God Ain't Through Yet (27 page)

T
hey say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Less than a week after I'd allowed Jacob back into my life and bed, he started acting a fool again.

I had dropped Charlotte off to spend Thursday night with Pee Wee so I could go to a bachelorette party with Rhoda that night. The agreement was, he'd keep her with him until he heard from me on Friday.

That Friday morning around ten, a folder ended up on my desk at work. It was red, which meant it was an extremely difficult case. Those were some of the ones that I usually handled. I groaned as soon as I saw it. I knew from past experiences that whoever the debtor was, he or she was going to cuss me out, talk about me like a dog, call me all kinds of obscene names, tell me to do something sexual to myself that was anatomically impossible, and then tell me where to go. That's what I usually had to put up with. I groaned again when I opened the folder and saw who that deadbeat was. Jacob's name leaped out at me like a panther.

“I'll be damned,” I said to myself as I looked over the documents. I could not believe my eyes. Jacob had defaulted on a huge bill to the funeral home that had handled his mother's funeral!

That devil had not paid one penny of the six thousand plus dollars that he had agreed to pay! I squinted my eyes to make sure I was seeing right. I leaned back in my chair and gave this situation some thought. I knew that most people had insurance on their loved ones so that they'd be prepared to cover final expenses when the time came. I had such insurance on my parents, my daughter, and myself. I still had burial insurance on Pee Wee. I was glad that he had not made me mad enough for him to require a burial. And Jacob had told me to my face that his mother had made him her beneficiary on her life insurance policy—two hundred thousand dollars! He had used the money to go on that lavish cruise he'd told me about, purchase his new car, upgrade his wardrobe, and do some home improvements. Had he no shame?! Apparently, he did not.

It saddened me to know that there were people on the planet who cared more about material things than they did their mother's final arrangements. And this was the man whom I was involved with! That saddened me, too. When old Mr. Boatwright died, well, when Rhoda smothered him to death, I had treated him with utmost respect to the very end—and he'd sexually abused me for ten years! Despite that, I'd helped my mother plan his funeral, I'd prayed for his wretched soul, and I was there when my mother wrote a check to the undertaker to cover his funeral. Not once did she, or I, even think about not paying off that expense.

To my surprise, Mr. Boatwright had left instructions in his will stating that all of the money left over after his funeral expenses had been settled was to go to me. Even then I had a hard time spending that ten thousand dollars on myself. And it never occurred to me to spend it on something as frivolous as a cruise and a new car!

I got so light-headed that I had to stand up. I couldn't understand how anybody could do what Jacob had done. And he must not have cared because he had let it go into collection. His poor mother was probably spinning in her grave.

I looked at the telephone; then I looked at the folder in my hand. I had no idea how I was going to approach this mess. But it was my job and I had no choice.

I reached for the phone, but then I stopped when I realized he was at work. I didn't want to leave him a voice mail message, so I decided to confront him face-to-face. I knew that this shit was going to have a negative impact on what was left of our relationship, so I had to resolve it with a long-handled shovel.

I kept myself busy the rest of that afternoon, calling some of the other deadbeats. By the end of the day, I'd been cussed out and called every name in the book. I was still tired from staying late at the bachelorette party the night before, so I couldn't wait to get home.

I picked up some Chinese takeout after I left work. Around six that evening, I called up Pee Wee and asked him what time he was going to drop Charlotte off.

“Charlotte's not with me!” he said quickly, panic in his voice.

“But—but the girl from her school called me up and told me that her daddy was there to pick her up!” I hollered, clutching the telephone in my hand like it was trying to get away. “What—oh shit!”

“What in the hell is goin' on, woman? My child is missin'?”

“Um, that must have been Jacob that picked her up. You know white folks think we all look alike. That girl probably thought it was you!”

“Look, I don't care what the hell you do with that punk! But I sure as hell care about what he does with my daughter. Now, if you don't want to end up in court in a custody battle, you'd better get the spirit, sister!”

“I wish you would calm down. Jacob loves children!”

