Mama B - a Time to Love (7 page)

I tossed and turned so until I had to get
up out the bed that night.
Frank? Unfaithful?
Now, I know everybody got
a past. Everybody got something they gon’ take to the grave with ‘em. But
Cynthia had started me on thinkin’ about Frank’s moral character.

I knew about the wine-drinkin’ and the
cussin’-movie watchin’, but those were things I realized I would have to leave
between him and the Lord. Albert did plenty of stuff I didn’t think was right,
but I didn’t really know about ‘em ‘til after we was married. Good thing, too.
Back before the Lord changed me, I didn’t know how to stay in love with
somebody who wasn’t doin’ what I wanted them to do.

Had to be about one o’clock in the
morning when I got up to use the restroom.  I called myself being quiet so
I wouldn’t wake Eunice, but she was up. The light shined under her door, and I
heard her mumbling to somebody must be on the phone. Couldn’t make out the
words, but she wasn’t havin’ no friendly conversation, that was for sure. Sound
like me
and
her both was havin’ a rough night.

 I took something for my lactose
intolerance and then ate a cup of yogurt with fruit and granola. Albert used to
laugh at me ‘cause even my midnight-munchies snacks be healthy.

On my pass back through to my bedroom, I
wasn’t trying to eavesdrop on Eunice, but her voice came through clearly. “How
many times do I have to apologize to you? Don’t you know it’s haunted me every
day for the past fifteen years?”

Goodness, no wonder she’s so miserable.
Been punishing herself. I didn’t know
who was on the other end of that line, but it musta been somebody important for
her to be up arguin’ with them at that time of night.

Suddenly, I heard Eunice’s phone slam
shut. She began to weep softly, yet loud enough for me to hear it on the other
side of the door. I stopped. Put my hand on the doorknob, wondering if I should
try and go in or leave her to the Lord and her feelings. Since I wasn’t sure, I
rapped on the door to ask her.

“Eunice, you okay?”

“Um...yes. I’m so sorry I woke you.”

“It’s all right. I was already up gettin’
a snack,” I spoke to her through the door.

I heard her sniff. “A snack sure sounds
good right about now.”

Gently, I cracked the door open and
peeked in with a smile. “I’ve got some yogurt.”

“No offense, B, but yogurt is
not
comfort food.” She tapped on over to meet and follow me back down the hallway
with her cane in hand. “Have you got anything sweet or crunchy?”

We stopped at the pantry. I took a look
inside, with Eunice directly behind me.

“You’ve got popcorn,” she spied, pointing
to the top shelf. “That’ll do.”

I stretched to retrieve the box. Had to
check the expiration date to see if it was still good. “This must be your day.
It’s still okay, but it’s the healthy kind. No salt and no fat.”

“We could pour butter and salt on it,”
she suggested.

She just determined to eat all wild, I
see. I figured I might as well share my secret stash with her.  “I’ve got
some butter and cheese sprinkles I put on my great-grandson’s popcorn when he’s
here.”

As the popcorn popped in the microwave, I
watched Eunice fidget at the table. Seem like she was itching to get something
off her chest. Lord knows after Cynthia’s big bombshell, I wasn’t in the mood
for no more confessions.

The timer went off. I fixed her bowl
Cameron-style, smothering the white puffs until it looked more yellow than
white. Have to admit, it smelled so good, I took a napkin and trickled some
onto a napkin for myself. Not too many.

Eunice crunched and closed her eyes in
bliss. “Mmmmm. This is so good. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I used to make popcorn for my kids. You
remember those popcorn poppers where you had to pour the kernels into a well
and the popcorn came shooting out of the yellow top?” She smiled.

“Yeah, we had one of those. Did you ever
do the kind where you put the tin pan over the stove’s eye?”

Eunice threw her head back in laughter.
“Oh my goodness! I almost burned up our house with that one!”

I was glad to hear her talk about some
good times with her family. Warms a mother’s heart. “How many kids?”

“Three. One died in an accident. Got two
left. The judge and the teacher. Not too bad, huh?”

“Not bad at all,” I complimented her.
“Sounds like they’ve done good for themselves.”

