Red Hats (3 page)

“Sex with me is a privilege,” she had declared. To make sure he kept his unwanted
thing
out of her, she would constantly remind him that he wasn’t a good lover. He was undesirable to her.

Looking out the window was Alma’s favorite pastime. It seemed as if everyone led an exciting life but her. The place was too quiet since the kids had left home. She couldn’t understand why they didn’t visit more often despite her pleas. After all, she was getting old and wouldn’t be around much longer. Her mother had died at the age of seventy-two from what they called natural causes. Alma didn’t think there was anything natural about death.

Why would God put eternity into our hearts and then let us get old and die? It just didn’t seem right. Alma was at
the age when death comes calling. The thing about death is that it doesn’t discriminate. Death is greedy for life—young or old, black or white, rich or poor, and even the unborn, her mother used to tell her. It ain’t happy unless it gets three in a row, according to the old wives’ tale. Lately, Alma wished it would call her number so she could stop wondering
when
.

With the kids off riding the ups and down of their own roller coasters, Alma felt death would satisfy her excuse for being so lonely. She knew part of the reason her children stayed away was that they didn’t like to hear the truth. Alma prided herself on being honest. Even if you didn’t ask, she was going to tell you what she thought, about anything and everything. For instance, she had told her daughter, Angel, that her ex-football-player husband, Darryl, wasn’t worth a damn.

“Momma, I love him,” Angel had explained.

“Ain’t that much love in the whole world, baby. He don’t treat you right. He’s lazy and beneath you. Whatever happened to that nice boy, Randy Stanton, you used to like?”

“He’s dead. Got shot robbing a liquor store ten years ago, Momma.”

“What about Terrance?”

“T-Bone? Please, Momma. Look, I know you don’t like Darryl, but I made a commitment to him before God to honor my marriage. I’m not going to leave him because you don’t like him. Now, I would appreciate if you would just try to get along with him when he is around.”

“OK. If you want to put
that
before your mother, go right ahead, but I can’t be phony. I got a feeling about him. You’ll see.”

Darryl had signed a big contract with a professional football team, and as soon as they got married, the chubby faked an injury the first year he played. They bought him out of the contract for a fraction of its worth. The fool thought he would get picked up by another team he really wanted to play for, but that didn’t happen, because they found out the injury was bogus. The first team sued him, and he had to pay the money back.

Now he ate like a football player on a security guard’s salary. He was fat and bitter and took it out on poor Angel. Once he was stupid enough to hit Angel in front of Alma. She had pulled a butcher knife on him and threatened to kill him if he ever put his meaty hands on her baby again. Just to make sure he knew she wasn’t playing, Alma had given him a little cut on the fleshy part of his right cheek, something to remember her by. Six stitches later, he had packed them up and moved them to Texas. He’d said it was because the land was cheaper than in New York, but she knew it was because he had seen his life flash before his fat, bulging eyes.

Sometimes Alma regretted what she’d done, because it cost her a relationship with her granddaughter, Nia. Alma loved the ground that baby crawled on. There was nothing more beautiful to her in the world. Alma looked forward to
the summers when Angel would come visit her for a couple of weeks, where she got a chance to play Grandma with Nia.
Grandma!
She was repulsed by the word. Thank God, Nia was so adorable when she said “Gan-ma” that it didn’t have the same sting as when she heard it correctly in her head.

Her younger son, twenty-two-year-old Jesse, was a so-called musician. A bum and a pothead was more along the lines of what Alma thought. Jesse would come by her house stinking like cheap booze and that musky marijuana odor mingled with sweat. It made her want to retch. He’d be so high that as soon as he sat down or leaned against something for support, he’d nod off.

“What kind of fun is that high?” she had asked him.

“It makes me creative,” he’d replied.

“It needs to make you employed,” Alma had snapped as she dug in her pocketbook for spare change, a ritual during Jesse’s inebriated visits.

“I need more than ten dollars. I’m trying to buy this new horn. It’s beautiful. Wynton Marsalis says this trumpet is made from the god of music. Please, Momma, it will take my skills to the next level,” Jesse had begged.

