Flyy Girl (3 page)

“Hello, hello, sleepy-heads,” Patti said, stepping through the front door an hour later. She hung up her jacket and immediately headed for the kitchen.

Tracy got up off her daddy's chest and followed her mother. “Can I help you, mommy?” she asked with wide eyes.

“Unh hunh, now get the little frying pan.”

“Okay . . . Now what?”

“All right, now get the Kool-Aid mix.”

“Okay, mommy . . . Here, mom, now what?”

“Go upstairs in my room and bring down the cups and bowls so mommy can wash them out.”

“Okay, mom. I'll be right back.” Tracy ran up the stairs and grabbed all the dishes she could find. “What now, mom?” she asked, running back inside the kitchen and breathing heavily.

“Aren't
you
full of energy,” Patti commented. “Well, why don't you go and see if your father needs any help.”

“Okay,” Tracy said, running. She tugged on her father's arm at the living-room couch. “Daddy, wake up.”

“Yes, pretty?” he answered, with his eyes still closed.

“Can I help you with something?”

“Yeah, sweetheart. Can you help your dad get up?”

Tracy looked at his long, lean body and remembered the last time she had tried, unsuccessfully, to lift him. She stepped back and shook her head. “No, I can't lift you, dad.”

“Yup, well, I guess you can't help dad then,” Dave responded to her.

Tracy, still filled with energy, hurried back to help her mother in the kitchen.

“Well, did you help your dad, sweety?” Patti asked her.

“No-o-o. Because he want me to help him to get up, and I don't have no muscles,” Tracy whined.

Patti laughed at her. “You have muscles; they just aren't strong enough to lift your dad.”

“Well, when I grow up, I'm gonna have bigger muscles. Right, mommy?” Tracy asked, tugging on her mother's apron.

“Yup, and you're gonna be as tall and as pretty as me.”

Tracy smiled, pleased with herself. “I'm gonna marry me a man like dad, too.”

Patti gave her a curious smile. “Do you like boys yet, Tracy?” she asked of her young daughter.

“NO! Boys get on my nerves!” Tracy shouted.

Patti chuckled. “Why do you say that?” she quizzed.

Tracy pressed her little hand on her hip and shook her head. “Because, 'dey rough and bad. And this boy named Aaron hit my friend Pam today,” she huffed.

“Why did he do that?” Patti asked her.

“ 'Cause his friend Tommy knocked Judy down when 'ney was playing ball, and Pam was gon' hit him for it. So then Aaron came to get in it for Tommy, and he punched Pam in her neck.”

“Well, did she try to hit him back?”

“Yeah, she tried to hit him first, but he blocked it with his arm.”

“Did the boy get in trouble?”

“Mmm hmm, but he didn't even care though.”

“Yeah, he sounds like a bad boy,” Patti said, continuing with her cooking.

“My friend Judy said that boys who hit girls are sissies. Is that true, mom?”

“Who
told her that?” Patti quizzed, turning to face her daughter.

“She said that her father told her.”

Patti grinned. “Well, you go and ask
your father
if that's true.”

Tracy ran back out and into the living room. “Hey, dad, are you a ‘sissy' if you hit a girl?” she asked, tugging again on her father's arm.

Dave opened his eyes and stared at her. “Did your mother tell you to ask me that?”

“Mmm hmm,” Tracy hummed. Then she smiled.

“Well, you tell her that I said she can't beat it.”

Tracy ran back to her mother and stuttered, “He, he said you can't beat it, mom.”

“Well, you tell him that I love him anyway.”

“Mom said she loves you, dad,” Tracy yelled out to him. Her father didn't respond. “Well, dad?” Tracy asked, expecting him to send another message.

“Well, pretty, I guess it's almost time to eat,” he mentioned to her instead.

Dave still hadn't responded to Patti's message as they sat down to dinner.

Tracy was confused. Her daddy didn't say that he loved her mother. Why not?

“You don't love mommy, dad?” Tracy asked him at the table.

Dave looked frozen, as if he had lost his appetite.

Patti came to his rescue. “Of course your daddy loves me, Tracy. What kind of a question is that?”

