Family of Lies (10 page)

J
UST WHEN
I
THOUGHT THINGS COULDN’T GET ANY WORSE, THEY DID.
First of all, I was extremely disappointed that Bo was not going to move to California. He was a smart man but docile enough for me to keep him under control. I had manipulated him and Cash since they were toddlers. If Bo lived in San Francisco and worked for Kenneth, he could help me keep Kenneth and all of that money the business was making under control. And since I had no intentions of working for Kenneth (or anybody else for that matter) so I could keep an eye on him myself, I decided that Bo would be the next best thing.

One of the things racing around in my mind during Sarah’s grandmother’s funeral was my telephone conversation with Bo the night before and how stupid he had sounded talking about how his wife had changed. That woman had been fucking him over for years. Just last week when he and I spoke on the telephone, he was threatening to kill her! The more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got.

Then, after that old woman’s funeral, two of Sarah’s hoochie-coochie friends crawled into the limo with me and Kenneth and Sarah because they wanted to see Sarah’s new home. Their names went in one of my ears and out the other; I just thought of them as Hoochie Mama One and Hoochie Mama Two.

“I want to see what kind of house gots
eight
bedrooms,” Hoochie Mama One hollered. This one had spent most of the time at the funeral standing in the back of the church listening to her Walkman and flirting with a boy with several gold teeth and his hair in cornrows.

“I feel you,” Hoochie Mama Two yelled back. Both of these bums wore outfits and hairdos I had only seen in nightclubs: tight skirts; see-though, low-cut blouses; fishnet stockings; and stiletto heels. Their weaves looked like they had been attached to their heads with staples.

I was horrified when one said to me, “Where you get your weave done at?”

“I don’t have a hair weave,” I snapped, patting the side of my hair. Yes, I did have a hair weave, but since mine looked so much better than theirs, I refused to admit to it.

“Well, who be doing your hair?” the same one asked, giving me a suspicious look.

“I go to Pierre at Tres Chic,” I bragged. I was one of the few black women that Pierre Bardot—one of the most famous hairdressers in Northern California—worked with. Not because he didn’t like to deal with black folks but because I was one of the few black women who could afford his prices.

“Ain’t that some kind of French?” I was so detached from these two hoodlums I didn’t even know which one was speaking now.

Kenneth sat facing me, looking disgusted and amused at the conversation I’d been dragged into. Sarah’s head was on his shoulder. Every time one of her crude friends said something, Kenneth looked at me and rolled his eyes. I was glad to see that he appeared to be as annoyed with them as I was. Now, because of Sarah, kids like these two were going to be in my presence on a regular basis.

I was elated when the limo stopped in front of the mansion. I ignored the two hoodlums gasping and oohing and aahing like they’d just landed in Disneyland for the first time.

Kenneth had a headache, so he went upstairs to lie down as soon as we got inside. Sarah was grieving so hard she had a headache too. All she wanted to do was sit on the plush blue velvet living room couch with a long face. It was up to me to “entertain” the two hoochies, and that was one thing I was not too thrilled about. When I left Houston, I thought I was through dealing with people like these and their uncouth behavior. Now here it was again, in my beautiful mansion!

“Would you girls like some tea?” I asked, forcing myself to keep the fake smile on my face.

“
Tea
?” Hoochie One snickered, looking toward the bar on the opposite side of the room. “My grandmama don’t even drink tea. You ain’t got no Pepsi?”

“And what y’all got up in here to eat?” Hoochie Two wanted to know. She repeatedly turned her ashy neck from side to side like a marionette, looking around the living room at the antique furniture and original paintings that I’d picked out myself right after I moved in with Kenneth. “This is the first funeral I went to where they didn’t have no real good stuff like fried chicken and some greens and corn bread. That’s what we served at my baby daddy’s funeral last month.” She shook her head and mumbled more complaints under her breath.

“Whoever heard of black folks serving them itty-bitty ham squares and cheese sandwiches at a funeral in the first place?” Hoochie One complained.

