Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl (14 page)

“Fort Lauderdale? Florida?” I say. “Why do you have to go there? Couldn’t you just get married and stay here in New York? I mean, it’s not like I can hop on the forty-four bus and go visit you there. It’s not like I can get on the number
two train or ask Uncle Paul to give me a ride.” I hardly see Daddy now, when we technically live in the same state, so I can just imagine how those visits will dwindle once he’s based out of Florida. My stomach sinks. And all of a sudden, the oxtail in my mouth becomes like rubber. I just keep chewing and chewing, but I can’t seem to swallow it.

I figured with Daddy traveling around so much for his music, he must have had other girlfriends, but none has been serious enough for him to come and talk to Mama about.

“Jeanne, one of the things I wanted to discuss with you … Maybe Faye could come live with me awhile. Give you a chance to maybe do some of the things you’ve always wanted to.”

“Really?” I say. And I almost jump out of my chair. A new life away from Mama? It couldn’t get any better than that.

“Live with you?” Mama says softly. “But she’s all I got.” I’m sure my head snaps around, because I’ve never heard Mama say anything like that before. She’s still kneeling on the floor, and in that one brief moment, she seems so much smaller.

“If not all the time, maybe summers and holidays. Look, I know you’re the one who’s been holding things down for the past few years now. I know you’ve shouldered a lot of the burden while I’ve been out picking at my bass, but I’ve stumbled on a nice full-time gig at a hotel down there. I’ll have some stability.…”

Mama begins rising from the floor. Only, it takes a lot of maneuvering, ’cause there’s plenty of green dress she has to
work with. She walks back over to the table, grabs Daddy’s plate, which still has some food on it, and flings it into the sink, breaking it into a hundred pieces.

“Melba? What the hell kind of name is Melba?” Then she grabs his glass and does the same with it. And then the words just start spilling out of her mouth. She’s talking so fast and her lipstick is smearing so much, it looks as if somebody has taken the time to paint each of her teeth red.

“You come in here after six years, wanting to be some hero and take my daughter away to Florida to stay with some woman named Melba, show her the good life, what she’s missing by living in some cramped little Brooklyn apartment with me. Since you’ve been gone, you’ve done what? Given a couple dollars here and a few cents there. Just because you throw money at that Catholic school of hers doesn’t mean you’re really contributing shit. I’ve had to pick up all the slack while you’ve been going around, trying to become a bass player, running around acting like you were a single man. But now that you’ve got things on track and you’ll finally start earning a little money, you don’t reward the one who’s done all the work. You reward some Melba who probably just popped up, saw you for what you are this moment, not for what you’ve been all those years. And now you’re gonna try to take my daughter away from me while you play house with this whore?”

And there’s this big giant vein in the center of Mama’s forehead that’s bulging and throbbing. And I’m wondering if it’s not going to explode and coat the entire kitchen in a deep, gooey red.

“Faye, go to your room,” Daddy says. “And don’t worry. We’ll figure this out.”

“Okay,” I say quietly, even though I don’t want to go. This was supposed to be about me and Daddy catching up and having some fun. How did it turn so nightmarish? I’m not getting a good feeling about how things are going to end. Even though I shut my door, I can still hear Mama’s voice coming harsh and loud. Daddy’s is softer-sounding, but just as intense.

“Everything you do in this life has consequences, Jeanne,” Daddy says. “Everything. You just remember that. You can’t do bad to someone and not expect it to come back around to you.”

“Then when will you get yours?” Mama yells. “ ’Cause I’m not the one who walked out on this. I’m not the one who stepped out with some fast-ass supermarket cashier girl—the first of your many little slipups—six years ago.…”

And this goes on, back and forth, until I become aware of only Mama’s voice still ranting and raving. I ease out of my room and over into the hallway, before stepping quietly into the kitchen. Mama is standing with her back flat against the broom closet, as if she’s been glued to it. Her eyes are all glassy and bulging, her bun has come undone, and with what’s left of her red lipstick, she looks like some deranged clown. And she starts breathing really, really hard, like she’s going to pass out. She suddenly separates from that closet and starts moving toward me. I just freeze. Too scared to move. Too scared to take in a breath. But Mama doesn’t even see me. She just brushes past and walks into
her room. The door slams behind her. I hear some things being thrown against the wall, then there’s silence.

