Life Is Short But Wide (19 page)

Tonya narrowed her eyes at Juliet and Bertha. Bertha was a little frightened, but dare not show it. But Tonya was the most frightened. Juliet was not frightened at all. Tonya did not know how much these people knew, or what they had seen.

She said, weakly, “Am nothin goin on round here. What ya talkin bout?” But she began to back away from their door, speaking in a different tone. “If ya ain’t got the rent, ya ain’t got it. But I’m tellin ya this can’t keep up. I’ll let ya stay for now, but ya betta think bout gettin some rent money.”

When they were alone, Juliet told her mother, “I told you something was going on that didn’t seem quite right to me. I believe they killed poor Rose. Poor Aunt Rose. Lord, please have mercy on her little child.”

Every time Leroy brought Myine up, Tonya said, “We gonna go get her soon. We jes want to be sure everthin okay round here.” Or she would try to put her arms around him, asking, “We can get married now, da’ling. You ain’t got a wife no mo, cept me. We don’t need no big wedding or nothin.

“We just sneak off one morning on ya day off, and get some preach’a to make us man and wife. Oh! Leroy! All the things ya wanted for us is here now.” Leroy looked at her as though she
was crazy, and walked away, laughing, as he went out to get into his car.

Tonya began to encourage Leroy to have a drink before he went to work. She would say, “to get ya ready for the day.” When he came home from work, she had a drink waiting for him, “for to relax ya afta a hard day. I know them people wor’y ya to death.” She had a glass of ice, and a bottle of liquor on the bedside table when he went to bed. “Hep ya sleep betta.”

He knew, somewhere in his mind, what she was doing. He thought he was the strongest, but he wasn’t really too sure in his mind. His mind was always a little fuzzy with liquor lately. “After all,” he would think, “Tonya loves me; look what she done done to get me.”

It didn’t take long, because he already had things he wanted to forget. He began to rely on liquor after the death of Rose. Tonya didn’t really know why she kept him full of liquor; it just seemed like a wise thing to do. And it was something she could do. Her house was more peaceful when she didn’t have to listen to him asking about Myine.

So much fear at the thing they had done pressed on his mind and hers. But the police never did come with questions. So Tonya began to concentrate on Leroy’s death. He was becoming a job; she always had to be careful, even with what she might say about Rose!

Tonya did not want him to die in that house. “Be better all round if he pass on away at the hospital.”

She wanted to move her daughters in the house with her; then she could stop paying rent on that shack. Her youngest, the baby, had already died. TeeTee, who was fourteen, already had two abortions. Dolly, who was sixteen, had one baby, Lola.
Tonya finally felt they needed her help, and concern. “They might as well be here with me. I got this house now. We need to stop payin rent somewhere else.”

Leroy was mostly drunk now, and he was about to lose his job. So Tonya told him she moved her daughters in to save money. He grunted, raised his hand, and waved it in a way he thought meant, “No, no.” She paid him no mind. If Leroy lost his job before he died, she would need her daughters to each get some kind of job.

First, they fought over Tante’s room upstairs. Dolly won because she had a baby. And the room was larger than the last empty room.

Her daughters liked living in the large house. They talked excitedly. “It gonna be perfect for parties!” Rose and Leroy had had plumbing and electricity put in. TeeTee liked not going outside to the outhouse. “This house perfect for me, too!”

Soon, even Leroy, half high all the time now, began to notice how the house was changing. Always dirty and greasy looking. Dirty clothes scattered everywhere. Dishes piled high in the sink. Pots and pans, greasy and burnt, sat on the stove until he washed them or got on Tonya about them. The young girls didn’t know how to take care of a house.

He did miss the neat house and appetizing table Rose had kept. His clothes even began to disappear, given to boyfriends, or the girls wore them themselves. Once the clothes were dirty, they were cast aside, it didn’t matter where they fell, even in the middle of the hallway.

One sober night he told Tonya, “Ya’ll got to do better’n this! I ain’t used to livin like this! I’m’a have to put ya’ll out, if this keep up! My house was clean!”

He shouldn’t have done it, but he shook his finger in Tonya’s face, saying, “I ain’t gonna live like all this no mo. Ya’ll got to do better’n this, or ya’ll can go on back to ya own house! Them are cows ya got, they sho ain’t no ladies! Ya’ll are destroyin my house! This bout ain a house no more, not like Rose had it. It’s a dump now!”

Tonya’s thoughts were a little confused. “He wou’n’t put us out. He jes talkin.” Tonya loved that house. She felt like a Lady in that house. She had envied Rose for years. That house meant Tonya’s world to her.

She repeatedly thought to herself, “Never was nothin said bout Rose dyin. Didn’t nobody ev’a say nothin bout polices. Nobody thought about why she die. Evabody knew she was always sick.”

She poured herself a drink, and sat down to enjoy it as she continued thinking. “If he was mar’ied to Rose, then this his house now. He herited it from her cause he was married to her. Don’t nobody know if he married to me now, or not. So if he die, I herit it from him. This be my house! My house!” She smiled to herself. “An I c’n leave that chile out there where she is at, cause ain’t nobody ev’a gonna find her, an Ma and Pa Whipet ain’t gonna tell nobody cause they needs somebody to do all that work for em.”

Leroy’s days became numbered. She didn’t have all the poisons they used on Rose, but she thought she had enough for Leroy. “If I don’t, they got rat poison, but I ain gonna use that; they looks for things like that. I seen it on TV.”

