God Ain't Blind (9 page)

“What do you mean by that? Like I just said, I am his wife!”

“And this is the real world. His old ass went out and bought a Firebird, and a red one at that. That’s one of the most popular chick magnets in the geriatric community. For males. We women have to use a lot more props to attract attention. But I don’t want to go into that right now.”

As soon as Rhoda paused, I jumped in. “I don’t want to go into this shit right now, either.”

“Just let me finish. If Pee Wee’s with some other woman, I can assure you she’s not some douche bag our age that he can satisfy by playin’ with her titties and a few half-ass thrusts—”

I cut her off in midsentence. “Rhoda, speak for yourself. It takes more than a few thrusts and playing with my titties for a man to satisfy me!”

“You’re missin’ the point—”

I cut her off again. “I’m his age. You’re his age. What does that say about us?”

“Annette, you know as well as I do that men our age rarely cheat GOD AIN’ T BLIND

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on us with women our age. To them, there’s no more sugar left in a woman’s bowl by the time she reaches middle age.”

“Louis is only thirty, and I can assure you that he doesn’t think my bowl has run out of sugar.”

“Now that’s a horse of a different color. Men his age don’t know any better. To them, tail is tail.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Dr. Rhoda?”

“When a man Louis’s age wants a woman your age, it’s for a different reason than a man our age.”

“I’m not following you at all,” I complained. “And to tell you the truth, we can end this conversation right now, because wherever it’s going, I don’t want to go.”

“I told you to let me finish. Anyway, men our age eventually stop seeing women our age as sexual options. We’ve become too convenient, too familiar to them. And in some cases, too flabby and worn out. It’s sad but true. But they still like us enough to keep us around.

Like beer or their favorite tool or somethin’. I bet if somebody offered Pee Wee a brand-new easy chair to lounge around in like a lizard, he’d grab it so fast, it would make your head spin. But, he still wouldn’t dispose of that damn old, faithful La-Z-Boy of his, which annoys you so much.”

“Then explain to me why Louis finds me so sexy and irresistible?”

“I just told you, men his age don’t know any better. Maybe his mama weaned him too soon, and now he’s got a mama complex.”

“Rhoda, if I were you, I’d stop while I was ahead. This conversation is wreaking havoc on my ego. If I keep listening to your theo-ries, you’ll have me convinced that my life is no longer worth living.”

“I’m only tryin’ to help,” Rhoda said sharply.

“Well, you’re helping me all right. Helping me lose what little dignity I have left. Because of what you’ve said so far, I’m already tempted to go throw my old, used-up ass off that bridge over the Mahoning River.” As grim as this conversation was, I still had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing. But I got serious again right away. “What about you and Bully? You’re forty-six, and he’s almost fifty,” I reminded her.

“Well, Bully and I are exceptions to the rule. We’ve been together almost as long as I’ve been with my husband. You know that.”

“Rhoda, do you think that Pee Wee is seeing a doctor, and do 62

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you think that he’s spending time with some woman every Friday, like I thought in the first place?”

“Both. But if I had to choose one, I’d pick the woman. It makes the most sense. He’s at that age when men start foolin’ around. And like we both know, your husband would rather get a whuppin’ than go to a doctor.”

“That’s what I think.”

“Are you goin’ to confront him?”

“Why should I? All he’ll do is lie about it. Remember last year, when I thought he was having an affair with—”

“Yes, I do. And you thought it was with my daughter.”

“I didn’t suspect it was your daughter when I first got suspicious.”

I didn’t like the silence that followed.

“Anyway, he denied he was having an affair with anybody then, too,” I said.

“He was tellin’ the truth.”

“How do we know that for sure? The only thing that we know for sure now is that he was telling the truth about not being involved with the women I accused him of seeing. He could have been fucking five other women, for all we know.”

“So what if he was? Annette, you’ve already fucked another man and lied to your husband. You don’t need to justify it now. And certainly not to me. This is the real world, and you can’t change it to suit you, so you may as well go with the flow like the rest of us, like I’ve already advised you to. If Pee Wee is screwin’ somebody else, you can’t stop him.”

