Cheaters (10 page)

Nathan cut her off. “I’m gonna send Jackie a birthday present.” He was referring to our baby sister.

“On time,” she added. “Y’all hear me?”

“Yes, Momma,” we both sang at the same time.

“I’m going to pick up the wife,” Nathan said. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

“Stephan, hurry.” Momma pushed me in the direction of my car. “Boy, go get them sodas before I dehydrate. I hope you didn’t get none of those cheap generic drinks like you did last time. If I wanted something that tasted like water, I’d drink water.”

Momma could talk forever when her children and grandchildren were at home. She always made everything more urgent than it was. I ran my hands against her salt and pepper hair as she adjusted her sky blue sundress over her petite figure. Momma could eat a horse and not gain an ounce.

Momma sashayed over to my stepfather to inspect. Pops tried to run her away from the grille by raising his spatula, but she didn’t budge.

He said, “Was I in your way when you was in there making that potato salad and beans and cole slaw, was I? Now, get on back in the house ‘fore I get mad and burn up everythang.”

She pinched his cheek and held it. “Hurry, snookums.”

“Unass me, woman,” he said. “Get back in the house and make yourself useful.”

She didn’t move until she was good and ready.

So much noise, so much life was here.

We lollygagged awhile. A few neighbors dropped by. But

my attention was on my mother. On the woman who had allowed her second husband to stomp on the memory of my father and cart us from Mississippi to California. My loving momma, Faye Ann.

Four children, two fathers.

Momma loved both of our dads enough to last a few lifetimes.

In front of other people I’ve had to tolerate her talking about Daddy. She said he was too pretty, too conceited. He felt more husbandly obligations to the women he wasn’t married to than the one he was. That last sentence was a quote from Momma’s mouth. What she’s told anybody who asked about my daddy.

I didn’t tell what happened after that day Daddy left with that high-yellow woman on his arm. The following day when we came home from school, Momma was sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, holding a revolver in her lap while she watched a pile of gassed men’s clothing burn in an oil barrel. As the fire died, she dropped in more brand-new shirts and ties and casually went back to rocking.

Nathan asked her where Daddy was, but she just sat in the chair, rocking and staring out into the yard. Each time a car or somebody looked like they were about to turn in, she cocked the gun and sat up. I thought she was getting ready to shoot a robin or a sparrow or something. You know, go hunting down by the old creek like we’d do sometimes. I kept my lips tight and watched Nathan so I’d know what to do. He talked to Momma for about thirty minutes, then gave up. We stood in the quiet for about ten minutes, when all of a sudden she turned to us and smiled. “Hey, snookums. When y’all get home?”

Some days stay colored in your mind. The next morning I woke before dawn, just in time to see Momma leave the house, dressed like a queen and smelling rosy, the way she did on Sunday mornings before we all went off to church. She was distant, in a trance like she had been the day before on the porch.

She didn’t come back home until late in the evening, after the sun had gone down and the cicadas were clacking in the trees. Me and Nathan had caught some june bugs. We had tied sewing thread to their legs and were making them fly in circles when Momma walked up, smiling and

too normal. So normal that she scared us. We were about to make a break for the woods on the other side of the road. She picked us up and danced while she kissed us, cooked dinner, fed us cookies and cream after dinner, helped us with our homework, sang us to sleep.

We found out what happened through word of mouth—and in a Southern town the word spread faster than a hurricane. When she got up that day at the crack of dawn, she had pressed her hair, styled it, dressed in her best and brightest clothes, and headed the five miles up to Daddy’s job at the lumber yard. She stood out in front and sweetly called him out. He stepped outside, madder than hell and swearing words hotter, followed by his best friend, Jeremiah Mitchell. All of their coworkers stopped working and dashed over for the show. Daddy was holding hands with some full-figured, long-haired Creole woman.

Momma’s voice was ice. “You ever coming back home?”

Before she could get an answer, the high-yellow lady walked out and threatened to break Momma’s neck for coming to see her man. Spat on Momma.

Momma took two steps like she was leaving, then pulled her revolver out of her purse and started firing.

