Young Wives

The phone rang and Angie held her breath. She pictured Reid again, but this time the picture was a little … well, mistier. This time, again on the second ring, the phone was lifted and again the soprano voice said, “Hello.”

It wasn’t a wrong number. Reid had obviously changed numbers. But did they reassign phones so quickly? She should inquire. But her voice box was paralyzed. Maybe it was a cleaning lady. Yes. That was it. Or a stranger making a delivery or reading the meter. It could happen, she told herself. She looked down at the florist’s card she was still clutching to her chest.

“Hello?” the soprano said again. “Hello. Reid? Is that you?”

Since it wasn’t, Angela hung up the phone.

7

Wherein Clinton and Jada have their talk, we learn about the nature of man, and the difference between milk, water, and blood

“Clinton, we have to talk.”

“Again?”

“I’m afraid so,” Jada said. Once the kids were on the bus, she closed the kitchen door and turned away and started wiping down the stove top. She could still see his face in the reflection of the stainless steel. She wondered when he had last cleaned the stove. “I’m afraid so,” she repeated, but she wasn’t really afraid. She was outraged. He had finally gone too damn far bringing dirt into the house.

Jada had suspected for years during their marriage that Clinton may have occasionally strayed. It was something she preferred not to think about, though awareness had sometimes been thrust upon her. That rich, bored woman in Armonk who had installed the two-hundred-thousand-dollar pool had called a little too often. And so had that black record producer’s wife, the Pound Ridge one who wanted to sing. Jada had decided to ignore them. They had never interfered in her marriage, never stopped Clinton from bringing home his paycheck, playing with his children, or loving her. Since then she’d learned that, in sales parlance, overly attentive client handling was called “petting the goldfish,” and if Clinton’s work had sometimes gotten a little up close and personal, Jada had turned a blind eye. He was a man, after all. And a good-looking, virile one. When men were offered what she thought of as POP—pussy on a plate—it was hard for them to walk away. Especially in Pound Ridge.

Jada sighed. That was back then, when her marriage was good and the children were small and she stayed home with them. Now her life was made up of working all day and cleaning all evening. Of getting meals on the table, laundry folded, and then waking up to do it all again. Clinton’s life, as far as she could see, was made up of lying around watching television, having it off with this new girlfriend of his, and in his free moments making sure the kids didn’t burn down the house. Jada wasn’t complaining about her life; she was doing this for her family and she could keep on doing it as long as she had to. It was just that when she looked at Clinton’s life, if he would only make a few changes, everything could be so much easier for both of them. Easier and worthwhile. And she knew a part of him wanted a worthwhile existence. But a part of him was also willing to risk what they had by being lazy, taking her for granted, and tickling the fancy of some woman in Pound Ridge. “Well, I’m not in Pound Ridge,” Jada said aloud and strode into the dining room, snatching up a tray and a rag as she passed her husband.

“Say what?” he said and followed her into the messy dining room.

Jada began throwing empty cups, cereal bowls, and a couple of crumpled paper napkins onto the tray. I’m losing it, Jada thought. It wasn’t just the glassware that rattled; she was, too. She was speaking her thoughts out loud. It was a family trait—her mother did it when she was disturbed. “I was saying we have to talk,” Jada snapped.

“Don’t you have to go to work?” he asked nervously.

“No. Why? Are you expecting someone over here? Let me straighten up for your guest.” She wiped down the table. It amazed her, even after all these years, that Clinton could stand there watching her do for him without lifting even a fork. That’s what came of marrying a man who was DDG. Well, that was the least of it. Jada felt she had risen above the small stuff; long ago she and Clinton had promised each other that if they had children—and they obviously had—that unlike the two generations of Jacksons before Clinton, their kids would grow up with a father. That was the big stuff. Until now, despite whatever brief flirtations might or might not have arisen from his work, Jada had never doubted that Clinton’s NUP was taking. Like most men. But there was a limit.

