and I appreciate that.” I don’t know where my mind was. I never thought I’d see the day that I’d marry a man I didn’t love. It had to be because I hadn’t got my mind back together yet. I wanted romance and excitement. I didn’t expect that from a man I pitied more than I loved. “I’ll be a good wife,” I promised.

One thing I could say about myself was I was loyal to the people who treated me well. I could never forgive myself if I ever hurt a person the way I’d been hurt by Larry. And anyway, Odessa assured me that she would crucify me if I mistreated her brother.

Bo and I had a little more than three thousand dollars between us, but he was determined to get a job blowing that horn of his with the first band that would take him. I planned to work, too, until I got pregnant again. That was something I hoped would happen right away. I thought that a child by Bo, even one with Bo’s cross eyes and plain features, would strengthen my feelings for him.

Bo had kept in touch with a few of his old friends in San Francisco. The man who had agreed to put us up until we found a place had suddenly been offered a job in Alaska. He was gone by the time we arrived so we had no choice but to check into a motel. To save money, we chose the cheapest one we could find. From the looks of the run-down neighborhood, I could see why the tacky motel we’d picked was so cheap. We were in the heart of the ghetto.

There was a lot of mess going on outside in the motel parking lot when we checked into The Do-Drop Inn. Aggressive homeless people wandered around demanding money. Angry-looking people screamed at other angry people, while young boys walked around hugging huge radios blasting music that sounded like nothing but a lot of noise. About an hour after we checked in, Bo offered to go get us something to eat and drink from an all-night convenience store at the corner.

“Wait for my hair to dry and I’ll go with you,” I said, walking out of the dank bathroom with a towel around my head.

“No, you stay right here and warm the bed until I get back,” he insisted. “I ain’t goin’ to set around waitin’,” Bo snapped, nodding toward the bed. “Now you just get in that bed and be ready for me when I get back.” That was the last thing he would ever say to me.

The eleven o’clock news had just gone off. I clicked off the shit-box of a television, because it kept going off by itself anyway. The noise from my blow-dryer kept me from hearing some of the noise outside, but it didn’t drown out the yip yip of a siren that seemed to be getting closer and closer.

I looked at my watch. Bo had only been gone a few minutes. I finally cracked open the door and looked out. I couldn’t see what was going on because a huge, rough-looking crowd had gathered in the parking lot. In addition to an ambulance, several police cars were present. Feeling that I would be safe with a bunch of cops running around, I went out to investigate. And that’s when I saw Bo on the ground, with blood trailing behind him. He was on his belly, crawling like a snake, trying to get back to me.

I froze in my tracks. As long as I live, I will never forget the look in Bo’s eyes when he saw me. He smiled and blinked, as a huge tear rolled down the side of his face like a marble. Then he closed his eyes and went to sleep. I was still standing in the same spot, unable to move when the paramedics covered Bo and slid him into the back of the ambulance. Bo’s impatience had saved my life. If he’d waited for me to go with him, both of us probably would have died.

The hardest telephone call I ever had to make in my life was to Odessa to tell her that her brother had walked in on a robbery in progress and had been shot dead.