The Future Has a Past (16 page)

Vinnie was a little angry with her. “You need, too! Have you talked to anybody about that house you want?”

“No. Ain’t had time.”

“Take time! It’s your life!”

Later Wynona did speak to Fred about finding her a house.

Josephine spoke to Vinnie about Wynona, too. “What’s going on with that fool Wynona? She gonna give all that money away? She is a sure-nough fool!”

“This time, Mrs. Smart Josephine is almost right,” thought Vinnie.

It wasn’t but a day or two later that Vinnie came out of her house with Wynona, and Betha came out of her house at the same time. When Betha saw Vinnie she commenced to run across the street toward her. Vinnie froze in her tracks, thinking “Oh, shit!” But she stood her ground, didn’t run back into her house or jump in her car, which is what she wanted to do. She was scared though. Wynona just gasped and held her breath, thinking, “Lord, I have to help my friend. I guess we both gonna get whipped today.”

When Betha got to Vinnie she raised both of her ham-bone arms and threw them around Vinnie and hugged her. Hugged her! Vinnie was surprised, astonished, relieved and grateful.

With a great big smile on her plump face, Betha said, “You was right! I love you! You a good woman! She is my mama and I sure do love her!” Then they hugged and all that. But it wasn’t long before Betha had a fight with one of her boy-friends, Dick or somebody, and they broke that record player and Betha went back to cussing her mother again.

Vinnie mused over it. “But, well, what you gonna do about somebody’s else’s life? Maybe it just comes from being poor and not having nothing or just seeing everybody havin everything on television and you still always having nothing.” Then she would sit in her window and look for her eagle. The eagle gave her something; she couldn’t put it in words, but the eagle gave her something.

Finally, Wynona’s last family got all they were going to get and they left with the words “I’m broke . . . I’m broke from comin down to your house here to see bout you!” ringing in Wynona’s ears. Some who had arrived late and weren’t close family didn’t get anything. They left mumbling to each other, “Stingy dog! She too cheap and tight for me. She sure gonna have some bad luck from the way she act to me. And she need not call on me for help cause I ain’t got no time for somebody won’t help nobody. Specially her own blood!” They left belching with their full bellies and rested backs from their stay in a decent clean room at the motel where they had slept on clean sheets and used fresh towels Wynona had paid for. Don’t tell me anything about some people. Just tell me what you gonna do about life and the way people are?

Wynona was so glad when the last relative was gone, her tears dried up and her teeth, the few good ones she had, shone again in her smile. That is when Vinnie told her, “One thing you could have done is get your teeth fixed.”

Wynona smiled behind her hand. “I can still do that.”

“How? You said you were broke. You have let your relatives talk you out of all that money and you may never get your hands on that kind of money again in a big chunk like that. Chile, you were blessed. And now . . . all that money gone. And you still need a house. That one over there you living in is gonna fall down on you cause your landlord isn’t going to never do no real fixin-up on it.”

Wynona still sat smiling behind her hand. “Well . . . I got a secret.”

“What kind of secret?”

“I hid some of my money from me and everybody.”

“Hid it? Where did you hide it in that little house full of your relatives?”

Wynona removed her hand in her excitement. “Well, you know my dog? Bozo? Well, he keeps a pile of dried-up doodoo right just side of his doghouse. Everybody always was complainin bout the smell and the flies. Well, I don’t smell it much cause I love him and I keep it cleaned up when I have time and don’t have so much company. They was all complainin, but didn’t nobody go out there to clean it up. I was always cookin them some food or goin to the store to buy it, or washin dishes and their clothes. My ole washin machine like to blew its rollers off! cause they want to wash every little thing stead of wait for a big load and they didn’t want to mix up their clothes with the other relatives’ germs. We washed nearly every day, well, I did, til I told them the machine was breakin down and they had to go to the launderette. They didn’t want to spend their own money so some of them wore their clothes longer. My sisters rinsed theirs out in the tub.”

“What’s that got to do with your secret?” Vinnie smiled at her.

