Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl (31 page)

I don’t let her words affect me. She’ll see just how long forever is to me. Once I pay for the eggs and walk out into the warm rain, I find myself shaking again. But it’s not from anxiety or fear. It’s on account of this excitement that’s come over me for standing up for myself. I can’t believe how good I feel.

*  *  *

There’s a little bounce in my step as I get off the elevator and walk down the hall. But when Jerry opens the door to our apartment, it all changes. It’s as if he has been waiting there for me to get back. I swear, I don’t even have the chance to pull my finger away from the buzzer before there’s the click of the lock being undone. And I hear Mama ranting and raving in the background.

“I’ve not even been gone a half hour,” I say. “What could possibly have happened in that short amount of time?”

“Maybe you should go back out,” Jerry says to me.

“It’s raining. Hard. Besides, I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“Is that her?” I hear Mama yell out. And Jerry’s shoulders fall a bit.

“Yes, Jeanne,” he says as he ushers me in. See, the thing is, Mama has had her moody spells since Jerry’s moved in, but she hasn’t had one of her “lock her away in Bellevue” shrieking spells till now.

“What happened?” I ask again as I follow Jerry down the hallway.

“She found the pictures.”

“What pictures?”

“The ones your father sent. And the letter too.”

I just shake my head. When I packed up my locker, I stuffed the pictures into the inside pocket of my loose-leaf notebook. The notebook is still in my knapsack, which I shoved under my bed.

“What was she doing in my bag?”

“Awww, man, little Faye, it was all my fault. I decided to go over some figures as I was having my coffee. I’d been adding things up in my head, you know. And your mother says why don’t I just use a calculator. But I don’t have one. Well, I do at the shop, but … And she says you use one for school, so she goes to your room. But a good amount of time passes, so I tell her it’s no problem if she can’t find it. That’s when she comes out holding the envelope with the pictures and the letter, looking like she’s just seen a ghost.”

We get to the end of the hall, and Mama rushes up to me, stopping only about an inch from my face. And her eyes are huge, and there’s this superhuman vein throbbing away in the center of her forehead.

“How long have you had these?” she asks. Only, she’s not yelling anymore. Her voice has become calm and measured, which makes me more uneasy than when she’s ranting and raving.

“N-n-not so long,” I stutter.

“Then why is this envelope postmarked two and a half weeks ago? Unless they had a hurricane down in Florida, one I didn’t hear about … and unless that hurricane picked
this letter up and out of the mailbox and blew it all around the state, there’s no way it took that long to get here. Why didn’t you tell me about this, Faye?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just figured it wasn’t my place. That Daddy would have told you.”

“Well, he didn’t. He didn’t.” And she’s shaking a little. And part of her hair falls out of the loose bun she had it up in and settles on her shoulder. And her eyes are glowing red. She looks like how I picture that crazy lady in
Jane Eyre
, the one who was locked away in Mr. Rochester’s attic.

“Jeanne, why you getting mad at Faye? She didn’t do nothing. It’s not that big a deal,” Jerry pleads with her. But it makes no difference.

“Not that big a deal? Not that big a deal? How would you feel if the person you’ve been married to for fourteen years just up and has some babies with someone else and you’re the last one to know?”

“I wouldn’t care. If I wasn’t married to that person anymore.”

“Well, technically, that’s not the case.”

“What you talking ’bout, Jeanne?”

“I didn’t sign those papers yet, so technically, we are still married. We’re still married!”

“Wait, but I thought you said you signed them. And what should it matter if he’s marrying someone else? Truth is, I want to marry you, Jeanne. I want to make you my wife. So there. He’s not the only one marrying someone else now.” But Mama doesn’t answer. She just keeps looking at those pictures.

“So what you think of that, huh, Jeanne? About becoming my wife? Mrs. Jerry Adams?”

But Mama doesn’t even seem to hear him. She’s just pacing and poking at that giant vein in her forehead with her left pointer finger.

“So he’s off having bastard babies. It’s not just some fling. It’s not just some fling.”

“It doesn’t matter, Jeanne. You’re with me now. And I love you. This is your time to move on. This is our time to move on … together.”

“It’s not fair. I gave him all I had. I gave him his daughter. Shouldn’t that be enough? But he just … he just makes someone else more important. He has a child with someone else.”

And I look over at Jerry. He’s standing in his undershirt, which is tucked into his high-waisted, stonewashed jeans. And he has these little man-breasts that are pushing up against the fabric. But that doesn’t even gross me out as much as it probably should. His face is like I’ve never seen it before. He looks as defeated as any of those wrestlers who’ve ever had to step into the ring against Superfly Snuka. And as Mama continues to pace and ignore him, Jerry grabs his pullover from the back of one of the kitchen chairs, pats my left shoulder, and starts to leave. And it reminds me of how Daddy looked that night I last saw him.

“I’ll see you later, right, Jerry?” I say.

“Yeah, Faye,” he says. But his words are not so convincing.

Thank God
for the rain, because without it, our apartment would be shrouded in silence. I want to turn on the radio, but with the mood Mama is in, I decide it’s best to have things remain as quiet as possible. She shut herself away in her room right after Jerry left, and I haven’t seen her in the two hours since. It might be a little late for it, but I decide to make breakfast anyway. I scramble up some eggs and warm some of the precooked sausage patties in the oven. After the bread pops out of the toaster all warm and brown, I arrange everything on a plate and walk over to Mama’s door. I put my ear against it, but the only thing I hear is the rumbling sky. Finally, I knock.

“Mama,” I say. Only, she doesn’t answer. “Mama, I made some breakfast. I’ll bring it to you if you want.” But she still doesn’t answer. I try the door and it opens, with a rush of smoke coming at me. I try to stifle my coughs.