“What about your kids?” she wanted to
know.

Chile, we got to talkin’ ‘bout our kids,
their degrees, and their jobs. Then we went down memory lane, talkin’ ‘bout all
the times they broke stuff in the house, the crazy pets they had, and their
silly jokes.

Turns out, Eunice’s deceased son died in
a car wreck when he was a teenager. Drunk driving accident. By the Spirit, I
knew this had something to do with why she’d been upset for the last fifteen
years. Since I ain’t never lost a child, I don’t know that pain. I don’t know
what kind of mess it would have made me if I’d gone through such a loss. And
lost two husbands, too?
Lord, have mercy.

We stayed up bumpin’ our gums until
almost two o’clock in the morning, and y’all
know
I don’t be out the bed
after 9:00 p.m. unless the Lord say otherwise. But that Eunice was a lot of fun
to talk to. She made me remember what it was like to come home and unwind with
somebody.

Albert could talk your ear off!
Sometimes, he’d be talking so until I fell asleep on him. That didn’t hardly
stop him, though. He’d shake me and say, “B, you up?”

I’d yawn, “I am now.” Ha!

Eunice finally said, “Ooh, I’m ‘bout to
hit the sack.”

“Me too.”

“Thanks for listening, B.”

I squeezed her hand. “Thanks for letting
me listen.”

Eunice rinsed out the bowl and set it in
the dishwasher. We turned out the kitchen light and returned toward the
bedrooms. “Night, B.”

“Night.”

When I got back in my room, it hit me
that I hadn’t said one word to her about the Lord.  I didn’t feel bad
about it, though. Eunice the type don’t respond to somebody preachin’ about
love. She the kind that got to
feel
it before she’ll listen to words.

Me
and Eunice made a trip to the Walmart and got some more groceries for the
house. Of course, folk was starin’ at her with all that riff-raff on her face.
Her eyes weren’t so bad anymore, but since she had taken the bandages off her
arms, anyone who got close could see the black string sewn into her skin.

She rode around in the handicapped buggy,
throwing all kinds of foolishness into the basket. Good thing we had already
decided she should be well enough by the end of the week to move back to
wherever she wanted to go. In the meanwhile, she said she needed some “real”
food.

That Eunice was something else. I didn’t
have a scale to prove it, but I know I’d put on a few pounds already, bein’ in
her company. She had cut loose in the kitchen a few times and managed to put
enough seasoning and honey just right on a chicken breast—make you wanna
holla! I had a mind to let her cook as often as she wanted to after that.

She grabbed a few pairs of pull-on pants,
shirts, and a pair of flip-flops.

“It’ll be getting cool soon. You might
want to get something a little warmer,” I suggested.

“Yeah, you’re right. Some of those
shelters might as well be made out of paper for as cold as they get in the
winter,” she said, dropping a sweatshirt into our stash.

I, personally, wasn’t looking forward to
dropping her off at some shelter, but I could see she was getting antsy. 
She was smokin’ outside more. Mumbling to herself. She wouldn’t agree to go to
the upcoming Wednesday night service. She apologized, said I didn’t have to
worry about her breaking my rules much longer.

“B, go on and get what you want,” Eunice
prompted several times as we swept up and down the store’s center aisles.

“We ain’t at the fruit and vegetable
section yet. That’s where I do most of my grocery shoppin’,” I said.

“Well, whatever you want, just throw it
in the basket. I’m buying,” she insisted.

Put together, our bill came to a little
over eighty dollars. Then she added cigarettes and that took it up to a
hundred. She pulled out a VISA card, swiped through the machine. Of course, I
didn’t pay no attention to what all she was doing as she conducted the
transaction.

But when she was done, the girl gave her
cash. Eunice thrust it into my hand before I knew what she was doing. “Here you
go, B.”

“Eunice, I ain’t asked you for no money.”

“I know. I’m
giving
it to you.”

The cashier chimed in, “Shoot, I’ll take
it if you don’t want it.”

Well, I’m not one to insult someone who’s
trying to bless me. I stuffed the money into my pocketbook. “Thank you, Eunice.”

