I did in every other situation, I made the best of my job. Life was too short. I was grateful and surprised that I’d made it to forty-five with my sanity intact.
Instead of a sentimental birthday card that I had expected to find, with a spidery note or a neatly typed message from Miss Nipp, the pretty pink envelope contained a sheet of perfumed pink stationery. There was a picture of a white dove in the upper right-hand corner. Both the sheet of paper and the envelope were rose-scented. The text had been typed in a crisp, bold font. I fanned my face with the envelope and the roselike fragrance was even more potent. But the pleasantries ended there. I gasped so hard that hot, foul-tasting bile rose in my throat as I read with my eyes stretched open as wide as they could stretch:
Greetings, Miss Piggy:
You are in trouble up to your receding hairline! Who in the hell do you think you are? It’s time for somebody to put you in your place. You are nothing but a fat, slimy, middle-aged, stinky, bald-headed, rusty-necked black cow! Don’t you know that by now? And you need to start acting like one and stay in your place. If you know what’s good for you, with your nasty stinking self, you will crawl back up under that rock where you came from and stay there or else! And guess what? I am going to make sure you do just that! Bitch!
Signed, me: your worst nightmare
“My worst nightmare?” I asked in a loud voice. “What in the world…?” My mouth dropped open and my heart started beating so loud I could hear it. I turned the sheet of paper over, blinking at it so hard my vision got fuzzy and my eyes burned. There was no signature, of course, or anything else that might have identified the sender. I went back out on my front porch, looking in every direction. I even stumbled out to the sidewalk in my bare feet and looked around some more. Puzzled, I returned to my living room.
“What in the world is this?” I managed, talking to a big, empty living room. An empty house, for that matter. Pee Wee and Charlotte were in Erie, Pennsylvania. My father-in-law’s grave was located there in a family plot where we would all end up someday. Every year on the anniversary of the fussy old man’s death, Pee Wee drove the three hours to Erie from our house in Richland to place fresh flowers on his father’s grave.
I looked at the telephone on the end table next to the sofa but I quickly decided not to call my husband. He had lost his mother when he was just a child, so he had been very close to his daddy. Visiting his daddy’s grave was enough to put him in a somber mood. And if that wasn’t enough in Erie to drag him down, he had some relatives over there that were so obnoxious they could bring down a satellite. The last thing I wanted to do was add to his burdens. Especially with something this off-the-wall.
I read the message again, blinking hard as my eyes continued to burn. Then I laughed. I mean, what else could I do? I read the message a third time, more slowly this time to make sure that it said what I thought it said. Then I blinked some more. My eyes were burning even harder, but I suddenly stopped laughing. If this note was for real, I had an anonymous enemy whose mission was to destroy me—and that was nothing to laugh about.
I folded the sheet of paper and slid it back in the cute little pink envelope. I looked at my hands, turning them over. Three chipped nails and ashy skin made them look like bear claws to me. Had I not received the pink envelope, I would have been on my way to the nail shop by now.
“Who sent me this damn thing?” I asked the empty room, glaring at the envelope. “And why?”
CHAPTER 4
I stumbled to the telephone. I felt like I was already drunk, even though I had not drunk even a beer. But I would—and I wouldn’t stop with just one beer! In the meantime, I needed to talk to somebody about the very strange piece of mail that I had just received.
My life story would have made a good made-for-cable television movie. It had all of the necessary sensational elements: rape, murder, prostitution, poverty, betrayal, and even more. I had survived it all. People were always telling me how strong I was. I guess it was hard for anybody to believe that somebody as big as an ox could be weak. My size didn’t matter when it came to feeling pain or anything else that I considered negative. Receiving a nasty piece of hate mail was the worst thing that had happened to me in a long time. All I wanted was a normal, peaceful, and happy life, and I thought I had finally achieved that. I resented the fact that somebody else had decided that I didn’t deserve what I had.
“Damn, Pee Wee, I wish you were here,” I said, talking to the wall. As soon as I got those words out, I was glad that my husband was not with me. He was my best friend, but there were a lot of things that I couldn’t share with him. The same was true of my elderly parents. But there was nothing I couldn’t share with Rhoda Nelson O’Toole.
She was more than my best female friend. She’d been my lifeline for over thirty-two years. She could not have known me better had she been able to read my mind. She was half my size but twice as strong. We shared some secrets that were so complicated you needed a pie chart to explain them. And so serious they could have put us both in prison for a very long time. But I’ll get to that later.
Other than the police, the ambulance, and the fire department, Rhoda’s number was the only other one I had on speed dial. My mother would have made a huge fuss about that if I’d been stupid enough to tell her. Not that I cared more about Rhoda than I did my own blood, but, well, there was no way I could explain what Rhoda meant to me. Not to my mother, my husband, or anybody I knew. When I thought about how important Rhoda was to me, I recalled some lyrics from an old Curtis Mayfield tune called “Pusherman”: I’m your mama, I’m your daddy, I’m that nigger in the alley… That old song, which the local R&B radio station still played on their oldies-but-goodies hours, was referring to a drug dealer. Right now Rhoda was the fix that I needed. I pressed the buttons for her number so hard on the telephone in my living room that the ball of my index finger throbbed.
“Woman, please be home,” I chanted. “Please be home. I need to talk to you.”
I had never meant to hurt anybody before in my life, but apparently I had done something that had pissed off at least one person. The innocent-looking envelope that had entered my life so calmly had struck me like a torpedo. I whipped my head around and looked toward the front door, wondering where the sender was at the moment, hoping that he or she did not occupy a residence too close to mine.
All of a sudden it occurred to me that the note had to have been sent as a joke. That had to be it! What else could it be? Like the black plastic snake in a gift-wrapped box addressed to me, which somebody had left on my desk at work a few days ago. I had laughed about that, and so had my co-workers. I still didn’t know who had sent that to me. Now I had to wonder if the blacksnake and the nasty note were related.
“Hello,” Rhoda answered on the third ring.
I was having trouble responding. I opened my mouth and my lips and tongue moved, but nothing came out but a few drops of dribble, sliding down my chin like poison.
“I said, hello!” Rhoda snapped. “Is anybody there?”
“Hi, it’s me. Can I come over? I have something to show you,” I muttered in a voice that sounded like it belonged to a timid child.
There was a moment of silence before Rhoda replied. “I was on my way out the door,” she said softly. “You don’t sound too good, girl. Is somethin’ wrong?”
“Uh-huh,” I replied, still sounding like a timid child. My heart had not thumped half as hard and loud during my phone sex session with Pee Wee as it did now. And there was no telling when I’d make it to the nail shop now. But the claws on my hands were the least of my worries.
“Well, why don’t I just come over there instead?” Rhoda asked, her slight southern accent sounding more prominent.
“Okay, but hurry up,” I said, breathing hard and loud. I didn’t realize I was sweating, too, until a few drops fell off my face onto my ashy hand.
There was a long pause before Rhoda spoke again. “You sound serious. Don’t you want to tell me what this is about?”
“Well,