People tripped over each other, jumped, dove for cover behind piles of wood, trees, each other, and mounds of dirt. Six rounds, reload, six more rounds. She didn’t hit anybody. Didn’t really try because we all knew she had the skills. She shot at Daddy and his woman, let them know who they were dealing with.

Daddy’s woman was so afraid, she snatched my old man in front of her, and they tripped. She fell, pinned him down. The woman prayed, screamed, kicked, cried, apologized.

Momma aimed at her. “I don’t appreciate you spitting on my dress like that.”

Screams, prayers.

Then she turned to my daddy.

Screams, prayers.

Momma said, “Be glad you the father of my children. Just be glad of that.”

Without flinching, Momma fired five rounds into his brand-new Buick Wildcat. The engine, radiator, the lights, tires, and what windshields she didn’t shoot out, she broke out with bricks.

When she finished, she looked at him. “Don’t come back.”

He asked, “What about my clothes?”

She pointed the gun at him.

He backed away.

Momma sighed. “Y’all have a nice day, ya hear?”

A few days later, Jeremiah Mitchell showed up at our house. Momma greeted him at the door with her revolver drawn, not saying a word. He just eased down two big bags of groceries on the old, rusted lawn chair we had on our porch, tipped his hat to her, then walked to his car and slowly drove away.

Once a week, real early in the morning, we’d wake up and bags of food would be between the screen and front door. If it had ice cream in it, he’d tap on the front window with a coin so we would wake up and put it in the icebox. And we had an icebox, not a refrigerator. By the time somebody got to the door, he’d be pulling off.

One morning Momma caught him outside putting two bags in the swing. With the gun pointed, she snapped, “Tell him I don’t want his charity no mo’, and take this back to him.”

“Missus Griffith,” he said. “He ain’t the one who been sendin’ you the supplies.”

“Who sent ‘em then?”

“They’s from me, ma’am.”

“Why?”

“I don’t mean no harm by it,” he said through the ragged screen door. “But, Miss Faye Ann, I know you going through some hard times, and I done seen what Duke done put you through. Firsthand. He out there living sweet with that no-count siddity excuse for a woman, and you done fell on hard times. I can’t stand to watch you and them boys suffer on the count of his foolishness.”

“Why?”

“Because I always thought highly of you, Miss Faye. Always have, always will. As far as I could see, you always was a real good woman. I know you ain’t got none of your people in these parts to help you out. Now, I ‘pologize if I done ‘fended you, but I just try to do right. If you don’t mind, ma’am, I’ll be on my way now.”

Momma invited him to stay long enough to stand and

drink a cup of coffee. We saw more of Mr. Mitchell, every now and then coming by in the afternoon or evenings, bringing her this or that, running her here or there. Fixing this or that.

Almost a year after that, I woke and he wasn’t in the living room, but his car was outside. Momma’s bedroom door was closed. It hadn’t been closed since Daddy left. I tried to peep through the keyhole, but she’d put tape over it.

At first I didn’t care for this new man in our house. But I began to look forward to his car being outside. Got used to him taking me and Nathan for a ride every now and then. Got used to the laughter coming from the other side of Momma’s locked door.

Still, I missed my Daddy.

Momma and Mr. Mitchell married. He adopted us and changed our last names from Griffith to Mitchell. Eight months later, my sister Jackie was born. The next year, Jeremiah Junior.

They tell me that trouble caught up to my daddy. He did a midnight run north, kept running until he landed in Canada. That was the last Momma heard of him before we received a death notice in the mail. Cirrhosis of the liver.

I never talk about it, but that family history hasn’t been easy for me to deal with. I didn’t want some other man to be my daddy. I didn’t want some strange man coming in our house trying to tell me right from wrong.

Our phone rang, jarred me out of a dreamless slumber.

Dawn woke up and rumbled, “What time is it?”

I glanced through the darkness. Red numbers glowed on the digital clock. I said, “Few minutes after three.”

Dawn cursed. “On a Monday morning? Somebody better have died, calling here this time of the friggin’ morning.”

The phone was on my side of the bed, so I picked up. I left the sleep in my tone when I answered, “Hello.”

A husky voice spoke up, “It’s me.”

“Jake?”

