Mama B - A Time to Mend (Book 4) (12 page)

We spent the morning and half
the afternoon serving. And on the way home, me and Frank decided that would be
our
new Thanksgiving tradition.

Lord, Frank got up Sunday
morning singing, getting his voice ready for the choir as we got ready for
church at Mt. Zion. His crooning was not pleasant to my ears by any means.
“Jesus gettin’ us ready for that greeeee-at day,” he tried to make the note work
but it didn’t. “Who shall be a-a-ble to stand.”

The man was disturbin’ the
peace.

I pulled up my stockings and
stuck my feet into my navy pumps. “Frank,” I called to him in the bathroom,
“honey are you
leading
the song?”

“You’ll have to wait and
see,” Frank hollered.

I made up my mind that no
matter what Frank sounded like, I would do the same as when my kids had their
recitals and musicals. Just encourage them all the same.

“I’m sure God will receive
your praise,” I told him once we got into the car.

 Frank was a little
antsy through the service, sitting in the choir stand as the newcomer. But when
he got up there and opened his mouth to lead his song, he started singing like
one of those people on American Idol who’d been lied to all their lives. I mean,
he sang his heart out—strong and wrong from the very first note.

Henrietta whipped her head
around to me. “He tryin’ to kill us all dead!”

I could hear the snickers
between the congregation yelling, “Go ‘head!” “Let the Lord use you, anyhow!” The
key word being, “anyhow”.

So I stood up and clapped
along with the music.

“Liars will be running on
that greeeee-at day…”

Clive had to speed up and
slow down a few times to stay on track with Frank’s special rhythm. Didn’t help
that Frank started making up new verses.
Hackers
will be running on that
great day…
government frauders
will be runnin’ on that great day.

To which, Henrietta gave me
another evil eye because I’m sure that last one described her.

Clive tried to play him down
by slowing down the music, but Frank didn’t get the hint.
Lord, why is he
singing like somebody’s paying him?
My husband was eating up the cheers
from the audience.

I finally caught his
attention by waving my hand wider than I normally would. Then, real
discreet-like, behind my fan, I gave him the crossed fingers sign. Between me
and Clive, we got Frank to bring the song to a close.

Of course, we all clapped
like we wanted an encore, but Pastor Phillips took the microphone from the
choir stand. “Amen and Amen. Thank you, men’s choir, for that twenty-first
century rendition.”

The choir was dismissed from
the stand during the offering. Frank joined me in the audience again. He asked
me how he did. I patted his knee and gave him the same assurance. “God received
it, honey.” That was all I could say.

Pastor Phillips preached on
how to look at the heart of a person, not just look on the outside. “Now,
beloveds, I know you’ve heard it said that we don’t need to look down on people
because they are not attractive, because they are poor, or because they are not
what society would deem desirable. It’s equally true that we should not look
up
to people because of their status, how they look, or what we dream it must be
like to live their wonderful life.”

I wished like crazy that Ida
Mae was in the service so I could hunch her and let her know to quit worryin’
about me and my so-called perfect life in her eyes. But I know better. When I’m
at church listening to the Word, I have to remember that the Lord knew which
one of us was gonna be in church that morning, and that somebody was me.
Give
me ears to hear, Lord.

Well, service went on and
dismissed, and my ears was certainly full of hearing as the last of us walked
out into the parking lot. I was not, however prepared for what I heard. I mean,
a loud parade of cussin’ and fussin’ comin’ from my house!

Ida Mae hollerin’ and
screamin’ bloody murder. And a voice I recognized as Earl’s coming right back
at her. The parking lot fell silent as people looked at each other, wondering
what was gonna happen. Finally, all their eyes settled on me.

“B, that’s coming from
your
house!” Henrietta stated the obvious.

“I know. I rented it out.” I
wanted to rush onto my property house, but remembered I didn’t have no right to
bust in on my tenant. Having an argument don’t necessarily break no laws.

“I’ll call 9-1-1,” Frank
answered for me, dialing on his phone. He’d just finished giving the address
and the occasion when we heard a loud crash.

I clutched my chest.
My
word!

“You ig-nut nut! Look what
your high yellow behind did!” Ida Mae screamed. “Get off of me!”

Frank shook his head. “I’m
going in.”

Chapter 16

“I’m with you.” Pastor
Phillips and Rev. Martin took off with Frank toward the house.

Me and Ophelia followed a
safe distance behind them and stood in my back yard as Frank approached the
back door and started beating. “Hey! What’s going on in there?”

Earl cussed Frank up and
down, told him to get off the premises if he didn’t want to get a knuckle sandwich.

“You ain’t gon’ knuckle
nobody, with your sorry slow-as-molasses behind! Can you even spell knuckle
sandwich? It starts with a K!” Ida Mae taunted.

Now that we all knew at least
her mouth was still in working order, I said, “Frank, come on back. Let’s wait
for the police.”

I called Son in the meantime
and told him how unruly my tenants was actin’, told him how embarrassed I was.
He agreed to come check on the situation.

The police arrived about five
minutes later. We all went around to the front to, hopefully, get to the bottom
of the problem.

As much as I hated what they
might have done to my stuff, I have to admit that my heart was beating fast
with joy. Now that they were causing problems with the law, maybe I would have
ground to kick Ida Mae out sooner. I had done forgot all about loving her, I
tell you.

“We’ll take it from here,”
the officers said after Frank explained the ruckus we’d heard coming from the
house.

From the policemen’s body
language, I could tell they wanted us to leave the location. Left up to me, I
would have stayed, but Frank led the way back to the church parking lot.

Once inside his vehicle, I
fussed, “Frank! They in there tearing up my house!”