I start picking up pieces of broken plate and wrapping them in newspaper. Only, I make sure to do it real quietly so as not to disturb her, so I don’t cause her to remember that I’m still here. About ten minutes later, she emerges from her room with a coat over her green dress and the big bow pushed up from her shoulder into the side of her face.

“Come on,” she says to me. “We’re going to the church!”

“But Mama, it’s not open now,” I say softly.

She stands there for a second. I think my words are registering because she slowly begins to take her coat off. But then she rushes at me and connects with an elbow to my temple.

I fall against the table, knocking over two of the chairs. But it’s okay. It doesn’t hurt so much. It doesn’t hurt because I can see Michael Jackson dancing toward me in his rhinestone suit from the “Rock with You” video. And he’s smiling like an angel.

Easter finally gets
here. I say finally because I couldn’t come up with anything to avoid having to spend twelve and a half hours at Ms. Viola’s every day for the four days we had off for our break. From six-thirty in the morning, when Mama left for work, to seven in the evening, when she returned, I was forced to perform slave labor. That’s a total of fifty hours of being subjected to whining and crying, and feeding and burping and cradling babies. Fifty hours of horse-toothed Gerald cracking corny jokes and snickering. Fifty hours of my own personal hell. Only break I managed to get was on Good Friday, when I insisted Ms. Viola respect my religious yearnings and allow me out for Mass. Once I got a taste of freedom, I hightailed it over to a McDonald’s, where I treated myself to a Big Mac lunch and considered taking the F train to Coney Island and flinging myself into the Atlantic.

Easter Sunday finds me seated next to Mama, trying to keep my eyes open during the longest Mass ever. There’s all
this pomp and circumstance surrounding it—which is not completely horrible at first. The lighting of the Easter candle is kind of cool, and there’s a full choir singing, but that gets old quickly enough. First of all, they really need to funk things up, like the choir does at the Baptist church Aunt Nola goes to—although I guess you can only get so funky when you have to sing songs named “The Strife Is O’er, the Battle Done” and
“Regina Coeli Latare.”
Secondly, one less reading from the Old Testament wouldn’t kill them.

Somewhere around the Gospel according to John, a little gray-haired white woman dressed from head to toe in Easter yellow exits her pew, and my mind runs across the old lady on Parkside Avenue. I start wondering if she’s even religious. Does she go to Mass? Maybe she’s Jewish. I don’t know. I always think of old white people as being Jewish, old Hispanic people as being Catholic, and old black people as being Baptist … unless they’re from the Caribbean.

Maybe if we hadn’t gotten into that fight I would have snuck out from Ms. Viola’s and gone back to see her, but she’s completely ungrateful. If she’s so happy being alone, then good for her.

When that dreadful service is over, Mama and I catch the Flatbush Avenue bus over to Cortelyou Road, then walk the five or so blocks to Aunt Nola and Uncle Paul’s, which is where we spend every Easter. I always have a good time there because they’re a real family. They’re forever telling jokes and laughing and hugging and kissing each other. Well, three quarters of the family is cool. Then there’s my cousin Lisa.

I used to get confused when I first started visiting my aunt and uncle by myself. All the houses on their block look the same. They’re all two-story attached row houses made with either red or brown brick. Fortunately, Aunt Nola’s a bit peculiar, so for half the year, her house really stands out. Her Christmas decorations go up just after Halloween and stay there until Easter.

