God Ain't Through Yet (6 page)

T
here were certain moments of bliss with my husband that I could not get out of my head, especially if a certain song came on the radio or the TV, or if somebody said something that reminded me of him. There was no way I was going to forget all of the pleasant experiences that we had shared together.

There were those loathsome weekend fishing trips that I used to pretend I enjoyed, but only to please him. There were the picnics and camping trips in the summertime where I'd invariably get poison ivy on almost every square inch of my legs. There were the trips to the Bahamas, the trips to the spas in Cleveland, and even the cheap dates he took me on to greasy, back-alley restaurants in parts of town you couldn't get a gangster to go to. Those were some fond memories for me. Despite the fact that I'd once been engaged to marry another man, Pee Wee had been my soul mate for years. I'd also wallowed around in bed with a slew of other men along the way, but Pee Wee was my only true love. I'd been with him longer, and in a more serious relationship—even before we got married—than I'd ever been with another man. We had a strong history, and because of our daughter, we would still have some kind of a future together.

And it was going to take more than a woman like Little Leg Lizzie to make me forget those moments of bliss. They kept me afloat just when it felt like I was about to go under.

I was compelled to reflect on my recent past to see if I could get a better understanding of what had gone wrong. I had to think back to events and conversations between Pee Wee and me that might have indicated that something was amiss. Not that it would do me much good now. But even if it was too late, I still wanted to know.

Even though Pee Wee was gone, he was still in my daily thoughts; things he'd said, things he'd done. It was almost like I could still hear his voice. “Woman, you are goin' to spoil me! I must be the luckiest man in the world,” he declared one January evening about a week into the new year—just a couple of months ago! I had met him at the door with a cold beer and his slippers. He took a sip of the beer and let out a loud burp. He paused long enough to give me a hungry little kiss on the cheek. I sucked in my breath, and hauled off and kissed him so hard on the lips he stumbled backward and hit the wall. “Girl, please. Let me get in the house and get out my work clothes first.” He laughed. “Damn, you act like you just got out of prison.”

“I'm just happy to see you,” I told him, leading him to the couch in the living room. “I left work early today so I could get home in time to make your favorite dinner. As soon as the cornbread gets done, we can eat.”

“I bet you plannin' on dumpin' me in that tub full of bubble bath again,” Pee Wee whispered with an anxious look on his face.

“I sure am,” I purred, trying to sound as seductive as I could.

“And another one of them hot-oil foot massages, too?”

“And another hot-oil foot massage, too,” I said with a nod. “Later, if you feel up to it, I want to make love to you like I've never made love to you before.”

“Hmmm. That's the same thing you said yesterday when I got home. You know, you don't have to be doin' all this. We ain't so young no more. Listen up, all them positions that you twistin' me in and out of these days, they are fun, but my back ain't what it used to be, baby.” He laughed. I laughed, too.

“Do you want me to stop giving you so much special attention?” I asked with an exaggerated pout.

“Naw, you ain't got to stop showin' me so much attention. But it would make more sense if you showed me the kind of attention that wasn't so physical. At the rate we're goin', I'll be dead soon.”

I continued to pamper my husband, but only half as much. He seemed pleased and appreciative. By the end of that month, things had become downright humdrum. I got tired just looking at his face as he slumped in his ancient La-Z-Boy snoring like a moose.

Despite all of my efforts, Pee Wee reminded me of the same old sad sack that he'd been when I had the affair! I made up excuses to get out of the house so I wouldn't have to look at his long face.

Thankfully, he continued to make love to me. And if he had stopped doing that again, too, I was still determined
not
to have another affair again.

There was no way I was going to let another affair disrupt or ruin my marriage.

“Baby, you've been down in the dumps a lot lately, and I don't like to see you like that,” I told Pee Wee over dinner one evening. He had come home from the barbershop looking more depressed than ever. Our daughter, Charlotte, noticed it, too.

“Daddy, you look like a grumpy old man,” she told him, rushing through dinner so she could flee and go do whatever it was kids her age liked to do. Unlike me, Charlotte had never had to worry about her weight. She had just gobbled up three spicy chicken legs and a mountain of mashed potatoes. I'd steamed a skinless chicken breast and stir-fried some vegetables for myself. I ate fried chicken and most of the other fatty foods that I had consumed over the years only once or twice a week now. And since I'd shared a slab of ribs with Pee Wee and Charlotte for dinner the day before, I planned to eat skinless chicken and steamed veggies for a while.

“I am a grumpy old man, and I'm goin' to be one until I'm a dead old man,” Pee Wee said with a straight face.

Charlotte, who had her father's rich mocha skin, cute features, and long, thin arms, rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Can I be excused?” she asked, glancing at the Mickey Mouse watch on her narrow wrist. “I get bored sitting around old people.”

“You go clean up your room,” I ordered, using the sternest tone of voice that I could manage.

