Naughtier than Nice (2 page)

The eve of Christmas Eve. My tree was decorated, presents for all underneath.

We were in the houghmagandy bedroom. We had a room at my home devoted to our passion, a well-appointed room I kept locked. King bed. Armless chair. Bench. Music. Candles. Mints. Water. Wine. Blue Gatorade. Massage oil. Lubes. An assortment of grown-folk toys. Scarves and blindfolds. Chocolates. Wipes. There was a wall of mirrors. I had a journal with my fantasies written down.
Kama Sutra
books. A mini fridge to store cool drinks and fresh fruit. I owned a Sybian. GoPro HERO3 Black Edition to capture memories, or just to play memories while we lounged in bed on a rainy day. We had an amazing sex life and a room dedicated to making love, exploring, having fun, and now to making a baby. If we kept this house, this room would become the baby's room, after it was deep-cleaned. If they used a blue light on that room it would have glowed and looked like a Jackson Pollock painting.

Santa Claus hat on my head and Argentine wine on my breath, I was on a Liberator pillow, my bottom angled upward at thirty degrees, but at one point it was more like seventy, with me on my shoulders, an angle that caused gravity to pull Franklin's weight down, pulled him deeper inside my love.

He rested on me, at a kinder angle, after his grand finale, winded.

I moaned, sucked his bottom lip, and asked, “Did you find Davy Jones's locker?”

“I was not that deep.”

“For the love of sweet black baby Jesus, you were deeper than Obama's speech on racism.”

I put butterfly kisses on his lips as I ran my hand through his magnificent dreadlocks.

He moved in and out slowly, kissed me, asked, “Can you feel them?”

“I feel them. Never felt anything like that in my life. You're addictive.”

He had gone to Suriname and had
boegroes
surgically inserted under the foreskin of his penis. Round balls rose from his flesh like beads. I felt the rigidity of the beads even when he was flaccid.

My cellular rang. It was my sister Tommie's ringtone. I stretched for the phone, couldn't reach it, but he grabbed it, handed it to me, never losing that connection. He kissed my neck and pushed his
boegroes
deeper. I felt the trend in Suriname. I felt what made his wood feel like it was made of steel.

I took a deep breath, tried to sound normal, answered, “What's the problem, Tommie McBroom?”

“Good night, Auntie Frankie.”

“Mo, what are you doing up this late?”

“When will I get to see the dress I'm going to wear at your wedding in the Caribbean?”

I laughed. “Is that why you called me?”

“The dress is so beautiful.”

“Is that dress on your mind?”

“I just had a dream about it. Only it was black. I don't want to wear a black dress.”

“Your dress is white. And it will be the prettiest dress at Auntie's wedding.”

“Why are you breathing funny? Are you on the treadmill?”

“Why are you whispering?”

“Momma doesn't know I'm on her iPhone. Our secret, okay? If
I use mine, she'll look at the Caller ID, know I was on my phone past my bedtime, and put me on punishment.”

“Why are you still awake?”

“The noise woke me up.”

“Where is Tommie?”

“She's in the bedroom with Daddy. She's making sounds like her tummy hurts.”

“Is the bedroom door closed?”

“Yes.”

“Just stay in your room.”

“Okay.”

“What do you want Santa to bring you for Christmas?”

“Auntie, there is no such thing as Santa Claus.”

“If you don't believe in Santa, you're too old to get presents.”

“Can we do the name song you taught me?”

I laughed. “Mo Mo bo bo, banana fanna fo fo, me mi mo mo, Mo!”

“Frankie Frankie bo bankie, banana fanna fo fankie, me mi mo mankie, Frankie!”

I said, “Now call Auntie Livvy and do the ‘Mahna Mahna' song.”

I ended the call and pulled the Santa Claus hat away from my head.

We laughed, talked about how we hoped we'd made a precocious baby like her.

Franklin went to the bathroom to take that post-sex piss and to clean himself. I heard the water come on in the bathtub and I smelled lavender. That meant we'd take a quick shower, clean the sticky stuff from our bodies, sit in the tub a little while, cuddle like that with music playing in the background. We might make love again. Until I was pregnant sex would be fun, but it would also have a purpose.

