Deliver Me From Evil (22 page)

W
hen I married Jesse Ray, I'd promised myself that I would honor my vow and be a faithful wife. But since things had changed so drastically since my wedding day, that damned vow was the last thing on my mind when Wade carried me in his arms upstairs to his bedroom. I didn't
plan
on establishing an ongoing affair or even seeing him again after today. So I had to make every minute of this rendezvous count. Shit!

I was so turned on, I couldn't even wait until I got out of all of my clothes. I jumped on Wade like a tiger and sat on his face so hard, he couldn't breathe. The last thing I wanted to do was smother the man, so I rolled off just long enough for him to catch his breath. I don't even remember how the rest of my clothes ended up in a heap on the floor.

“You still got it,” he told me, sliding off my quivering body to his side of the bed after our first session. “After all these years, you still got it.” He blew out a breath and sat up, looking down at me. My ponytail had come undone, so my hair was all over my head, and a thick lock partially covered my eyes.

“I was surprised to see you back in Berkeley, and even more surprised that you wanted to see me again,” I said, brushing my hair back. I was breathing so hard, my chest hurt.

“Why wouldn't I want to see you again? We were always good together,” Wade said, giving me a surprised look of his own.

“But it wasn't always good for us. I'd like to forget that little episode in L.A. when I showed up at your door,” I said.

“Things have changed. You're not a little girl anymore,” he said and laughed, slapping my naked thigh. A door slammed downstairs, and we both froze.

“Shit!” Wade hissed, holding a hand up in my face. “Stay here. Don't make no noise,” he told me, struggling to get back into his jeans. He left the room, running his fingers through his hair. “Shit! Mama's back. What the fuck did she forget this time?”

With the door to his bedroom closed, I couldn't hear much of what was going on downstairs. But I could hear Miss Louise's throaty voice. I got up and put my ear to the door long enough to hear her tell Wade that she had come back to get her lucky cigarette lighter. Then she asked him for a hundred dollars so she could go play keno when she lost the rest of the money that she had when she got to Reno. His response was so low and muffled, I couldn't understand what he said. But when I heard him padding back up the stairs in his bare feet, I ran back to the bed.

“Hey, baby. Listen, I'm going to have to make a quick run,” he whispered, even though he'd closed the door behind him. “I'm a little short on cash,” he said, sliding into his shoes. “One of my homeboys owes me a few bucks.”

“You need a ride?” I asked, rising.

“No, baby. You stay right where you at. I don't want Mama to know you are up here.”

“But my car is out front,” I reminded, scrambling around for my clothes.

“That don't mean nothing. That car could belong to anybody. I should be back in about ten minutes. My boy lives just around the corner.”

I didn't want to be left alone. I didn't want Wade out of my sight until I was finished with him. “How much do you need?”

“I don't need nothing. It's for Mama. You know how she is about her keno and shit. A hundred-dollars would do it.” I immediately opened my purse and plucked out a crisp hundred-dollar bill. As soon as I held it up, Wade held up both hands and shook his head. “Baby, you don't have to do that.” I noticed how weak his protest was. At the same time he was turning the money down with his mouth, he was reaching for it with both hands.

“I'll pay you back as soon as I can,” he said, moving toward the door.

I didn't plan on seeing Wade again, so I didn't expect him to pay me back the money. So I planned on fucking the hell out of him as soon as he got rid of his mama. That was worth more than a hundred dollars to me.

 

Wade didn't promise me anything about seeing me again before I left his mama's house, with a massive grin on my face because I had been fucked the way I should have been fucked. I didn't care that he didn't promise me anything. I didn't promise him anything, either. As odd as it was, I reminded myself that I was still a married woman. But I was human, so I was bound to make mistakes and bad choices. I couldn't think of a better mistake or worse choice than the one I'd just made.

I almost cried as soon as I turned onto my street. I had to blink, close, and rub my eyes because I didn't want to believe what was in front of me. Parked in our driveway like a gigantic stink bomb was Adele's jalopy, with the trunk open. There were boxes on top of boxes stacked up on the sidewalk next to her car and on my front porch. I was disappointed not to see Nita's car. But before I could even park, Nita pulled up behind me. Sitting in the front passenger's seat in Nita's Taurus was Adele's smart-mouthed daughter, Odette, looking at me like I'd stolen her purse. Odette and her twin brother, Odell, were fifteen going on forty. The boy, even though he was strange and sneaky, wasn't that bad. But Odette thought that the world revolved around her. And, for a girl who was just as plain as her mother, she had a lot of nerve thinking so highly of herself.

