His First Wife (10 page)

Sometimes you need to remind yourself of old sayings you'd heard and ignored in the past in order to get out of bed in the morning. And it was raining the morning after the worst day of my life, so the saying just came to my mind. My entire body was hurting when morning came to wake me. Before I even opened my eyes, I knew it would take me minutes, maybe even an hour to convince my overstretched body to rise. When I opened my eyes and found that I wasn't sleeping in the bed I shared with my husband, but rather the bed my mother put in the room that was once my bedroom, I recalled the events of the night before and how I reasoned that the only place I wanted to be, could be with any emotional sanity, was home . . . the home I grew up in. It wasn't a decision I'd come to lightly.

After I left Marcy's, I had been sitting in the driver's seat of my car with my head spinning in a vat of drama.
Jamison. My mother. Marcy. Milicent . . .
It seemed the whole world was off. Crumbling. Falling apart. And I didn't know what to do. I needed these people right now. I'd waited thirty-three years to get pregnant. And I needed something to go right. Just someone to lean on. But now they all seemed out of place.

Was this me? My life? I was so confused that without thinking, I drove straight to where my mind had been programmed to take me—my home. But when I pulled up in the driveway, I saw Jamison's truck and realized that I wasn't ready to talk to him yet. That truck outside, the man inside, had been somewhere else just one night ago and that was still heavy on my heart. What was there to say between us? Ask about the thing?

After sitting there for a few minutes, I decided to drive to a hotel, but when I got there, I thought of how ridiculous I'd look—eight months pregnant, checking into a hotel with a local driver's license. . . . Even in my “unright” mind, this was a low I wasn't ready for.

So I kept driving. My foot to the pedal, just as firmly as it had been the night before, I kept driving and realized that the only place left was my mother's house. Then I got mad. Mad that she'd come up with some silly excuse not to come pick me up from the jail when both of us knew she wasn't going anywhere. This wasn't about scheduling. This was about pride and order and I was tired of both. If not one of the people in my life was there for me, even my own husband, my mother was supposed to be. I wasn't going to drive around like a homeless, motherless child when it wasn't true. She was about to have to do her God-given job, like it or not.

So, I woke up in the bed in the guest room that was once my bedroom. My back aflame, my ankles completely swollen, my baby shifting from side to side, begging for food, if I'd forgotten just how pregnant I was the day before, it was clear now. Everyone was right. I had no business being out like that. But you try telling that to a pregnant woman who'd just found her husband cheating.

“Mother,” I called without moving a muscle a bit. She knew I was in the house. She was an old, Southern woman who dared not even snore in her sleep for fear of seeming crass. If one thing moved in that house, she knew it.

“Mother,” I cried again.

I tried to pull myself up in the bed, but it was useless. My back had been hurting since the fifth month, and now it was next to unbearable.

“Mother,” I hollered this time. The door opened slowly and my mother poked her head in as if unaffected by my screams. She was never a fan of loud voices and things. She always said the home was to be a place of serenity and calm. But then, she used to say a lot of things.

“You are in here hollering like my house is some saloon,” she said. She was dressed in a blush night robe with a floral head scarf tied toward the back of her head.

“I just need you to help me get up,” I said. “My back hurts.”

“Of course it does. That's what happens when you're eight months pregnant and out in the street chasing some man.”

“The man is my
husband
,” I replied. “And I wasn't out chasing anyone.... Look, would you just give me a hand.”

She frowned and after much reluctance came over to help.

“Oh, I see you're sleeping in your clothes now,” she said. I was still wearing the dress from Marcy's. “Did you pick that up in jail?”

“Whatever,” I said. I'd gotten used to my mother's quick and dry judgments. She wasn't the kind of person who could see a problem and just let it slide. She had to let the world know if one thing was out of place, one item wasn't meeting her standards. She'd always been that way even when I was a child, but like everything else, it only got worse when my dad left. Then she became the judge, and the rest of us . . . the defendants.

“Oh, and you're cursing at your mother now too?”

“Mother,” I said, “Since when did
whatever
become a curse?”

She looked at me blankly. I was out of order.

“Look, could you just help me out of this dress, so I can put on something clean?”

“Hum . . .” she responded, but I could tell she was struggling not to say something else.

“Well, I had Edith put some clothes out for you in the bathroom,” she said, unzipping me. “And there's a towel for you in there too.”

“Clothes?”

“I sent her to the store this morning. I knew you didn't come with anything.”

“Thanks, Mother,” I said and I really meant it.

“And please comb your hair before you come down. I don't need you looking like a convict at the breakfast table. There's been enough going on around here,” she said. “Your Aunt Luchie is coming over here for breakfast and I don't want her getting wind of what's happened.”

“Aunt Luchie is coming,” I said happily. My mother rolled her eyes. Her oldest sister, Aunt Luchie, was the most beloved of all of my mother's siblings. She was the free spirit of the family. She'd been a teacher, a chef, and preacher, and once a jazz singer. She always had a smile on her beautiful face, a new song to sing to you, and the ability to make everyone feel special and important. And for this, everyone, everywhere loved Aunt Luchie. And while my mother too shared in the energy of the communal crush, she couldn't help but to make it obvious that she was jealous of how everyone received, with open arms, her big sister, especially where I was concerned. When I was smaller, I'd scream and holler whenever Aunt Luchie tried to leave our house. My mother would look at me angrily and send me to my room. “Never beg anyone for anything,” she'd say.

“She's coming over to try to get money for that old hospital downtown,” my mother said emptily. While Aunt Luchie was the oldest, her rebelliousness led to my grandparents leaving my mother in charge of their estate when they passed. Now Mother held the old purse strings and all of her siblings, including Aunt Luchie, had to come to her for everything.

