Can't Get Enough of Your Love (5 page)

“Just take care of the dollhouse and Jenny will take care of you,” he said. He pulled his hat down and took a snooze until we reached the farmhouse, and I didn't take a single wrong turn on the way back to his farm.

I shook him gently after I parked. A few raindrops plopped down.

“It's fixing to be a real bad storm,” he said as he got out of the car. “A bad storm with heavy rain, maybe with hail. You better be getting back to Roanoke. Best
you not move in until all this passes, Ms. Cole. I'll have the place ready for you. The day you're ready to move in, you just go on and move in.”

“Shouldn't I call you first?”

He shook his head. “Jenny will tell me.”

And with that, I roared away as the rain thickened, the wind picked up, and hail filled the air.

I
moved in
two
days later after first surviving a hail of words from Mama.

I would have moved in the very next day, but I just had to have an argument with Mama. I'm sure it's in some “how to raise your mama” book. First, you have to shock your mama with “Mama, I'm moving out after twenty-five years of sponging off you.” Second, you have to watch her mouth drop to the floor. You will be amazed how far a mama's mouth can drop, and when it comes back up, it has dust bunnies all up in it. Third, you have to begin packing as the lecture rages all around you and
keep
packing no matter how much sense she makes.

It was actually one of the better moments in my life. “After twenty-five years,” Mama raged,
“twenty-five years
! You suddenly get it into your head, just
suddenly get it into your head
, to go off on your own, just
go off on your own
….”

Mama has this need to repeat everything twice, the second time louder. She has conversations with herself like this all the time, even when she's asleep and even
when she prays. I wonder if God hears her original prayers, or does He hear the echoes? I'll bet He hears the echoes. They're always louder.

“You think you can take care of an entire house when you can't even take care of half of this one?”

She had a point, but I didn't say anything. I waited for the repeat, but she didn't give me one that day.

“I asked you a question, Erlana!”

Again, I waited for the repeat. None came. “Mama, there's not much to take care of at that house.” And besides, I had three strong men who would do all that for me.

“You know, Karl, if you refinish those cabinets, I might be up for that special thing you want to try…. Roger, boy, you need some sun! You know how I love your freckles. Go make me some new ones to count with my tongue. See all that grass out there? … Juan Carlos, want to go skinny-dipping? You do? Well, before I join you, why don't you do something about that dock over there….”

Yeah. I can take care of that house all by
myself
.

“Erlana, you know you can't multitask.”

She made another point. I can barely pee and brush my teeth at the same time. I've lost a few toothbrushes that way.

“Taking care of a house is multitasking all the time.”

“I'll manage.” After all, it takes skill to multitask three men. I smiled. “I'll be fine, Mama.”

“And you think you can afford to stay at that house making only seven fifty an hour and not working in the summer?
Not even working in the summer!
”

That calmed me down. The repeat had returned. All was right and well with the world again. “I'll manage. Any work I do on the place gets deducted from the rent.”

“You are actually going to do some work around that house?”

It did sound kind of funny when I said it. “Yes.”

“I'll believe that when I see it. But it still takes money to fix up a house, Erlana.”

“I have a couple thousand saved up in the bank.” I had been saving for a new car, but the Rabbit will just have to do for a little while longer. “I'll be paying around sixty a month in utilities, sixty for my phone, the Rabbit is paid for, I have low car insurance”—since I have a five hundred dollar deductible—”I have no furniture to buy, no drapes or … okay, maybe all that yellow can go—”

“And what is it, thirty miles from your job?” Mama interrupted.
“Thirty miles!”

“Twenty,” I said as I began to empty my drawers into two big old duffel bags, the only luggage I have ever owned.

“Twenty! That's forty miles a day, two hundred miles a week, over seven
thousand
miles a school year! Seven
thousand
miles, Erlana!”

Mama's really good at math.

“That car of yours can't handle that!”

But Juan Carlos can. He's a mechanic. He's
really
good with his hands. I want to tell Mama about Juan Carlos, Roger, and Karl, but that would cause trouble….

Though introducing them to her might be fun. Hmm …

“Mama, this here's Juan Carlos. You like the little mole on his cheek, his thin moustache, and his soft skin?”

Mama grabs her chest. “He's a … C-c-catholic who barely speaks English!”

“I understand him just fine, Mama. And this is Karl. You like his little shaving bumps and the dimple in his chin?”

Mama slumps onto the couch, still clutching her chest. “Where'd he get all those tattoos? In prison?”

“Karl graduated Hampton U, Mama. He's no felon. And this is Roger. You like his big pores, freckles, and goatee?”

Mama goes into convulsions mumbling, “He's white? He's
white?”

“Yes, Mama, and guess what? I'm dating all three of them … at once!”

Once the introductions were over, we'd have to pay a couple hundred for the ambulance, so … Hmm. Which of the three would give her the
worst
heart attack? Probably Karl. He's black with the most beautiful Afro, which I love braiding—or only half-braiding, depending on how horny I am. He also has more tattoos per square inch than the average tattoo artist.

And I've checked out each and every one of those tattoos, mainly looking for other women's names. I haven't found any yet, but if I do, I got me some strong teeth and sharp nails.

“The Rabbit will be fine, Mama.”

“And how are you going to feed yourself?”

I had shrugged. I mean, it didn't matter because I was going to get fed in bed. Wait—Roger usually likes to eat at the table. “I'll manage, Mama.”

“Child, you can't cook.”

True. “I will manage, Mama, okay?”

“Well, what about—”

“Why should I stay here, Mama?” I interrupted.

More jaw dropping. I rarely interrupt her. She
picked up her jaw and blinked at me. “You should stay here because it's the … because it's the
sensible
thing to do.”