“I know that, Rhoda. And I’m not going to try and stop him,” I snapped.

I didn’t bother to mention to Rhoda the time that she had violently ended an affair her husband had drifted into years ago.

When she had found out the woman’s name and address, she’d paid her a visit and attacked her. But fighting over a man was one thing that I felt women our age were above. However, I could only speak for myself.

“I’m glad to hear you say that. You’ve done your job, and if he can’t appreciate it, that’s his problem. In my opinion, you’d be a fool to get in his face about another woman—unless you want to give him up altogether. Besides, Louis is in the picture now.”

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“I don’t want a divorce,” I whined. “And I don’t want to grow old by myself. I like Louis, but I don’t know if I could live with him. Besides, he’s still a young man. He’ll want children someday.”

“Who the hell said anything about divorce? If Pee Wee drops dead tomorrow, you’ll be alone, anyway. And as far as you movin’

in with Louis and havin’ his babies, I don’t think you have anything to worry about in that area.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. Feelings of insecurities that I thought I’d laid to rest crept up on me like armed muggers.

“Girl, Louis is not stupid or naive. That man can see that you are not anybody’s spring chicken. I am sure he knows that Mother Nature has put your baby-related equipment in the attic and left you nothin’ but a playpen. All he wants is to join you in that playpen for a while. And as fine as he is, he could pick and choose. So if you don’t want him, he won’t have any trouble findin’ a woman who does.”

“Pee Wee and I have been through so much together. He’s as much a part of my past as you are. I can’t dismiss any of that.”

“Who said you had to? Look, this is your life now. Enjoy it while you can. Let me get off this phone. I need to go make myself beautiful for my man, and my husband. You should be doin’ the same thing for yours.”

“I will,” I replied. I was already reaching for my compact and lipstick.

“And stop thinkin’ about the past!” Rhoda ordered. “You can’t do a damn thing to change it.”

C H A P T E R 1 3

The Wizard of Oz couldn’t change my past, so I knew I couldn’t.

Hell, I didn’t even like to think about it. And I was glad that I had forgotten a lot of it, anyway. But there were some things from my past that entered my mind almost every day. Things that most people experienced only in bad dreams or bad movies.

One was the fact that I’d been sexually abused by one of my mother’s oldest and dearest men friends throughout my childhood. He was the man who had fathered the child that Rhoda had helped me abort when I was sixteen.

I could hardly remember a lot of the details of my abuse. But I could never forget how Rhoda had ended my nightmare. She had smothered my elderly abuser to death with a pillow as he slept in the bed in the room he’d rented in the house I now owned.

That low-down, funky, child-raping, horny-ass old Mr. Boatwright’s murder had become a blur in my mind, and Rhoda hadn’t mentioned it in years. Nor had she mentioned the four others she’d committed that I knew about. I could barely remember the other people she’d killed—and never been held accountable for—but I could remember that they’d all got what they deserved. Those traumatic events still haunted me, but not nearly as much as the one that I’d endured last year.

For several months, I had been viciously harassed by an anony-GOD AIN’ T BLIND

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mous enemy. Not only had I received hate mail and a visit from a male prostitute at my home, but I’d received vile packages at my office. I had also received threatening phone calls at home and at work, and once even at my mother’s house. My perpetrator had wanted me out of the way so she could be with my husband.

That was why I’d suspected Pee Wee was having an affair back then. That brazen bitch had known things only a woman as close to him as I was could have known. She’d even mailed me a pair of his shorts that were still funky with his body odor. One of the packages that had been sent by FedEx to my office had contained a pile of horseshit.

Throughout that ominous episode, the only thing that kept me from going completely to pieces was the support of Rhoda and her teenage look-alike daughter, Jade.

“Annette, you know I have always had your back, and I always will,”

Rhoda had told me. Knowing what I knew about my best friend, like how she’d had no problem killing the man who had taken my innocence, I knew that if anybody could “protect” me, it was Rhoda.