The doorbell goes
ho, ho, ho
when Mama rings it. Aunt Nola is all smiles and hugs as she greets us. She even says something complimentary about my “sassy new hairstyle” once I take my hat off. I’m pretty sure she’s just trying to make me feel better, but I’ll take it. Uncle Paul sips his rum and Coke and laughs in the background while my cousin Andre waves from the kitchen. And the house smells like baking bread and roast beef.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Lisa sneaking up the stairs, acting as if she doesn’t see us.

“Hey, Lisa,” I say as I catch up to her. “What’s going on?”

There’s the loudest sigh before she mumbles “Nothing” through gritted teeth. Lisa’s one of those stuck-up beauties, someone I’d get a whole lot of pleasure dishing out a spoonful of misery to. I mean, there’s never a blemish on her face or scar on her knee or hair out of its beautiful place. And she’s all too aware of this. She’s the sun and we’re just itty-bitty planets trying to get a little of her glow. My very presence seems to annoy her to no end. I guess it takes her out of her beautiful thoughts and distracts her beautiful mind from whatever it is beautiful people spend their days thinking about—butterflies and unicorns and jelly beans and
stuff like that. But this is the thing I don’t understand: if you’re so pretty, what do you have to be so pissed off about all the time?

She looks at my hair with the slightest bit of interest. I know she wants to say something about it, but doesn’t want to risk the possibility of it maybe turning into an actual conversation.

“I need to go upstairs,” she grumbles.

“I’ll just come and keep you company.”

“No. I have my period. I need to be alone.”

I find it interesting that since I started getting my period, it only comes once a month. Lisa’s seems to show up every time she has to do something she doesn’t want to.

As we all get ready to sit for dinner, the bell rings, and Uncle Paul exchanges a weird look with Aunt Nola before he heads for the door. A few seconds later, he’s back with …

“Jerry Adams, everybody. Jerry, we were just about to have some dinner. You’re eating with us, and I’m not going to take no for an answer.”

“I guess I have no choice, then,” Jerry Adams says. And this is followed by the loudest, cheesiest laugh I’ve ever heard: “Hey, hey, huh. Hey, hey, huh.”

Jerry gets seated right next to Mama and immediately begins stealing glimpses at her from the corner of his eye. I try not to stare, but his name couldn’t be more fitting. The man has the wettest, juiciest, drippiest processed curls I’ve ever seen. It’s as if someone dipped his hair in Vaseline, then straightened it all out, then curled it back up, then dipped it in baby oil. I think I’ll call him Jheri curl Jerry, or JCJ for
short. I’m trying to eat Aunt Nola’s lamb, but my eyes keep drifting back to the little beads of liquid just barely hanging on to the very end of each strand of hair. I can’t understand how they don’t drip down into his food and poison him. I’m waiting and waiting for one to fall, but nothing. They just keep dangling there, like he’s put a spell on them and they don’t dare defy him.

“So, Jerry, Jeanne is an amazing chef,” Uncle Paul says. “Prepares food for very influential people in Manhattan.”

“She’s a pretty one too,” Jheri curl Jerry says. I see my cousin Andre rolling his eyes and giggling.

“I’m a glorified maid is what I am,” Mama says nastily before turning to JCJ. “Mr. Adams …”

“Oh no. Unless you want to insult me, please call me Jerry.”

Mama sips some water, puts Aunt Nola’s pretty crystal glass back down on the table, and continues.

“As I was sayin’, Mr. Adams, I’m not stupid. Why don’t we cut to the chase and call this what it is … a setup. But the thing is, I don’t need any help getting a man.”

“Then why haven’t you had one in all these years?” Uncle Paul says under his breath. Mama shoots him a look.

“Because that was my choice. I mean, do you see what’s out there? Besides, I’ve got enough to handle with my job, my daughter, and my God. Don’t have time for dating fools.”

There’s this pause. Then a loud, “Hey, hey, huh. Hey, hey, huh. I love a woman who has a strong mind. I like to call it spice. And spice makes everything better.”

Mama rolls her eyes, but Jerry just keeps on going.