God Ain't Through Yet (5 page)

W
ithin days after Pee Wee's departure, I felt like an over-cooked rump roast. My meat felt like it wanted to fall off my bones. I didn't even look like myself. My eyes had a hollow look to them. My hair wouldn't curl, even when I used a hot curling iron. I had to wear a scarf when I went out in public.

He wasted no time pouring more salt into my wounds. The affair got so serious so fast that Pee Wee started parading Lizzie all over town. He even took her to some of the places that I went to. And the apartment that they'd moved into—that he paid for with money that belonged partly to me—was in a new high-rise just three blocks from my office. If all of that wasn't unspeakable and painful enough, I had to face all of our friends—the same ones who had once envied my “perfect” marriage.

It seemed to get worse with each passing day. One Sunday night, after he'd been gone for almost three weeks, my mother steamrolled into my house with her wig on sideways, the way men at baseball games wore their caps. There was enough rouge on her cheeks to paint a cruise ship. I could tell that she'd been upset for a while. She was still in her church usher's uniform and clutching one of the hymn books that she passed out in church. “Did you know that Pee Wee brought that woman to church today?” she screamed. “Brother Mitchell had to hold me up to keep me from falling to the floor! How could you let this happen?”

“Let what happen?” I asked in a calm voice. Muh'Dear was hysterical enough for both of us. I saw no reason to let her know just how upset I really was.

“You let that
white
woman take your husband? How could you let that happen?”

I shrugged. “I guess the same way you let a white woman take your husband,” I responded with a smirk. That was not what my mother wanted to hear.

“But Frank was a fool! We all know that now. He was, and still is, limited—and still a straight-up fool if you ask me! He didn't know no better. He ain't responsible for his actions, and he'll at least get slightly singed by the fires of hell some day. But you—I raised you to be a strong woman. You ain't worldly. I know you used to be in the world, but you are a righteous, pious, virtuous woman now. Women in your position don't let their men run amok! I just want to know how you could let your husband drag his whore up into the same church where I worship? Where you worship when you ain't too lazy to come to church?”

As difficult as it was, I managed to remain calm. “It is a free country, Muh'Dear.”

“Well, Pee Wee ain't a free man! He can't be actin' like one and get away with it! You need to take a brick and bounce it off his head! I am ashamed to see you bein' this weak!”

“Like I said, this is a free country. Pee Wee can take his lady friend anywhere he wants to take her.” I was in the kitchen folding the laundry I'd just removed from the dryer. I was glad Charlotte was in her room.

“And you ain't gwine to do nothin' about him takin' his lady friend around all of your friends?
My
friends? Bah! What will Reverend Upshaw's mama say when she hears this? What are you gwine to do about this apocalypse?”

“Like what?” I asked with a weak shrug. “What do you expect me to do about it? And I'm not into bouncing bricks off of anybody's head.”

Muh'Dear didn't have an answer, and I guess she got tired of asking me questions to which I responded with dumb answers. She threw up her hands and left, running out my front door like a woman on fire, mumbling Biblical phrases under her breath. I waited a couple of minutes to make sure she had driven off before I sat down and had myself a brief cry.

One of the things that angered me the most was that my husband didn't just betray me, he betrayed our daughter as well. However, my daughter's reaction was a whole lot different from mine. She was reasonably confused and hurt, but not for long. Like any other eleven-year-old, she focused on the benefits of having another female adult in her life whose goal was to make her happy.

No matter what I did for my daughter, my husband's mistress tried to upstage me.

The first weekend that my daughter spent with her daddy and her new “stepmother,” she came home with new clothes, new toys, and the kind of smile that I saw on her face only on a Christmas morning. And she inevitably made comparisons between me and my new nemesis. “Mama, Lizzie doesn't make me eat greens and beans like you do. She lets me stay up late. She lets me do this, that…”

I got highly upset each time my daughter made a reference to that woman. After a while, everything she said about Lizzie sounded like gibberish. “Lizzie, yadda, yadda, yip yip, blah, blah, blah…” The words rang in my ears like bells.

“I don't give a
damn
what that
damn
woman does or doesn't do. I am still your
damn
mother and don't you ever forget that,” I usually replied, shaking my head and sometimes rubbing my ears.

“And another thing…Lizzie don't use cuss words in front of me,” my daughter revealed, giving me the kind of look I usually gave to her when she stepped out of line.