“And I’m right behind her, Auntie,” Jade had said. The girl had always been a little too grown, vain, sneaky, self-centered, and big for her britches. But so had most of her friends, so none of those character flaws seemed out of the ordinary. I had loved her despite her many flaws, and she’d had me convinced that she loved me, too. Every time she saw me, she bombarded me with so many hugs and kisses, it often annoyed me. But I never complained.

I had been Jade’s play auntie, and I had trusted her so much, she had a key to my house. She’d come and gone as she pleased.

I’d stood by like a damn fool and let that little hussy walk all over me like I was a doormat. I hadn’t realized that she was making a fool out of me at the time, because I was getting what I needed from her and Rhoda. And that was the emotional support I felt I couldn’t get from anybody else. I hadn’t had the nerve to tell my elderly parents or husband about everything that was going on.

But Rhoda and Jade had known every little detail. They had read most of the vicious letters and notes and had seen the contents of most of the disgusting packages.

Not only had Rhoda and Jade been particularly anxious to comfort me after I had received an exceptionally vicious call or letter, 66

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they had even offered to help me apprehend and chastise my tor-mentor. “Auntie, my mama and I can take care of this bitch if you want us to.
Real good,
” Jade had told me. I certainly hadn’t wanted Rhoda to kill another person on my account. And once she’d assured me that she wouldn’t let it go that far, I agreed to let her and Jade “straighten out” the culprit as soon as we identified her.

We’d zeroed in on Betty Jean Spool, one of my husband’s exes.

But when she died in a drug-related incident and the threats continued and got even more vicious, I knew I’d accused the wrong person.

I’d been so close to a nervous breakdown, my flesh crawled when I thought about it now. But it had got worse. A threat had arrived in the mail that was directed toward my daughter. It was a picture of her that had been cut and trimmed into the shape of a coffin.

My only child meant the world to me. I would have gone up against Satan himself to protect her, and in a way I did.

The perpetrator, the person who wanted me completely out of the picture, even if it meant my death, had turned out to be the last person on earth that I would have suspected: Rhoda’s daughter, Jade. I had treated and loved that child like she was my own, but she had convinced her foolish self that my husband was in love with her and the only thing standing in the way was me.

Jade’s elaborate stunt had almost destroyed me and my relationship with Rhoda and my husband. And even after that little heifer came clean and “apologized,” things were never the same again.

I had never felt so betrayed in my life. That girl had caused me more grief than Mr. Boatwright, and he had raped me for ten years.

But I had got over that. I had eventually touched base with others who had experienced sexual abuse on some level. To my horror, I’d realized that that taboo was common and as old as time. But to this day, I didn’t know of anybody else who had gone through something like what I’d gone through with Jade.

Somehow, Rhoda and I managed to work through the mess that Jade had created, and things between Pee Wee and me returned to normal. Those things didn’t stay normal long. About a month after Jade’s confession, Pee Wee started to withdraw. It was a gradual change, but by the end of that month, he had stopped making love to me. When I tried to initiate intimacy, he responded like a GOD AIN’ T BLIND

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cold fish. Not long after that, he was more like a dead fish. I got the message, so I stopped trying. I had a lot of other things going on in my life that I could focus on, and that was just what I did.

One of the things I got more involved in was work. I had a job that a lot of people wouldn’t have wanted if it had been handed to them on a silver platter, but there were still some people who were jealous of me because of my job.

Gloria Watson was one of my bill collectors. She had been with the company longer than I had. She had kissed more upper-management butts than a politician, and it had done her no good. I had been promoted from a low-level position as a caller to the coveted manager’s position.

Managing thirteen people was not easy. Most of them had chips on both of their shoulders and attitudes that the Devil must have been proud of. During my first two weeks as manager, two of my people threatened me with lawsuits for “harassing” them after I docked their pay because they’d come to work two hours late. I com-promised by letting them make up the time on a weekend. I had more trouble with the women than the men. The sisters did so much eyeball rolling and neck rotating in my presence that eventually I started doing it. Those were things that I had specifically avoided doing all my years as a black woman because I didn’t want people to stereotype me. The sisters on the daytime talk shows were already doing enough damage to our image.