“Yeah.” He sounded frazzled. “I wake you up?”

“Three in the morning. What you think?”

“Damn. Sorry. I didn’t look at the clock.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Dawn sat up for a moment. “Everything all right?”

I told her who it was. She made a frustrated sound and pulled a pillow over her head.

Jake said, “I pissed her off, huh?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. Dawn mumbled a few words, told me to take the phone into another room so she could get her sleep. I headed for the office. On the way down the hallway, I asked him, “What’s up?”

His voice vibrated, had a disturbed tremble. He said, “Dreams. Those dreams again.”

His chills came through the fiber optics loud and clear.

“You at the fire station?”

“Glad I ain’t. I wouldn’t want them to see me like this.”

It sounded like a bad connection. Clicking was in the line. The crackle was soft, barely audible, but it was there.

I lowered my voice and asked, “You with Pamela?”

A beat passed before I heard his ragged breath, then his words: “Not tonight. I’m out your way in Chino.”

“At Charlotte’s?”

“Yeah.”

I asked, “Where’s your Florence Nightingale?”

“‘Sleep. She pulled a double at Pomona Valley Hospital.”

I cleared my throat, sipped the glass of water I had left on my desk, sat down. I said, “Those crazy dreams are back?”

“Yeah. Every time I close my eyes, that Stephen King shit starts up. Man, I didn’t mean to wake you, but I just have to talk to somebody when those dreams come down.”

I told my friend, “Slow down. Everything’s all right.”

“Them fucking dreams are getting worse. Shit, all of them fucking bastards were chasing me through the fire station this time, up Crenshaw and shit.”

“Any of ‘em look familiar?”

“Yeah. And most of ‘em were coming out of the ground, popping out of coffins.”

Jake sounded weary. The nightmares he’d been having were starting to wear me down as well.

But he was my friend.

I clicked on a light, left it at a soft setting.

He gave me the details.

It made no sense to him. Made no sense to me.

I told him, “Charlotte’s phone is still clicking.”

“It was okay a while ago when I called home and checked my messages. It started that clicking then.”

“Speak up. Your volume’s low.”

“I switched phones two or three times, and it didn’t make any difference. She said that GTE is coming out next week. They might have to replace some wiring.”

“Where’s she?”

“I got me some of that, and she rolled over and went to sleep.” He puffed. “She’s getting better, but still, a bad performing and a non-fulfilling woman drives a man to stray.”

“You know you ain’t right.”

“If I could get her to pump her narrow ass and talk dirty like Pamela, hell, I’d marry her tomorrow.”

“It should be more between you two than sex.”

“It is. Just not after midnight. If I hadn’t stayed at Shelly’s so long, I would’ve went to see Pamela. Should’ve. She does some booty-licking shit that drives a nigga crazy. But after Charlotte rides off to work in the morning, I’m going to hook up with Pamela. Now, she always answers the door in satin and silk, runs a brotha’s bath water, rubs him down, ain’t got no hang-ups, tries to turn a brotha out every time she sees him. I try to do some real shit with Charlotte, and she gets all tense.”

I said, “Work with Charlotte. Buy some Kama Sutra books, check out some erotic movies and watch ‘em together. Maybe try some nude yoga, give each other oil massages.”

“Man, Charlotte is almost thirty years old. What am I going to look like trying to teach her what she should already know?”

“You’re gonna look like you love her as much as she

loves you and wanna share some serious gifts. It should be different with your fiancée. Make it spiritual. Hell, I thought what you liked about her was that she hadn’t been around the block.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I know. Be careful what you wish for.”

I said, “People pray for rain, then complain about the flood. They pray for it to stop raining, then bitch about the drought.”

“I know you ain’t trying to lecture me.”

“Charlotte’s not the same as Pamela. What’s the point of holding on to Charlotte if you keep on doing wrong?”

Jake sounded better. The phone was still clicking, but his voice was clearer. I wasn’t getting through to him though. I wanted to say that nobody could gamble forever and never lose. Coming from me, it would sound sanctimonious. I’d be the first to admit that I’m a creature of contradictions. In one way or another, we all are.

He said, “I hope I get some sleep before Tuesday.”