Can't Get Enough of Your Love (23 page)

Damn. Another mosquito bite. I can't have much blood left, y'all. Go suck on a bullfrog or something. Go get yourselves some green blood.

I see a huge yellow truck rolling down the dirt road. I watch it park next to my Rabbit. Who's this?

Mr. Wilson gets out.

He sees me and comes down to the dock.

“Hey,” I say.

Wow.

This is the first time I've spoken to anyone since … I can't remember when. Damn. The last time I spoke to anyone was to say goodbye to Bobby on the last day of school.

“Just came to show Jenny my new truck,” Mr. Wilson says.

No wonder the truck is so yellow.

He sits next to me. “She also said I needed to do some fishin'. You been fishin' yet?”

Define “fishing.” I hooked a few men, and they all got away, even in my dreams. “No.”

“Want to go?”

“I don't know.” I should go fishing. I mean, I have nothing else to do … and no one else
to
do. “Sure.”

“I'll be back presently with the canoe.”

And then … we fish. I learn the finer points of worm tying and bait casting from Mr. Wilson, who has me throwing my line up into the reeds while we float in the middle of the pond in the canoe.

“Up in those reeds is where the fish are, as hot as it is,” he whispers.

Fishing is a quiet sport.

Oh, I get tangled up and snarled and hooked and every other kind of thing, so much so that Mr. Wilson can barely keep his line in the water. He has to keep reeling in his line to rescue me.

“You aren't doing much fishing, Mr. Wilson,” I say, casting toward a collection of cattails.

He doesn't speak for a moment. “Maybe I was just supposed to be your guide today. I never did listen to Jenny all the way through. She whispers ‘Go fishin', old man' to me, and I go.”

Creepy.

For the most part, nothing happens. I might make this nothing part of the nothing I usually do all day. It's relaxing in a sweaty, eye-squinting kind of way. It does give me time to philosophize, ponder, and think. It also gives me time to sweat buckets in a metal canoe roasting the soles of my feet. There's obviously nothing here but mosquitoes, and I doubt they'd fit on the hook. The fish are taking naps or something. Maybe I've infected them with my laziness.

Just then, a bass shoots out from reeds like a shark to take my worm and—bam!

“Keep the rod tip up now,” Mr. Wilson says calmly.

How can he be so calm? I've just hooked Moby Dick or something! I fight the hell out of that fish, and the fish fights the hell back, dipping my pole into the water several times and pulling the canoe in circles while I scream and shout.

“Easy … easy,” Mr. Wilson keeps saying, and it's easy for him to say! My forearms are about to burst off my bones!

I drag the fish to the side of the boat. “Don't you have a net or something?”

Mr. Wilson reaches into the water … and pulls up
my fish by its mouth. “Don't need one.” He holds the fish lengthwise. “Nice bass. Pregnant, too.”

Moby Dick is really Moby Jane?

“You might want to put her back.”

After what I've been through, that is so true—and weird—on so many levels. “Yeah.” Damn, I have goose bumps on a scorching hot day.

He removes the hook carefully and “swims” the fish back and forth in the water before releasing her to the deep. “Hard to catch, easy to put back.”

Unlike men, whom I've found are easy to catch and hard to put back.

“You done?” he asks.

I smile.

I'm smiling.

I haven't smiled in …

I'm smiling.

Damn. Did I brush my teeth this morning?

“No,” I say, “I'm just getting started.” I attach another slimy worm to my hook, rigging it Texas-style.

Mr. Wilson nods. “Get to it, then.”

I am a casting fool after that. I have been bitten by the thrill of the hunt. I can taste another catch in my mouth. I can almost see the bass lying in the reeds, their orange eyes looking up at my flopping, flying worm, their salivary glands (if they even have any) dripping and—

A whole bunch more nothing happens for about an hour. All I catch are some rays, and I lose another pound of sweat into the bottom of the canoe.

“It's getting pretty hot,” I say.

“Nah, this ain't hot,” he says, paddling us back to the dock. “It ain't August yet. If we don't get more rain, this pond is liable to dry up again.”

