Every Woman Needs a Wife (9 page)

“This is not going to happen in my house!” he shrieked. “Either I go or she goes.”

“Oh no, my brother, that’s not a threat anymore,” she said in a normal tone while pointing to the exit. “The door’s that way. So get your stroll on and mosey on down to the no-tell motel or heartbreak hotel, whichever one will take your tired behind in.”

“Look, I—”

She held up a hand, cutting him off. “End of discussion! My…
wife
, the woman you’ve been
doing
on the sneak tip, is about to earn her keep the honest way—on her feet taking care of me, instead of on her back fucking you.”

Brandi sailed past him and out to the party, closing the door behind her.

When had his wife become such a hard-core bitch? She’d been feisty when he’d first met her on Fisk campus, but it was the sadness in her eyes that told him something lay underneath, something deep and disturbing, though she tried to hide it with a cold brush-off for anyone who tried to get close. The only other man who had a chance was Michael Cobb, and sources told Vernon that the man was taking things slow. Too slow, because Vernon was able to inch in after Michael had laid at least two years of groundwork and was all set to close in for the kill. And he would never have thought Vernon would be competition. Especially since Brandi and Vernon went at it every time he showed up on the Fisk campus…

♥♥♥

Brandi strolled down Seventeenth Street trying to keep up with Avie, who was on her way to chew Veronica Chapman out for trying to steal her
boyfriend. Crowds had gathered on the left, spreading out over the campus lawn like weeds. As they passed the library, they ran smack-dab into the Morehouse Seven as Vernon and his friends, visiting from Atlanta, were called. She tried to avoid them at all costs, especially since the leader of the group always had words with her. None of them kind.

Vernon’s smooth voice carried across the lawn. “Maybe if you’d loosen up and get a little dick, you wouldn’t be so mean all the time.”

Brandi whirled to face him, books in hand, as students who were engaged in conversation slowly turned their attention to the two squared off near the wire gate.

“Maybe if you had one that was longer than three inches, you might have a chance.”

“Oooooooh no she didn’t,” someone said in the midst of the howls of laughter.

Vernon wasn’t going to let that ride. “How can you even know what that is, since you haven’t had dick since dick had you.”

Brandi flinched. How dare he say that she hadn’t seen a dick or had any since she’d been conceived. He wanted to play dirty? So be it. “Don’t have to have any of yours to know that you’re the reason masturbation was created.”

The women in the crowd clapped and cheered as Brandi strutted past the men. And that was how it went almost every weekend. They fought like debtor and collection agency.

Michael continued to be the wonderful, charming man she had come to consider a constant in her life. He was quietly aggressive, but nowhere near as fiery as Vernon. Michael sat back thinking Brandi was a sure thing.

Vernon would show him that nothing was a sure thing when it came to women.

Now, it seemed, Brandi was going to use Tanya to teach him something he would never forget.

T
anya perched on a chair in the corner of Brandi’s living room—the perfect angle to watch the dynamics of the family—trying to make sense of her new situation. Vernon’s mother came over and talked with her a while, feeling her out, then offered encouragement when she realized exactly what her son had done.

As little groups converged trying to make heads or tails of Tanya, memories of Michelle Pitchford’s family swam in and out of her mind, making her homesick for the family that had taken her in after a tumultuous time in her life. As she bit into a slice of sweet potato pie, Christmas at the Pitchfords brought a smile to her face…

♥♥♥

“Hey, what’s this white girl doing here in Diane’s kitchen?” Grandpa James bellowed as he came through the wooden door leading to the large kitchen. He locked his gaze on Tanya, who was helping Mama Diane fold the butter, vanilla, sugar, and eggnog into the mushy sweet potatoes in a metal bowl. Eight pie pans layered with homemade crusts sat on the counter. Scents of nutmeg and sage vied with the savory scents simmering on the stove to dominate the kitchen.

Michelle had warned that the old man would come in way after everyone else and inspect what had been done. His piercing brown eyes swept across the room—the largest in the wood-frame house—taking in the women singing, talking, and laughing as they worked in unison, each for
a special purpose. Mama Diane had told Tanya that he wasn’t too fond of white folks, so she had to be especially careful around him. He still bore a grudge for what those Jersey whites did to members of his family: The lynching of two couples on a road between Monroe and Jersey in July 1946 was still lodged in the memories of those who had loved them.