“Just that they always want to see my bankbook. I know they looked for it. I had to keep changin where I hid it. And I truly wanted them ALL to go and I know they ain’t goin til I’m broke. So while I was actin like I was cleanin round my dog Bozo’s house I had a big thought. Right away I told them I had to go to the store. I got a minute alone and dug down deep up under some things and got my bankbook and left like I was goin to the store, but instead I went to the bank. Didn’t have but about thirty thousand dollars left and hadn’t done nothin for myself, girl. Nothin! And I was plumb worn out from givin and doin things for them and I knew I might never see my sisters and children again if I didn’t give em somethin.”

Vinnie heard herself saying, “They are not children anymore. They are grown.”

Wynona gave her a special look to remind her of her own kids. Then she went on speaking, “After I went to the store, cause I had to bring somethin home with me, I went to the bank and took all my money out cept for one thousand dollars cause I got to keep lottery-ticket-playin money.”

Vinnie gasped as she thought of that money in the house with all Wynona’s relatives.

Wynona spoke on, “Girl, I was so nervous you can’t magine it nor blive it either. My knees shook and what few teeth I got rattled with twenty-nine thousand dollars in cash wrapped up in my apron stuck in a grocery bag hangin at the end of my arm. At first I thought of them people what snatch purses and I pulled that bag up to my chest and let my purse hang off my arm cause it was empty.”

“Lord, have mercy, Wynona!”

Wynona smiled sadly as she continued. “When I got home I took some stuff out the grocery bag, waitin. I planned ahead and I had some spray and stuff I said I was gonna fix that dog-doogie pile with so they could breathe better, and I went out there with my grocery bag and sprays and my shovel and rake. I knew they wasn’t watchin and they wouldn’t come out cause I might ask for some help. I raked a spot and dug a right smart place down deep. It look like I was goin to bury that dog poop, but I buried that twenty-five thousand cash dollars instead. It was wrapped tight by then and I covered it with some of the freshest poop and some ole poop too and I knew that money was safe.”

“Well! I’ll be doggoned!”

Wynona laughed, “So was my money! Yes, I sure did! And I ‘accidently’ left my bankbook out after I finished givin my sisters a few thousand each: my kids already had theirs. After the rest of em saw that bankbook and tried to set their mouth to ask for some of that little one thousand dollars, I got mad. But I didn’t say nothin . . . cause they my relatives and they family and I love em, but I decided then I would get sick and have to go to bed and be taken care of by them.”

“Lord, have mercy! Please.”

“So the next morning over the stove cookin some breakfast for them four or five what was still left, I just fell backwards onto the floor, holdin on to my chest where my heart is.”

“Oh, Wynona. Poor dear.”

“My children was gone, my sisters was packin. Them few holdin on carried me to my bed, feelin and pattin on me as they carried me, to see was I hidin any extra money on me. I was sad, mad and just through, but I let em cause I had the sweet smell of Bozo’s poop on my mind. I don’t know who called the doctor, but he went to actin like I need to go to the hospital; make him some money too, I guess. But I opened one eye and told him, ‘Listen, Doctor, I’m just tired. You just order me some rest and quiet and twenty-four-hour care and I will pay you for this visit soon as everybody is gone and I can get up.’ He caught on right quick and did what I tole him. And when you came over and everybody was talkin bout havin to leave and you said you would look out for me, they almost flew on way from here. You was very kind.”

Vinnie laughed happily, “You were very smart! Now, I’m gonna call Fred and you go see if the worms are eatin that money. And it’s gonna rain again, too. Go put it back in the bank for your own self’s house and home, chile, and some teeth. Then maybe you can court again someday!”

They laughed and hugged. Friends.

Wynona went home to check her money.

In the beginning Josephine knew about the money and scoffed at Wynona. “She isn’t gonna have that money long enough to buy a slop jar, which I know she needs! Lottery store gonna get it all back!” She ridiculed Wynona’s relatives, too. “People always show up when they smell money! She a fool to let them in, cause all her family are poor as church rats and you know, they poor! The church gonna be after her, too! That fool won’t have a dime in a week. I give her a week! Maybe! She don’t ask my advice and I could tell her something because I am her friend. She ought to buy that house she been renting from me! Do something good for herself!”

When, at last, Josephine found out Wynona was looking at houses, she took herself over to Wynona’s rented house. She told her, “You ought to hold on to that little money you got left. Why don’t you fix this house up? I’ll take it off the rent; even though you have cheap rent as it is. Just fix it up for yourself so you can live comfortable. You can live here til you die and never have to worry again. I wish you would get rid of that dog though . . . and them chickens. Shit everywhere! All over the yard!” That was not true, but Josephine was too smart for anyone to correct her.

