Ralph said, “I’ll let it slide by tonight. But from here on I want you to have me a dessert. Maybe a piece of pie or a piece of cake.”
I said, “What kind do you like?”
He said, “My favorite pie is pecan pie and my favorite cake is angel food cake with ice cream.”
I said, “I’ll have you an angel food cake tomorrow night.”
He said, “That’ll be just fine.”
Ralph then pushed his chair back from the table and ripped off this big belch. From the way it sounded you’d of thought somebody had fired off a shotgun. Ralph never belched when he was eating out in public. He only belched when he was eating at the house. I listened to Ralph belch for six years. Him belching got on my nerves. But I never said anything to him about his belching. I spent the first sixteen years of my life listening to my daddy fart and the next six years of my life listening to Ralph belch.
After belching the next thing Ralph did was to light up one of his little Swisher Sweet cigars. Ralph’s cigars smelled different from my daddy’s cigars. Daddy always smoked King Edward cigars. Ralph always smoked a Swisher Sweet. After he’d blown two or three smoke rings in the air he looked at me and said, “Beulah, I’ve been doin’ a lot of thinking today about you and me. I think it would be a good thing if you understood right up front what I’ll be expecting you to do now that you’re my wife.”
Smoking his Swisher Sweet wasn’t the only thing Ralph was doing. He had a toothpick in his right hand and he started cleaning between his teeth. I learned that’s another thing Ralph did all the time. He picked his teeth as much as he belched.
He went on, “I need to let you know what I’ll be expectin’ out of you. You know what the Bible says. It says, ‘Wives, obey your husbands.’”
Ralph was all the time quoting the Bible to me. Particularly when he had some point he was tryin’ to put over. He could pick out a verse here and he could pick out a verse there. Earline said Ralph fired Bible bullets. Maybe she was right. Whenever he wanted to put a point over he would fire a Bible bullet at you. The way he started quoting the Bible to me about wives obeyin’ their husbands made me feel uptight. All my life I’d been bossed around by my mama and my daddy. Now Ralph—in so many words—was tellin’ me he had a right to boss me around since he was my husband. Which is why the very first week I was married to Ralph I began to wonder if maybe I’d jumped out of the fryin’ pan into the fire. Jumpin’ from the fryin’ pan into the fire don’t make things easier. Or better.
Ralph started spellin’ out to me what he wanted me to do now that I was his wife. He explained, “I need to leave the house every morning around a quarter to seven. I can do a better job runnin’ my cafe and meat market if I’ve eaten a good breakfast before I leave the house. So I want you to get up every morning when I get up and I want you to fix me a man’s breakfast. When I say a man’s breakfast I mean a big breakfast. I want scrambled eggs, bacon, home-made biscuits, molasses, and hot coffee. When I say hot coffee I mean hot coffee. As far as I’m concerned there ain’t nothing worse than a cup of luke-warm coffee. And from time to time I’d like for you to change it up and have hot cakes for breakfast. When I come home every evening I want you to have me a good home-cooked supper like the one you fixed tonight. Only don’t forget the dessert. Supper ain’t supper if you don’t wind it up with a dessert like pecan pie or angel food cake. I get home every night around seven o’clock give or take a quarter hour. So when I get here I want you to have my supper ready to eat. And—like my coffee—I want it to be pipin’ hot.”
All the time Ralph was tellin’ me what he wanted for breakfast and what he wanted for supper he was smokin’ his Swisher Sweet and picking his teeth with a toothpick. Every evening he spent a lot of time picking around his gold tooth. I’ve told you Ralph had buck teeth. One of his front teeth that stuck out was covered with gold. I don’t know what you’d call it. Maybe you call it a filling or maybe you call it a crown. I’m not sure what the right word is. All I know is that one of his front teeth was covered with gold. One time he told me he was fixed up with that gold tooth by a navy dentist in Charleston, South Carolina. Ralph was really proud of his gold tooth. He’d take a toothpick and clean around it time and time again.
I sat across the table from Ralph and listened to what he was saying. I listened with both ears. I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t like the way he was giving me these marching orders about breakfast and supper. And I sure enough didn’t like it when he started talking about his first wife Ruth Ann.
Ralph said, “Beulah, I hope you can be a good wife to me and for me like Ruth Ann was. Bless her heart, she got up every morning and fixed me a big breakfast and every night she had a hot supper waiting for me when I come in. I’ll never forget the way she could fry green tomatoes. She knew how to bread ’em and fry ’em just right. But that ain’t all Ruth Ann did. Every morning after she’d cleaned up the house she’d get in the car and drive up to my cafe and help us get through the noon rush. The main thing she did during the noon rush was take orders and handle the cash register. I could always trust Ruth Ann to make the right change and to be nice to my customers. She’d make ’em all feel at home. That’s one of the secrets of running a cafe like ‘Ralph’s Place.’ You’ve got to be nice to your customers so they’ll keep comin’ back time and again. It’s that repeat business that keeps you in the black. Without repeat business you’d go broke before sundown. Ruth Ann would always stay at the cafe until around four or five o’clock and then she’d come home and fix me my supper.”
He added, “So to make a long story short, Beulah, I’m hoping you’ll be a good wife for me like Ruth Ann was. She was a jewel. I want you to do like she done: fix my breakfast, help out in the cafe, and then fix me a hot supper.”
All this Ruth Ann bullshit was news to me. Before we got married Ralph hadn’t said nothing to me about working every day in his barbecue cafe. And before we got married he hadn’t sung the praises of Ruth Ann all the way to the blue sky above. I began to feel like a Ruth Ann double. Or like I was supposed to be her shadow.
What Ralph didn’t know was: I was wishin’ he’d be tender and lovey to me. I was hopin’—since we’d gotten married—that he’d come home in the evening and hug me tight. And give me kisses. Lots of kisses. And tell me how pretty I was like he done the time he leaned against the church piano and told me how pretty I was and how he’d been thinkin’ about me and how he wanted to marry me. But some husbands don’t act that way. After they get married they ain’t sweet and tender to you no more. They don’t feel like they have to be. After all, they’ve married you. They’ve got you like them lightning bugs me and Velma used to catch and put in a fruit jar. And when it comes to sex they might as well still be masturbating. Instead of using their fist they use your crack and masturbate in it. They jack off in your cherry.
If I’d had any sense I’d of sized up the situation up front for what it was and I’d of said, “Ralph, I can tell this here marriage between you and me ain’t gonna work out. You don’t want a wife. What you want is a Ruth Ann substitute. And what you want is a wife who’ll be an unpaid employee. But that ain’t what I want to do with my life. So I’m packin’ my suitcase and I’m goin’ home to Mama and Daddy. I won’t have to give you back no wedding ring because you didn’t give me one.”
By the way, that’s one of the things that disappointed me about my wedding. I kept thinking Ralph would mention getting me a wedding ring. You can get real nice wedding rings that don’t cost too much at Wal-Mart or Service Merchandise. But Ralph never mentioned buying me a ring. So I didn’t buy him one. Velma had told me she’d give me the money to buy Ralph a ring if we had a double-ring ceremony. But that never come up. So I let it slide by.
But me thinkin’ about sayin’ I was goin’ home to Mama and Daddy wasn’t nothing but hot air. And I knew it. Mama was mad at me. She’d thrown my shoes out in the front yard. If I’d gone home she’d of really rubbed it in about me marryin’ Ralph. She’d say, “I told you and your daddy that he ain’t no good.” And she’d say, “I told both of you that out on the front porch the night