“Oh, I'd rather sit here and be bored than do that,” my daughter decided, rubbing her small, button-like nose.

“I think she should go clean up that pigsty of a room,” Pee Wee said, nodding in agreement.

“I want you to go over that room with a fine-toothed comb until you find that earring of mine that I told you to stop playing with,” I told my daughter. “And don't you ever get into my jewelry box again. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, ma'am. Do I have to look for that old earring now?”

“Yes, you do, so get on it.” Pee Wee cleared his throat. It was impossible for me not to notice how distracted and nervous he was acting. I knew him well enough to know that there was something on his mind, and it was probably something I didn't want to hear. My first thought was that it was something physical. That thought chilled me down to the bottom of my feet. I didn't think I could deal with that. Last year when he had that cancer scare, he had not even told me about it until he received a clean bill of health from his doctor. That news had almost destroyed me—even after I knew that he was going to be all right. A very qualified doctor had treated him and assured him that he had nothing else to worry about. But doctors didn't know everything. And even with all the knowledge they possessed today, they were often wrong. Before Pee Wee could utter his next sentence, I began to anticipate his funeral and my eventual nervous breakdown. “I need to talk to your mama about somethin' anyway,” he added, making me even more apprehensive.

Charlotte and I looked at Pee Wee at the same time, then at each other. “Shoot. I hope we ain't getting no divorce,” she said with a worried look. “Jimmy Proctor's mama and daddy just got a divorce and now he ain't no fun no more. Always sad…”

Divorce? I had not thought of that; but now that it had been mentioned, it was running a close second place to cancer! If it was either one, I was doomed! Now it was my funeral that I was anticipating.

Somehow I managed to force myself to remain calm. But the truth of the matter was, I was in mild agony. To me, divorce and cancer were two of the most feared words in the English language.

“Nobody is thinking about divorce,” I said weakly, addressing Charlotte but looking at my husband. My daughter released a loud sigh of relief before she strutted backward out of the kitchen and ran upstairs to her room. I turned to Pee Wee and held my breath. “Are we?”

“Are we what?”

“Is anybody
in this room
thinking about a divorce?”

“If it is, it ain't me. How many times do I have to tell you that I don't want no divorce.”

I felt relieved, but only for a split second. With divorce off the plate, that left the demon that I feared the most. “Are you sick?” I rasped.

“No, I'm not. This ain't got nothin' to do with my health, praise the Lord.”

To say that I was even more relieved would have been putting it mildly. I was ecstatic. But that lasted only a few moments, because from the look on Pee Wee's face, something was still very wrong.

“Then what do you want to talk to me about?” I asked him, my voice, hands, and half of everything else on my body trembling. One of my knees was shaking so hard it was tapping against the leg of the table like a baton.

He took his time answering my question. And when he did, he didn't even look me in the eye. He tilted his head to the side, scratched his neck, and then spoke with his lips barely moving. “Baby, I need a change. I need a real change in my life, and I need it now.”

“M
ama, why are you looking so crazy?” My daughter had slunk back into the kitchen before I could respond to Pee Wee's comments. “You are looking so mean, people would think somebody stole something from you.”

Charlotte was just inside the doorway, leaning against the counter. I didn't like the look on her face, or her tone of voice. One thing I could say about my relationship with my daughter was that I never let her forget which one of us was the parent and which one of us was the child. Whenever I got too liberal with her, to reestablish my role, I just thought about the incorrigible kids of some of the people I knew, and all of the problems that they were embroiled in. Like the kids acting out in school, talking back, running wild in the streets, doing drugs, fucking their brains out, and so on. That all reminded me of how good my relationship with my child was. But to save myself some time, I thought about children like Jade, Rhoda's only daughter.

Even though Rhoda was a stern parent who kept a tight rein on her little devil, Jade made my daughter seem like the poster child of innocence. That was one of the many things that I had to be thankful for. Nevertheless, I gave Charlotte one of my meanest looks. But before I could deal with her the way I wanted to, her daddy took over.

“I know you didn't clean up that room that quick,” Pee Wee said, shaking a finger in Charlotte's direction. “Did you find your mama's earring?”

“I couldn't even find the fine-toothed comb that Mama told me to go over my room with!” she hollered with a hopeless look on her face.

My daughter said and did some cute things. And when she did, Pee Wee and I usually laughed at the same time. But not this time.

“What's a fine-toothed comb anyway? And how is it going to help me find an earring?” Charlotte gave me a wide-eyed look.

“Don't worry about the earring right now. Just go to your room,” I ordered.

As soon as Charlotte disappeared, I turned to Pee Wee. “What's going on? What kind of change are you talking about?”

He shrugged his shoulders first; then he looked me in the eye. “I'm bored,” was all he said. He shrugged again. But this time the way he did it made it seem like he was in pain. And from the frown on his face, he must have been. There were tears in his eyes, and his forehead had deep lines stretched across it. I had never noticed them before, but they must have been there for a while, and quite permanent, because when the frown left his face, the lines remained.