“Don’t try to con me. Ten dollars is all you’re going to get, and if you keep bugging me, I will take that back. God don’t love no junkies, boy. You’re a sinner in the Lord’s eyes.”

“You messing up my high, Momma,” Jesse had offered
in his defense. He’d eventually stopped coming by, probably because Alma constantly reminded him of his spiritually disapproved state.

Two semesters shy of a bachelor’s degree in communications, and he’d decided music was his calling. But Coltrane he was not.

“Just because you can make a horn squawk don’t mean you can play it,” she had said to him.

“You never even heard me play before. You’re a dream killer, Momma.”

“And you’re a mother killer, because you dropped out of college.”

Jesse was her problem child. He had issues Alma knew only God could heal. To compensate, she gave him a little money now and then to keep him from getting desperate or criminal.

Her older son, Todd, was her pride and joy. He had turned out as well as a mother could hope for, except for the white woman he married. Alma was jealous of the lavish wedding he’d had with Helga. It was the kind of ceremony she’d always told Todd she dreamed of having.

“Why’d you want to marry that?” she had asked him.

“Because I love her, Momma. She’s a great mother to my children, always positive and loving, plus she supports my goals. We’re a team, just like the good Lord intended,” Todd had explained.

“All that sounds good, son, but don’t they make them like that in a black?” Alma had asked sarcastically.

“Momma, could you please be happy because I’m happy?”

“I don’t see how you can love the oppressor of your people.”

“She’s German.”

“Well, it’s like the Jews were black and they oppressed them. Same thing.”

“Momma!”

“OK, I will keep my thoughts to myself. If you love your little wet dog, I’ll try to still love you.”

Todd was an architect for a large firm in Germany. That’s where he had met the white girl, Helga. All in all, Alma couldn’t complain too much about Todd, because he took care of his mother. He had put her on a defined-benefits plan that gave her a monthly check for a couple grand. With Harold’s Social Security check and his pension plan, they did just fine for themselves.

Todd had two children, or
mutts
as she saw them. Their names were Hansel and Gretel, a horrid idea the white woman came up with. She thought it might be fun for them as they grew up. School would be hell for them. Alma was offended that the names she’d picked, Draden and Mikyla, were not even considered. In protest, Alma wouldn’t call them by their given names. Instead, she called them “children” or “kids.” Alma had only seen pictures of them, although she had spoken with them on the phone. They sounded funny to her ears. German accents just didn’t sound right coming out of the mouths of little black faces.
Even if she couldn’t actually see them, the very idea bothered her.

Alma closed her eyes and swayed to the sounds of Sam Cooke singing “When I Fall in Love.” The lyrics reminded her of her teenage years, sneaking into the Apollo to see Jackie Wilson with her best girlfriend, Donna. The security guards would harass them for their phone numbers and threaten to turn them away if they didn’t oblige, but since Alma was so fine, they’d let her stand in the wings watching Jackie make the girls in the audience swoon.

Jackie once tried hitting on Alma until he found out she was only fourteen years old. Though the relationship was deferred, it was enough to make her a legend among her friends. They were jealous. Donna and the rest of the girls couldn’t for the life of them understand why she told Jackie her real age.

“If you lie to a man in the beginning of your relationship, you will have to lie throughout,” Alma told them.

The song reminded her of the good times between Harold and herself. Alma smiled at the thought of the first time she had met Harold, at the Savoy Club. When he walked into the smoke-filled room, he literally took her breath away. Alma recalled him floating toward her, wearing a smile that said,
Excuse me, miss, may I spend eternity with you?
He was so handsome it made Alma’s knees weak. Had he not taken her hand and asked her to dance, she was sure the floor would have been the next thing she felt.

Harold had been dressed to kill in a beige pin-striped linen suit with a crisp white shirt and burgundy tie. He looked brand new, as if God had just made him. And that man could dance his ass off! They boogied all night to long songs, fast songs, slow songs, and in-between songs. They even danced to the a cappella songs, because their bodies had their own rhythm. A woman could tell a lot about a man by the way he moved on a dance floor. Alma had learned enough to know that the chemistry they created in that crowded dance hall would only intensify if they were alone in a candlelit bedroom.

