Cheaters (31 page)

Beverly countered, “Don’t mess with me because I’m tired and hungry. I didn’t get much sleep. My damn neck is hurting.”

“Stop, Tammy,” Lila said. “You work last night, Beverly?”

“Naw. I got my hair did and I slept in a chair so I wouldn’t mess it up. I went to visit Mookie and I wanted it to look good. He likes it when my hair looks good.”

Her hair was in a hard-freeze style, shaped like a crown, all kinds of glue and glitter and arts-and-crafts crap in it.

Tammy said, “I’m not through with my conversation.”

They fell into an argument about Beverly always stealing from people. Beverly had been to Tammy’s place and helped herself to Tammy’s herringbone slacks a few months back. A blouse before that.

Beverly’s eyes tightened, her scowl went to me. She said, “You must be Tammy’s friend Momma was telling us about.”

I said, “Yeah.”

Beverly smirked. “You met J.J.?”

Tammy said, “Don’t go there, Beverly.”

Beverly’s scowl turned into some sort of smile. She said, “Oh, so your funky little friend don’t know about J.J.?”

“His name is Darnell,” Tammy said. “What did Momma tell you about bringing that up? My business isn’t everybody’s business.”

“This necklace wasn’t nobody’s business, but you brought it up in front of every-damn-body. Who you trying to impress? Why don’t you take your friend around to Purnell’s old house so he can meet J.J.? All of y’all can drink and have a good time.”

Tammy growled, “Give me my necklace.”

“I ain’t giving you nothing until I’m ready.”

“Take it off or I’ll snatch it off.”

“That’ll be the last thing you snatch.”

“Don’t you girls start to fighting,” Lila said. “Beverly?”

“
What
?”

“When your boyfriend getting out of jail?”

“Mookie should be out this month. He only doing six months this time because it got reduced to a misdemeanor and the place is so crowded they’re letting some of them out early. Actually four months because of good behavior.”

Beverly went into the den, got on the phone, turned on another television. Martin’s voice boomed from the tube.

The pregnant sister, Rhonda, was sixteen. She wobbled

inside with her thirty-year-old boyfriend trailing behind her with nervous baby steps. She was five-seven. Leon was at least two inches shorter. I knew his name because he had a golden overlay in his mouth that spelled his moniker in crooked letters.

Seven conversations were going on, everybody was trying to out-loud each other, the radio had been turned on, so that no matter how much volume I gave the television it wasn’t enough.

“Who gives a fuck?” That was Purnell. Every three minutes he’d scream that, then say, “Somebody get me some goddamn pants.”

Tammy sat by me. She looked wounded, ashamed, glanced at her watch about ten times a minute. We knew I had to get back home to my wife. We both had different kinds of frustration.

She closed her eyes for a moment, massaged her temples, opened her eyes, said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I thought for once they’d give it a rest and act civilized.”

It went on for a while, all the noise, all the bickering.

Tammy stopped bouncing her leg and said, “Let’s step outside for a minute. We can sit in the car and listen to the radio.”

By the time we got in the car, Tammy was crying and blowing her nose, but no hard weeping noises.

She asked, “Still think I’m fantastic?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Well, you wanted to know me. Now you know me. This is the mess that I come from. This is the mess that I run from. One day I’m going to Europe, like Nina Simone, and leave all of this behind. My kids won’t ever know that any of these people exist.”

I didn’t say anything for a while.

I asked her, “Who’s J.J.?”

“When I was fifteen”—she blew out a long stream of air, her tone almost faded—“I messed around and was pregnant by J.J. I’m not down with abortions, so I put the baby up for adoption.”

“Boy or girl?”

“I never saw the baby. Just heard the baby cry when they wrapped it up and took it away. Some nights I can

still hear that cry.” Her voice deepened with the sadness. She continued, “When I’m acting, whenever I have to do an emotional scene, I use all of
this.
It’s called sense memory.”

I repeated, “Sense memory?”

“It’s a technique. You think of something or somebody in your life to get you to the emotional state you need to be in.”

“Uh-huh.”