I had helped Kenneth make the funeral arrangements. Had I left everything up to him, he would have ordered fried chicken and greens and corn bread. He had protested when I suggested cheese sandwiches and ham squares. But like always, I had gotten my way this time too.

I had given Delia the day off. I excused myself to go get a couple of soft drinks and some ham and cheese sandwiches that I’d asked her to make the night before.

Sarah offered to show her friends the rest of the house. They were so loud I could hear them even after I had entered the kitchen. Now that they were out of sight, I couldn’t tell which one was doing the talking at all now.
“I ain’t never seen no spiral staircase like the one up in this motherfucker!”
They kept babbling about how “cool” or “hella sharp” this or that was and asking how much things cost.

“What bus do we take to get home?” Hoochie One asked, walking back into the living room with her shoes in her hand. Her heavy thigh bumped against one of the end tables by the couch, almost knocking one of my exquisite ivory ashtrays to the floor.

“Bus?” I said the word like it was obscene. I would travel by skateboard before I got on a bus. “It’s been more than thirty years since I rode on a bus. I don’t know how they run or even where the bus stops are in this neighborhood,” I replied, setting the ashtray on the mantel above the fire place.

“Dang!” the hoochies yelled at the same time.

“Can’t we give them a ride home or get Daddy’s chauffeur to take them home in the town car?” Sarah asked in a small voice. She was looking down at the floor when I whirled around to give her one of my meanest looks. But both hoochies saw it, too, and I guess that was enough for them to get the message.

“We can walk them nine or ten blocks to the bus stop,” Hoochie One sneered.

By the time they left, stumbling out the door in those four-inch stilettos like two drunken streetwalkers, I had a headache. The insides of my nostrils burned from the unholy stench of their cheap cologne. I sprayed the entire room and the seats they had occupied with air freshener.

I was glad when Sarah got up off the couch and went to her room to continue her grieving. And I was glad that Kenneth was still upstairs lying down. I moved to the kitchen where I sat down in a chair at the large round red oak table that I’d ordered from an exclusive furniture store in Pebble Beach last month. It even had a lazy Susan in the center like the tables featured in some of my favorite old movies. We ate our informal meals here. Dinner was always served in our spacious dining room, which was located on the other side of the living room. I sat in my seat enjoying a glass of wine, going over the unpleasant events that I had endured on this gloomy day.

About an hour later, Cash and his wife, Collette, wandered in from their weekly movie date. Cash and I were first cousins and I loved him to death, but he was as oafish as they came. He looked like a dark brown frog, but his short, stout, pecan-colored wife looked even worse. She had a wide flat face, beady black eyes, and a nose that resembled a frozen meatball. The only attractive thing about her was her thick black hair. She practically kept the women who braided hair in business.

“How was the funeral?” Collette wanted to know, dropping down into a chair across from me. They had come in through the kitchen door. Each one was clutching a bottle of beer. Cash, still ghetto to the bone, was chomping on a hot link wrapped in a napkin.

“Pure torture,” I moaned, rubbing my forehead with the balls of my thumbs. Then I told them about Sarah’s two visitors and how much they had irritated me. “I’m so glad you two moved in here. I’m going to need both of your shoulders to cry on from time to time now. Otherwise, Sarah and her friends just might drive me crazy.”

“Don’t you worry about nothing, cuz. You know I always got your back,” Cash assured me, giving me a warm look. He set his half-eaten hot link down on the top of the lazy Susan and gave it a few twirls, something you’d expect only a very young child to enjoy.

“And me too,” Collette said, wiping beer suds off her lips. I liked my cousin’s wife. She had been raised in a middle-class neighborhood in Long Beach. But she’d hung out a lot in Watts and Compton, so she was very much aware of the behavior of folks in the ghetto. She knew how I felt.