“That's what's got me so worried! And you, of all people, after what you told me you went through with Mr. Boatwright—”

“Hold on. I hear a car.” I laid the kitchen phone down on the counter, ran to the living room window, and snatched open the curtains. There was Charlotte crawling out of Jacob's car with three shopping bags. As soon as I opened the door, he blew his horn, waved at me, and sped off like he was driving a getaway car.

I grabbed Charlotte by the arm and pulled her into the house.

“What the hell is the matter with you, girl? You don't leave school with anybody but me, Rhoda, your daddy, or your grandparents.”

“Dang, Mama! Why are you tripping? I was with Jacob. He says he's more like family.” She was clutching the straps of her shopping bags so tight she must have thought that I was going to take them from her. “He took me to that sale at the Barbie store in the mall. Then when I told him you had picked the stems off some greens last night so you could cook them up for dinner tonight, he felt sorry for me and took me for pizza.”

“Go put your things away and get back down here. We need to have a long talk.”

As soon as Charlotte stomped up the stairs with her lips poked out so far it looked like they'd been starched, I returned to the telephone. “Everything's fine. It was just a big misunderstanding,” I told Pee Wee in a calm voice. “Jacob had picked her up from school.”

“Shit! Oh, hell no!” He was frantic. “If you can't straighten out that punk, I will! If I hear about him pickin' my daughter up from school or doin' anything else with her that I don't think is right, I am goin' to kick his ass! Will you pass that on to him for me?”

“Pee Wee, you are overreacting. And as far as I'm concerned, this conversation is over.” I hung up.

When Charlotte finally joined me in the kitchen, her face was so long it almost touched the floor. “You don't want me to have no fun,” she said with a pout.

“Honey, I want you to have fun. I know it's important for a girl your age to be happy. But it's more important for you to be safe. The world is not what it used to be, and you can't trust everybody.”

“What are you talking about, Mama? I was with Jacob, not the boogeyman. He wouldn't let anything happen to me.”

“You don't understand.
Anybody
can be the boogeyman….”

I could see that I had only confused her more. “Charlotte, when I was a little girl, younger than you, somebody my mama trusted took advantage of me.”

“You got…
raped
?” She gasped; then she gave me a pitiful look.

“Yes,” I said with a nod. “And it went on for years.”

“Is he in jail?”

I shook my head. “He was an old man and he eventually died. I didn't tell my mama what had happened until he'd been dead for a long time. But it still hurts when I think about it. I don't want that to happen to you.”

“You think Jacob…uh, can I go to my room now. I don't like talking about stuff like this.”

“You can go to your room, but you can expect me to talk about stuff like this whenever I feel it's necessary. Now, I like Jacob; I like him a lot. But he's supposed to be courting me, not you. I don't like it, your daddy doesn't like it. And I don't even want to think of how crazy your grandparents will get if they knew about it.”

“Oh, so you don't want me to speak to Jacob no more?”

“I didn't say that. I don't want you to ever leave school with him again—unless I know about it. I don't want you to ever go to his house again, without me knowing. That's one thing I've already warned you about. You haven't been back over there, have you?”

Charlotte dropped her head. Then she nodded. “I rode my bike over there yesterday to see his new goldfish….”

“C
harlotte, don't you
ever
go to Jacob's house again unless I'm with you. If you do, you will be severely punished. Now, do I make myself clear?”

She nodded. “Can I go over to Patsy Boone's house after school tomorrow?”

“Yes, you can go over to Patsy's house. She lives just down the block, so I can pick you up on my way home from work.”

Charlotte couldn't get to her room fast enough. The phone rang, but I didn't pick up. I let it go to the answering machine. It was Muh'Dear talking loud and fast. “Annette, pick up that phone. I know you standin' there.”

“Hi, Muh'Dear. I was in the bathroom,” I lied.

“You been hidin' from us? Scary Mary said she seen you at the mall the other day and you ducked around a corner so fast she couldn't catch you. She thought you saw her but was tryin' to dodge her.”

“I didn't see her.”