“When I have to be angry, I think about my family. When I have to be sad, I think about my baby, thinking about the pain I felt and how I was all alone when I gave birth, then how happy I was when I heard it crying, remember how that cry faded when the nurse disappeared through that door, and the tears come just like that.”

“What about when you have to be happy?”

“I think about being in Europe, singing with Nina Simone. Most of the time. When I had an audition the other day, for the first time I thought about something else to get my joy.”

“What?”

“You. Having you hold me. Feeling you kiss me. Making love to you in the rain.” She sighed. “But you’re married, so my imagining I’m on stage with Nina Simone is more realistic.”

“Is it?”

Her eyes drifted toward mine. “You tell me.”

“I don’t need to say what’s obvious.”

“I’m not weak, but at the same time I feel myself getting weak for you, Darnell. You’re the most positive thing in my life. Right now anything can happen.” She laughed. “I’ve actually considered cutting Bobby loose and being your mistress.”

I patted her hand. Rubbed my fingers across her skin.

She told me, “Problems in relationships don’t come out of thin air.”

“What do you mean?”

“When did you realize that you and your wife were having problems?”

I thought a moment, then said, “In the receiving line when I tried to get a hug. She brushed me off so she could go to her buddy Charlotte and the rest of her bridesmaids.

And I was her husband. I’ll never forget that. I think she was more in love with the idea of being married than she was in love with me.”

I waited for Tammy to ask me if I loved my wife, was ready to tell her I did, ready to confess that sometimes love wasn’t enough, but the question never came.

She said, “I never should’ve come back.”

“Why? These are your people.”

“Sometimes leaving town is a polite way of breaking up.”

“Breaking up with who?”

“Everybody in that house. Maybe I’ll move on from here. Get married and have some sane babies.”

I said, “Marriage isn’t always a happy ending; sometimes it’s a troubled beginning.”

“You speaking on your marriage, or marriage in general?”

“Shhh. Sing one of those Nina Simone songs for me.”

I was in my car in the desert holding another woman’s hand, wondering what my wife was doing at this moment. And I wondered if Tammy cared where her man was.

Lila stuck her head out the door, interrupted Tammy’s soft flow of the theme song from
Porgy and Bess.
I loves ya Porgy. Her mother yelled to let us know that the food was done.

Tammy moved slowly, took short, reluctant steps toward the house.

The scene inside the house was unbelievable.

The vegetables, salad, pies, everything was on the counter. Lila was pulling the turkey out of the oven.

Purnell screamed for his pants.

Then everybody attacked the food, elbowed and pushed each other so they could get to it first. No one had a chance to bless the birthday meal that Lila had slaved over before Tammy’s sisters—who already had knives in hand—started cutting, cursing, and arguing while they snatched legs off the turkey, pulled off pieces of meat before Lila could put it down on the counter. They were grabbing vegetables, bowls of salad, whole pies.

My face was rigid, eyes wide open; I couldn’t move.

Tammy mumbled, “A bunch of fucking vultures.”

Nobody heard her. Too many arguments were going on.

Beverly made four plates of food, three plates of dessert, bitched about there not being any soda in the house, and

rushed out the door. Rhonda’s round belly bumped her momma out of the way. She piled food on two plates, for her and her old man with the graffiti on his teeth, grabbing all the best parts of the bird, acting like this was the last meal she’d ever eat.

Tammy took my hand, pulled me back toward my car. This time she was practically running, dragging me along. She opened the door and got in on the passenger side, told me to get in.

She asked me to start the engine.

I asked, “Where we going?”

“Back to civilization.”

“You’re not going to eat your birthday dinner?”

“Please, Darnell, just get me away from here.”

“Okay.”

“Every time I come out here and try to show them love, I always leave with tears rolling down my face.”

I cranked the car up.

She adjusted the vent so the air could blow in her face. “Well, now you know more about me than Karen and Chanté do. They’ve never been out here. And they never will be out here. And don’t let word get back to them that you were out here. They wouldn’t understand.”

I rubbed her hand. “Don’t worry, it’s between us.”

“Seems like we can’t tell anybody about anything we do.”

I felt her pain when I whispered, “Seems like.”

Tammy was silent for a few moments. Then she said harshly, “J.J. is Purnell’s oldest son.”