“I hope Sarah’s friends don’t come around here too often. We’ll have to keep our eyes on them when they do and make sure they don’t walk off with anything.” A frightened look suddenly crossed Collette’s face. She looked toward the ceiling. “Since we’re on the subject, I’m going to lock my bedroom door from now on as long as that girl lives here. I am not even going to let my purse out of my sight when she’s around or when any of her friends come to visit.”

“I’m more worried about Sarah’s homies doing a home invasion, hog-tying us, and cleaning us out,” Cash added. “But I got something for them if they break in while I’m home.” He lifted his denim jacket and revealed a gun in the waist of his jeans that I didn’t know he owned.

“I hope you never have to use that damn thing,” I gasped. “Uh, have you ever used it?”

“Not yet. But if I have to protect what’s mine, I won’t have no trouble doing whatever I have to do. I’ll even kill me some niggers if they get out of line with me.” Cash laughed but I knew he was serious. He had come a long way from the street gang in Houston he had belonged to when he was a teenager. But he still had some gangster blood in him, which was why I felt safer with him out in public than I did with Kenneth.

“Cash, have you ever killed anybody?” I asked.

“Yep. I blew away a few of them Muslim bad boys while I was stationed in the Middle East,” he boasted.

I shook my head. “I didn’t mean when you were in the marines.”

“Oh, you mean around here?” Cash vigorously shook his head. “Oh no. I ain’t never had no reason to hurt nobody here. But like I just told you, I’d kill me some niggers if I had to.”

Cash’s declaration stunned me. I had no idea that my cousin had it in him to be so cold-blooded. If he thought that he could kill somebody if he had to, I wondered how far I would go
if I had to
.

The room remained silent for a few moments.

Collette looked at Cash and frowned. Then she turned to me and shrugged. “Oh well. Look on the bright side of that girl being here, Vera. She’ll be eighteen in three years, so she can get her own place. Or maybe she’ll get caught up in the crossfire during a drive-by while she’s roaming the streets with her thug friends and get blown away.”

My mouth flew open. I was so taken aback by what Collette had just said, and the coldness in her voice, that it took me a few moments to respond. “Collette, that’s an ominous thing to say.”

I was glad to hear that Cash felt the same way. “It sure enough is.” There was a concerned look on his face as he stared at Collette. I decided that maybe he wasn’t so cold-blooded after all. “I’d hate to see the girl get herself killed. She done had enough misery in her life. She lost her mama and her granny. Maybe she’ll find a husband real soon. Then she’ll be his problem.”

My breath got trapped in my throat. I thought I was having a panic attack. Somehow I managed to contain myself. “Now that’s another thing we’ll have to deal with—her men! Lord knows what kind of porch monkeys she’s going to have coming to this house!” I shrieked. The thought of brooding young punks swaggering into my house with gold teeth, gold chains, nose rings, cornrows, and baggy clothes sent shivers up my spine. I never thought I’d have to deal with a problem of this magnitude. “If she’s not already pregnant, it’s just a matter of time before she becomes another baby mama or worse.”

“Vera, I feel so sorry for you. You got a mess on your hands now,” Collette decided, giving me a sympathetic look.

“That’s true,” I agreed. “But I don’t care what I have to do, I am not going to let Kenneth’s child ruin my future.”

I
DON’T KNOW WHAT MADE ME CHOOSE THE BEDROOM THAT WAS
directly above the kitchen. But it was a good thing I did. For one thing, it had a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Even though my daddy’s mansion was beautiful and very expensive and full of fancy furniture, it was an old house. It had one of those old-fashioned air ducts on the wall close to the floor near the side of my bed. The vent had to be opened and closed by hand. When I stood close enough to the air duct and opened the vent, I could hear the conversations taking place in the kitchen. If I crouched down and put my ear real close to the open vent, I could hear even better. That’s how I found out just how Vera and Cash and Collette felt about me.