My cellular rang while a John Handy tune from his album
Hard Work
blanketed us.

Franklin called out, “Is Mo calling again? Does that kid drink coffee all day?”

“Livvy is probably calling me now to curse me out because I had Mo call and wake her up.”

Franklin laughed. “Y'all talk all day and call each other all night like you ain't seen each other in weeks. Y'all cuss each other out and ten minutes later y'all are laughing like it never happened.”

The ringtone wasn't my sister's ringtone. Then I thought it might have been an old lover from my long-discarded A, B, or C list, and I wanted to answer and tell them merry Christmas, tell them that those wild days were over and their services would no longer be needed. As the phone chimed, I picked it up and looked at the number on the display. It looked like an international phone number.

I sucked lime Jell-O from my fingers, then answered in my business voice, hoping nothing had happened with any of my properties. A hysterical bitch was on the other end. I had never heard so much anger. As I sat exposed on ruffled sheets, I found out my fiancé was
already
married. Based on the screams, he had married when he was living in Alabama, several years before he had met me.

I will never forget the look on his face when he left the bathroom laughing, naked, modified cock swinging, and walked toward the king-size bed, his sweet dreadlocks pulled back into a ponytail.

He didn't see the pained expression on my face.

He tossed me a wet towel.

I let it bounce from the bed to the carpeted floor.

I held my Santa Claus hat in my fist, exhaled, tilted my head like the old-school RCA Victor dog, and then asked, “Are you married to a bitch in the military?”

He froze.

My nostrils flared and my left hand became a fist.

He looked at me.

Silence penetrated the room.

Franklin was unable to inhale.

He looked at the phone in my hand.

Time stopped moving, folded its arms, leaned against the wall, and waited to see how this was going to turn out for us.

“Yes or fucking no.
Answer me.
Are you married and is the heifer overseas in the military?”

His shoulders tensed; he opened and closed his hands, murmured soft curses, exposed.

That was when I heard them. A lot of people were behind his wife, urging her, cursing me as well, a platoon of fools.

Franklin tried to explain what couldn't be explained to an audience of military wolves.

I slapped him as hard as I could.

He staggered across the room, held his face in disbelief, then snapped at me for striking him.

His wife snapped, threatened to kick my ass for hitting her husband. I told the heifer if she were here I would kick his ass and her ass, then went off on her for having the audacity to get my phone number and call me.

I cursed both of them out, cursed them hard and strong.

I took my cellular, went into the bathroom, locked the door, ended the call with his wife, then didn't answer as Franklin knocked over and over. I stood in the shower, under tepid water, so I couldn't hear a damn thing he said, muffled his lies, shouted for him to get out of my house. He refused to leave.

I called my sisters. Livvy and Tommie hurried over with Tony and Blue—Livvy's husband and Tommie's fiancé. I didn't come out of the bathroom until then, and my sisters were there as I ranted. Franklin was in the living room standing by the Christmas tree, the lights blinking over lie after lie. Mrs. Carruthers called my cellular over and over and over on the eve of Christmas Eve. In front of everyone, I answered.

We all listened to her vile rant with my phone on speaker.

Tommie said, “Franklin, you have a wife and made plans to marry my sister?”

Livvy said, “Woman on the phone, you really need to have some respect for my sister.”

Franklin's wife called me all kinds of names,
cunt
being the nicest word to leave her mouth.

Again I hung up on the madwoman and told Franklin to get to stepping and step the hell out of my life. While he was surrounded by my family, while Blue and Tony were in his face and kept him away from me as my sisters hid my gun and grabbed my arms and kept me away from him, while Livvy held one of my arms and Tommie gripped the other, Franklin trembled and tried to plead his case to the jury of his peers.

He said he had been trying to get a divorce for years. No one cared because he had presented himself as being free and single. He had been married and sleeping in my bed like we had already taken vows. He had put an engagement ring on my finger when a wedding ring was already on another woman's hand.

I snapped, “You're a monster, Franklin.”