“Tell Charlotte to come by after school tomorrow. I got some of that hard candy she likes.”

“She's going to visit her friend after school tomorrow. You know that little Patsy girl, a grade ahead of Charlotte.”

Muh'Dear gasped. “You let your baby run around with a pregnant girl?”

“What are you talking about? Patsy's only twelve….”

“My mama had me when she was twelve!”

“Are you telling me that Patsy Boone, my daughter's friend, is going to have a baby?”

“Girl, I'm speakin' plain English. You can't understand what I'm sayin'?”

“How in the world did that happen?”

“Patsy's hotter than a six-shooter. I'm surprised it didn't happen before now.”

I looked toward the stairs. “I'll talk to you later.”

I rushed up to Charlotte's room and flung open her door. “Girl, why didn't you tell me that little Patsy girl was pregnant?”

There was a startled look on Charlotte's face. She stood in front of the mirror on the front of her closet door admiring the new jeans Jacob had purchased for her. With a shrug, she said, “I thought you already knew. Everybody else in town knows.”

“Everybody except me,” I said sadly.

I went back downstairs right away, moving my feet so slowly, it seemed like it was taking forever for me to make it to the living room.

A few minutes later, Scary Mary entered my house without knocking. She made herself comfortable, stretching out on my living room couch like a cat, staring at me with a sympathetic look on her face as I complained about my daughter's recent behavior. This was one of the few times I was glad to see her. I needed to talk to somebody after I'd heard about little Patsy's pregnancy. I had called up Rhoda's house, but Jade wouldn't call her to the phone. Then I'd called up Pee Wee. When Lizzie answered the phone, in such a cold and impersonal way—“Annette who?” she'd asked—I got so pissed off I just hung up.

“I didn't know that raising a child was going to be this hard,” I lamented.

“Girl, you ain't seen nothin' yet. If you this worried about your girl and she ain't even in her teens yet, just imagine what you're going to go through then,” Scary Mary said, taking a loud drink from the glass of bourbon she'd requested. “Now, you take me. I was a pistol back in my day. I lost my cherry when I was nine.”

I could feel the sides of my face tighten. “Was it somebody in your family? Somebody you knew?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who took advantage of you?”

“What's wrong with you? Ain't nobody took advantage of me. I was ready to be popped!” She smacked her lips and winked at me.

“Oh,” I muttered.

“He was the cutest boy on the planet. Big brown eyes, smooth butterscotch-colored skin. His daddy was Korean, his mama was black. He was so exotic I couldn't help myself! Of course, neither one of us knew about orgasms then, so when we came at the same time, we both thought we was havin' a spasm, and that that was the punishment from God that all the old folks had been scarin' us with. Heh, heh, heh.” Scary Mary paused and shook her head. There was a wishful look on her face. “Boy, if I could go back in time, I'd be a totally different person if I had had more sense and more guidance.” She sniffed and looked away, but not before a tear rolled out of the corner of her eye. I pretended not to see her wipe it away with the tip of her finger.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything you want to ask me. I ain't shy.”

“How did you…how did you end up becoming a madam?”

“What kind of stupid question is that?”

“Most kids dream about being doctors and nurses and whatnot….”

“The young girls back in my day didn't have a lot of choices. Black and white, they was sellin' pussy—one way or the other. Hell, just gettin' married is a form of prostitution! A woman hooks up with a man and she marries him for what he can give her.”

I shook my head. “There are a lot of women who don't need a man to take care of them. There are a lot of men who are hooking up with women so they can be taken care of.”

“And that's why we call them suckers gigolos!” she yelled.

I laughed. She didn't. Instead, she gave me a serious look as she wiped away another tear. “When I found out I could make just as much money sellin' somebody else's pussy as I could mine, I did. Shoot. My mama didn't raise no fool.” She stopped talking and gave me a dry look.

“You don't have a problem with taking advantage of people like that?”

“Takin' advantage of who? I ain't never took advantage of nobody in my life! If my girls are fool enough to sell pussy and give me the money, I'm fool enough to take it! This is a mad world, and it's gettin' madder by the minute. Now look at you sittin' there worried to death about your daughter endin' up a fool.”