“It's sensible to pay rent to your own mama for seven years?” I asked.

She had sighed. “Is that what this is about? Is
that
what this is about? If this is about money, Erlana, I can—”

“It's not about money, Mama.”

“It isn't?”

“No.” Simple answers are the best for jaw-dropping, repetitive mamas.

“Then why do you have to leave?”

She had finally asked the right question. “I am twenty-five years old. All these years you've been saying that I need to grow up”—definitely repeated to me more than twice
a day
—”and when I finally do something grown-up, you tell me it's not sensible. Now Mama, I know you're not bipolar”—though she eerily fits most of the clinical descriptions. “And I know you don't like to contradict yourself”—although she does contradict herself as often as the sun rises. “So what did you really mean all these years when you said that I needed to grow up?”

Lots of blinking, ending with her eyes sealed shut, her lips twitching. Her eyes opened with a little roll, a few nasally exhaled breaths escaping. “I meant …” Arms folded, head shaking, eyes closed again. “I meant that you should settle down.”

With a man, a house, and a baby. It was time to drop the hammer. “Like you did, Mama?”

Eyes open. More whites than browns. Eyebrows stitched together. “Erlana Joy Cole, you will not
sass
me in this house, I will not have sassing in
this
house, you will
not
sass me in
my
house!”

And she said it
three
times
three
different ways! I had looked away and started on the next drawer. “It isn't sassing if it's the truth,” I whispered.

“What did you say?”

My mama can hear the click of a car door gently closing five blocks away and know that it's me coming home really late from a date with a boy. My mama can hear me whispering on the phone under my covers while she's working in her garden outside on a windy day. My mama can hear ants fart and fleas sneeze. She can hear snow falling in Maryland. She had heard me, so I didn't repeat it.

Her hands dropped to her sides. “I don't want you to go.”

My heart hurt a little when she said that, but I haven't watched half a lifetime of
Oprah
and
Montel
for nothing. “I'm only twenty miles away.”

“Twenty miles … I want you to stay.”

“I'm not a dog, Mama.” I couldn't help myself.

“I didn't say you were!”

I turned to her. “I am leaving this house, Mama. I am moving into another house. I have been here long enough. I—”

“Your daddy put you up to this, didn't he?”

No matter how often I tell her, she still won't believe me. “Mama, I haven't spoken to Daddy in almost seven years. You know that.” He called and talked to me for all of two minutes the day I graduated from high school. “I am putting
me
up to this.”

I had finished packing my dresser and opened the closet door. I didn't have much in there, so with one
swoop of an arm, I had emptied my closet of “dress” clothing. Man, do I hate wearing church dresses. As for the shoe boxes stacked floor to ceiling, though, that would be tricky. My feet stopped growing ten years ago, and I religiously take care of my shoes, saving all the boxes.

“What am I going to do without you, Erlana Joy?”

Another shot at my heart. I had to be strong. “You have your flowers, Mama. They're starting to come up now, right? And like you've always said I'm not worth lint around here.” I also wasn't worth a pickle, a penny, and later (after inflation) a nickel.

“I didn't mean … You know I didn't mean any of that
literally
, Erlana. I was just trying to … to motivate you.”

I removed an old framed snapshot of my daddy from my nightstand. “You
have
motivated me, Mama, and this is the result. You have motivated me to grow up and move out.”

“You hate me,” she said.

That one bounced right off my heart. Is this a line all mamas use as a last resort? “I don't hate you, Mama. I'll never hate you.”

“Then why are you running away?”

Oh, I suppose I could have said something lame and melodramatic like “I am going out into the world to find out who I truly am, Mama,” or “I am going out into the great beyond to find
me
, Mama,” or “I want to see what I can possibly be in this wild and wonderful world.” None of that would be true, and I try never to say anything too melodramatic like that.

I just wanted a place where I could be loved, without restrictions, without strings, and without daily lectures,
where I could be worth more than lint, a pickle, and some change.

I simply said, “I am not running away, Mama. I am growing up. There's a difference.”

“You're running away from me.”

“Mama, if I had wanted to run away from you, I would have left long ago.” When I was eight years old. “I have overstayed my welcome at your house, that's all, and it is time I was moving on.”

“Oh, you're exactly like your daddy, despite all I've tried to do for you. Just exactly like your daddy.”

I took that as a compliment. “Thank you, Mama.”

And that's how I left her. I didn't feel bad about it. I mean, twenty-five years is probably seven years too long to stay at home. After high school, I could have gone to Radford University—they accepted me and my measly 2.8 GPA—but I stuck around Roanoke because I really didn't have an escape plan for
after
Radford. I would have probably gotten a business degree and worked customer service at the bank for the rest of my life, maybe with Mama as my boss!

It's still one of my recurring nightmares. Not very pretty.

Now, I had an escape plan, and the day I moved, I introduced Jenny's dollhouse to Juan Carlos.

And the housewarming gift he gave me—repeatedly—didn't warm up just the house.

A
fter dumping what little I had and setting up my entertainment system (a twenty-inch TV/DVD player and a boom box) at my new house, I drove back to Roanoke to pick up Juan Carlos at Berglund Auto World. Yes, he is a mechanic without his own ride. Karl at least has an old Chevy Blazer, and Roger has a Nissan pickup. Almost every day, Juan Carlos's mama drops him off at work in her old Pontiac Bonneville or he takes the city bus to work. His mama also gets most of his money. At first, I thought it was sweet, but now … He is definitely too attached to his mama, and though I have never met her, I want to smack her for not severing the umbilical cord. A man pushing thirty should not be living at home with his mama.

“Where are we going?”

“For a drive.”

He licked his lips. “You have something … planned?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, okay.”

Juan Carlos isn't exactly a conversationalist, but he's very good with his tongue.