God Don't Play (31 page)

CHAPTER 71

R
hoda and I were occupying a white plastic table in the hospital cafeteria, trying to eat some hard scones and drink some muddy coffee. After just a few minutes, we gave up. And it was just as well, because a thin film of some slimy shit settled on top of the coffee.

“Jade knows about me and Bully,” Rhoda told me in a weak, dry voice.

“Jade knows a lot of things, Rhoda. Too much. She knows too much for her own good,” I told her.

“Well, I’ve already packed Bully’s things and I will escort him to the airport myself tomorrow evenin’. He won’t be comin’ back to my house. He won’t be fuckin’ me anymore. I shouldn’t have let him…again. But…I just…I just wanted to be
loved
by a man, just one more time.”

“You are loved, woman.”

Rhoda shook her head. “Not the way I need to be.”

I didn’t remember much about my fight with Rhoda. I remembered grabbing her by her wrists. But she had some scratches on her face, too. And her lip was busted. I felt kind of strange looking at her. Here was a woman not even half my size. She had survived a stroke and lost both breasts. It seemed like she was slowly fading away. And that made me feel so sorry for her. I didn’t even think about the fact that she had attacked me in my own house. I didn’t know if I could ever get over that. But that was the least of my worries. Getting over Rhoda’s attack was one thing. My main concern was getting over what Jade had done.

Interns, doctors, and nurses scurried about, the tails of their white jackets flapping like wings. The friends and relatives of other patients wandered in and out of the cafeteria with that lost look, a kind of desperation, on their faces that I was all too familiar with.

Rhoda and I had left Jade’s room on the third floor only after Dr. Beatty, a sad-faced, elderly man who looked like he should have been in a hospital bed himself, assured us that she was going to be all right. She had swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills, but her stomach had been pumped. Otis and Bully were still in Jade’s room, chanting some Jamaican prayers. Quite a few of Rhoda’s relatives were on their way to Ohio: Her parents were coming in from New Orleans, and her son and some others from Alabama.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, lifting my coffee cup, frowning at the slime. I set the cup back down, my eyes on Rhoda’s face. Which, I was happy to see, had more scratches and knots than I’d originally noticed. And since I didn’t remember doing anything but holding her by her wrists, I had to wonder what Jade had done to her when she confronted her. That girl!

Rhoda sniffed and lifted her chin. Her eyes were bloodred. “When was the last time your man made love to you?”

I shifted in my seat and looked around. “That’s kind of personal. But if you must know, it was last night. It had been such a long time, I felt almost like a virgin again.”

Rhoda gave me a pensive look. Then a look that was unbearably sad crossed her face. For the first time, she looked her age. “My husband hasn’t made love to me in eight years,” she said in a flat voice.

“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. “Uh…that’s cold.”

“Bully…” Rhoda dropped her head but she kept talking. “He couldn’t keep his hands off me.” Rhoda rolled her eyes up toward the ceiling, then at me. “The breast cancer, the stroke…Otis couldn’t deal with it after all.”

“But you stayed with him,” I reminded her.

Rhoda shook her head. “He stayed with me. I wasn’t goin’ any place. Where would I go? What man in his right mind would want me? Just Bully. And to be honest with you, he’d stick his dick in a hog. He is the only man who has called me beautiful since I lost…since my cancer. And that stroke! You remember how long I had to walk around with my face hangin’ like a basset hound! Bully…he called me. He called me all the way from London at a time when I really needed to be…needed. When that bitch he married took off, I insisted he come stay with us.”

“What about Otis?”

“What about him?”

“You are still with him. How much does he know about you and Bully?”

Rhoda waved her hand and tilted her head. “He doesn’t want a divorce. I tried to go that route, but he wants to remain a family.”

“But does he know about you and Bully?”

Rhoda shrugged. “Like I said, I’m takin’ Bully to the airport myself tomorrow evenin’. He’s goin’ back to London to reconcile with his estranged wife. So, I am back where I started. Annette, I have to save what’s left of my family.”

