Page 28 of His First Wife

“The man is my husband,” I replied. “And I wasn’t out chasing anyone.... Look, would you just give me a hand.”

She frowned and after much reluctance came over to help.

“Oh, I see you’re sleeping in your clothes now,” she said. I was still wearing the dress from Marcy’s. “Did you pick that up in jail?”

“Whatever,” I said. I’d gotten used to my mother’s quick and dry judgments. She wasn’t the kind of person who could see a problem and just let it slide. She had to let the world know if one thing was out of place, one item wasn’t meeting her standards. She’d always been that way even when I was a child, but like everything else, it only got worse when my dad left. Then she became the judge, and the rest of us . . . the defendants.

“Oh, and you’re cursing at your mother now too?”

“Mother,” I said, “Since when did whatever become a curse?”

She looked at me blankly. I was out of order.

“Look, could you just help me out of this dress, so I can put on something clean?”

“Hum . . .” she responded, but I could tell she was struggling not to say something else.

“Well, I had Edith put some clothes out for you in the bathroom,” she said, unzipping me. “And there’s a towel for you in there too.”

“Clothes?”

“I sent her to the store this morning. I knew you didn’t come with anything.”

“Thanks, Mother,” I said and I really meant it.

“And please comb your hair before you come down. I don’t need you looking like a convict at the breakfast table. There’s been enough going on around here,” she said. “Your Aunt Luchie is coming over here for breakfast and I don’t want her getting wind of what’s happened.”

“Aunt Luchie is coming,” I said happily. My mother rolled her eyes. Her oldest sister, Aunt Luchie, was the most beloved of all of my mother’s siblings. She was the free spirit of the family. She’d been a teacher, a chef, and preacher, and once a jazz singer. She always had a smile on her beautiful face, a new song to sing to you, and the ability to make everyone feel special and important. And for this, everyone, everywhere loved Aunt Luchie. And while my mother too shared in the energy of the communal crush, she couldn’t help but to make it obvious that she was jealous of how everyone received, with open arms, her big sister, especially where I was concerned. When I was smaller, I’d scream and holler whenever Aunt Luchie tried to leave our house. My mother would look at me angrily and send me to my room. “Never beg anyone for anything,” she’d say.

“She’s coming over to try to get money for that old hospital downtown,” my mother said emptily. While Aunt Luchie was the oldest, her rebelliousness led to my grandparents leaving my mother in charge of their estate when they passed. Now Mother held the old purse strings and all of her siblings, including Aunt Luchie, had to come to her for everything.

“Grady?” I asked. I’d heard about them closing the hospital on the news.

“Apparently.”

After taking a long shower, I dressed and followed the direction of Aunt Luchie’s laugh toward the kitchen. It was loud, cackling, and lacking any melodic qualities. I was sure my mother was sitting beside her cringing at the inconvenience.

“He called you, girl,” Ms. Edith, who’d been my mother’s maid for as long as I’d been out of the house, said when I turned into the hallway that led to the kitchen. Ms. Edith was a sweet, old woman who always seemed to have her wig on crooked. She loved taking care of my mother, watching Wheel of Fortune and having a secret to share. It seemed like every time I walked into the house, Ms. Edith would come over to me, trying to share a secret she’d been saving.

“Who called?” I played into her. I knew she was talking about Jamison, but Ms. Edith liked to reveal her secrets slowly. An old Southern woman cooking up the latest headline.

“Your husband,” she stepped back and gave me the thin, questioning detective eye. “He’s called every hour, on the hour, since we been up this morning. Now, your mama, she done told me not to tell you, but you know Ms. Edith got your back, right?” She snapped her finger and winked. “A woman needs to know if her husband is trying to reach her—no matter what he done,” she tried to whisper in my ear. “Your mama thinks I don’t know what went down yesterday with you in that jail all alone,” she pulled all of me—and I do mean all of me—into her arms and squeezed me tight like I was about to be put away for life, “all alone . . . not my Kerry Ann! I wanted to come get you, but you know that mother of yours done come up with a million things for me to do in this house, so I couldn’t get a foot out the door.”

“Well, thank you,” I said, kissing her on the cheek. Ms. Edith was about to go into her other favorite topic—how clean she keeps my mother’s house.

“Now, you know there wasn’t much for me to do around here,” she went on. “I keep this place clean as a whistle. Even when she have those people come drunk around here, acting like they sixteen years old, I still keep it cleaner than a hospital.”

“You sure do,” I said.

“Is that my niece I hear?” Aunt Luchie called. “Come in here, gal, and give your aunt a big old hug . . . if you can.” She started laughing at her joke before I even entered the kitchen.

“Very funny,” I said, walking in to see that Ms. Edith had set up a formal breakfast table for us.

“Sugar, sugar, sugar,” Aunt Luchie said, running to me. As usual, she was wearing a silky sweat suit that was made of every color in the colori

ng box and short heels—she was sporty, but her upbringing still hadn’t allowed her to wear sneakers. Aunt Luchie had to be one of the most beautiful sixty-nine-year-olds I’d ever seen. Her smooth, coal-colored skin, thick eyelashes, and perfectly grayed hair (that she called platinum) made you fear getting that old a bit less. She’d aged with the grace of a dancer . . . which I think she’d been at one point.

“Look at you!” she kissed me on the cheek and looked me over as if she hadn’t seen me less than a month ago at my baby shower.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com