God Don't Play. Mary Monroe

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      Around four that afternoon, the telephone rang. Expecting to hear either Rhoda or Jade on the phone, I answered in a cheerful voice.

      “Hello, bitch!” It was a woman’s voice.

      My heart must have skipped two beats. I got so light-headed, I had to lean against the kitchen wall. The same way I had leaned against it when Pee Wee had talked dirty to me on the telephone a few hours earlier. A low, disguised whisper made it impossible for me to recognize the harsh voice. There was no noise in the background. Just the raspy breathing of a person who obviously needed to get a life, and stay out of mine.

      “Who is this?” I asked, my hand trembling. “Are you the same one who sent me that snake, and that nasty note?”

      “You’re damn right I am the same person who sent you that blacksnake and the note, and you can expect a lot more from me before I get through with your big, sloppy black ass!”

      There was so much contempt in the voice on the other end of the line, it made me flinch. Even so, I tried to sound pleasant. I felt that it would be to my advantage to do as little as possible to provoke my tormentor. “What do you want? What did I do to you?”

      “You’ll find out soon enough!”

      Before I could say another word, the line went dead. Tears that I couldn’t hold back formed in my eyes, blurring my vision. For a moment the black telephone cord looked like the fake plastic blacksnake that I had received on my birthday. I gasped and threw the telephone to the floor.

      I checked all the windows and doors again. I even went down to my basement to make sure all of the windows were closed and locked there, too. I stumbled upstairs to the master bedroom and grabbed the baseball bat that Pee Wee kept on the floor by his side of the bed. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely hold the bat, let alone use it if I had to.

      I left all of the lights on in the house, and I rushed out the front door like a bat flying out of hell. The house that I loved so much and had spent so many memorable moments in, not all of them good, was the last place on earth where I wanted to be alone right now.

      CHAPTER 7

      “Auntie, are you all right?” Jade’s voice woke me up. She tapped on the dusty window on the driver’s side of my two-year-old Mazda.

      After Rhoda had received her nice new SUV, I had dropped hints all over the place, hoping my mother, who now had more money than she could spend, would get me one, too. She ended up getting me the sofa instead and then reminded me about all the times when she and I had walked five miles each way to get to and from the Florida shacks we once occupied, and told me how I should be grateful that at least I had a vehicle, period. I still longed for one, but every time I saw Rhoda’s chic SUV I knew that if I really wanted something better I could get it myself. Gifts to myself from myself didn’t have the same effect as gifts I received from somebody else, though. It did a lot for me to know that other people cared about my feelings.

      That was why it was no big deal for me to sit in my car in front of Rhoda’s house all that time waiting for her to come home so that I could talk to her again. Besides, I felt safer in my locked car on the street than I had felt in my locked house. I looked at my watch and trembled when I realized I’d been sitting in front of Rhoda’s house for over three hours, asleep for the last two.

      “Auntie, what’s the matter? You look like you saw a ghost,” Jade said, squinting her eyes to see me better.

      I rolled down the window and unlocked my door, happy to see Jade and Rhoda, even with the horrified looks on their faces.

      “What is goin’ on, woman? How long have you been sittin’ out here?” Rhoda asked, opening my door.

      I had not bothered to ring the bell on Rhoda’s front door, even though I knew her husband was in the house. His Thunderbird, along with several other vehicles, occupied the driveway.

      Rhoda’s handsome Jamaican husband, Otis, was from a well-to-do family. He was my husband’s closest friend, and I’d known Otis almost as long as I’d known Rhoda and Pee Wee. But I’d always been careful of what I said to and around him. I had never gotten over the fact that he’d been the first and only male to come between me and Rhoda back when we were in high school, when I first realized how important Rhoda was to me. I used to be very possessive of her time, but over the years I had learned to compromise. I saw Rhoda when it was convenient for her. Even if it meant I had to sit in my car on the street for hours at a time.

      “Uh, I just got here,” I lied. “I was so tired, but I didn’t mean to go to sleep. I just…just closed my eyes for a few minutes.” I yawned, then forced myself to smile. I had slept with my head against the steering wheel. Now my forehead was so numb it felt like I had lost the top part of my head. “I guess I was more exhausted than I thought.”

      Rhoda had parked her SUV on the street in front of her house. She and Jade had shopping bags from some of the most expensive stores in Cleveland.

      “Why didn’t you wait for us inside? Otis is home,” Rhoda said, a quick glance over her shoulder toward her house. She waved at her husband, who was now peeping out the living room window with both hands shading his eyes. She set one of her shopping bags on the ground and grabbed me by my wrist, practically pulling me out of my car. My feet felt heavy, like my body didn’t want them to move. I felt like I was rooted to the spot I stood in, like an old tree.

      “I didn’t want to bother Otis and his company. I didn’t mind waiting outside,” I mumbled, with a wave of my hand. Rhoda and Jade looked at each other, then at me. “I…I…got a phone…phone call,” I stuttered. The voice coming out of my mouth sounded nothing like my own. I was beginning to feel like a visitor in my own body.

      I didn’t feel like myself because I was still confused, and I was truly frightened now. I was mad, too. Mad as hell. I wasn’t the bravest person in the world, and I had only had to defend myself on a few occasions in my lifetime. But I was prepared to do whatever I had to do to protect myself.

      I couldn’t think straight. There was an eerie sound buzzing in my ears and a storm of a headache pounding at my brain. I thought I was going crazy. I thought, at that time, that Rhoda was my best and only ally. “The same bitch who sent me that blacksnake and the note called me at my house.”

      “How do you know it was the same person?” Jade asked, her eyes wide with anticipation.

      She had two shopping bags in each hand and a shoe box under one arm. Her yellow backpack was dangling off her shoulder like a vine. And she had on a different shade of lipstick from the one she’d had on earlier, which told me that she’d had her makeup done, too. Rhoda had done the same thing. She even had on a pair of long, curly false eyelashes. It was no wonder they had been gone for so long!

      As in awe as I was of beautiful women, I was glad that I was so low maintenance. After a five-minute shower, it took me ten minutes to do my makeup and hair, and then wiggle myself into one of my many muumuus. I didn’t own a single belt. There was no point, because I had no waistline. And the one pair of jeans that I’d had the nerve to buy ended up as the top part of a backyard tent that Jade and some of her friends made. I had a few suits that I wore to work and a few other fancy outfits that I wore to weddings and funerals, but floor-length dusters and muumuus suited me just fine most of the time. Rhoda and Jade took at least two hours to put themselves together each time before they left their house. Even just to go to the corner store! It frustrated me СКАЧАТЬ