I didn't move until Nita parked her car and came over to me. She had to motion for me to roll my window down.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked, ignoring Odette as she strutted up on my front porch, with a large suitcase in one hand and a tennis racket in the other. A tennis racket! One thing I had to say about my in-laws was that for people who were always complaining about being broke, they sure lived high on the hog. The kids would only wear designer clothes and had to eat in the most expensive restaurants in town. But only when it was at somebody else's expense. That usually meant that the money for their extravagances usually came out of Jesse Ray's or Miss Rosetta's wallet. Now that Miss Rosetta was incapacitated, Adele and Harvey did all her banking. Her pension and Social Security checks were deposited directly into her checking account, which Adele and Harvey controlled. Every month they took turns spending what they wanted to on themselves and leaving nothing for Miss Rosetta but some change.

Now I loved money just as much as the next person, and I spent my share of it. But I figured that what belonged to Jesse Ray belonged to me, so it was not like I was mooching off of anybody. But it never ceased to amaze me how people like Wade's mama and Jesse Ray's family could be so brazen about spending money they were not entitled to.

“Like I said, I am going to pray for you,” Nita said, shaking her head. “Your sister-in-law left work early and snatched the kids out of school, and they've been hauling their shit over here since this morning,” Nita told me, looking at her watch. “I didn't think you'd be gone this long.”

“I didn't, either,” I confessed. “Uh, Wade was glad to see me, and we had a lot to talk about.”

“I bet you did. Well, all I can say is, I am glad you got to do something for yourself today. From the looks of things, it's going to be a while before you get your cookies again.” It felt like I was having an out-of-body experience as Nita opened my door and pulled me out of my car.

“They are only going to be here for a little while. A week or two,” I said in a tentative voice, nodding toward the house. Adele was peeping out of the front window, looking at me with a smirk on her face.

“For your sake, I hope that's the case. But judging from what I've seen so far, a little while means one thing to me and you, and something else to these folks. Odette just had me drive her back to the house—for the third time—to get more of her shit, including her cat, Bruce.”

Adele left the window and came out to the porch, hands on her hips, looking at me and Nita. There was a cigarette stuck between her ashy lips. She took it out and shook ashes into one of my best coffee cups, knowing that I had placed ashtrays in every room of my house, including the bathrooms. I was too horrified to comment on Adele's smoking etiquette, but I couldn't overlook the fact that she had invaded my wardrobe.

“That bold hussy is wearing one of my best house-coats,” I hissed, rocking from side to side on my weakened legs. My body was still feeling the effects of my marathon fuck fest with Wade. My nipples were still tingling. My crotch was vibrating like I was still riding up and down on Wade's huge dick. The state of my body was probably the only thing that kept me from running down the street, screaming.

“And how was your … uh … date?” Nita asked, with a wink.

Even though I was preoccupied, I managed a smile and a thumbs-up.

“Uh-huh. I feel you,” Nita said, nodding. “When are you going to see him again?”

“I … we didn't discuss that,” I said, with a shrug, my eyes on Adele, who was still standing on my porch, with her cigarette.

“Well, if I were you, I'd keep his number real close,” Nita advised, rolling her eyes and nodding toward Adele. “I have a feeling you are going to need it again.”

I let out a disgusted breath and shook my throbbing head. “I have the same feeling myself,” I said through clenched teeth.

T
he day that my in-laws invaded my house marked the beginning of a battle that would have put the infamous movie
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
to shame. I was glad that I did not have access to any lethal weapons, because I probably would have used them. And, the “support” that I received from my husband was so weak, you couldn't even tell that he was involved in this mess. I knew I had to fend for myself. I went into battle with Adele and her kids with no allies, except for Jeanette, Nita, and Miss Odessa. I couldn't count Miss Rosetta, because she didn't even know where she was, let alone what was going on in the same house. One thing I could say for myself was that, thanks to my experiences with street life, I was a fighter and a survivor. I was going to do whatever I had to do to keep Adele and her kids in line.

By the end of the second day, everything was in an uproar. It felt like I'd been set up, because it seemed like my in-laws' behavior had all been carefully planned, rehearsed, and staged. Even their cat was in on it! I loved animals, but Odette's heavyset, five-year-old calico cat, Bruce, became a major pain in my ass within hours after moving in. Even though the cat had enough sense to use his litter box, which Odette had set in a corner in the kitchen, that damned creature strutted around like royalty on top of my kitchen table whenever he felt like it, which was every hour on the hour. Nobody but me yelled at Bruce and chased him off the table. What was even more irritating was the fact that Adele thought it was “cute” the way Bruce leaped up on my smoked–glass top table to strut his stuff.

“I don't know why you are making such a fuss. My cat is clean,” Odette snapped every time I scolded Bruce.

“I don't care how clean Bruce is. I don't want him shedding hair all over my kitchen table,” I shot back. I didn't even mention the fact that Bruce had also clawed the bottoms of all my expensive living-room drapes, already. Odette dismissed me with a wave of her hand and ignored me as much as she could. But I could not ignore her presence any more than I could ignore her mother's.

Clothes and boxes had been dumped just about everywhere but where they were supposed to be. A box full of toys for the cat had been set on my kitchen counter. Toiletries, magazines, books, and even wig heads had been piled up on the living-room floor, right by the door.