“She’s family. Now behave yourself.” Mama Diane’s round mocha face broke into a soft smile as she kissed the man’s weathered cheek. “She’ll be living with us from now on.”

Grandpa’s plaid shirt tightened with every move, as his gaze swung toward the window and out to where his son, James Jr., stood yakking it up with the fellas on the front lawn. “Uh…something I need to know? They say Papa’s a rolling stone, but didn’t know he tried to hit a few rocks now and then.”

“No, she’s a friend of Michelle’s,” Mama Diane said with a hearty chuckle.

“Humph, better not be somethin’ else goin’ on ’round here,” he said, running his hands under the water flowing into the sink. Then his gaze swung from Diane back to Tanya. “Did you make some Brummistew?”

Tanya frowned, thinking that maybe he meant the pinkish-red mixture that was sitting in a big silver pot on the back burner of the old stove. Mama Diane said they would serve it with light bread, crackers, or cornbread, but she had never heard it called Brummistew. “Do you mean
Brunswick
stew?” Tanya asked, looking up at him.

“Humph.
Y’all
might call it that, but ‘round here, we call it Brummistew.”

“Oh,” Tanya said, throwing her head back so the long blonde braid fell down her back. “I only know it by the
proper
name.”

“Proper my Black ass,” he snapped, narrowing his eyes to peer at her. “Slaves invented that dish, and only our kind have the right to give it a name.”

“Everyone eats the stew,” Tanya said, beating the orange mixture with heavy strokes the way she’d seen Mama Diane do earlier. “How could slaves have invented that?”

“Boy I tell ya, youngsters just don’t know nothing important these days.” He took a deep breath and looked down at Tanya. “After the meals were prepared for the master and his family, the leftover pork was ground up
with chicken and a few spices…” He picked up a group of small glass bottles. “Like these right here. And there ya have a Southern delicacy—Brummi-stew.”

“Brunswick stew,” she said with a wide grin.

“Little girl.” He waggled a long finger at her. “Me and you ain’t gonna get along so well.”

Mama Diane turned from the stove and winked at her.

Tanya sighed and said, “Brummistew.”

“Now that’s better.” He peered into the next pot on the stove, steam billowing out on the sides. “Y’all got any turnips mixed in with those collards?”

His eyebrows arched into half moons as he looked at Tanya.

“Mrs. Pitchford said that Mr. Pitchford didn’t put them out this year.”

“Didn’t put them out?” he said, his voice filled with wonder. “Girl, you sounding mighty Black ’round here.”

“Mama Diane’s teaching me a whole lot. She said that turnips are a delicacy and since everyone doesn’t plant them, it’s hard to get her hands on them if they’re not grown right here in Social Circle.”

He lifted the glass cover of the cake dish to inspect the contents. “Who made the Red Velvet cake?”

“I did,” Tanya said proudly. “And topped it with pecans.”

“Hmmmmm,” he murmured, giving it a once-over before replacing the lid. Mama Diane gave her a thumbs-up. Evidently Grandpa James approved.

Michelle had warned Tanya that Grandpa James would be a tough customer. Looking at his wrinkled skin the color of roasted pecans, the way his eyes missed nothing, and the little ways he joked and chided the rest of the women, she could believe it. No one got off easy. But Grandma Belle had his number, patting him lovingly on the rump every time he strolled past. Tanya didn’t miss his satisfied grin, or the fact that he went past Grandma Belle on purpose, on out-of-the way trips to other parts of the kitchen—often more than once.

Most of Michelle’s family had arrived late last night. The women, with their own seasonings in tow, brought the items to make their specialties. Tanya soon learned that Christmas and all other family gatherings always
took place at the Pitchford home. Children stretched out upstairs on cotton pallets next to older aunts and uncles, resting up for all the fun that would happen the next day. This Christmas, with a small, decorated tree in the living room, and presents stacked up on all sides, was a warm contrast from the formal parties complete with tuxes, ball gowns, and stuffy attitudes at the Jaunal mansion, where Tanya had spent the first twelve years of her life.