Like any other woman in my situation, I was hurt and mad as hell. Not just about my husband's betrayal, but now I had to worry about losing my daughter's allegiance, too. Somehow I managed to promise myself that I was going to rise above my pain and be even stronger. I was not about to let my anger cripple my spirit like it did some women. One of those women was my mother.

My father's desertion had almost destroyed her. She ended up resenting men and life in general for years. And even though my mother eventually found love again—with my daddy after a thirty-year separation—she still held on to some of her bitterness.

I had to face the most difficult challenge in my life: I had to find a way to get over losing my husband, and I had to deal with that slut who had stolen him right from under my nose. I knew that I was going to be angry for a while, but I was not about to let my husband's affair make me so bitter that I wouldn't be able to get on with my life. What I had to do now was decide
how
I was going to get this mess out of my system. Somehow I would maintain my dignity, but I wasn't going to sit back and let Pee Wee and Lizzie quietly ease into a new life and live happily ever after at my expense.

In spite of all my anger, I tried to remain realistic. I knew I couldn't force my husband to come back to me, and even if I could, I didn't want him back
that
badly. However, I planned to make sure he didn't forget me anytime soon. My name alone was going to be a major thorn in his side and her ass for a very long time.

I knew that from what I'd seen so far, Lizzie was not about to let him go too soon, or that easily. She worshipped the ground he walked on.

The more I thought about my husband's affair, the more I was convinced that it had been a long time coming. Pee Wee, whose real name was Jerry Lee Davis, was the kind of brother who women of all ages and colors usually chased like dogs in heat. It didn't matter that he was forty-seven and had already begun to lose his looks, hair, memory, and teeth. None of that mattered when you looked at the whole package. He owned and operated a successful business, he was generous, he was well respected in our church and community, he loved kids, and he was as considerate as a man could be. He was also a strong, caring man who went out of his way to keep the people he loved happy. All of that was more than enough for other women to be attracted to him. And some continued to cast their roving eyes in his direction even after he married me.

Before the breakup of my marriage, a lot of people had accused me of being smug. Yes, I had been smug for years because I had convinced myself that my marriage was rock solid. The last time I asked my husband if he would ever get in another woman's bed while he was married to me, he said, “Only if a storm blew me into it.” I kept my guard up and my eyes open because I was not about to let another woman take my husband away from me. Well, clearly I hadn't kept my eyes open wide enough, because another woman took him from me anyway.

How in the world did this happen to me?
I asked myself. I didn't know where to look for answers. I didn't really want to know all the details as to how it had happened anyway. Unfortunately, I already suspected that my past behavior had a major role in my life's latest drama.

E
xtramarital affairs were not new to me. The preacher before the current preacher at my Baptist church had been caught in bed with his wife's younger sister two years ago. The man I worked for was in the middle of a nasty divorce because his wife had left him for his business partner. The list of philanderers I knew about was very long.

Unfortunately, my first experience with an extramarital affair involved my own parents. In a way, it was the end of my innocence, because from that point on, I had to grow up real fast. For years, people teased me by telling me that I was the “oldest” little girl they knew. To this day, sharp pains shoot through my chest every time I think about my parents' breakup.

Out of nowhere, Daddy decided to run off with a white woman. They got married, and he had three more kids with her. Even as a child I could not understand why a pampered white woman from a prominent family, and during the turbulent fifties at that, would give up all that for a black man.

Well, that bold white woman's fascination with black men didn't last long. According to Daddy's version of the events, she eventually couldn't deal with the pressure of being married to a black man in the South. Segregation still ruled at the time, and black folks who didn't stay in their place often ended up dead. Daddy's new wife's rebellion toward her family fizzled out in a big way. When the going got too tough for her, she got going. Not long after giving birth to her third child with Daddy, she ran off with a white man. When she died in an automobile accident, her family didn't even mention Daddy or her three half-black kids in her obituary.

More than thirty years later, my parents got back together and now had one of the strongest marriages in Richland. It had not been easy for my mother to take Daddy back. Even though he put his hand on the Bible and swore to her that he'd never cheat on her again, she assured him that she would never trust him again anyway. She also threw his betrayal up in his face on a regular basis. Daddy was so afraid to look at another woman now, especially a white woman, that he behaved like a blind man when he had to be around one—no matter how young and pretty she was. He wouldn't even go to a female doctor; and if a woman got too friendly with him in public, in Muh'Dear's presence, he became hostile. It was no wonder that I avoided going anywhere with him as much as possible.