Adele and Odette were supposed to share one of our two spare bedrooms. Odell was to occupy the other. Yet nobody had bothered to store any of their belongings in the room to which they'd been assigned. I ended up doing it, thinking that I was doing a good deed. But even that “good deed” backfired. Even though they were “homeless,” Adele and Odette had the nerve to be the most territorial and touchy females I'd ever met.

“What's wrong with you? Why are you hanging up my good clothes like that?” Adele asked as I finished storing the last of her dresses in the closet in the room she'd occupy.

“Like what?” I wanted to know.

“You don't just slap my shit onto no pole all unorganized and mixed in with my pants and blouses,” Adele hissed, brushing off a dress that looked like it belonged to her daughter. “I paid good money for this frock.”

“Then you take care of it,” I advised, hands on my hips. My attitude and body language stunned Adele, and I didn't know why. She had known me long enough to know I didn't take anybody's mess lying down. “You do whatever the fuck you want to do with your shit then. But whatever you leave lying around in
my
house, I will move it and put it where it should be,” I warned.

“This is my brother's house, too,” Adele said in a meek voice, which was rare for her. She usually sounded and acted like a frustrated fishwife.

“And your brother is my husband. What's his is mine,” I reminded.

“Look, Christine. I don't want to be here any more than you want me here. I got other places I can go. But part of the reason I came here was so I could help take care of my mama. Now either we can get along or we can't. But me and my kids are here, and we will be here until we leave.”

“Adele, as long as you treat me with some respect, I will treat you with some,” I said, mumbling profanities under my breath as I backed out the door.

“Don't start no mess, there won't be no mess,” she said in a low voice, following me, looking toward the stairs. The living room was just off the landing and next to the ground-floor bedroom that Miss Rosetta occupied. The last thing I wanted to do was upset Miss Rosetta. Even though she could not respond to much of anything, she could still hear.

No matter what I said or did, it provoked somebody. That was why I decided to hide out in my bedroom until Jesse Ray got home from work on day two of my nightmare. I couldn't keep my eyes off the clock on my nightstand. The hands seemed to be moving so slowly, I thought they had stopped. I fumbled around until I located my watch in my purse, but the hands on it moved just as slowly as the hands on the clock.

I don't know if Jesse Ray planned it, but it just so happened that he had to stay at the store a little later than usual to do some inventory. He didn't seem the least bit sorry when I called him. “Baby, we had a few emergencies down here that I needed to straighten out. I don't know what time I'll make it home tonight,” he told me. He sounded impatient, but my mind told me that that was just to throw me off.

“Jesse Ray, your last emergency was a missing copy of the
Godfather
DVD. It took you two hours to find out it had been misfiled. You want to talk about an emergency. There are a whole lot of emergencies going on in your house right now, and you need to be here to help me deal with this shit!” I hollered.

“Well, I got a real emergency down here tonight—”

“Can't it wait until tomorrow?” I wailed. “I'm going crazy up in this house with all these people downstairs. There's boxes of shit everywhere you look, and I've already had to listen to Odette's smart mouth. I can't deal with this by myself!”

“Baby, have a glass of wine and stay in your room. I'll be home soon. The cops are here and—”

“The cops? Did you get robbed or something?”

“We had a shoplifting incident tonight. I was able to hold this motherfucker until the cops got here. Now let me get off this telephone so I can wrap this thing up. Don't hold dinner for me. I got a pizza on the way.”

I hung up. During the few minutes that I'd been on the telephone talking to Jesse Ray, I'd heard glass breaking downstairs, and the television and the stereo were blasting at the same time. I counted to a hundred and asked God for strength before I went back downstairs.

I waltzed into the living room and turned off the television and the stereo. Like a zombie, I stumbled into the dining room, where Adele and the twins were at the dinner table, gnawing on the baked chicken and turnip greens that I'd prepared for dinner. And by the way they were grabbing, gobbling, grunting, and chewing, I knew that there would be nothing left for Jesse Ray when he got home, anyway. “We don't play the television and the stereo at the same time in this house,” I told them, looking from one scowling face to another.

“You been tripping ever since we got here,” Odette said, talking and chewing at the same time. “Ain't she, Mama?”

“This is her house, sugar. We got to respect her,” Adele said, giving me one of the most fake-looking smiles I'd ever seen.

Odell gave me a pitiful look and a real smile, but I was even suspicious of that. Even though he was fairly nice compared to the rest of his immediate family, this boy was too quiet for me. Quiet people made me nervous. That was one of the reasons I never liked being alone with my daddy.

Quiet people even disturbed elderly Miss Odessa. “Still waters run deep,” she told me. Her translation was: “Watch your back.” But my in-laws were as destructive to my face as they were to my back. I was not only going to watch my back, I was going to watch all the rest of my body parts as well. Speaking of body parts, Wade's were definitely among the many thoughts swimming around in my head. I was glad I still had his cell phone number.