God Don't Play. Mary Monroe

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      After the ugly comment that the note writer had made about my hair, I knew that I couldn’t go on without covering what was left of my hair with a wig. I had worn braids for a few years, but I’d removed them after a comment made by a meddlesome Black co-worker.

      “Girl, if you want to get anywhere in this company, you better stop comin’ up in here lookin’ too Black. Them braids gots to go if you ever want to get a management position in the corporate world. Remember how many of us moved up the corporate ladder once we got rid of them Afros and Jheri Curl dos?”

      I didn’t like what my co-worker had said, but I’d taken her advice. Lo and behold, a month after I traded in my braids for a sleek perm, I was promoted. The woman who had thought that she would get the position, even though she’d often come to work with a greasy hairnet hugging her head, stopped speaking to me the same day. My breath caught in my throat just thinking about this particular woman. She had slashed the tires on her ex’s car when he left her. If she could do that, she could do anything!

      “Auntie, are you listening to me?” Jade yelled, startling me back to the present moment.

      “Huh?” I replied, jerking my head around to face her. My face felt like something was crawling all over it. With my hand throbbing like I had arthritis, which I probably did have, I slid it up and down the side of my face. There was warm sweat on my face, not spiders like it felt like.

      I sat on top of the wobbly picnic table with a can of beer in my hand with gnats, ants, and flies keeping me company. I offered a weak smile and shook my head at Jade.

      “I’d rather just sit here and watch,” I told her. My body felt like a huge boulder, rocking this way and that. It was hard for me to shift my body from one position to another and not fall from my seat. Running around like a teenage athlete was out of the question. Especially with what I had on my mind.

      CHAPTER 15

      That telephone call had really disturbed me. Even more so because poor Jade had experienced my tormentor’s wrath. I had ignored the telephone in the kitchen when it rang again about an hour later, glad that the others had ignored it, too. After the ringing had stopped, I shuffled into the kitchen and checked the answering machine. The caller had not left a message. I turned off the ringer and the answering machine before I returned to my spot at the table in my backyard.

      “Oh, let old lazybones stay right where she’s at,” Pee Wee teased. He paused and shook his finger at me. “I’ll exercise her sure enough, later on tonight,” he threatened, immediately covering his mouth.

      “Watch that smutty mouth you got, mon,” Otis teased, his Jamaican accent more pronounced than usual. “There is young peoples in de midst.”

      “Like I don’t know what’s going on,” Jade scoffed, rolling her eyes and slapping Pee Wee’s butt with the palm of her hand.

      Pee Wee ignored Jade’s gesture, not because he knew I was looking, but because he knew that I trusted him. I trusted him with all my heart. I knew that as long as he was married to me he would never do anything inappropriate with Jade or any other female. Pee Wee was the only man on earth I could say that about. Daddy didn’t like me feeling that way, but with his own track record he didn’t have a leg to stand on.

      “I’m tired!” Charlotte yelled, out of breath. She darted across the yard and fell to the ground, fanning and wiping sweat from her face. “Mama, can I have some beer, too?”

      “What’s wrong with you, girl?” I asked harshly, giving my daughter one of my meanest looks.

      “My throat is dry,” Charlotte whined. She screwed up her face, and then coughed and pounded on her chest all at the same time.

      “Have you lost your mind? You are a child, and children do not drink beer,” I managed, glaring at my daughter like she had asked me for the Hope Diamond.

      “Jade drunk some beer!” Charlotte pointed out, stomping her foot.

      Charlotte and Jade both had friends their own ages, but they had a special friendship that was slightly disturbing. At least it was to me.

      As strict as Rhoda and Otis were with Jade, she still got away with more than a lot of kids her age. I knew that they allowed her to drink a little wine every now and then, falling back on the excuse that some of the most prominent families in town allowed their children to drink wine occasionally.

      Rhoda’s father had an older half brother, named Johnny, who had returned to his home in Alabama several years ago. This half brother, who happened to be White, was as shady as he could be. Despite his morals, he had been a fun person to be around. And one thing that I could say about Rhoda’s uncle Johnny was, even though he was a notorious womanizer, he had never said or done anything inappropriate to me like Mr. Boatwright had done.

      Rhoda often visited her uncle down South, usually with Jade in tow. From what I had managed to piece together from stories Jade had shared with me, that same old White man was just as crazy about Jade as he was Rhoda.

      All of the kids in our neighborhood had called him Uncle Johnny, even me. This Uncle Johnny had spoiled Rhoda rotten when she was a child. Pee Wee had told me that the same old man had even taught her how to shoot a gun.

      In addition to expensive toys and clothes, Uncle Johnny used to give Rhoda big bottles of wine, way before she reached legal age. It had been nonalcoholic wine, but to me, wine was wine.

      I felt the same way about beer and as long as I could help it, my daughter was not going to drink beer until she was of legal age. I had enough to deal with. I didn’t need to have to deal with a miserable situation like an alcoholic child, too.

      “Mama, can I please have a little sip?” Charlotte pleaded.

      Out of the corner of my eye I saw Pee Wee about to react. He slapped his hands onto his hips and started moving toward Charlotte with a stern look on his face. But I got to her first.

      “Jade’s a lot older than you. How many times do I have to remind you of that?” I ignored the sneer that I got from Jade and for once, I was glad she was not my child.

      CHAPTER 16

      I didn’t like breaking up a party, especially one that I had initiated. But I needed some space so I could rearrange my thoughts. And besides, as much as they tried to hide it, Jade and Charlotte had worn themselves out with all that running and jumping around. Pee Wee, Otis, and Rhoda seemed to be dragging, too.

      I feigned a headache. In a way, I did have one. My head felt like it was about to explode because it was crowded with so many thoughts. To make it look good, I slapped an ice pack on my forehead and did some serious moaning and groaning. But it wasn’t even necessary for me to go to that extreme.

      “We should be leavin’ anyway,” Rhoda told me in a tired voice, walking along with me as I hauled the leftovers to the kitchen. “Bully doesn’t like to be alone too much, even in a house as cozy and nicely decorated as mine. Lord knows what that runaway wife of his will say to him. That’s when and if she calls my house tonight. You know how tacky British woman can be. They don’t understand men like we do, especially if their man is a brother.”

      I noticed the dreamy-eyed look Rhoda got on her face every time she mentioned Bully. He must possess some very good dick, because for a houseguest he held a very high position on Rhoda’s СКАЧАТЬ