longer. I will be making my own money, I will be getting some work experience. And it would sweeten the pot if you gave me a nice raise…”
“I’ll talk to your mother, but you know how stubborn your daddy is.” I sighed, rolling my eyes.
“Well, Daddy will go along with whatever Mama says. If you can get to her, Daddy won’t have a choice but to go along with my plan.”
I let out a deep breath and handed the tray back to Jade with most of the food untouched. “I’ll talk to your mother.”
A huge smile appeared on Jade’s face. “Thank you, Auntie.” She turned to leave the room.
“Jade, can you bring me a phone? I’d better call Pee Wee and let him know where I am,” I called after her. “I didn’t think to leave him a note.” I felt my hair. It was so matted and knotty it felt like I had on a spiked helmet.
“He knows you’re here. I called him up early this morning myself, and I told him everything,” Jade told me, talking over her shoulder.
I gasped and swung my legs to the side of the bed. “Everything?”
Jade stopped and turned to face me again. “Yes, I…oh, not that. I didn’t tell him about that snake, or that note that somebody sent to you, or that nasty phone call you got. Mama said that you should be the one to do that,” Jade said with a distant look on her face.
I let out a sigh of relief.
Jade gave me a pitiful look and returned to the side of the bed. “Auntie, you should tell him as soon as you get home.”
I looked past Jade toward the window. August was such a beautiful time of the year in Ohio. A lot of people complained about the heat, but that was one of the things that I enjoyed most about the month. I never waited for Labor Day to arrive; I started having cookouts before the holiday. Like today. A barbecue in my backyard would be a great way to welcome Pee Wee and Charlotte back from Pennsylvania.
Telling them that somebody hated me was one thing that I would put off doing for as long as I could. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell Jade that. “Jade, you have to promise me that you won’t tell your uncle Pee Wee, Charlotte, your friends, or anybody else about…what happened.”
Jade tilted her head to the side and made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “I won’t. I just told you that Mama said you should be the one to tell Pee Wee,” she said with one eyebrow raised. “I don’t want to get in your business. You know me better than that, Auntie.”
I nodded. “And I will talk to your mother for you as soon as I get her alone. And don’t worry, she’ll listen to me. She always has.”
CHAPTER 12
After Jade left the room, Rhoda wandered in, looking like she had just stepped off the cover of Essence magazine. She wore a bright red sleeveless blouse and black jeans, and a pair of shiny, see-through sandals. Her hair and makeup were flawless.
“Are you all right?” she asked, winding her watch, tossing her hair back.
“I’m fine. Uh, let me say this before I lose my nerve,” I said, my words almost running together.
Rhoda stopped winding her watch and stood by the side of the bed looking at me with a puzzled expression on her face. “Say it, then.” She shrugged.
“Jade doesn’t want to go off to college until next year.”
“Is that all?” Rhoda said, looking relieved.
“She said that she wants to work for me a little while longer,” I said. “But I think the real reason is that she’s not ready to leave home yet.” I threw that part in on my own because I didn’t want Rhoda to think that I was the only reason that her daughter didn’t want to leave home.
Rhoda looked even more relieved. “Well, she can stay home with me for the rest of her life if she wants to. If I had my way, both my kids would live with me until I died.” Rhoda gave me a wistful look. “I would give anything in this world for my son to move up here. I tell him all the time that his…boyfriend is just as welcome in my home as he is.”
“So, will you talk it over with Otis?”
Rhoda waved her hand. “He doesn’t want her to go away to school, or any other place, period. It’s the grandmothers and the rest of the family, on both sides, that want her to continue her education.”
“Well,” I chuckled, “this was easier than I thought it would be.”
Rhoda decided to treat Jade and me to brunch at the mall, but I promptly declined the invitation. After the pile of food that Jade had placed in front of me, going to brunch was the last thing on my mind.
With Otis and Bully in the house with me, I chose to stay in the guestroom until I felt ready to go home. Two more hours lying in somebody else’s bed was about all I could stand. I crawled out of the bed in Rhoda’s guestroom, and slid back into my muumuu and my flip-flops.
I joined Otis and Bully in the living room. I forced myself to smile when Bully commented on how melancholy I looked. After a few awkward comments, most of them made by Bully and Otis, I watched a few minutes of the ball game that had them jumping up and down in front of the TV whooping and hollering like hyenas. Sports didn’t interest me and being alone with other women’s men made me nervous. As soon as a commercial came on I excused myself and eased out the kitchen door.
By the time I made it back to my house, it was so hot and muggy the idea of standing over a barbecue was the last thing in the world that I wanted to do. But it was too late. I had already opened my big mouth and invited Rhoda and her family to the house that evening.
The only good thing about the invitation was the fact that Rhoda’s houseguest had declined. “But I will take a rain check!” Bully had yelled before I left Rhoda’s house, with a leer on his face that I hadn’t seen since Mr. Boatwright. As if I didn’t have enough problems already, I didn’t want to have to deal with unwanted attention from Rhoda’s ex-lover, especially right in front of her face. Rhoda was very territorial. All I needed was for there to be some friction between her and me over a man! She had told me, with a severe scowl on her face, that Bully’s wife had called him up from London earlier that morning. Apparently, the wife had left the man that she had run off with in a flophouse in Paris, and then returned home, eager to resume her relationship with her husband. Rather than go running back to the wife, Bully was going to spend a few more weeks with Rhoda and Otis, after Rhoda had insisted. However, Rhoda had suggested that Bully at least be available to talk to the woman when she called again. Which meant he had to stay at her house to answer the telephone today.
The more personal information that Rhoda kept from me, the more I wondered just what was going on between her and Bully. In the back of my mind, I was thinking that Rhoda was glad to be involved in my latest dilemma so she would have a good reason not to discuss Bully’s presence with me. As far as I was concerned, Rhoda could have been fucking the pope for all I cared. I had my own problems to deal with, and I would have done myself more harm than good by pissing her off when I needed her as much as I did now. Until I figured out what was going on and why, I needed to keep Rhoda on my side.
Pee Wee and Charlotte drove up in his Jeep about an hour after I got home. I waited until he did all of his complaining about his relatives in Pennsylvania before I told him about the cookout we were hosting.
“Goddammit, woman. I’m tired and I sure don’t feel like entertainin’ nobody. You should have checked with me first before you planned this shindig,” Pee Wee scolded, standing in our living room doorway with the screen door cracked open, fanning his face with an old issue of Black Enterprises. He had on some baggy black shorts and a light blue T-shirt. For a man with such a nice build, he had some of the scrawniest legs I’d ever seen. I enjoyed looking at him when he was naked because there were other things on his body that took my attention away from his knobby legs. I couldn’t deal with him in shorts, and I usually told him so. But today I decided to keep my criticisms