Tracy backed off and hunched her shoulders. She was still a bit
confused and apprehensive about the tension she had caused at their dinner table.

Dave quickly finished his food and headed out of the house after dinner.

Tracy was left alone to ask her mother plenty more of her questions.

“Mommy, where does daddy go at night?”

“To his friend's house,” Patti answered while cleaning pots and pans inside the kitchen sink.

“Does daddy love you, mommy?”

Patti was getting agitated. “Yes, he does, Tracy. Now what is wrong with you?”

“How come he never says it then?”

“Look, now, stop bugging me. Okay?”

“But does he, mommy?” Tracy persisted.

Patti sighed, surrendering. Had she pushed Dave to his limit? Did he still love her? “I hope he still loves mommy, honey,” she said to her persistent daughter. “I hope and pray he does.”

Dave walked in at eleven on a Wednesday, early compared to some of his other nights out. He had begun to spend more of his free time away from home. He failed to touch Patti or talk to her for weeks at a time. He only chatted with her on occasion, kissing her every now and then.

He walked to the kitchen and got out a spoon with the cherry vanilla ice cream and started eating it from the box. Patti waited upstairs, listening to his footsteps. After a few minutes of debate, she decided to walk down the steps to join him. Carefully, she approached him as he sat inside of the kitchen. She calmly slid her hands over his shoulders from behind. Dave moved forward to release her hold. Patti then sat in front of him to look into his eyes.

Dave got up and went to the bedroom without a word, leaving the box of ice cream on the table and daring Patti to comment on it. Once upstairs, he walked inside of the bathroom to take a shower. Patti followed after him.

“Dave . . . where do you go at night?” she finally asked, trembling.

“I go the hell out. Where the hell do you think I go?” he answered while running warm water. He closed the door behind him and took a fifteen-minute shower.

When he had dried himself off and returned to the bedroom, Patti was waiting for him.

“Dave . . . are you seeing another woman?” she forced herself to ask him.

“What if I was? You wouldn't care. You're still my number one, right?”

Patti pressed the issue. “Are you, Dave?”

Dave pulled on his pajamas and slid underneath the covers. “Can I get some sleep, Patti? I'm tired. It's been a long day.”

Patti snatched the covers from him in a frenzy. “Stop playing with me, Dave! DAMN IT, I'M SERIOUS!” she shouted at him.

Dave took a deep breath to calm himself as he sat up to speak. “Now look, Patti, you wanted to keep playing these little panty-games, and it ain't fun no more. I don't have any more energy for that. So look, give me back my sheets, and shut up before you wake up my daughter.”

It was too late. Tracy heard them going at each other from her room. She sat up in her bed, wide awake, realizing that her mother was losing her daddy.

Several weeks more had passed, and Patti tried her hardest to avoid Tracy's daddy questions. Nevertheless, her mother's lack of answers didn't appear to stop Tracy from asking.

“Mommy, tell me how you met my dad?” she asked one morning.

Patti shook her head, exhausted by them. “You just won't quit, will you? Okay, girl, what do you want to know?” she said, sitting down to join her daughter eating breakfast.

“Where did you meet him at?”

“I met him at a college party.”

“Daddy went there?”

“Yup, and he was one of the most handsome guys there.”

“And did he like you?”

“Well, he came over and asked me to dance.”

“And you said, ‘yes'?”

“Of course I said, ‘yes.' I wouldn't have said, ‘no' to
him.”

“And then you got married?”

Patti grinned and shook her head. “No, not that fast. First mommy had to get him away from all the other girls.”

“How did you do that?”

Her mother reflected on “the good old days.”

“By being more sexy than them,” she answered. Patti then lost track of time as she thought back to the many weeks of seduction. She used to take Dave out to Fairmount Park at night and do wild and crazy things under the privacy of the trees. She used to sneak him into her house at night, while her parents and sisters slept.

Patti painted a facade of not appearing to be jealous whenever other women showed interest in Dave. She acted as if she was above them, which made Dave feel more comfortable with her. Patti was always two steps ahead of the game.

