God Ain't Blind (4 page)

Do you want to stop off at that rib place and pick up a plate for Pee Wee before I drop you off? You usually do.”

“Yeah. That man would choke my tongue out if I came home without a rib dinner for him,” I said with a forced chuckle.

“Husbands! Bah! After a while they are as hard to keep in shape as a pair of cheap panty hose. My husband has become so fuckin’

22

Mary Monroe

irritatin’ that whenever I get constipated, all I have to do is look at him for a few minutes. He’s the best laxative in the world. My bowels never had it so good.”

“Rhoda, that’s one of the most disgusting things I have ever heard you say! Otis is your husband. If he’s that bad, why are you still with him?”

“For the same reason I keep those old house shoes I’ve had since I gave birth to my last child. He’s comfortable, familiar, and convenient—and he used to be good and sexy. Just like that old shoe you married.” I didn’t like the smug look on Rhoda’s face, but it was one I was used to seeing. “Here we go,” Rhoda said, sucking on her teeth as we stopped in front of Al’s rib joint. “I think I could go for some hot links myself.”

C H A P T E R 5

My husband, Jerry, whom we all called Pee Wee, was in the same position in his shabby blue La-Z-Boy recliner in our living room that he was in when I left the house more than four hours earlier.

“I’m home,” I said, coughing at the same time to clear my throat.

I used to look forward to coming home. But that was back in the day when my husband greeted me with my housecoat and slippers, a cold drink, and a mind-boggling French kiss. And when I got home before he did, I would greet him the same way. Things had changed, and not for the better. Coming home nowadays was like visiting a relative I didn’t like. Every time I heard that old song by the Supremes called “Where Did Our Love Go?” it reminded me of my marriage. There had once been so much affection in my home that I thought it would never fizzle out. Well, it did. I didn’t know how to resurrect it, either. I was thankful that I now had another man to focus on. Like a lot of women my age, I still had a lot of love to give, and I still needed a lot of love myself.

“You bring them ribs?” Pee Wee asked. At the same time, he released a silent fart. Even though I didn’t hear it, the stench was so unholy, it made my eyes water and the insides of my nostrils burn.

“Excuse me. I had chili for lunch, and I’ve been payin’ my gas bill 24

Mary Monroe

ever since,” he drawled. He didn’t even turn around to face me as I stood in the doorway.

I held my breath and fanned my face with my hand, but it didn’t do much good. The closer I got to him, the more my eyes watered from his gas.

I was disgusted, to say the least, and glad that I had not brought company home with me. Without a word, I set the Styrofoam container, which contained a large order of ribs, three chicken wings, two slices of wheat bread, some coleslaw, and baked beans, on the coffee table in front of him. And, without a word, he flipped open the container and started eating, gnawing on one of the wings like a beaver.

Pee Wee spent more time with that old chair of his than he did with me. He looked like an old man stretched out in it, with his gray-ing hair and his bony, reptilian-like bare feet. His belly was so bloated and low, it looked like he was about to give birth. Had I known that the “worse” of the “for better or worse” part of our vows was going to be this bad, I would have deleted or rewritten that outdated, unrealistic shit myself. It was a damn shame that my once near-perfect marriage had become so unbearably dull. I was now the wife of a caricature.

I sat down gently on the arm of the sofa, facing him, and cleared my throat to get his attention. That didn’t work. “Did you make Charlotte take a bath before she went to bed?” I asked, looking around my spacious living room, admiring the new beige shag carpet and the gold velvet sofa and love seat that I had purchased two months ago. I was glad to see that he had not made too much of a mess. The only things I could see worth complaining about were the four empty beer bottles on top of my red oak coffee table; a limp switch in his lap, which he must have used on Charlotte to make her behave; and some toenail clippings on the floor in front of him. I made a mental note to scold him about all that later. As tired as I was, the last thing I felt like doing was arguing with him.

“Pee Wee, I am talking to you.”

He grunted and gave me a surprised look, like he had just noticed me sitting in front of him, with my suede purse still in my hands and the yellow cashmere sweater he’d given me last Christmas still draped around my shoulders. “Did you say something?”

