I shuffled into the kitchen and checked the answering machine. The caller had not left a message. I turned off the ringer and the answering machine before I returned to my spot at the table in my backyard.
“Oh, let old lazybones stay right where she’s at,” Pee Wee teased. He paused and shook his finger at me. “I’ll exercise her sure enough, later on tonight,” he threatened, immediately covering his mouth.
“Watch that smutty mouth you got, mon,” Otis teased, his Jamaican accent more pronounced than usual. “There is young peoples in de midst.”
“Like I don’t know what’s going on,” Jade scoffed, rolling her eyes and slapping Pee Wee’s butt with the palm of her hand.
Pee Wee ignored Jade’s gesture, not because he knew I was looking, but because he knew that I trusted him. I trusted him with all my heart. I knew that as long as he was married to me he would never do anything inappropriate with Jade or any other female. Pee Wee was the only man on earth I could say that about. Daddy didn’t like me feeling that way, but with his own track record he didn’t have a leg to stand on.
“I’m tired!” Charlotte yelled, out of breath. She darted across the yard and fell to the ground, fanning and wiping sweat from her face. “Mama, can I have some beer, too?”
“What’s wrong with you, girl?” I asked harshly, giving my daughter one of my meanest looks.
“My throat is dry,” Charlotte whined. She screwed up her face, and then coughed and pounded on her chest all at the same time.
“Have you lost your mind? You are a child, and children do not drink beer,” I managed, glaring at my daughter like she had asked me for the Hope Diamond.
“Jade drunk some beer!” Charlotte pointed out, stomping her foot.
Charlotte and Jade both had friends their own ages, but they had a special friendship that was slightly disturbing. At least it was to me.
As strict as Rhoda and Otis were with Jade, she still got away with more than a lot of kids her age. I knew that they allowed her to drink a little wine every now and then, falling back on the excuse that some of the most prominent families in town allowed their children to drink wine occasionally.
Rhoda’s father had an older half brother, named Johnny, who had returned to his home in Alabama several years ago. This half brother, who happened to be White, was as shady as he could be. Despite his morals, he had been a fun person to be around. And one thing that I could say about Rhoda’s uncle Johnny was, even though he was a notorious womanizer, he had never said or done anything inappropriate to me like Mr. Boatwright had done.
Rhoda often visited her uncle down South, usually with Jade in tow. From what I had managed to piece together from stories Jade had shared with me, that same old White man was just as crazy about Jade as he was Rhoda.
All of the kids in our neighborhood had called him Uncle Johnny, even me. This Uncle Johnny had spoiled Rhoda rotten when she was a child. Pee Wee had told me that the same old man had even taught her how to shoot a gun.
In addition to expensive toys and clothes, Uncle Johnny used to give Rhoda big bottles of wine, way before she reached legal age. It had been nonalcoholic wine, but to me, wine was wine.
I felt the same way about beer and as long as I could help it, my daughter was not going to drink beer until she was of legal age. I had enough to deal with. I didn’t need to have to deal with a miserable situation like an alcoholic child, too.
“Mama, can I please have a little sip?” Charlotte pleaded.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Pee Wee about to react. He slapped his hands onto his hips and started moving toward Charlotte with a stern look on his face. But I got to her first.
“Jade’s a lot older than you. How many times do I have to remind you of that?” I ignored the sneer that I got from Jade and for once, I was glad she was not my child.
CHAPTER 16
I didn’t like breaking up a party, especially one that I had initiated. But I needed some space so I could rearrange my thoughts. And besides, as much as they tried to hide it, Jade and Charlotte had worn themselves out with all that running and jumping around. Pee Wee, Otis, and Rhoda seemed to be dragging, too.
I feigned a headache. In a way, I did have one. My head felt like it was about to explode because it was crowded with so many thoughts. To make it look good, I slapped an ice pack on my forehead and did some serious moaning and groaning. But it wasn’t even necessary for me to go to that extreme.
“We should be leavin’ anyway,” Rhoda told me in a tired voice, walking along with me as I hauled the leftovers to the kitchen. “Bully doesn’t like to be alone too much, even in a house as cozy and nicely decorated as mine. Lord knows what that runaway wife of his will say to him. That’s when and if she calls my house tonight. You know how tacky British woman can be. They don’t understand men like we do, especially if their man is a brother.”
I noticed the dreamy-eyed look Rhoda got on her face every time she mentioned Bully. He must possess some very good dick, because for a houseguest he held a very high position on Rhoda’s priority list. She had told me herself that she enjoyed cooking special meals for Bully. Even when she prepared hot dogs or hamburgers for dinner, she thawed out a steak for Bully. Jade had spilled the rest of the beans on him. To me, he sounded like the houseguest from hell. He left his dirty clothes and toenail clippings all over the house, and he ate and drank like a hog. When it came to meat, he only ate steak and lamb. And he had to have bread from a Scandinavian bakery way across town. And as much as he liked to drink, Budweiser beer and Wild Turkey weren’t good enough for him. He had to have some kind of Guinness brew or Remy Martin cognac. He was so lazy that when Rhoda wanted to make up his bed, she had to do it with him in it. That Bully. He took hour-long baths and chatted for hours at a time on the telephone, racking up hundreds of dollars worth of calls (that Rhoda and Otis had to pay) to people in Jamaica and London. He even had the nerve to complain when his meals were late.
“And Lord knows Bully will have made a mess in my kitchen and I’ll be up all night cleanin’ it up.” It was one of the few times that I’d seen Rhoda complain with a smile on her face.
“Well, the way my head is throbbing, all I want to do is crawl into bed,” I muttered. “I’ll call you from work tomorrow.”
After Rhoda and her family had left, knowing I had a headache, Pee Wee saw that Charlotte got herself ready for bed. And when he finally came to bed, I pretended to be asleep.
This was one of the few times that I was grateful for middle age. Especially middle-aged men. In some ways, it had slowed Pee Wee down more than it had me. With so much beer in his belly and him being tired from jumping around in our backyard, he was out like a light in no time, purring like a cat. This was the first time in years that his snoring didn’t bother me. When I finally did get to sleep, I woke up every half hour or so with thoughts whirling around in my head like gnats.
I left to go to my job at the Mizelle Collection Agency the next day an hour ahead of my normal time. That way I didn’t have to see Pee Wee before he left to go to the barbershop that he owned and managed. He had inherited it from his late father, so it meant a lot to him. He enjoyed his work so much, he often stayed on the premises long after the last customer had come and gone.
We had an agreement that he would get Charlotte up and off to the child-care center that Rhoda operated out of her house during the summer months. I took care of her the rest of the year. I didn’t complain about having to get my daughter up and out of the house nine months out of the year when Pee Wee only did it for three months. I looked forward to it. But Pee Wee was such a hands-on kind of daddy that I thought it was good for him to do some of the things that most men left to their women to do.
Other than Mr. Royster, a bowlegged security guard in his late sixties, I was the only one in the office. Over the years it had become my home away from home because it was where I went when I needed some time and space to be alone.
Right