They had all been like brothers, but he couldn't buy empathy from Blue or Tony. My brother-in-law and my future brother-in-law had my back like my blood was their blood, were outraged, like my shame was their shame. Tony picked up belongings that littered the house. I followed Franklin and threw framed photos and F-bombs. I threw his Christmas presents at him. I wanted to throw grenades at him.

My sisters stayed with me, one on each side of me, their turn to be my bookends while waves of agony were drowned first with wine, then with Jack and Coke, my favorite liver killer. The next morning, before the sun came up, I went to my garage and looked at my two rides. I used an Audi for work, but I also rocked a 1968 Pontiac Firebird coupe on most weekends. This had put me in the Firebird mood. To try to clear my head I turned off my phone and
rode my muscle car from the southern terminus of the Pacific Coast Highway at I-5 in Dana Point to somewhere up near Ventura. Alone with my thoughts, I was on the road for many hours before I turned around. I gassed up my ride, took to the highway, opened it up, sped down the 101. I found my way back to Los Angeles. Exhausted, numb, I went to Inglewood Park Cemetery and lay down on our parents' graves. They were buried side by side, holding hands in the afterlife, as I had thought it would be with Franklin and me.

I lay between them and whispered, “Mom. Dad. I screwed up. Why can't I do this right? Why can't I have what y'all had?”

Livvy and Tommie knew where I would be, knew where we all went when we were at the bottom of the bottom and could only look up and see darkness. I looked up and they were standing over me.

Tommie said, “Think we can borrow a shovel and dig this funky-breath heifer a grave?”

“There is an open grave about a half mile in. We can stack her like they do at that corrupt cemetery that was in the news for putting one dead body on top of another. What say you?”

“We can bury her there. She looks so damn pathetic.”

Breakfast at Tiffany's
shades over my eyes, dreadlocks tied to either side like I was Pippi Longstocking wearing an LA Lakers sweat suit, I raised my middle fingers at both of those McBitches.

Livvy's light brown hair was in an Elsa-from-
Frozen
braid. Tommie's hair was all Afro'd up today. Livvy held plastic bags of grilled chicken from El Pollo Loco. Tommie held a tray of soft drinks.

I asked, “What does a sister have to do to have a moment to think by herself?”

I sat up. Soft breeze on a sunny day, the temperature at sixty-seven degrees on Christmas Eve. My sisters, both dressed in sweats, took out paper plates. Then I heard someone calling for her auntie.
Mo ran across the graves. I ran toward her, picked her up, and gave her a piggyback ride to the grave site.

I said, “We're a day early. We don't come until Christmas morning.”

Tommie said, “We're still coming back tomorrow.”

Livvy said, “I know that's right. Mom and Dad get us two days in a row this time.”

We all sat and ate lunch, me, my sisters, my little niece-to-be, with the ghosts of our parents at our side. We didn't talk for a while, not even Mo, not until we started gathering the last of our refuse.

Tommie said, “I can make the phone calls, Frankie.”

“Wait until after the first of the year. Let's not mess up Christmas for everyone else because mine got screwed.”

Livvy said, “I can help you make the calls, Tommie.”

I said, “No e-mails, no tweets, no Facebook. Nothing that can be saved or passed around.”

They nodded in agreement.

I shook my head. “It's my mess. Let me pull up my big-girl panties and be responsible.”

Mo said, “Auntie, you don't wear panties. You wear a thong if you wear anything at all.”

We all laughed and wiped tears from our eyes.

Everyone who had been invited to the Caribbean McBroom-Carruthers wedding had to be uninvited. Explanations, apologies had to be made to those who had scheduled vacations, a reason had to be given, and I didn't try to cover up for his lies or my mistake. I'd been deceived. It was my turn to play the fool. I took the blame, said it was my fault for not doing my due diligence, for not having him fully investigated. I'd entered into a relationship in trust and had exited on the back of a lie.

*   *   *

After the first of the year, Monica came to keep me company and help me take down my Christmas tree. We made brownies and chilled as we watched television. She was worried about me.

“Auntie, why aren't you and Uncle Frankie getting married so I can wear my new dress?”

I looked at her, and her simple words about Franklin made me ache.