“Thought you might be hungry, so I brought you some food,” I say. But I don’t advance any closer at first, in case
she’s about to have one of her throwing fits and is deliberating whether to launch an ashtray or a phone at me.

She’s lying on her bed in her black slip, propped up against two pillows. There’s a cigarette in her mouth. And since there’s more of her mascara staining her cheeks than coating her eyelashes, she kind of resembles a giant raccoon. But despite all this, she still somehow manages to look beautiful.

“I brought you some food,” I say again as I finally start moving forward. I do it at a very deliberate pace. I’m pretty sure I look like one of those animal-control specialists dispatched to capture an escaped beast. You know how they always approach so gingerly, as if they’re preparing to be attacked.

I reach her nightstand without incident and put the plate down. Then I shoot a quick glance at her. Something about the way she looks is making me uneasy. Well, that’s not really a news flash. But today is different because she has a look to her I’ve never seen before. Defeat.

“Mama, are you all right?” I ask.

She shakes her head slowly.

“Why does Dad’s new baby make you so upset?” As soon as the words come out of my mouth, I regret it. I’m sure they’re exactly what she needs to hear to snap her out of her funk and make her go off the deep end on me. I don’t usually bother her when she’s in one of her moods, but here I am in her territory, butting into her business. Her eyes shift a little and she finally looks at me. But she doesn’t really seem angry. And she actually responds.

“I don’t know why,” she says softly. “Listen, Faye, I think maybe you should pack your suitcase with some stuff. And you should call your aunt Nola and tell her and Paul that I need for you to stay there a little while.”

Usually, I’d be doing backflips after hearing this. And it’s not like I don’t want to go, but I know in my gut that something’s really wrong here. Guess I got so used to Mama always being irate, I don’t know how to react when she’s anything but. Weird, huh?

“Well, how long should I pack for?”

“A week, maybe two. Maybe longer. Once you’re all done, you go on over there. This afternoon. You understand?”

“No. Not really. I mean, are you going somewhere? You and Jerry, maybe?”

“I just need a little time. That’s all. I’m just so tired, and I need a little time.”

“Time away from me?”

When she doesn’t say anything else, I walk out of her room, closing the door behind me.

I eat by myself and look off at the rain as it smacks against the kitchen window. I especially focus on the little drops that cling to the bars of the fire escape.

Once I’m done, I pull my travel case out of the hall closet and start packing some clothes. Then I dial Aunt Nola, who is confused as to why I’m the one calling to ask about staying with her, and not Mama. But she reassures me that I’m always welcome there.

I don’t leave that afternoon. I just go to my room and look out at the rain and think about all that’s happened over the
last few months. And I wait. I wait for Jerry to come back. I wait for Mama to come out of her room. I wait for the phone to ring. But none of these things happen. I never thought I’d say so, but right about now, I wouldn’t even mind hearing one of Jerry’s boring stories about some barrel he had to ship to Antigua that ended up in Anguilla instead. I wouldn’t mind hearing that weird laugh of his. But Jerry doesn’t come back that afternoon or even that night. I stay up until one, but I never hear the front door open. I never hear footsteps in the hallway. No voices, no noises, no “hey, hey, huh.” There is only the trickle of raindrops against my window.

Mama doesn’t leave her room at all. Not even to go to the bathroom. The next morning when I knock on the door, she doesn’t answer. But when I try the knob, the door opens again.

“Girl, didn’t I tell you to get going to your aunt and uncle’s?” Mama asks. She’s still in her black slip. Still lying in the same position as the day before when I brought her breakfast. I look around for the plate. It’s on the floor near her bed. There’s still food on it, but I can tell she ate a little.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I was here taking care of myself a long time before you ever came around,” she says. That sounds a little bit more like the Mama I’m used to.

“Go on, now, Faye. Go on to your aunt and uncle’s.”

“Okay, I will. But only if you answer this one question: What is it about me that makes it so hard for you to love me?”

Mama suddenly looks confused.

“You’ve never once told me you loved me. So I just want to know, why am I so hard to love?” I ask again.

Mama’s eyes soften a little. She reaches for the box of Virginia Slims on her nightstand and takes out a cigarette, but she doesn’t put it into her mouth or light it.

“What are you talking about?” she asks. “Of course I love you. You’re my child.”

“Then maybe it’s that you don’t like me.”

She shakes her head slowly. “It’s not you. It was never you. It’s me. I can’t seem to figure out what I’m feeling inside. I can’t figure out why things make me as angry as they do. Life shouldn’t make me as angry as it does. Running out of milk shouldn’t make me as angry as it does.…” Her voice trails off and she lets out a long sigh.

“No, it’s not you, Faye.” Those are the last words she says to me. I stand around a while longer, but Mama seems to have zoned out.

I return to my room only long enough to grab my suitcase. I suppose I didn’t realize exactly how heavy it was before, because it takes way too much energy to get it down the hall and out of the apartment. I guess when you’re not really used to going anywhere, it’s hard to gauge exactly how much to pack.

It’s pretty warm outside, and it seems like there are a million people on the street. Four girls jump double dutch a couple of buildings away. One has her long hair in cornrows, and there are all these beads hanging from the end of each braid. I stand by for a few seconds, watching her hop around furiously, trying to figure out how she doesn’t knock herself
out from the force of her hair adornments. When she trips over the ropes and messes up, she turns to look questioningly at me and the suitcase resting near my leg. I take this as my cue to continue to the bus stop, so I grasp the handle of the suitcase and go back to hauling it down the street. But I only make it a few steps before another hand latches on to the handle. I look over to find Gerald standing next to me.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I saw you from my window. Where ya going?”

“To catch the bus to my aunt and uncle’s house.”

“For how long?”