God Don't Play. Mary Monroe

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СКАЧАТЬ the fact that Jade was treated like she was made out of gold.

      “She’ll be mad at me for a little while, so I’d better take her to the mall with me,” Rhoda said, almost choking on her words. “And let her pick out somethin’ expensive and pretty. Poor thing. She must be havin’ her period.” Rhoda sighed so much when it came to Jade, you would have thought she was on a respirator.

      “Can you hurry on over before you go to the mall? And, uh, leave Jade in the car when you get here, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to upset her.”

      “Girl, you are scarin’ me.” Rhoda paused and let out a mild belch, then complained vaguely about a chipped nail. “And what’s this about a blacksnake?”

      “Oh. I didn’t think that it was anything to get upset over when I got it, but now I don’t know.” I tilted my head and sucked in so much air my lungs felt like they were going to explode. My eyes were on the evil note still clutched in my hand. It took me a few seconds to compose myself. Rubbing my chest I said, “They had a little surprise party for me at work last week. I came out of a staff meeting and there was a cake on my desk with one candle on it, and a pile of birthday gifts.” My voice trailed off as I recalled how I’d jumped and shrieked when I’d opened the box and saw the fake blacksnake.

      “And where did the blacksnake fit in?” Rhoda wanted to know.

      I swallowed hard. “Well, after I had cut my cake and given everybody a slice, I started opening my gifts. I’d received more than a dozen, and I think it was like the fourth or fifth one I opened. There was a clock radio for my desk, a Macy’s gift certificate for a hundred dollars, and some perfume. I got some other really nice stuff this year, too. Of course, the office troublemakers didn’t give me anything, but they were first in line to get a slice of my birthday cake.” I paused and sucked in my breath, raking my fingers through my knotty hair. “It was a long, flat box, wrapped in gold paper with a white bow. It couldn’t have been cuter. Anyway, I popped open the box, unwrapped the gold tissue paper inside, and there was a fake snake. A two-foot-long, black, plastic, shiny fake snake coiled up like it was ready to strike. It looked so real, I thought it was real at first. I even screamed and dropped it. Everybody, except for me, thought it was funny,” I said stiffly, recalling how disgusted I’d felt at that moment.

      “Who sent it?”

      “That’s just it,” I said, flinching. “I don’t know. Nobody would admit it. I don’t have any proof but I think it was José, the Puerto Rican maintenance man. He sent one of the file clerks some flowers with painted-on faces for her birthday last month. The faces looked demonic. Everybody laughed about that, too. Even me.”

      “Well, flowers with ugly faces are one thing. A blacksnake is another thing.”

      “But it was a fake snake,” I said, forcing myself to laugh. “If whoever sent it really wanted to be mean, they would have sent me a real one,” I insisted.

      “Well, did you ask that Puerto Rican José if he sent you a fake blacksnake?”

      “Yes, I did. He said he didn’t send it,” I managed. “You know there were a few folks who didn’t like me getting my promotion—Carla Henry, Bev Carson, and a few others. They gave me dirty looks and moved to another table in the cafeteria when I tried to sit with them the other day. And Jade told me that she heard a couple of those wenches talking about me like a dog in the ladies’ room just yesterday.”

      “Oh? Look, I don’t want my child to be exposed to that kind of foolishness. People like that could be a bad influence on her. They talk about you in front of Jade?” Rhoda sounded serious and angry.

      “Oh, you don’t have to worry about anybody being a bad influence on Jade,” I said dryly.

      “What’s that supposed to mean?” Rhoda sounded worried now.

      “Nothing,” I mumbled. I found it hard to believe that Rhoda thought Jade was so innocent.

      “Then why did you say it?”

      “Jade’s not that weak. But she likes to know what’s going on around her. Uh, she likes to hide in one of the ladies’ room stalls with her feet in the air so that the office blabbermouths won’t know she’s present. You know how nosy our girl Jade is,” I reminded her.

      “Tell me about it. But I was just like her when I was her age,” Rhoda confessed.

      “I remember,” I clucked. I ignored an ominous chill that moved across my face, by just thinking about how much alike mother and daughter were. Not only did they look, act, smell, walk, and sound alike, they also thought alike. It was almost like they were the same person. But as far as I knew, Jade had not killed anybody.

      Rhoda had.

      CHAPTER 6

      While awaiting Rhoda’s arrival, I made sure that all of the windows and the back door in my house were locked. I drank three beers in less than ten minutes, draining the last bottle with a mighty burp. I regretted drinking all that beer because it didn’t help me one bit. I didn’t even get a buzz. All it did was make me run to the bathroom twice within fifteen minutes to empty my bladder.

      I didn’t hear Rhoda pull up in her silver Volvo SUV—her last year’s birthday gift from her parents—when she and Jade arrived about twenty minutes after Rhoda and I finished our telephone conversation. They galloped up onto my front porch, stomping like runaway mules. I flung open my front door and they entered my house, both scowling like prosecutors.

      As usual, except for height, Rhoda Nelson O’Toole and Jade looked like supermodels. They had inherited their deep green eyes from Rhoda’s father’s Caucasian mother. But other than the color of their eyes, there was nothing else in their appearance that identified them as biracial. Rhoda and Jade were both as dark brown as I was.

      Their faces were beautifully made up, and their tight jeans and bibbed white T-shirts showed off slim, taut bodies that women with my body type couldn’t develop even with black magic. Their skin was so smooth and flawless it looked like it had been sprayed on. You had to look really closely to see the fine lines around Rhoda’s eyes and mouth. But even that didn’t give away her true age. I knew women in their early twenties who had more lines on their faces than Rhoda had.

      Good skin was one of the few things that I had going for me. I had my share of fine lines and wrinkles, but you had to look really hard and closely at me to see them.

      My hair was another story. When I didn’t hide my brittle ends, kinky knots, and bald spots under a scarf or a wig, I kept my hair neat and dyed jet black to hide the stubborn gray strands that sometimes seemed downright invincible. Rhoda’s long hair, cascading down her narrow back like a silk scarf, was just as jet black and lush as Jade’s. Maybe even more so, because Rhoda had pampered hers longer than Jade had. It pleased me to know that Rhoda had to dye her hair, too, to hide the gray. That wasn’t much of a consolation, but it felt good to know that nature had only laid the groundwork; Rhoda had to work hard to remain beautiful.

      Even after all the years that I’d known the beautiful Rhoda, standing next to her I sometimes felt as unattractive as a pile of horse shit. I had been fat and plain for as long as she’d been beautiful. It was the one thing that I knew I would never get over. But Rhoda’s opinion of me was decidedly different.

      “Annette, you look amazin’,” she assured me as she air-kissed both sides of my face. “Forty-five years old this month and your skin СКАЧАТЬ