“Jade’s goin’ to be fine, Rhoda,” I said, squeezing her hand.

Rhoda wiped her eyes and nose with a napkin, then she took a sip of the grim coffee. “What she did to you was wrong. I know it. She knows it. She admitted to me that she was jealous of you and Pee Wee. Y’all had it all. Me and Otis, we have nothin’ anymore.”

I shook my head. “You still have your daughter, Rhoda. You still have Otis. You have your mama and your daddy and you still have your son. And…You still have me.”

I went around to Rhoda’s side of the wobbly table and gave her the hug she needed. I held her in my arms for five minutes as she cried on my shoulder.

“Do you want to see her?” she asked, gently pushing me away.

“Maybe it would be better if I waited…” I began.

“She’s still unconscious. She won’t even know you’re in the room.”

I followed Rhoda to Jade’s room where Otis was on one side of her bed, mumbling some gibberish. Bully stood with his back to us, looking out the window. There was nothing to see out that window except the other side of the hospital. Nothing but orange bricks. Bully turned as soon as he heard us enter the room, and gave us a blank stare.

Jade was on her back, mumbling some gibberish, too.

“She’s delirious,” Otis said in an extremely tired and worried voice as he rubbed Jade’s forehead. “De doctor man say she will be fine, praises to Jah.”

“I’ll pray for her,” I said. As soon as I said that Jade opened her eyes.

Large tears slid down her cheeks to her lips. She sniffed and licked her lips dry, rubbing her eyes. She gave me a hard, cold look before she shifted her eyes and looked around the room. She let out a feeble moan and then she focused her attention on me again.

“Where am I? Who are you people?” she whimpered through trembling lips. “Am I dead?”

As upset as I had been with Jade, my heart just about broke in two.

Rhoda staggered before she fell into her husband’s arms. Bully moaned and placed his head on my shoulder. I stood there, rubbing Bully’s back and staring at Jade.

“She’s got
amnesia
!” Rhoda sobbed. “My poor little baby doesn’t even know me!”

CHAPTER 72

I
could not believe how frail and frightened Jade looked. The beautiful head of hair that she was so proud of looked like a thick, tangled spiderweb. Dried snot hung from the bottom of her nose, on both sides. Her dried lips were cracked and bruised, like she had been biting herself.

She looked at me like she didn’t know who I was, and for that I was grateful. I didn’t know much about amnesia, but I did know that people could recover from it and regain all of their memory. However, I had heard of people who regained only part of their memory, permanently blocking out the things that were too painful. I didn’t want Jade to get off that easily. I wanted her to eventually remember every single thing that she had done to hurt me. And I wanted her to remember it for the rest of her life, because I would.

There was a lot of work that had to be done. I knew that I had to face my nosy parents and that busybody Scary Mary, sooner or later. They were relentless. They wouldn’t stop until they knew everything about what Jade had done to me.

Then I had to deal with Jade when the time was right, if she regained her memory. Our relationship would never be the same. I seriously doubted that I could continue to work with her at the same place of employment. As a matter of fact, if she did return to work, I planned to fire her immediately. But that wouldn’t be the end of it. Jade had been such a huge part of my life that losing her would be like losing an arm or a leg.

Otis and Bully left the room to go to the cafeteria for coffee. A few minutes later a stout, grumpy nurse entered Jade’s room with a cup containing some pills, a thermometer, and a chart. She chased us out so Rhoda and I left to return to the cafeteria.

“I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose her,” Rhoda sniffed in the elevator, her head on my shoulder. “She’s all I got. She’s my only chance to be a grandmother.”

“You won’t lose her,” I said sadly, knowing that I had lost Jade. “You can get past this.” I gave Rhoda a firm hug before we left the elevator.

“And what about you?” she asked, squeezing my hand.

