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