Grandma Lilly had just been buried a few hours earlier and since I believed in ghosts and stuff, I was sure her spirit was still near me. She had to have heard what Vera and those fools said about me, too, so she must have rolled over in her grave. I wanted to go downstairs and tell all three of them what I thought about them and that they could kiss my black ghetto ass! But I managed to control myself. I didn’t like being in this mansion any more than they wanted me in it. But it was my daddy’s home too. And because of him, it was now my home. However, if I had had someplace else to go, I would have packed up my shit and left that night.

I was glad I had only three years to go to reach eighteen so I could be on my own. I had never given much thought to going to college before, and I didn’t think I was going to change my mind about that. It was a dream that I had given up on a long time ago. Very few kids in my old neighborhood dreamed that big. The ones who didn’t get killed along the way got dead-end jobs or had a bunch of babies and got on welfare and did whatever else they had to do to make it. I didn’t want to have any babies until I got married. The five boys that I’d already had sex with, beginning when I was thirteen, hated to use condoms. But I had told them all, “No condom, no nookie.” And just to make sure I was doubly protected, I was on the pill too. And I was going to stay on it until I was ready to be a “baby mama.”

My new bedroom, done up mostly in pink and white, had a lot of other cool stuff. I had a queen-size bed, a TV, a computer on a desk, and a closest full of new clothes. Even with all of that and my daddy paying so much attention to me, I didn’t feel comfortable in this new place. I felt more like an abandoned baby in a basket that somebody had dropped off on a doorstep like in the movies. I slept less than four hours that night. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Vera and those other two assholes had said about me.

I realized just how phony Vera was the next morning when she knocked on my door. I was still in bed. She entered my room before I could even respond.

“Good morning, sweetie,” she purred, so much warmth in her voice a rock would have melted on her tongue. Even if I had not heard her trashing me last night, I still would have been able to tell she was as fake as the color of her partially fake hair. “I know you must still be tired from all you went through yesterday, but if you’re up to it, breakfast is ready. Your daddy told me how much you like grits and hot links, so I had Delia go to the market this morning and stock up on them.”

“Uh, I’m about to get up,” I muttered, sitting up. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was only 8:00 a.m. and this wench had on more makeup than Ronald McDonald. And she was dressed like she was going to be in a fashion show. “You look real nice, Miss Vera. You going somewhere?”

“Uh-huh. I have an important appointment this morning,” she told me, looking at her watch.

Both of us remained silent for a few seconds. Finally I shrugged. “Daddy said something about a private school for me?”

“Oh that. Well, he thought it might be a good idea for you to get away from California for a while and clear your head. You’ve been through so much the past few weeks—losing your mother, your stepdaddy, and your grandmother so close together and now having to adjust to a whole new lifestyle.”

That bitch! I knew she was lying. Daddy had already told me that
she
had suggested that I go to a boarding school because it would help “clear” my head. My head was already clear. I knew what time it was and it was not the time for me to act a fool and say what was really on my mind. Vera had a plan. Well, so did I. I was going to prove to her that she was wrong about me. I wasn’t going to cuss her out or do any other crazy thing like she probably expected me to do. But I was still going to associate with some of my old friends and I was still going to fuck the boys I wanted to fuck. I hoped that by the time I turned eighteen, Vera will have changed her mind about me so I wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable when I was around her. But I was not going to let her break my spirit. I was prepared to stand my ground, and I didn’t care about the fact that she was my daddy’s wife. I was his blood and as far as I was concerned, that gave me more leverage.

The first couple of weeks in the mansion were the hardest. Vera was like an angel to my face. But when she and Cash and Collette got together in the kitchen, they talked about me and the few old friends I still associated with like dogs. They were on a roll today, talking so fast and loud they sounded like they were speaking in tongues.

“I thought you said she was going away to some boarding school,” Collette spat. That was followed by a loud belch, so I knew they were drinking too.

“She is. I’m working on the arrangements now,” Vera mumbled. She was usually too demure to belch in front of people, but this time she let out one that sounded like it had come from a buffalo. “Excuse me!” she giggled.

“A boarding school in another country, I hope,” Cash guffawed.