“That's not exactly what I'm worried about. It's just that being a single parent is a lot harder than I thought it'd be. Since Pee Wee's departure, I feel like I've aged ten years.”

“Don't mention age. As you know, I'm ninety if I'm a day, and I didn't live this long by bein' a fool. I stay three steps ahead of everybody. You remind me of myself when I was your age—strong and smart. Women like me and you, we sure enough don't take no mess. Somehow we always land on our feet like a kitty cat. Speaking of kitty cats, when you get a chance, drop by my house and meet my new booty. Her name is Weng Lu, and she's from one of them way off Asian cities. She's real popular with my adventuresome clients. They all want to see if that rumor's true about Asian gals' pussies bein' slanted in a
sideways
position in the crotch area.” I rolled my eyes. The old madam, who looked like she belonged in a mummy's tomb, let out a great belch. “But even with you bein' strong and smart, you might make it alone and you might not! A woman raisin' kids alone got it hard.”

“It's not like Charlotte's daddy's not in the picture,” I reminded. I was glad that we were back on our original subject.

“He ain't in the house! And that's just as bad. If I was in your shoes, I'd be doin' everything I could to get my husband back.”

My jaw dropped. “Don't forget; you were the one who wanted me to chastise him and make him suffer by putting a voodoo spell on him,” I reminded.

“Well, you know as well as I do that them voodoo spells swing more than one way. You can use it to get rid of him, cripple him, or you can use it to get him back home!”

“I hope I never want a man bad enough to use voodoo to get him,” I said, putting a lot of emphasis on my words. “I'd rather die alone than go to all that much trouble for love,” I admitted with a shudder.

“Well, it's your funeral, baby. Mind if I have me another highball for the road?”

I didn't go to bed until midnight, and I didn't sleep much that night. As soon as I got up the next morning, I called up Jacob.

“Hey, baby. I was just on my way out the door to work,” he told me.

“Will you stop by the house tonight. I need to talk to you,” I said in a weak and uncertain voice.

“Listen, if it's about me picking Charlotte up from school, you don't have to worry about that anymore. I won't do it again unless you tell me to.”

“That's one of the things that I need to talk to you about,” I mumbled.

“Let's discuss it over dinner at that Italian place you like so much. I'll pick you up around six thirty. Is that cool? I owe you another good time, I think.”

“I'll see you at six thirty,” I replied.

It was one of the longest days I'd ever endured. Pee Wee had picked Charlotte up from school so she could spend the night with him. Jacob picked me up at six thirty just like he said he would. And all the way to the restaurant, he talked about how happy he was going to make me.

I didn't beat around the bush when we got to Antonosanti's. “Jacob, before we discuss our personal relationship, I need to ask you something. And this is business related,” I began. I was glad the waiter had already delivered our wine. I took a long drink.

Jacob gave me a puzzled look. “Is there somebody else?” he wanted to know, his jaw twitching. “You don't want me anymore?”

“We'll discuss that later—”

“We'll discuss that now!”

Before I knew what was happening, he lunged across the table and grabbed my wrist. “Who is he?”

“I don't know what the hell you are talking about! And that's not what I want to discuss,” I yelled, prying his fingers from around my wrist.

“You are my woman and I love you, BITCH! If I ever catch you, or find out you—”

I was so furious that when I rose, my chair fell over. “I am not going to stay here and argue with you in a place like this.”

“You want to get down and funky, I will gladly take you over to the projects on Noble Street. That way we can go at it ghetto style.”

“I'm out of here.” I looked around. People on all sides were staring at us. Carlo, the cute young waiter who usually waited on me when I visited Antonosanti's, rushed in my direction.

“Annette, is there a problem?” Carlo asked, looking from me to Jacob.

I held up my hand. “It's all right, Carlo. Put the wine on my account. And please call me a taxi.”

Before I could leave the table, Jacob leaped up from his seat and slapped my face so hard I saw stars and stripes.