Oh no! Not the pond I named “Mine”! “Has it happened before?”

“Sure. Plenty of times.” He grabs the side of the dock, holding the canoe steady while I get out. “And trust me, you don't want to be downwind of this pond when it's almost empty.”

I hear before I see another vehicle.

“You expecting company?” Mr. Wilson asks.

“No, sir,” I say, and I shield the sun from my eyes.

Mama? Is that Mama's car.

I stand.

It's Mama.

I have never been so glad to see her.

“P
shaw, girl, you smell like all outdoors,” Mama says as I hug her in front of her car. “You could use a bath.”

“I've been fishing.”

She coughs. “And you smell like a fish, girl. Damn.”

Mama cussed! I leave for a little while, and Mama lets her hair down. I step away from her. “What brought you all the way out here?”

“I was in the neighborhood.” She opens the back door of her car, grabs a casserole dish, turns, and hands it to me. “I've been cooking you a nice Sunday dinner.”

Sweet potatoes! Yummy! “It's Sunday?” Where has the time gone?

“Yes, it's Sunday.” She shakes her head. “It looks as if I got here in the nick of time, too. Just take that inside and get in the tub.”

I sniff myself and don't smell anything vile. “Do I smell that bad?”

“Girl, even the flies are scared to buzz around you. Now go on and take a bath.”

I kiss her cheek. “Okay.”

Damn. I'm acting as if I'm ten years old or something. I have to get a hold of myself.

But when I walk into the kitchen, I immediately feel shitty. I have let this place go completely to hell. I haven't done dishes since … I can't remember. Plates, dirty clothes, mildewed towels, unopened mail, an overflowing garbage can …

Where the hell have I been?

Mama bursts through the door behind me with a Crock-Pot and a hanging plant. I know what she's thinking, and I brace for it, but she acts as if she can't see the dishes, the dirty laundry, or the mess, putting the hanging plant on top of the icebox, clearing off a space on the counter, and plugging in the Crock-Pot.

“Go on, now. You're stinking up the kitchen.”

“What's the plant for, Mama?”

She sighs. “To give this room more oxygen. Now go on.”

I smile. “Is that my housewarming gift?”

She nods. “Yes, Erlana. Now go on. You stay any longer in this kitchen, the plant will
die.”

“Is that, um,
the
plant?” Mama has been growing this one hanging plant since the day I was born, somehow keeping it alive.

“Yes, and unless you want to kill a twenty-five-year-old plant, you'll get out of this kitchen.”

“Okay, okay,” I say, and I limp up the stairs.

I don't even know if I have
any
clean clothes, not even one clean footie sock. I'm afraid to look in the closet, since I have yet to clean
those
sheets, and the only drawers I have are—

Roger's boxers.

I had rescued them from the barn and cleaned the smoky smell out of them with dish soap.

I put them on. Better than nothing. They hang on me some. Damn, where did my hips go? Shit! Have I lost that much of my booty? I have to get that booty back.

I collect a pair of shorts and a T-shirt that smell less funky than the rest and hit the shower.

Without first turning on Sheila and letting her warm up for thirty minutes.

I now know what shock treatment must feel like. Even my teeth get goose bumps, but I scrub, scrub, scrub away about a week's worth of filth, and when I'm done, my ankles look almost the same color again.

I need to take more showers.

The water, though, doesn't go down the drain. Shit. And it kind of looks like the pond, with tiny waves lapping at the sides of the tub. I'll deal with that later.

In front of the bathroom mirror, though, I feel so hideous. My hair is a rat's nest even a rat would avoid. I check the bathroom closet for some Optimum Care shampoo and find an empty bottle. Why'd I put an empty bottle back? Oh sure, I have
plenty
of conditioner. Can you put conditioner on dirty hair? At least it would smell better.

“You need your hair done,” Mama says behind me, and I can't help but jump a little.

“Yeah.” I turn and see her holding a nearly full garbage bag, green rubber gloves on her hands. “What are you doing?”