That chilled me.

She blew her nose again. “J.J. was the fool who carried Purnell in the house and left him with you. Eleven years later, and he still has the nerve to act jealous. Me and J.J. used to date before Purnell married my momma. Momma met Purnell because of my troubles. Purnell left his wife to get with Momma. His ex’s in Vegas, and I think he still sees her from time to time. It’s a mess.”

Four years of law school and all I could say was, “Wow.”

“I was knocked up by my stepbrother before he was my stepbrother. But people around here just say I was pregnant by my brother. Some reputation, huh? I always think I’m going to make it one day, maybe get a Grammy for

singing the soundtrack to a movie, or an Emmy for
my
television show, or that Oscar for that movie I’ll do with Denzel, and one day when I’m on
Oprah
, sitting on that soft sofa, laughing and girl-chatting about whoever I’m seeing at the time, fans everywhere, somebody in the audience will be from around here, will stand up at the microphone, give that knowing smile, and ask me the million-dollar question I don’t ever want to hear, and all of this, all of this fucking past will come out, and I’ll be humiliated and chastised and booed out of my own life.”

Without saying good-bye to her people, we headed up K Street.

She never looked back.

She cleared her throat, shifted, put her seat belt on, swallowed whatever she was thinking, said, “Small town, huh?”

“Yeah. Small town.”

“Small town, small minds.”

Her face had turned scarlet from her forehead down to her neck. Tammy closed her eyes and blew out five octaves of passion. I don’t know what the song was, but it was in French.
Ne Me Quitte Pas.
She dove into her own world and chanted that emotional chorus over and over.

We grabbed sodas from a laundromat. Shared a honey bun from 7-Eleven. Headed toward the freeway. Toward the L.A. County line.

She took my wedding ring out of the ashtray, handed it to me.

I put it back on.

Saturday. Six p.m. I was at Pops’ shop on Crenshaw, across the street from Crenshaw Car Wash. The sky was gray out this way, so not many people were getting their hoopties
flossed, but the barber shop was crowded, all kinds of conversations going on. Every other minute one of the boulevard’s career hustlers stopped by trying to sell everything from Disney T-shirts to XXX videos.

Jeremiah Junior, my baby brother, was cutting my hair. I wanted my top short, sideburns long. I kept my face clean-shaven, sort of like the models in EM. Posters of Mo Thugs, The Fugees, Rappin’ 4-Tay, Snoop Dogg, and others were on the mirrors at Junior’s stand. The largest poster was of a caramel sister in a two-piece bikini, with inviting lips. The caption read “
NOTHIN
’
LIKE
A
BARBER’S
TRIM
.”

We were arguing sports.

I said, “Sacramento is a graveyard for NBA players. It’s the elephant’s graveyard of the NBA.”

“That’s cold.”

“That’s the truth.
Damn.
”

“Be still before I mess your wop-sided head up.”

A
Best of Jerry Springer
tape was playing on the television facing Crenshaw. About five barbers had customers lined up along the wall; all were watching the tube and talking. On the show, a heavyset sister wearing a ton of gold sucker-punched a skinny sister who’d been in her face talking crap. Everybody in the shop cracked up and pumped it up, “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.”

Pops walked in looking like a short, aging Michael Jordan. Junior looked just like his daddy, only with hair.

I said, “Evening, Pops. Momma up at the house?”

“She’s up there.” He wiped something off his jeans and polo shirt. “Come see me when Junior gets done with your head.”

He didn’t look too happy. But he never did look too happy to see me.

Junior said, “What you do this time?”

“Hell if I know. Knowing him, he’ll blame the rain on me.”

Junior said, “It’s overcast. It ain’t raining.”

“He’ll blame me for that too.”

Five minutes later, I went into his office.

He was behind his chipped wooden desk. I stopped in front of a poster of Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Holmes, and Norton, all in tuxedos. Champions Forever.

Pops motioned for me to sit. I did. I always did what he told me to do. Always had to. Everybody had to.

He said, “What you do to that pretty girl with the ugly name?”

He was talking about Toyomi. I said, “Nothing.”

Pops told me that she’d been calling up to the house all day, ranting and raging.