Then she thought about the people on “her” land. Juliet and Bertha. “I ain’t gonna bother em jes now, til this here house is all mine. Won’t be long. I c’n wait. Then … they got to pay or go!”

She did holler at her daughters about the mess in the house, but she didn’t do much better than they did. Often they stole enough from her purse to get a six-pack for her so she would go to sleep, just like Tonya did for Leroy when he didn’t have to work.

The girls didn’t care about the house, really. Not like their mother. And they hadn’t been taught to think. So they only thought, “It jes a good ole place to get a party on, and slip all my boyfriends in.”

Time passed, slowly, as Tonya began giving Leroy small doses of poison in his food. Slowly. Just to sicken him a little. Stop him from asking about Myine.

Friends had warned Leroy about losing his job. He began to cut down on his drinking. He also began to look at Tonya through suspicious, narrowed eyes, suspecting her of having something to do with his constant illnesses. He didn’t want her to sleep in the same bed with him any longer.

She didn’t want him to die too soon; she needed his money. She was saving the big dose to serve him one morning as he was leaving for work. “Let him die at work! So them people, not nobody, can’t blame me.”

She wanted to go get Myine to bring her home, but not for a good reason. She was thinking, “This house needs more work en I can do. And TeeTee and Dolly ain gonna never do no betta. I’m gonna have to put em out jes to keep my house clean.” As an afterthought, “Or I c’n make Bertha a maid in exchange for the rent.”

In this way, a few years had passed.

Myine’s life was painfully sad. All work, starting at about 5:00 a.m. They had given her an alarm clock, so no one would
have to wake up to wake her up. She started the fires in the kitchen, and pumped the water in. They could have had more modern conveniences, but they weren’t looking to live much longer, so why waste the money?

Myine had been at Mom’s Cafe almost five years. She often looked out over the trees, trying to read the stars, wondering which way was home. When Tonya had brought her, she had driven many extra miles in different directions until the child had fallen into a deep sleep.

She was only about fifty miles from Wideland. Myine wanted to run away, her life was so sad and desperate, but she did not know which way to run. The north star didn’t mean anything to her sense of direction.

She had no social, mental, or physical life. She was not allowed to go to school. School had been stopped, never thought of. “What ya need to go to school for? Ya already got a job!” They were not mean to her. Ma Whipet was even some ways kind. Pa Whipet, for his own reasons, did all the whipping that needed to be done.

As Myine grew older, her little body blossomed, and you could see she was going to be a good-looking young woman. Pa Whipet liked to spank her by bending her body over his knees. He would spank her behind, then rub her behind. Spank and rub, spank and rub. He didn’t hit her to really hurt her. He hit her for the chance to rub her buttocks; his shaking hand slipped lower each time he rubbed. In time he let his fingers rub over the exposed private parts, but not too often, because Ma Whipet was there.

Sometimes Myine heard creaking noises in the kitchen, behind which she slept. She grew used to that; she knew it was Pa
Whipet sneaking in to steal the covers off her, and feel around her private parts, quickly. Thank God he was frightened of staying too long.

She wanted to tell Ma Whipet, but Pa Whipet had whispered to her, “We bought ya, ya know. We can sell ya to some real mean men who would love to work ya to death, and do plenny more things to ya. If ya tell … Well, ya know what c’n happen to ya. Ya have a easy life here with us. Think bout that! Fore ya opens ya mouth bout anything!”

Her little cot was in the supply room surrounded by boxes. She used one wooden box for little personal things she wanted to keep. Pretty rocks, lovely, colorful birds’ feathers, a beautiful leaf, or a dead flower sat atop the box. Her clothes, the few she had, were kept inside the box.

She looked longingly down the roads leading away from the cafe. She wanted to run away so deeply in her heart; she did not know which way to run. The Whipets kept her frightened as to what was out there in the world … waiting for her.

So she worked each day the sun came up, and prayed each day to the God she had grown up knowing. “Please, God, oh, please, God. I want to go home, I want to see if my mother is still alive, and my father. And I’m tired, Lord. Lord, I am so tired. Help me, please, help me.”

She cried, “Lord, Lord,” as she washed dishes, cleaned tables, learned to cook simple things. She cried, “Lord, Lord,” as she fell, exhausted, to sleep, jerking awake from deep tired sleep only when she heard unusual sounds from inside the supply room. She began to sleep with a knife under her pillow.

In Wideland Leroy finally died, an angry frown twisted on his face, forever. He had known it was coming if Tonya continued
staying at his house. But there was nothing he could do to get her to leave. When he died, he whispered in his brain, “Lord, what have I done? I had a good woman. Look what I got … now. Where my little child? What have I done?” But he knew what he had done. That hurt the most. It was all his own doing.

People had always held funerals at home in their parlors. Now funerals were a business. The funerals were held in funeral parlors, and you paid; sometimes dearly. But still, Tonya did not take him to a funeral parlor. The few words said over his cheap casket were said quickly. Tonya rushed the preacher, as she moaned, groaned and screamed out, “Take me wit ya! Leroy! Lord, I loves my husband. Don take im from me! Jesus!” She cried, but there were no tears.

When the funeral business was all over, and the few visitors were through dropping by, and a few days had passed, Tonya went to bring Myine home.

She just walked into the little dingy cafe, and said, “I come to get Myine.” She told Myine, “Get ya things, we goin.” Naturally the Whipets fussed, and tried to get her to change her mind.

Pa Whipet spoke first. “It’s been five years, Tonya! She like our own child now! Ya can’t take her away!”

“Yea, I can. Let’s us go, girl.”