“Cleaning up.”

I feel so low. “Thank you” is all I can manage to say.

Instead of making me feel worse, she smiles. “I don't mind. It brings back some good memories.” She looks past me to the tub. “You got a slow drain?”

“I nod.”

“You have a plunger?”

“No.”

“We'll get you one.”

I nod. “Thanks.”

“Dinner should be ready in about twenty minutes.”

“Okay.”

After she leaves, I realize that she hasn't been judgmental or critical even once. She had every right to be, yet she chose to be nice.

Wait.

My mama, the woman who fussed me up and down and sideways for the last twenty-five years is suddenly … nice? How is this possible? Maybe my being away from her has made her nice!

No. Maybe
my
being away from
her
is
allowing
her to be nice. That's probably it. I brought out the worst in her from the day I was born. I turned her mean.

Two carefully tied do-rags later, I'm down the stairs and in … a clean kitchen that doesn't smell like mold or sour milk. Even the floor is shiny. I must have been in the shower a long time!

“Mama, you didn't have to—”

“I know.” She brings over a glass of iced tea and hands it to me. “I like this place,” she says. “It has character.” She sits at the table, which is also shiny. “When you first told me about it, I didn't believe it. You have yourself a real home here.”

I sit opposite her and take a sip. It's sweet. Damn. She even brought her own sweetened tea for me to drink, and now I'm crying in it.

“Too sweet?” she asks, which is what she always used to ask, and now she's here asking it again and I'm crying and I can't explain why, and suddenly I'm standing and she's holding me and I'm saying, “I'm sorry,
Mama, I'm so sorry,” and she's just humming something beautiful the whole time in my ear.

She gently pushes me away. “Are you going to tell me about it now?”

And then I tell it all, talking about Karl, my African god, gone away; about Juan Carlos, my romantic stallion, gone away; about Roger, my earth brother, gone away—and she doesn't interrupt me even once.

“That's … that's about it, Mama.”

She gets us some more iced tea. “I just knew something was wrong, and now I know what.” She sits and takes a sip. “Too sweet.”

“Just right,” I say.

She takes another sip. “Do you miss them?”

I nod.

“All
of them?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you can't have them all, Erlana,” Mama says.

“But I did. I did have them all.”

She stares me down. “After all you just told me, you have to know that you can't have them all.” She looks side to side, raising and lowering her chin. Then she looks under the table. “Because they ain't here no mo'.”

And now she's talking all country? Cussing and country. This place seems to get to everyone.

“I know, I know,” I say. “I
used
to have them. I have to keep telling myself that.”

She sighs. “Oh, you never know. You might still have them, and they're just being stubborn.”

“It's been almost two months, Mama. They're not coming back.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. And you thought this little foursome would last, too.” She smiles. “I wouldn't put too much stock in any thoughts you have, Erlana.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You're welcome.” She stares into my eyes. “Which one of them still makes your heart hurt?”

A question out of left field. “They all do.”

She shakes her head. “I don't think so. One of them makes your heart hurt the most. Who is it, Erlana?”

All of them make my heart hurt, but if I'm truly honest about it … “Roger.”

“Because he proposed to you?”

“No. Because we used to talk, really talk.”

Mama nods. “And which one excited you the most?”

That's easy. “Karl.”

“He's good?”

“What do you know about ‘good,' Mama?”

She opens her eyes wide. “Your daddy was
good
.”

I giggle. “Karl was good, then.”

She nods. “Just one more question. Which one romanced you the most?”

“Juan Carlos.”

“Hmm,” she says, a twinkle in her eye. “I'm beginning to understand it all now. Are you?”

Understand what? “No.”

“Put them all together, Erlana, and you'll have your daddy.”

Gross!

I mean, what?

I've been dating my daddy?

“Your daddy was all of that.”

I see Roger, Karl, and Juan Carlos in my head.

Jeans. Boots. Long-sleeved shirts for the most part. Working men. Damn, she's kind of right, but …

“Mama, I'm not trying to date my daddy.”