Gonna Lay Down My Burdens. Mary Monroe

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СКАЧАТЬ Mama, he took us shopping and bought us something nice and expensive.

      My sister, Babette, two years older than me, pranced into the living room wearing a shower cap and a new silk yellow bathrobe that Daddy had just bought for her. Like Mama, Babette was slightly plump and had light-brown skin. Babette and I had the same large dark-brown eyes, narrow-bridged nose, and lips that Mama’s white clients had to buy from a plastic surgeon. Babette had thick dark-brown hair worn shoulder length; mine was black and a few inches longer. I had Daddy’s smooth dark skin and height and his high cheekbones. Daddy’s parents had passed on before I was born, but he had two sisters in Florida and one in Huntsville that we rarely saw or heard from. Mama’s parents, both retired schoolteachers, lived in Montgomery. My grandparents sneaked into Belle Helene every now and then to make a fuss over Babette and me. Using bad grammar in their presence was the quickest way for us to get a whupping. Speaking properly was a small price to pay to avoid my grandparents’ wrath. However, I did sprinkle my speech with enough foul language when I was around my friends to let them know that I was still basically a homegirl.

      “That new girl Desiree Lucienne, she said for you to call her,” Babette told me, sitting down on the love seat facing me, carefully smoothing the tail of that fancy housecoat. Babette had slapped my hand when I tried to touch the housecoat right after she slid it out of the neatly wrapped gift box it had come in. “Desiree said she wants to borrow your black leather jacket,” she added, crossing her legs with caution. I didn’t know that Daddy had given her new mules, which looked like fluffy yellow bushes, to match the housecoat. “Look how dainty my feet look,” Babette squealed, wiggling her feet. After my sister stopped admiring her feet, she turned to me with a serious look. “Carmen, go on and call that Desiree girl back. She sounded desperate.”

      My choice of friends annoyed my sister. She should have been used to it by now because I’d always been drawn to the kinds of companions who needed a strong friend like me. Before I’d even started school, I had taken in a three-legged dog and a blind cat. I grieved for days when they died the same week. I felt like I had let them down in some way. I didn’t want to disappoint any of my human friends and lose them, too. Desiree was my newest project, and I couldn’t wait to incorporate her into my life.

      CHAPTER 10

      Unlike me, Desiree Lucienne didn’t have any close friends. She was just as unpopular as Burl. Like with Burl, the only friend who ever called her was me.

      She had a telephone in her room, and when I did call back that night, she answered on the first ring. “Carmen, you want to come over Saturday afternoon?” If red robins could talk, they would sound like Desiree. That girl had such a nice, melodic voice. It was one of the things I liked most about her. Especially compared to Regina and Crazy Mimi. They had the harshest voices I had ever heard coming out of teenage girls. More than one person had mistaken Regina for a man over the telephone.

      “Uh…I don’t know. I might be going to the movies with Burl.” As much as I liked this new girl, I had to get to her when I could. It didn’t really bother me having to put her on hold. I knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

      “Oh. Well, if you change your mind, let me know. I got some new patterns I want to show you. After that, I have to go down to my daddy’s office to help clean up. His cleaning lady has been sick for two days.”

      Desiree had moved to town three months ago from Birmingham. She was in my homeroom and three of my classes. She was shy and kept to herself, but some of the other girls at our school mistook her for a snob. They picked on her until I took her under my wing. Knocking Chester to the ground that time had earned me quite a reputation. Nobody messed with me, so naturally the kids I befriended were safe. I liked hanging out with Desiree, even though we didn’t have a lot in common. She liked to read romance novels and she made most of her own clothes from patterns she created herself. She brought sandwiches to school made with bread that she made from scratch, while I ate lavish meals I purchased from the cafeteria. I rarely cracked open a book, and when I did it was a murder mystery or something by Stephen King. I certainly didn’t have the patience or time to fuss with patterns and sewing machines for myself, but I liked watching Desiree do it. She hinted that she wanted to be a designer when she grew up, or a chef. Mama and my grandparents and all of daddy’s relatives wanted Babette and me to be teachers. Daddy said, “I don’t care what y’all do as long as it ain’t illegal.”

      A career was so far down the road, I didn’t give it much thought at the time. I didn’t know what I wanted to pursue, but it wasn’t teaching. For the time being, just being a teenager was enough to keep me occupied. It was a full-time job hanging out with my friends and trying to capture Chester.

      I learned the rest of Desiree’s history by listening to Mama gossip on the telephone with Miss Mozelle. Desiree’s daddy, Dr. Andre Lucienne, was a gynecologist, a Creole, an alcoholic, and a brute. He had beaten his wife so much, she had run off with just the clothes on her back, leaving Desiree and her older sister, Colleen, with Dr. Lucienne. Now he was beating Desiree and Colleen. Even though I had heard a lot of negative stuff about the doctor, I liked him almost as much as I liked my own daddy. I never told anybody, but I often wished that my daddy was more like Dr. Lucienne. Daddy was younger and better-looking than Desiree’s daddy, but sometimes he embarrassed me in front of my friends by using bad grammar and wearing the greasy overalls and lopsided, outdated Afro he wore most of the time. Dr. Lucienne was a short, jowly-cheeked, lumpy man with a moon face and wiry gray hair. And even though everybody said he looked like Fred Flintstone, he had the kind of light skin and straight hair combed back like a duck that a lot of the women I knew liked. I looked forward to riding the bus with Desiree to her daddy’s downtown office. I watched in awe as he rolled around his office on his stubby legs, barking at his nurses and patients with the tails of his long white smock flapping like wings.

      Mama didn’t like me going to the doctor’s office because she didn’t like his head nurse. Bertha Cross, called Nurse Bertha, had been on staff when Mama worked at the county hospital years ago. Very few people liked this woman. Each time Daddy worked on her truck, she complained about his prices and would only pay him with post-dated checks. Once she tried to pay him with food stamps that somebody had paid her with for an abortion she had performed. (I’d overheard that hot piece of gossip from Kitty, who had heard it from the pregnant girl’s mother.) Nurse Bertha was a good Christian lady, but nosy and manipulative according to Mama, and the main reason Mama had given up nursing to do hair. Ironically, Nurse Bertha was now one of Mama’s best customers.

      The last time Mama did Nurse Bertha’s limp, dyed-black hair, Nurse Bertha complained about the style. “Sister Taylor, you got me lookin’ like one of them jezebels on Soul Train.” Nurse Bertha always wore too much expensive perfume, but she was a heavy smoker and had the breath of a moose. I could smell it from where I stood, peeping from around the doorway a few feet away.

      Mama told her, “Didn’t I tell you that style was too young and wordly for you?”

      Nurse Bertha, a petite woman with delicate brown eyes that looked out of place on her leathery bronze-toned face, glared in my direction as I said, “Patti LaBelle wears her hair like that. Those flat bangs make you look younger, too.” My comment made her smile.

      “Well, if Patti LaBelle can wear a do like this, so can I!” Nurse Bertha hollered happily.

      Mama sprayed the kitchen with pine-scented Glade after Nurse Bertha left. Then Mama advised me not to pass out compliments to people who didn’t deserve them. “Lying only leads to more lying. A girl like you has no reason to go around telling lies,” Mama added.

      “Yes, ma’am,” I muttered, crossing my fingers behind my back.

      I rarely told Mama about my trips to the doctor’s office, and I certainly did not tell her СКАЧАТЬ