Tanya had never stayed up all night, but managed to keep her eyes open as the symphony of so many women—with skin ranging from midnight black to as ivory as her own—orchestrated a spectacular Christmas dinner. She and Michelle were put to work peeling and dicing potatoes and celery for iced potato salad, stirring the pots of black-eyed peas and butter beans, or cleaning the greens in a porcelain sink—an endless job. Grandma Belle, along with Aunt Lily and Ruby Pearl, directed cooking traffic from an old wooden chair pulled up to the oak table in the center of the kitchen. The women took turns singing old hymns or even breaking into one or two secular songs and the time moved swiftly.

A peace had settled into Tanya’s soul. She knew that she was now home.

Though they didn’t appear to be as busy as the women, the men weren’t exactly loafing. After they slaughtered a pig, they were up all night cooking it over a wide pit right off the front lawn. Once they got the pig over the fire, they tossed a few horseshoes while downing cans of Old Milwaukee and Country Club, and passing around bottles of Boone’s Farm and Canadian Mist.

Uncle Jeff gave Michelle and Tanya a lucky swig of both along with some homemade plum wine, but made them promise not to tell Mama Diane. Of course they wouldn’t tell. It was the first time Tanya had a taste of anything so strong. The girls brought the pig skin back into the house and passed the tray to Aunt Martha, who would season it and fry it up to crisp little kernels that would go into the crackling corn bread. Later, some would mix it with buttermilk and make a meal out of it.

Grandpa James dropped his horn-rimmed glasses and the lens rolled out, slanting downward toward the living room and coming to a stop under the sofa. “Hey, I told you about these damn floors! When are you gonna fix ’em?”

“Daddy, this house has been rebuilt for the last time,” Mama Diane said from her place near the back door. “This floor is going to stay exactly how
you
laid it—crooked.”

“I didn’t do the floors, now. I did the frame. My brother Otis laid these crooked floors.”

“And I measured them right!” Otis yelled across the yard. “Ain’t my fault it’s crooked. You laid the floors.”

“Oh, Lord, don’t get those fools started,” Ruby Pearl said with a weary shake of her head. “We go through this every time they get together. A house that’s been rebuilt as many times as this one is bound to have something wrong with it; at least the plumbing works. By now the old outhouse would’ve been full of shit, same as you, James.”

His gaze leveled on the heavyset woman. “You’re not too old for me to put over my knee.”

She grinned and said, “You’d have to catch me first.”

He jerked suddenly in her direction and she sprinted to the door and made a hasty exit toward her husband as the women broke up laughing.

Tanya looked up at Grandpa James. “How many times has this house been rebuilt?”

Then she stood over the waste can, peeling the shells off the hard-boiled eggs, listening to him tell how the parts of the Pitchford house had been moved from several different pieces of property before coming to stay put on the south end of Cherokee Road. The first time they moved the house from Monroe to a sharecropper’s land in Covington so their family could work the fields. Then, when they were hired to work someone else’s land, the house had been dismantled, the pieces hauled through the woods and back trails only to be rebuilt in Monroe again. Finally, on another stint, it landed on the current spot in Social Circle.

“Why not just leave the house and build another one?”

“Honey, where we come from, we just don’t have that kind of money,” Grandma Belle said, her skin peppered with perspiration, and her smile warm enough to sweep away the cold in any heart.

The first time the woman laid eyes on Tanya, she lifted her chin so that they were eye level. It was as though she could see into Tanya’s very soul.
“This child’s gonna need some serious looking after, Diane. You see these eyes? These are the eyes of a child who’s seen too much pain, too early. You’re in the right place, little one.”

The woman had hugged Tanya to her massive breasts and for the first time Tanya could remember she cried long and hard. Cried until she was too dry to do anything else but sleep. And the Pitchford women had looked after her all through the night.

The heat in the kitchen was unbearable, but Tanya wouldn’t trade it for the world. “When we move, the house moves, too,” Grandma Belle said proudly. “Our people are natural carpenters. The whole family helps to build a house.”

“And sometimes the floors aren’t level because
someone
doesn’t have the proper tools or doesn’t know how to measure,” James Jr. said through the back-door screen.