Wynona just called Fred and said, “Hurry up, please!”

Fred found Wynona her house. It was a nice house with a small cottage in the rear that needed a little work. It was a little on the edge of town near the area where Fred lived. Clean neighborhood, trees growing along the street. She would be able to have a few chickens even, in a chicken house, of course, because there were eagles and hawks around coming from the hills. She put ten thousand dollars down and Fred gave her his commission fee for the closing costs, so she still had fifteen thousand left.

While the house went through escrow she got herself some new, fresh white teeth and that made her go to a beauty shop and get her hair done. She smiled all the time and everywhere. She bought a few new frocks, but not many. “I want to save my money for new furniture and a new refrigerator, chile. I might even think of somethin else I want!” Wynona grinned as she spoke.

It was the rainy season when Wynona moved. Vinnie, in her “thinking” window seat, looked out of her window, thinking of how lonesome it would be without Wynona next door. Then . . . she spied the eagle again swooping and diving, flying through the rain. Its wing seemed a little better. It flew faster, it seemed, and went further up toward the sky. Oh, God, how beautiful the eagle spiraled toward the sky with the clouds above it! It seemed to love its life, its body, its power to soar. She watched as the eagle soared easily and lightly as a feather until it flew out of sight.

After Josephine saw Fred coming and going to both Wynona’s and Vinnie’s houses, she went to visit Vinnie. “Girl, you let that man back in your life?! You sure are a fool! I thought you, at least, had some sense. He is too quiet. Quiet people are dangerous cause they fool you. He is doing something! I know men! They ain’t no good. You were doing alright, already! Don’t ask for trouble. He’s gonna leave you again. You’ll see!”

“He didn’t leave me the first time, Josephine.”

Josephine smirked, “I know everybody needs their pride, but he will leave you this time then, I bet. You are too easy to get. Men don’t like women that come when they call.”

“I didn’t go when he called and he called for almost two years.”

Josephine sat back and crossed her legs, said, “Well, you just take your time, girl. Because you are not getting any younger, you know. No sense making your last years—”

Vinnie interrupted her, “Thank you, Josephine. I know you mean well. But you know what they say about people who don’t have nobody, tellin you about how to keep your somebody. So I’ll just follow my own mind like I try to do on everything in my life. Sometime I’m wrong, I make mistakes, but at least they are my own mistakes.”

Josephine took umbrage, “What you mean, ‘somebody with nobody’? I got plenty men want me! You don’t have the experience with men I have. I been married three times!”

“Alright, you’re smart. But you are not smart enough to know what’s in my mind.”

“No. Some things are too small for me. Well, just don’t say I didn’t try to help you, that’s all.”

Vinnie smiled as she said, “You have done your best.”

Soon after Wynona moved, Josephine started a small little affair with a gentleman visitor. It was just two dates long. The first time he asked her out to dinner and after she explained to him where she wanted to go, Delrichio (it was a very expensive place, but the food was delicious), they went. As they waited for their order to be served she said to him, “I know I am different from all the other . . . ladies you know, because I don’t like anything cheap. I like the best of everything. You can ask my last husband, he will tell you: ‘You never have to wonder what to get for Josephine, just simply get the best!’ ”

Then she blinked her eyelashes at him and said, with double meanings, “Everything I have is good!”

He did visit her again in her home, which was indeed filled with very good things, expensive things, too. This time after a dinner she cooked, she explained every dish she served to him and the kind of plates he was so fortunate to eat off of. They even had a “demitasse” in her living room with a fine fire burning in the fireplace. She told him all the things she wanted in a man and all the things she would not take from that man. Then she blinked her eyes at him again and said, “I am a woman though, and even I get lonely . . . sometimes. I miss the . . . comfort of a . . . man’s strong shoulder. So, it is very, very possible I would marry again.” She smiled seductively at him as she placed her hand on his knee. “I am smart enough to know when it is time to join my life with somebody again. The ‘right’ somebody.” She picked up her demitasse and smiled at him over the fine rim of the cup.