“Let’s just wait until Son
gets here. He can run interference between you and Ida Mae.”

“I don’t want no
interference. I want her O-U-T, out!”

“Didn’t we just pray for a
door to minister to Ida Mae last night?” He just had to bring the love of God
back into this.

I breathed hard. Crossed my
arms. “God works in mysterious ways, right?”

We rounded the corner and
parked on my street, waiting for Son to come since he was the intermediary
landlord of sorts. By this time, the police had apparently finished up their
investigation because Earl had come out of the house with a duffle bag, thrown it
into the back of his truck and took off.

A little while after, Son and
Wanda’s car took up the spot Earl had just left. Me and Frank got out, ready to
go inside and survey the damage.

“Son, if this place is
trashed, I want her gone,” I warned him after he knocked on the door.

“Momma, please. Don’t
overreact.”

“I’m just telling you the
truth.”

Ida Mae answered, black eye
liner streaked down her face from crying. She unlatched the screen door. “Y’all
come on in.”

Chile, my house looked like a
whirlwind! Done broke out a window, put a hole in my living room wall, broke
one of the glass bulbs on my ceiling fan, and—
Oh no, Lord!—
Albert
and Son’s grandfather clock was on the floor with the glass busted out of the
front portals and the sides cracked apart.

If someone would have told me
that the clock would be destroyed that day on account of Ida Mae and her
boyfriend, I would have bet that I’d be fussin’ and pretty close to cussin’
when I laid eyes on the destruction. But when I saw the last of what used to be
my life broken, shattered in the house that used to be mine, all I could do was
weep. “It’s gone, it’s gone.”

Frank held me in his arms.
“B, it’s going to be okay.”

Son stood frozen, looking at
the gigantic timepiece splattered on the floor as well. “Wow, Aunt Ida Mae.
I—I—Daddy and I made that clock together.”

Wanda rubbed his arm as Son’s
face shattered as well.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I’ll...I’ll try to find another one—”

“You can’t replace this,” Son
cried.

Ida Mae’s brown face crumpled
under the weight of her almost-visible guilt. “I’m so sorry. Me and
Earl…sometimes we just get into it and—”

“I want you to leave,” Son
demanded. “By tomorrow at noon. I’ll send a moving van myself.”

“Son, can’t—” she tried

“No! It’s well after the first
of the month and you still haven’t paid rent for this month or November. I had
to pay Momma myself to cover for you. I’m tired of your games,” he insisted.
“Late on this, waiting for a check on that.”

This was news to me, of
course. As far as I knew, the money went straight from Ida Mae to Son’s account
to me, minus his five percent.

“It’s not my fault I don’t
get my check until the second Wednesday of the month,” she sobbed.

“But you didn’t pay when your
check
did
come,” Wanda piped up. “You put
our
family in a bind, especially
with Son’s reduced hours at work.” My daughter-in-law must have been waiting
for the moment to let Ida Mae have a piece of her mind.

“Me and Earl were trying to
catch up on bills and other people we owe,” Ida Mae stared at her empty hands.
“I was
going
to pay.”

The only thing that surprised
me was how quickly Ida Mae had reneged. I thought she would have at least made
it until the end of the year before pulling her let-me-write-you-an-I-O-U
shenanigans. Albert had more of those bogus promissory notes from her than all
the dollar bills she’d actually ever returned to his hands.

Son threw his hands in the
air and bowed his head. “Momma, you were right. I was wrong. She’s violated the
terms of the lease by destroying your property and creating an unsafe
environment. She can be gone in twenty-four hours.” He spoke as though Ida Mae
weren’t even in the room.

He walked to the fallen
grandfather clock, scraped a few shards of glass back aside. Suddenly, he
turned away. “Come on, Wanda. Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Frank stopped Son.
“We’d better go to Home Depot and get some plywood to seal up this window. It’s
supposed to rain tomorrow.”

Son wiped his eyes. “Yeah.
You want to stay here, Wanda?”

She shook her head. “No. I’ll
go with you and Frank.”

I wanted to go with them,
too, but in my heart, I knew Ida Mae needed me more than I needed to be away
from her.

“Y’all go on. Me and Ida Mae
need to clean up a mess.”

Chapter 17

Soon as Son and the rest of
the crowd who might be swayed by Ida Mae’s immediate drama left, she dried her
eyes and resumed her nasty old self for me. “You got your wish,” she snarked.
“I’ll move out, back to my hole in the wall that’s so small I barely have to
walk three steps from the front door to the back and smack dab in the middle of
the hood. It’s just a matter of time before somebody breaks in and—”

“Ida Mae,
shut up
.” I
been wantin’ to say that for dern near fifty years now. “Quit with all these sad
stories. You sixty-something years old now. When you gon’ start taking
responsibility for the decisions you made leadin’ up to now? What you doin’
with a beatin’-type man anyway?”

“He don’t hit me. He hit
walls and stuff. He’s not too bright,” she admitted.

“Well, if he’s so slow, why
are you with him?”

She raised an eyebrow. “He
ain’t slow at
every
-thang.”

I left that alone.

She sucked in her neck.
“Besides, it’s easy for you to say how picky I need to be about a man. You had
it made after you married my brother and he put you on easy street. You barely
worked. Moved into a beautiful house. Kids went to college. Military benefits
for life—”

I wasn’t about to let her
pull me into an argument on the basis of what all the Lord done in me and
Albert’s life. “Your brother and I worked hard with the strength God gave us,
but we talkin’ about you right now. You done spent all your life tryin’ to keep
up with the Joneses and this side of the Jacksons. You had a good job with the
school system, but you wanted to live like the Rockefellers. Always callin’
Albert—”