I bowed my head. “I’ve survived worse,” I said evenly. “But then you already know that,” I said, blinking at Rhoda. Somehow I managed a smile.

“I want you to know…I want you to know that what Jade did to you, it won’t ever happen again. I promise. But she is still a child, my child, and I can’t get past that.”

“I know you can’t get past that, Rhoda, and I don’t expect you to choose me over your child. But don’t forget, I love Jade, too. Despite all this, it’s not the end of the world. We’ll work through it.”

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am for what I did to you in your kitchen. I just snapped,” Rhoda sobbed. She produced a handkerchief from her purse and blotted her eyes and nose.

“I just snapped, too,” I said, biting my lip.

Rhoda and I joined Otis and Bully in the cafeteria. I wasn’t surprised to see them drinking sodas while two cups of cold coffee sat off to the side on the table.

There was not much to talk about. I certainly had very little to talk about. I excused myself to go call Pee Wee to let him know what had happened.

The one telephone that I was able to locate on the same floor as the cafeteria was occupied. It was near a waiting room so I waited around for about ten minutes, listening to a redneck with a ponytail yelling into the telephone about an Indian doctor who’d just performed an emergency C-section on his wife.

I don’t know what made me do what I did next. But before I could stop myself, I was back in the elevator. I got off on the third floor, and with my head bowed, I padded past the nurse’s station back to Jade’s room. Despite what she had done to me, she was still that same little girl who had accused me of being Santa Claus.

The door to her room was ajar. I moved as quietly and quickly as I could. I stopped before I got all the way in the room. Jade was not in her bed, but I could hear her. I moved a little closer. She was in the bathroom, singing “I’m Every Woman,” and dancing a jig like one of the
Soul Train
dancers! I leaned forward a little more. She was looking in the mirror, mugging like she was in Hollywood, posing for her close-up.

With a heart that felt as heavy as a large rock, I backed out of the room and waited a few moments before I coughed loud enough to get her attention. While I was peeping around the door, Jade shot out of the bathroom like a cannonball and leaped back into the bed and pulled the covers up to her neck.

She immediately closed her eyes and started moaning, “Mmmmmm…Where…am I…Where am I? Aarrggggh.”

I couldn’t resist what I did next. I moved over to the bed and stood over Jade with my arms folded. I didn’t say a word, but there was a stern look on my face that I wanted her to see. She cracked open her eyes just enough to see me. And as soon as she did, she started babbling some more gibberish. She was still doing that when I left the room.

I went back to the cafeteria and hugged everybody good night. Even Bully. And then I left. I couldn’t wait to get back to my house where I belonged.

CHAPTER 73

C
harlotte cried when I told her that Jade was going to live with her grandparents in New Orleans for a while.

“But she didn’t even come say good-bye,” Charlotte sobbed. “Why is she leaving?”

“Well, she’s going to go to college down there next year, and she wanted to get used to living there first,” I explained.

“Oh,” Charlotte said, drying her eyes. “I hope she brings me a present when she comes back.”

That was it. Charlotte ran off to be with one of her friends who lived in the neighborhood, and she forgot all about Jade. Well, she didn’t really forget about Jade, but she accepted the fact that Jade was not going to be around for a while.

Muh’Dear, Scary Mary, and Daddy had stopped badgering me. But only because I had told them the whole story. I knew that they wouldn’t until I did. So I did.

I didn’t tell Rhoda or Otis, or anybody else, what I’d seen when I’d peeped in Jade’s hospital room that night. I didn’t see any point.

It was Sunday, a few days after my visit to Jade at the hospital. Around six o’clock that evening, my telephone rang. I was in the kitchen alone. Charlotte was at the movies with Muh’Dear and Daddy. Pee Wee was in the living room slumped in front of the television with a can of beer and a plate of snacks.

“Auntie?” It was Jade.

“Jade.”

“Auntie, please don’t hang up. They are about to take me to the airport to go to New Orleans, and I wanted to say good-bye. And I just want to let you know how sorry I am about what happened. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You did a pretty good job anyway.”