I gave him a puzzled look as I sat there waiting for him to give me more information. “And?”

“And what?” he replied with his mouth resembling a hole in the ground.

“So you're bored. What else?”

“That's it. I'm bored.” He shrugged again. His whole face twitched for a few seconds, making him look like a confused rabbit.

“Is that all? Is that why you are sitting here looking like Methuselah's granddaddy? Is that the reason you got me all nervous and scared? I was sitting here thinking that you wanted a divorce or that you're sick with something. And all this time your only problem is that you're
bored
!” It took all of my strength for me to keep from laughing out loud. But I didn't laugh, and I wouldn't laugh until he told me what he was bored with. “You're bored with…”

He laughed before I could finish my sentence. “Don't worry. You ain't what I'm bored with. It's just everything else. Runnin' the shop so many years has become such a routine that I could cut hair in my sleep. The main reason I wanted my own business in the first place was so I wouldn't have to worry about slavin' away at a job I didn't like, or a job that ended up borin' me to death. Well, I got my own business and it's so borin' now that I can hardly stand to go in anymore.”

“This is making no sense at all. You love being a barber. When we were kids that was all you talked about doing. And if you're tired of being a barber, what else in the world do you think you can do at your age?”

“I didn't say I was tired of bein' a barber,” he mumbled, looking at me with an uncertain look in his eyes. He didn't sound very convinced, so I didn't know what to think. “Life is passin' me by, so maybe I should look into somethin' else before it's too late.”

“Too late? As my mother often tells me, you've already got one foot and a big toe in the grave,” I scoffed.

“You don't have to be so optimistic, Annette,” he snapped. The sarcasm in his voice was so thick I could have cut it with a butcher knife. “The least you can be is a little more sympathetic. Shit, I ain't dead yet, so it ain't too late for me to do nothin'.” He shot a piercing look in my direction but I didn't even feel it.

I sucked in some air and then finally gave him the sympathetic look he was whining about; but I also delivered some pretty harsh words. “Baby, you are no longer twenty-five. You are not even in the same dimension with youth anymore. No matter what else you try to do, you're a decade late and a thousand dollars short.”

“A
day
late and a
dollar
short would have been enough. Do you have to bury me that deep?”

“I'm sorry,” I said, and I really was. I had just made a pretty heavy-handed comment. Sadly, it was the way I really felt….

“Like I just said, I'm not dead yet, Annette. As long as I'm alive and kickin', I can still do other things with my life,” he said sharply, and with a fierce scowl.

One of the reasons I didn't like for people to confide in me about a serious matter was that no matter what I said, they copped an attitude. I didn't even want to think about what Pee Wee would say if I agreed with him that life was passing him by and that it was time for him to pursue a change. And the reason I didn't go in that direction was because no matter what he decided to do, it would have an impact on my life. After all I'd already been through, all I really wanted to do now was spend the rest of my years living a quiet, happy life. I didn't want to make any more changes. I finally had everything I needed to be happy; so as far as I was concerned, the only thing left for me to do was enjoy myself and keep Pee Wee happy.

“Maybe you need a hobby,” I suggested. “Or some other kind of social outlet.” I felt like I was grabbing at straws, or a life jacket or something. Whatever it was that I was trying to get a hold on, it was a lifeline because I felt like Pee Wee was sinking fast into some kind of abyss and he was dragging me down with him. “Brother Barnes and some of the other brothers from church get together every week and play Chinese checkers. Deacon Maize has a domino club.”

Pee Wee looked at me like I'd slapped him. “Brother Barnes and Deacon Maize and all their checker and domino playin' buddies are in their seventies and eighties!”

“Well, so what? If it's not too late for them to put some spark in their lives, it's not too late for you. I think a hobby would do you a lot of good,” I insisted. It still felt like we were both sinking.

“I already got all the hobbies I need!” he retorted. “I go fishin', I spend time playin' pool and drinkin' with my boys—what I need another hobby for?”

Not only was I getting tired of this conversation, I was also getting impatient and bored. “But exactly what do you really want to do?”

“That's what I'm tryin' to figure out, baby,” he replied.

“All right, let's look at things from a different perspective.”

“Such as?”

“Remember when your boy Victor Ford closed up his sports bar and went on that round-the-world trip when his wife ran off with that musician? He sold his house, his SUV, his furniture, everything. He didn't even make it halfway around the world before he came running back to Richland. He ended up opening another sports bar, but it was ten steps behind where he was before he sold the first one. You are a barber, that's what you were born to do. And what about all your loyal customers? If you even think about going out of business, what will become of them? There's only one other black barber in town now, but you get most of the business.”

I rose from my seat, went around the table, and stood behind Pee Wee. He covered his face with his hands and released some of the deepest, loudest, most painful-sounding moans I'd ever heard.

It scared me to death because it sounded like he was dying.