GOD AIN’ T BLIND

25

he asked, with his mouth full of food. When I didn’t respond right away, he gave me an annoyed look, and then he dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

I didn’t know what I had done to make my husband treat me like a nuisance. This behavior had been going on for several weeks now, and it was beginning to get on my last nerve. I didn’t like to brag, but if anybody had asked me, I would have told them that I was a wife and a half. I was attractive, I kept a clean house, I brought home half of the mighty big piece of the bacon that it took to make us comfortable, and I was a good mother to our only child.

No man in his right mind could ignore that. Apparently, that was no longer enough for my husband. But that was his problem. If he didn’t appreciate me, I’d find somebody who did. And tonight was a good start.

“I asked you if you made Charlotte take a bath before she went to bed.”

“Uh-huh,” he replied, chewing so hard, his ears wiggled. I was beginning to feel like I was trying to pull his teeth. That was how hard it had become for me to make him talk. Barbecue sauce had saturated his goatee. But instead of using one of the napkins that had come with his order, he kept right on chewing. It disgusted me, but that didn’t seem to bother him a bit. Then he started to smack so loudly, it made me want to help him eat. You would have thought that he was gobbling from a platter at the Last Supper.

“You had to whup her?” I asked, nodding toward the switch in his lap. I had received more than my share of whuppings during my childhood, but I didn’t approve of hitting kids. However, every now and then, it took a few whacks across Charlotte’s butt to get her attention.

“She had it comin’,” he managed.

“Well, don’t do it again unless I’m here,” I said. “You men get too heavy-handed when it comes to whupping a child.”

He rolled his eyes, broke the switch in two with one hand, and dropped the pieces to the floor, next to his toenail clippings.

“Did anybody call for me?” I asked, with an exasperated sigh, rising from my seat. I dropped my purse and sweater onto the sofa, and then I slid out of my shoes and kicked them to the side.

“Naw.” He chewed and smacked some more. Then he swallowed 26

Mary Monroe

so hard, he had to tilt his head back and lift his butt a few inches off his seat. “Damn,” he complained, with his face contorted. My husband had become one of those people who made eating look like a sporting event. He punched himself in the chest with his fist, and then he expelled a grunt and a mild belch. “This grub is so screamin’ good, I want to put my whole face in it. You didn’t get yourself nothin’ from Al’s?”

“We had pizza and beer at the bowling alley,” I replied. “Uh, I really enjoyed bowling tonight. I’m glad I joined Rhoda’s bowling team so I can do this
every
Thursday night. . . .” I paused and held my breath, anxious to hear what he had to say.

“That’s nice. I hope you do. You need to get out of this house more, anyway. If you don’t do somethin’ for yourself, ain’t no tellin’

how soon you’ll get old before your time.”

His last comment made my ears ring.

“Pee Wee, I wish you would tell me what is wrong. We can’t go on like this.” I held my breath again as I awaited his response.

He stopped chewing and smacking for a moment and gave me a surprised look. There was a large wad of food in the left side of his mouth. He didn’t even bother to swallow it before he spoke again.

“What the hell are you talkin’ about, woman? Who said somethin’

was wrong?” he replied, with a shrug. He swallowed the food, and now his face had a slack-jawed appearance.

“Something is definitely wrong,” I insisted.

“Not with me!” he yelled, looking even more surprised. “I’m not the one goin’ through the change.” His words felt like a stab.

“This has nothing to do with menopause! Whether you will admit it or not, you are the one with the problem!” I hollered.

“Well, if you are so smart, why don’t you tell me what my problem is?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. That’s what I was hoping you’d tell me. You . . . you’re not the man you used to be,” I wailed.

The food on his plate was good, but it couldn’t have been that good. He blinked and stuffed another wad of coleslaw into his jaw.

I was glad he swallowed it before he responded to my last comment.

“Well, since you brought it up, you ain’t the woman you used to be, neither,” he told me, with a pinched look on his face. “But like GOD AIN’ T BLIND

27

old blue-eyed Mr. Frank Sinatra sung in one of his songs,
that’s life.