“Auntie, please try to understand me. I thought Pee Wee wanted to be with me. I thought that if you were out of the way, me and him could be together. Honest to God, I did!”

“Well, you thought wrong, Jade. Pee Wee is a forty-five-year-old man. A successful man with everything in the world going for him. What did you think
you
had to offer him?”

“Just myself, Auntie. I’m pretty…I’m young. I thought he’d be glad to have me. He was like…He is like…so cute and funny and nice and everything. He looks at you like you are somethin’ good to eat. I wanted me a man like that.”

“First of all, he looks at
me
like I’m something good to eat. You just said so yourself. That doesn’t mean he would have looked at you like that. What you need to do is find you somebody who will look at you the way my husband looks at me.”

“I tried to kiss him one time and he cussed at me,” Jade sobbed. “That was last year.”

“You should have stopped there, Jade. Just because you throw yourself at a man doesn’t mean he’s going to catch you.”

“But he looked at me all the time. Especially when I wore my white shorts,” Jade said, defiant to the bitter end.

“Jade, I looked at you when you wore those white shorts. Everybody looked at you when you wore those white shorts. That means nothing. But just because people, men especially, look at you, that doesn’t mean they want you. All you are doing when you walk around half-naked is attracting attention. But it’s
negative
attention, baby. And believe me, that kind of attention won’t get you anything but a baby you don’t need, or a disease that might put you in the grave. Life is one game where people don’t play fair.”

“You mean people like me? Mama sat me down and talked to me for hours that night I…that night I…tried to kill myself. My daddy jumped in the mix. And even Uncle Bully tried to talk to me and here he is doing the wild thing with my mama!”

“That’s your mama’s business, Jade. What you don’t seem to realize is, you are still a child.” There was an uncomfortable pause. All I could hear was Jade breathing through her mouth. “By the way, I’m glad to see that you’ve recovered from your amnesia,” I said.

“Huh? Oh, that? Yeah, I recovered from that! I feel fine!” Jade said, talking so fast she almost lost her breath. Then there was more silence. “Do you hate me, Auntie?”

“No, I don’t hate you, Jade. I hate what you did to me.”

“I didn’t mean any of that mean stuff I said to you that night you found out.”

“I know you didn’t, Jade.”

I wondered if I was just incredibly stupid and gullible, or if I was crazy after all. I had asked myself a thousand times how I could have let something like this happen.

Scary Mary had told me to my face, “Girl, you don’t never give no woman, ugly or pretty, young or old, a position of power in your life, your house.”

I had given Jade so much power in my life and in my home that it had overwhelmed her. And I had trusted her when I knew in my heart that I shouldn’t have. No, I couldn’t hate Jade for what had happened, no more than I could hate myself, because I was in it, too.

“Auntie, are you still there?” Jade asked, her voice just above a whimper.

“I’m still here. I was…just thinking about something else, that’s all.”

“I have to go now. Maybe one day, we can forget about this and you’ll love me again.”

“I still love you, Jade. Nothing can change that.”

“Then maybe one day, you’ll be my favorite auntie again?”

“Maybe I will.”

“’Bye…Auntie.”

“’Bye, Jade. Have a safe trip.”

I hung up the telephone and wiped a tear from my eye. Pee Wee entered the kitchen, chewing and balancing an empty plate.

“I heard the telephone ring. Who was it?” he asked, heading to the refrigerator.

“Huh? Oh. Just some telemarketer,” I said, turning my head so he wouldn’t see my tears.

“Tryin’ to sell you some shit you don’t need?”

I was glad that he had his back to me, as he leaned his head inside the refrigerator. I wiped my eyes and nose on the tail of my muumuu. “Uh-huh,” I mumbled. “Just another telemarketer, trying to sell me some shit I don’t need.”

Pee Wee removed two beers. I was glad he handed one to me.