The bottom line was, cheating was nothing new to me. “We all have to deal with it sooner or later,” Muh'Dear had warned me years ago. “Ninety percent of marriages is the
Titanic
with a slow leak…bound to hit the bottom sooner or later. If you are lucky, you can plug it up and keep it afloat, but just for a while. Because sooner or later, somebody is gwine to punch another hole in it.” And so far, my mother had been right. I couldn't think of a single one of her female friends, or mine, who hadn't been cheated on. Even Rhoda O'Toole, my best friend, had not been spared this universal indignity.

Rhoda's husband, Otis, had cheated on her at one of the most vulnerable times in a woman's life. She had just given birth to her daughter. She had been experiencing post partum depression, and dealing with a huge weight gain. But Rhoda was not the kind of woman to take anything lying down. She would rise up during her autopsy to get revenge. She'd paid her husband back in spades. Otis's ill-fated affair had lasted only a few weeks. It probably would have gone on a lot longer if Rhoda had not paid the other woman a visit and roughed her up a bit. But that was only part of her revenge. She resumed a relationship with a previous lover, who also happened to be her husband's best friend. That man was still in the picture after more than twenty-five years! Rhoda told me on a regular basis that she was not about to end the affair, so that if her husband ever strayed again, she'd be ten steps ahead of him already.

I had never condoned Rhoda's affair, and until last summer I was the kind of woman who had always looked down on married people who had affairs. I felt that way until I had one myself. But since I'd done so many other stupid things in my life, which included prostitution, having an affair with a man young enough to be my son was not that much of a stretch.

Rhoda knew about my affair from the beginning, and she had encouraged it. At the time, she was the only other person who knew that my husband had stopped making love to me. “Girl, you live in the same house with Pee Wee and he treats you like a stranger with bad breath. If that's not a reason for you to sleep with another man, I don't know what is,” she told me a few weeks before I took her advice.

“But Pee Wee is such a good man. I don't want to hurt him,” I protested.

“Then don't. If you can spend the rest of your life without sex and not go crazy, then it doesn't matter.” Rhoda always gave me sly looks when she said things like that. I always knew that when she really wanted me to do something, she didn't stop until I did it.

“You want me to cheat on my husband so you won't feel so guilty about you cheating on yours, don't you?”

“Honey, I don't know what makes you think I feel guilty about cheatin' on my husband.” Rhoda chuckled. “My husband has nothin' to complain about. I'm a good wife.”

“That's because he doesn't know you've been sleeping with his best friend all these years,” I reminded. “I'm a good wife, too.”

I was a good wife, but when my husband went a year without touching me, even being a “good wife” didn't stop me from crawling into bed with Louis Baines.

Louis seemed too good to be true. Unfortunately, that had been the case. He turned out to be a common con man. But he was one of the most dangerous kind—a smart one. He had me believing that he was in love with me and that he had no interest whatsoever in the fact that I had a high-paying job and access to large sums of money. He would ease sob stories into our conversations about one thing or another that were related to his “financial difficulties,” but he never asked me for money. He was so cunning he didn't have to. All he had to do was display a puppy-dog face, break a few dates with me, and mention that his financial difficulties might impact our relationship, and I'd reach for my wallet. I had been a goose just waiting to get cooked, and he'd cooked my goose to a crisp. I'd given him thousands of dollars.

My ill-fated affair would probably still be going on if I had not overheard a telephone conversation between Louis and the fiancée he had back in North Carolina that I didn't know about. Laughing like a hyena, he told her how he was going to shake me down for one last lump sum and then be on his merry way back to her. I cringed when I recalled some of the nasty names that he had used to refer to me, like “greasy black bitch” and “that funky, old, fat woman.”

After an ugly confrontation, where he attempted to blackmail me for more money, I had no choice but to run home and tell Pee Wee what I had been up to. It was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do in my life.

“Annette, I can forgive you for sleepin' with another man, but I won't ever forget it. If we want this marriage to work, both of us are goin' to have to do our part,” Pee Wee said during one of our conversations after I'd confessed.

“Baby, I will work double time, triple time, night shift, day shift, three shifts in a row to repair this marriage,” I vowed.

That was just what I had been doing since the day we had that conversation.