“Grady?” I asked. I'd heard about them closing the hospital on the news.

“Apparently.”

 

 

After taking a long shower, I dressed and followed the direction of Aunt Luchie's laugh toward the kitchen. It was loud, cackling, and lacking any melodic qualities. I was sure my mother was sitting beside her cringing at the inconvenience.

“He called you, girl,” Ms. Edith, who'd been my mother's maid for as long as I'd been out of the house, said when I turned into the hallway that led to the kitchen. Ms. Edith was a sweet, old woman who always seemed to have her wig on crooked. She loved taking care of my mother, watching
Wheel of Fortune
and having a secret to share. It seemed like every time I walked into the house, Ms. Edith would come over to me, trying to share a secret she'd been saving.

“Who called?” I played into her. I knew she was talking about Jamison, but Ms. Edith liked to reveal her secrets slowly. An old Southern woman cooking up the latest headline.

“Your husband,” she stepped back and gave me the thin, questioning detective eye. “He's called every hour, on the hour, since we been up this morning. Now, your mama, she done told me not to tell you, but you know Ms. Edith got your back, right?” She snapped her finger and winked. “A woman needs to know if her husband is trying to reach her—no matter what he done,” she tried to whisper in my ear. “Your mama thinks I don't know what went down yesterday with you in that jail all alone,” she pulled all of me—and I do mean all of me—into her arms and squeezed me tight like I was about to be put away for life, “all alone . . . not my Kerry Ann! I wanted to come get you, but you know that mother of yours done come up with a million things for me to do in this house, so I couldn't get a foot out the door.”

“Well, thank you,” I said, kissing her on the cheek. Ms. Edith was about to go into her other favorite topic—how clean she keeps my mother's house.

“Now, you know there wasn't much for me to do around here,” she went on. “I keep this place clean as a whistle. Even when she have those people come drunk around here, acting like they sixteen years old, I still keep it cleaner than a hospital.”

“You sure do,” I said.

“Is that my niece I hear?” Aunt Luchie called. “Come in here, gal, and give your aunt a big old hug . . . if you can.” She started laughing at her joke before I even entered the kitchen.

“Very funny,” I said, walking in to see that Ms. Edith had set up a formal breakfast table for us.

“Sugar, sugar, sugar,” Aunt Luchie said, running to me. As usual, she was wearing a silky sweat suit that was made of every color in the coloring box and short heels—she was sporty, but her upbringing still hadn't allowed her to wear sneakers. Aunt Luchie had to be one of the most beautiful sixty-nine-year-olds I'd ever seen. Her smooth, coal-colored skin, thick eyelashes, and perfectly grayed hair (that she called platinum) made you fear getting that old a bit less. She'd aged with the grace of a dancer . . . which I think she'd been at one point.

“Look at you!” she kissed me on the cheek and looked me over as if she hadn't seen me less than a month ago at my baby shower.

“Yeah, he's growing,” I said.

“Don't worry, baby. He'll be out in about four days. Five at the most,” she said, rubbing my stomach.

“Oh, Luchie, stop all that old talk,” my mother cut in. “She isn't due for at least two weeks.”

Aunt Luchie had never had a child of her own, but she always seemed to know a lot about babies—when they were coming, what kind of person they'd grow up to be, what kind of illnesses they'd have. She called it her gift, but my grandparents told her it wasn't appropriate for someone like her to go around speaking in such a way. They were Christian and didn't believe in such things. But that never stopped even the most upstanding women of our church from stopping to ask for my Aunt Luchie to lay hands on their new baby.

“You mark my words,” she said to me. “I was only a day off when you were coming—”

“Two days,” Mother said.

“Twenty-seven hours,” Aunt Luchie retorted. “Anyway, don't go listening to that old hen. I
know
. . .” She took my hand and led me to the table. “Now, what you doing staying at your mother's house?” She placed a scone on a saucer in front of me.

“
She,
” my mother cut in again, “was just here helping me with some things.”

Aunt Luchie frowned.

“What
things
?” Aunt Luchie asked suspiciously.

“What does it matter to you, old woman?” my mother said.

Suddenly, Ms. Edith appeared, plopping a second and unnecessary carafe of coffee on the table.

“Hum,” she said loudly.

“I thought you were coming over here to talk about the hospital,” my mother said. “Now, let's talk about that.”

“Please, Thirjane. Now you want to talk about the hospital?” Aunt Luchie said. “Let the girl speak.”

“It's nothing; I was just in a disagreement with Jamison,” I said. My mother sank down in her seat.

“A disagreement?” Aunt Luchie asked.

“Yes,” my mother said.

“Who is she?” Aunt Luchie asked knowingly.

I wanted so badly not to answer her, to keep the whole thing a secret, but I needed to talk about it.

“What makes you think it's that?” my mother asked.

“The girl is about to give birth any day . . . what else would make her leave her home and come . . . here?”

“Um . . . hum,” Ms. Edith said. My mother shot her eyes at her and she turned to pretend she was cutting fruit on the countertop.

“It was just a small argument and they will be back—”

“Her name is Coreen,” I said, cutting my mother off. With the mentioning of a name, even my mother fell silent.

“How long he been stepping out?” Aunt Luchie asked.

“I don't know, six, maybe seven months. That's all I know of.”

“You knew all this time?”

“Some of it. But . . . I just didn't know what to do. He kept saying she was just a friend. And that I was being paranoid. But my gut kept telling me something was wrong.”

“Well, why didn't you follow your gut?”

“I don't know, Aunt Luchie. He kept saying I was wrong and that I needed to trust him.”

“Always trust yourself first,” she said. “When you see something evil, you call it what it is. You ball up your fist and you fight the thing when you first see it. All this posing and prissing like you too good to fight to be treated right. That won't get you anywhere.”