The long talk Tracy had with her mother about how her parents met made them run late. Tracy's girlfriends at school wanted to know why.

“Why was you late today, Tracy?” Judy asked at recess.

Tracy was usually one of the first students at school. “I wasn't late,” she told her nosy friend.

“You was almost late,” Celena interjected, siding with Judy.

“Well,
almost
ain't good enough,” Tracy snapped.

Her friends caught on to her disdain and dropped the subject. They sat and quietly watched the boys play ball. They all watched Aaron, except for Tracy. Tracy was too wrapped into herself and her family to think of any boy.

“Aaron is the best one at keep-away. They can't catch him for nothin',” Celena commented.

Judy sat and stared.

“So?” Pam huffed. “What 'chew watchin' him for?”

“Because, he fun to watch,” Celena answered.

Tracy said out of the blue, smiling, “Ay y'all, guess what my mother told me? She told me that she took my dad from a whole lot of other girls.”

“She did?” Judy asked, stuffing her mouth with a cupcake.

“Yup, and then they got married and had me.”

“WATCH OUT, GIRL!” Aaron shouted, zipping past them with other boys chasing behind him.

“HEY, AARON! WATCH WHERE YOU GOIN', BOY!” Celena yelled.

Tracy paid him no mind. She continued with her story.

“Well, anyway . . .”

“So are you saying that it's over?” Tanya asked her sister, Patti, that evening. They sat in Tanya's small living room. She lived in a small, three-bedroom house in Logan, Philadelphia.

“Girl, I don't know. I mean, he hardly talks to me,” Patti responded.

“Yeah, that's how they get when they wanna call it quits. Either they ignore you or they get on your damn nerves until you can't take it anymore,” Tanya told her.

Tracy was upstairs playing with her cousins Patrice and Kamar.

“I mean, what am I supposed to do?” Patti asked helplessly.

“Tell him that you love him and that you'll try your best to work things out,” Tanya calmly suggested.

Patti snapped, “Are you serious? I'm not fuckin' beggin' him shit. He's the one cheating on
me.”

“Well, okay, Miss Know-it-all. Why the hell are you asking
me
in the first place, since you got all the answers?”

They sat quietly for a few minutes before Patti apologized. “Look, I'm sorry. I'm just under a lot of stress right now.”

Tanya was still annoyed. “You think I don't know that? Me and John have arguments, too. It ain't like I don't have to sit down and think things out myself sometimes.

“That's one of your damn problems, Patti. You always take other people for granted. Now you gettin' some of your own medicine.”

“What, you think this is my fault?”

Tanya looked at her sister curiously. “I don't know, Patti. Is it your fault? You tell me.”

Patti sat and thought about it.
Maybe I have overdone things a few
times,
she told herself.
But it ain't all my damn fault!
I mean, he's not
even trying to talk it all out. He's just trying to punish some-fucking-
body.

“Dave, we need to talk. I mean, our marriage isn't over, is it?” Patti asked, settling into bed after putting Tracy to sleep.

Dave rolled away from her. He stared at the rain out of their bedroom window. “Ain't shit come out my mouth, did it?” he answered sourly.

“That's funny. I thought you said that
I
curse too much.”

“Well, I've changed, and your shit is rubbing off on me.”

Patti eyed his back. “Aren't you gonna take a shower?” she asked, attempting to provoke him.

“Why should I take a shower?”

“Didn't you make love to her?”

Dave paused. “No, I just went to dinner with her, and she kissed me,” he lied. He wasn't dating any other woman, he simply wanted to give Patti something to think about.
Maybe she'll tell me to get out,
he thought to himself. He felt as if he was suffocating in their marriage.
Maybe I was too damned young to get married. I was just finishing
school when she got pregnant.

Patti wanted to kill him.
She fucking kissed you, hunh?
she felt like screaming at him while pounding her fists against his head and back. Then she thought about what Tanya had said earlier, and decided to use her head. “So . . . what are we going to do now?” she pleaded. “Are you ready to throw away your life with me and your daughter for this woman?”

“I think I need to take a little break for a while. I got this little apartment I've been looking at,” Dave announced to her.