Since Eunice had to walk to the car on
her cane, of course she trailed behind me. Good thing, too, ‘cause now I was
starting to wonder where Eunice gettin’ all this money from. I got to doin’ the
math up in my head. She said she gave the person who brought her to Peasner
fifty dollars, she gave me fifty dollars, she done spent a hundred dollars at
Walmart and another hundred-and-something she had just gave me. That’s goin’ on
four hundred dollars in less than a week, with no job to speak of. But she beggin’
for food from the food pantry and stayin’ in homeless shelters.

At the rate she was goin’, she didn’t
need to follow nobody’s rules. She could afford to get her own place and take
care of herself.

Somethin’ wasn’t addin’ up.

Eunice wasn’t much help putting all the
groceries away back at the house. Said her leg was botherin’ her. Since she’d
been wearing some pants that Libby brought her, I hadn’t had an opportunity to
see what was going on with her. But when I went in to check on her before I
took my afternoon nap, I had to keep my composure. Her bad leg had done turned
dark brown and was weeping from the pores.

“Eunice, you got to get to a doctor,” I
warned softly, trying not to scare her too bad.

“It’s only cellulitis. Flares up from
time to time.”

“Has it been this bad before?”

She shrugged. “Can’t say that it has. But
everything gets worse as we get older, right? I’m guessing with the fall and
the drugs and all, it might be taking a little longer to get better.”

I shook my head. “This ain’t healthy. I got
a good mind to take you to emergency right now.”

“You will do no such thing,” Eunice
protested, covering that leg with the bed covers, as though her condition would
leave my mind if I couldn’t see it any more. “I’ve seen enough doctors this
week to last me the rest of the year.”

“What about your stitches? And your
nose?”

“The doctor said the stitches would
dissolve on their own. And once a broken nose is set, all you need to do is let
it heal. I’ll take off the face bandages tomorrow.”

She ‘bout stubborn as my momma was.
Couldn’t get her to go see a doctor ‘til it was too late. “Eunice, need I
remind you, you ain’t got no medical degree, far as I know. You got no business
doctorin’ on yourself.”

She raised an eyebrow. “When you spend
several years married to an abusive alcoholic, you learn to be your own doctor
after a while.”

Eunice grabbed the medicine bottle and
half-full glass of water on the night stand. She popped another pill. “I’ll be
fine, B. You worry too much.”

She could set up there and act like her
leg was fine all she wanted to, but I knew better. Eunice was sicker than she
thought.

Frank wanted to go for a light dinner
after our dancing Friday night. I figure since I been up with Eunice ‘til two
in the morning, I could extend a similar courtesy to Frank. All those calories
we burned on the floor would make up for eating so late.

Frank picked a steakhouse off of the
highway. One I hadn’t ever been to, actually, so I had to study the menu. So
many new places popping up near Peasner.

“What’ll it be?” he asked when I closed
the booklet.

“Believe I’ll have the chicken Caesar.”

“Sounds good.”

The waitress came and took our order,
leaving us in a familiar spot across from each other. I don’t know what it was
about the lighting in that place, but Frank looked awful handsome despite his
laid-back clothes. Bald head, brown eyes, smooth skin, shining white dentures.
I could see why women might have thrown themselves at him, making a man’s
temptations even harder to bear.

All through our chit-chat as we ordered
and waited for our food, I told myself to stop thinking about what Cynthia had
said. Whatever Frank done in his past ought to stay there, like they say about
Vegas. Still, there was a part of me that wanted to know.
What if Frank is
some kind of womanizer? What if he makes a fool of me? It would be all my fault
because Cynthia did warn me.

I tried to take everything into account.
In the past months, Frank had been nothing but kind to me. Sent flowers, took
me dancing, let me take everything as slow as I needed to.

But he did make a habit of texting me
before we talked.
Maybe he had to get where he could talk, get away from
another woman? Maybe the reason his daughter stopped volunteering at the shelter
was because he didn’t want her to see me.
Then the enemy got real busy with
the accusations.
What if his wife didn’t die of a disease – maybe he
poisoned her?