“No, it’s in Iowa. Kenneth had suggested one in Switzerland, but I don’t have the patience to wait several weeks for her to get a passport. I want her little ass out of my house now. It’s just as well she’s not going to Switzerland or somewhere else out of the country. That ignorant little bitch would be totally out of her element in a foreign school. Can you imagine her over there asking them to fry her some chicken wings?” Vera howled. “Lord have mercy. I took her to lunch at La Salle’s Bistro last week and she had the nerve to order a cheeseburger!”

“La Salle’s? You took a jigaboo like Sarah to a place like
that
? A piece of toast cost ten dollars up in that motherfucker! I can’t imagine what a cheeseburger costs,” Cash hollered.

“Thirty-five dollars is what that damn thing cost!” Vera screamed.

I rose up from off the floor and closed the vent, so mad I wanted to cuss out the world. I stumbled to my bed and flopped down, landing on my back. I had heard enough. Yes, I had ordered a cheeseburger—with extra onions—in that fancy restaurant Vera took me to last week. What was wrong with that? If it was so tacky to order a burger in a place like La Salle’s Bistro, why did they have it on the menu in the first place?

A few minutes later, Daddy opened my door and quietly entered my room. He was the only one in the house who entered my room without knocking. Vera always knocked, but she always entered before I could invite her in. I was glad I had got up from the vent and moved back to my bed in time. Had I not, Daddy would have caught me listening to the conversation taking place in the kitchen and I knew he would have put a stop to that.

“Baby, Vera tells me you’re all excited about going away to that nice school in Iowa,” Daddy said.

“Uh-huh. I’m real excited about it,” I said. I was so sad and confused that I didn’t really care one way or the other. My only concern was doing whatever I had to do to keep my daddy happy.

“It’ll be a big change from the schools I’ve been going to here.”

“True. And a big improvement I might add! The life you lived before will make your new life with me seem like a totally different culture. Just think of all the fine young ladies you’ll meet in that school. The exposure will do wonders for your future development.”

I frowned. “Just promise me one thing, Daddy. I do not want one of those stuffy coming-out parties. . . .”

Daddy laughed. “Oh, you don’t have to do anything like that. I’m just so excited for you, baby! And just think, you’ll learn a lot more than what they teach the kids—or don’t teach, I should say—in your old schools. I just want you to make us proud of you. Your mother feels the same way.”

“My . . .
mother
?” Just hearing that word associated with Vera sent a sharp pain through my chest like a butcher knife with a poisonous blade.

“Honey, Vera is your mother now.” Daddy suddenly looked so tired and hopeless, I wondered just how happy he was. From the conversations I’d already overheard, Vera thought of him as an “old fool” and a “stupid bastard.” Lord how I wanted to tell him some of the things she’d said about him! But I couldn’t. He was obviously madly in love with that woman. And maybe she had loved him at one time and that was why he chose to keep her. “She’s my wife and I love her to death. I caused her a lot of pain by having that affair with your mother, but she was woman enough to forgive me. I promised her that I’d make up for my betrayal. I made a mistake and I intend to pay it off in full.”

“I was a mistake?” I had been called a lot of things in my life, but nobody had ever made me feel like I was a mistake. Even though my daddy didn’t mean it the way it sounded, he had still hurt my feelings. “You don’t have to let me live with you. I got friends I can live with,” I pouted.

“Oh no, baby! I didn’t mean anything like that! You are a blessing to me, and I thank God you are in my life. It’s just that, well, you were not conceived under the best of circumstances.” He paused and offered me a smile. I smiled back. “Now let’s look more toward the future. See, Vera loves you just as much as I do.”

“But do I have to call her mama?” I grunted.

“That’s up to you. Everybody in this house just wants you to be happy.”

“I am happy,” I mumbled, looking toward the floor. When I looked back at Daddy’s face and saw his big smile, I actually did feel happy. But the only thing I was happy about was the fact that I was making him feel so good. “I can’t wait to get to that boarding school.”