Shortly after their encounter, despite Alma’s strict Christian upbringing, her flesh had betrayed her heart, despite her mind saying,
This is wrong, and God will judge you if you lie with this man.
Like Eve, who defiantly ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, Alma lay with him. She didn’t feel the immediate effects of her sin, and she continued to give herself to this man who consumed and devoured every part of her. Harold touched and kissed areas she didn’t know she had. He was a slow, gentle lover, with patience and a true desire to please a willing virgin.

For three months straight, every day except the ones forbidden by nature, they had made exquisite love. Eventually, like Eve in the garden, Alma had begun to feel the effects of her sin. Telling her mother she was pregnant was the toughest conversation she’d ever have. It was also the shortest conversation, cut off by the front door opening
and Alma being ushered out of her devout Christian home before God’s wrath sent fire from the heavens to destroy them all.

Alma had nowhere to go except back to the arms of her lover, who gladly welcomed her and quickly married her to provide his queen the dignity she deserved. Alma was disappointed in the way they got married. It wasn’t romantic at all. He didn’t get down on one knee—he didn’t even formally propose. They had simply gone downtown and got married in street clothes. Not the way she’d fantasized about getting hitched at all. There was supposed to be music playing, with family and friends gathered in celebration against a scenic background. Not a small room void of any flowers or wedding decorations, with a stranger as a witness to their lifelong union. Sometimes Alma wondered if the coldness of their wedding had to do with the coldness of their marriage. Todd had barely been one year old when she found out she was pregnant with Angel. Eighteen months after Angel, she and Harold had had a sit-down.

“I’m pregnant again.”

“How’d you do that?” Harold had asked. “We haven’t been doing nothing regular for a while now.”

“It only takes one time,” Alma had stated.

“I think you should get your tubes tied. We can’t afford no more kids.”

“I think
you
should get
your
tubes tied. I’ve already sacrificed my body giving birth,” she’d replied.

“Alma, they can tie you up in the delivery room. It’s
simple. Everything is already opened up. I don’t see the problem with you doing it.”

“The problem is, I may still want some more children. Just because you say we can’t afford them don’t mean I don’t want them.”

“Fine! I’ll get a vasectomy,” he’d shouted.

After the operation, Harold wasn’t the same. He said he felt less than a man. She told him it was all in his head, but he did have a hard time getting it up for her after the vasectomy. Alma had felt bad for him. Maybe she shouldn’t have pushed him to do it. Maybe things would be a lot different.

Now, between the music and her trip down memory lane, Alma made up her mind to cook for Harold tonight. Perhaps they could have a decent conversation for a change, instead of arguing all the time. It would be nice to reminisce with him. She would even make some of his favorite, peach cobbler. If he was really nice, she would give her has-been a piece of herself for dessert.

Harold sat across from his
childhood friend, Bob, studying the chess pieces before him. Bob was like a junkyard dog with shaggy black hair, always a bit unkempt. He never strayed too far from the neighborhood. He was a divorced veteran and father of eight children, who had fought and won several battles with prostate cancer. He turned his attention to the coffee stains on Harold’s shirt. The third musketeer, their buddy Seymour, observed their moves from the sidelines.

“What happened to you? Scare a flock of pigeons on your way here?” Bob joked.

“No, only Alma. She was feeling feisty this morning.”

“Again?”

“Yeah, she got mad and threw her coffee on me,” Harold said.

“You need to leave that crazy woman,” Seymour offered.

“For who, and exactly where would I go? She ain’t that bad. She’s just an acquired taste, that’s all. Going through that female transition is hard on her. She needs me.”

“For what? To abuse?” Bob replied.

“It’s OK. I can take it. She loves me—just don’t know how to show it. That’s marriage. See, I understand what I signed up for. Most people don’t.”

“What’d you sign up for?” Bob was determined to not let up.

“I signed up for God’s view of commitment. Till death do us part.”

“She’s gonna kill you, all right,” Seymour stated.