Well, I’d had about enough of giving the
devil room in my brain. If I was gonna be in some kind of a
more-than-friendship with Frank—
IF
—I certainly needed to
feel like I could be honest with him. “Frank. There’s…something I want to ask
you.”

He swallowed and set his fork on the
plate. “Yes?”

Had to discern how to approach this one.
Can’t very well come out and ask a man if he ever cheated on his deceased wife.
“You remember Cynthia, from church the other day? She ate with us at Pastor’s
table.”

“Oh yes,” his eyes sparkled with
remembrance. “The reverend’s wife.”

“Mmm hmm,” I confirmed. “Well, she said
something to me…something about you and…it bothered me.”

He sat back, bewildered. “I didn’t know I
was so popular. What did she say?”

“It’s not so much what she said. She
hinted that…you had some issues in the past with…faithfulness.”

The smile slipped from Frank’s face. His
eyes dropped.

Immediately, I knew I had hurt my friend.
My heart hurt
for
him. I reached across the table and squeezed his hand.
“Frank, I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s
he-said-she-said anyway.”
How could I have been so silly?

He took a deep breath and yanked his gaze
back to me. “No, no. It’s okay. I’m sure Cynthia was only trying to protect
you, and I’m glad you’re comfortable enough to ask me hard questions.”

Thank God he felt that way because I sure
wanted an answer.

He inhaled. Exhaled again. “Cynthia was
correct. There was a period of five years or so, right after I turned fifty,
when I thought I was
the man
. Thought I was God’s gift to black women
all over the metroplex. It’s amazing that I don’t run into more relatives or
acquaintances of the women I used.”

My Lord!

“I was smart, had a prestigious career,
made good money. Nobody said ‘no’ to me, except my wife. I was too stupid to
know she was only trying to keep me grounded. I thought she was my enemy.”

Sounded familiar. Plenty good men done
fell into that trap.

“But then Margie began to suffer with
Lupus and I realized I could lose the best thing that ever happened to me. None
of those women meant what she did. It was like…like that moment when a big
flash comes and you hear angels singing
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Like the
Lord presented her to me all over again.”

I smiled at the love Frank obviously had
for his wife. I was also grinnin’ because I liked the way Frank didn’t get all
huffy and defensive. And he didn’t give me one of them beatin’-around-the-bush
lines a lot of men give when you ask how they treated their first wife—“I
made some mistakes” or “I wasn’t a perfect husband.” The fact that Frank came
at me straightforward said more about the character of the man sitting across
from me than anything else.

 “Did your wife know about the other
women?”

“Yes. She found out. It took counseling,
some nights on the couch, she threw a few dishes at me…but she took me back.
She
actually
took me back. For the first time, I understood the love of
Christ. Through her. Through reconciliation. I never forgot that I had the love
of a woman I didn’t deserve. Kept me at her side until her last breath.”

Chile, I was ‘bout to start cryin’. “She
was a wonderful woman of God.”

“She sure was. You would have loved her,”
he nodded with his own eyes watering. “You two have the same sweetness of His
Spirit about you.”

“That’s ‘cause
He’s
sweet, you
know?”

“Amen and amen.”

The waiter brought our salads but
apologized for leaving our garlic rolls. “I’ll bring them right back.”

My first thought was to tell him to leave
mine since I don’t eat much bread. But then I thought about Eunice. She’d walk
a mile on that bad leg for a hot, buttery garlic roll. “Can you wrap mine up so
I can take it with me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Frank extended his arms across the table
for prayer. We caught hands and he led us. “Father, thank You for being the
great lover of our souls. Thank You for Your Son, Jesus. And thank You so much
for bringing B into my life. I pray that You would glorify Yourself in this
friendship. Teach us and keep us by Your Spirit. And now we bless the food we
are about to receive. Thank You for it. Let it nourish our physical bodies as You
continue to nourish our souls. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

I whispered, “Amen.”

Y’all not gon’ believe this. For real.
But the second my eyelids parted and looked at Frank again, seem like the
scales fell from
my
eyes. I don’t know exactly how God did it, but He
opened up a window from heaven and shined some kind of special light on Frank
Wilson before me.

I just about heard them angels singin’ to
me, too:
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!