Don’t nothin’ stay the same forever. What’s your point?”

He finally lifted one of the napkins and wiped his mouth, releasing another mild belch. Now he looked so calm, it was frightening. I had not seen him look this satisfied since the last time we made love, last year. He yawned and stretched his arms high above his head, letting me know that he was about to end his participa-tion in this tense conversation.

“I know that nothing stays the same forever, but you’ve changed so much I hardly know you anymore.” I walked over to the large front window and continued to talk, with my back to him. “We used to talk about so many different things. We used to do so many things together. We were so busy, we needed a pie chart to keep up with all our activities. And . . . and now our bedroom seems more like a morgue. We had one of the best marriages in town. If you don’t love me anymore and want to . . . want to move on, just tell me, and I won’t stand in your way.” A few moments passed before I spoke again. “Did you hear what I just said, Pee Wee?”

He responded with a resonating snore.

C H A P T E R 6

I didn’t treat my battered body to the long, hot bath that I had planned to take during my ride home from the motel. I settled for another brief shower instead, like the one I’d taken in the motel with Louis.

After I had dried myself off, I stood in front of the full-length mirror behind the bathroom door and admired my naked body.

Even as agitated as I was because of my conversation with Pee Wee, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. I liked what I saw in that mirror. I never thought that I would live to see the day that I’d have a waistline that was where it was supposed to be. I was nowhere near Janet Jackson territory in the body department—even when she was going through one of her plump periods—but I no longer had to turn sideways to tell where my back ended and my butt began. I still had some cellulite on my thighs, but according to the tabloids I read every week, so did Goldie Hawn, and she was still one of the most glamorous human beings on the planet. Most of the dimples, lumps, fleshy flaps, and bumps that had once decorated more than 50 percent of my body had disappeared. I could even see my navel now, because all the flab that used to encircle my middle like a tutu was completely gone. I was going to do whatever it took to make sure it never returned.

Pee Wee didn’t know what a good thing he was losing, but his GOD AIN’ T BLIND

29

loss was another man’s gain. That belief was probably the only thing that kept me going.

Louis was a man who was good not only with his dick and his hands; he had a way with words, too. He always seemed to know just what to say to make me feel good. “I can’t keep my hands off you,” he had told me just before I left the motel. “I just don’t know what I’m gwine to do with myself for the rest of the night.”

“You can spend the rest of the night thinking about me,” I’d told him. “And I will be thinking about you.” I was thinking about Louis right now. I was thinking about him so hard that I knew I couldn’t get to sleep until I heard his voice again.

I could hear Pee Wee snoring in the living room all the way from our upstairs bedroom at the end of the hall. When he fell asleep in that damn chair, I usually left him there for the night. I had stopped trying to drag his deadweight black ass upstairs ever since that night a few months ago when I pulled a muscle trying to do so. It didn’t matter to me where he slept anymore. Because when he was in bed with me, I was just as alone as when he was not there at all.

But tonight was different.

I didn’t go straight to bed after my shower. I slid into one of my sleaziest Frederick’s of Hollywood negligees. A sad smile crossed my face when I recalled how Pee Wee had referred to this short, see-through red night wear as a “naked-la-gee” when it arrived in the mail on the morning of his last birthday. I picked up the telephone on the nightstand next to my side of the bed and had the operator connect me to the Do Drop Inn motel, room 108.

“Hello,” Louis answered on the first ring. I could hear loud, angry voices in the background, which meant the hookers and the truck drivers had locked horns.

“Hi. It’s Annette,” I said, trembling like a schoolgirl.

“Hold on, baby. Let me close this window. Those fools outside in the parking lot are getting on my nerves.” He was gone so long, I thought he’d joined the melee in the parking lot. “I’m back,” he told me, huffing and puffing. “Damn, this place is a dump. I had to wres-tle with the window to open it and to close it.”

“I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

“Oh no, baby. I am so glad you called. My dick is buzzing like a killer bee and throbbing like a lawn mower,” he told me.

30

Mary Monroe

“That must be a sight to behold.” I laughed. “I wish I could see that.”

“I wish you could see it, too.”