Jada, even now, with Clinton standing hang-dog and useless behind her while she picked up the placemats, tried not to make a moral judgment about it. People just had their NUP, like the color of their hair. Jada had to admit that Shavonne’s NUP was taking, too. Kevon, at least at this age, was more like Jada; his natural preference was to give. When she and Clinton had first met, the truth was Jada had liked to give. It had made her feel important and useful. Clinton needed to be taken care of and Jada guessed she needed to be needed. She’d cut his hair, she’d bought his clothes, she’d cooked for him. All Clinton had to do to make her happy was to say, “Nobody makes cornbread like Jada’s. Can’t eat no one else’s cornbread,” and Jada excused the double negative, feeling happy and content and ready to bake another fifty pans of cornbread. Now Jada knew Clinton-speak. “Can I help with dinner” meant “Why isn’t it on the table yet?”

From the time Clinton’s business had begun to fail, it had been one long slide on his side. Bit by bit. First he stopped bringing home money, then he stopped looking for work, stopped coaching Little League, stopped doing carpentry around the house. He’d even stopped what, in her opinion, was a married man’s most primal task—taking out the garbage.

Her parents’ marriage hadn’t prepared her for this. Her mother and her father loved and respected each other. They’d been bitterly disappointed when Jada married an American black man. Though she’d been born in New York, Jada’s parents were Bajans and they still thought of Barbados as home. “Americans. Forget them. They have no drive,” her father had said. “They have no morals,” her mother had warned her. Jada felt they were old-fashioned and definitely prejudiced, even more so against blacks than whites. Most of all they were prejudiced against other Islanders: they despised Jamaicans, were competitive with Antiguans, and were suspicious and contemptuous of the French islanders. American blacks were beneath them all.

It was ridiculous. Jada had laughed at them. But now occasionally Jada wondered if her parents hadn’t been right, at least about Clinton. She hoped her marriage calmed down again, because she didn’t look forward to giving them bad news. She wasn’t certain about all American black men, but hers was undependable and lazy.

Maybe it wasn’t true, but it felt true now. Maybe there had once been some kind of equilibrium between her and Clinton, when her giving had been balanced by Clinton’s money-earning and the wonderful loving, but both had ended long ago. He hadn’t earned even a dime in almost five years and they hadn’t made love in almost three (except for the New Year’s Eve when both of them had been drunker than they should have been and Sherrilee was accidentally conceived). They hadn’t had sex in so long that her diaphragm must have been torn. She wasn’t sure how it happened, but she’d gotten pregnant and—after what had happened once before—she couldn’t bear the thought of not bringing the baby into the world. She’d prayed over it, and God, or her heart, had spoken. Sherrilee was an adorable baby, good as gold, and though it had been difficult to work through her pregnancy and was difficult now to leave the baby behind when she went to work, Jada didn’t regret her decision. She had thought the baby might bring them closer, and Clinton had acted delighted and involved. But, as with most things, Clinton didn’t follow through and now she wondered if she had done the right thing.

“Jada. Please have patience. I need you,” Clinton said.

Need? Jada had been so damn needed that she’d run out—not out of giving, but out of feeling happy about doing it. The children had shown her that it was as natural as breathing to give to a nine-year-old, but definitely unnatural to have to give in the same way to a thirty-four-year-old man. Natural or not, Jada was damn tired of it.

“Yeah. You need me. But you say you love her.” Jada couldn’t believe he’d told her about this latest affair. She hadn’t wanted to hear a word, but he’d insisted. “Go need her,” she told Clinton, and turned her back

Jada stuck her head into Shavonne’s room looking for dirty laundry, Clinton behind her. She picked up the pile and moved down the hall. Tonya Green, the woman Clinton was seeing, claimed to love children, though Jada had heard that her two were living with her mother. What did she do all day? Jada wondered. She didn’t work. She had a reputation in their church for being very pious. She taught Bible school. Did she go to prayer meetings? Hang out in bars, hoping to meet a buff married man? Maybe she alternated. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, prayers. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, her prayers were answered.

Jada snorted. The oddest part of all this to Jada was that when it came to the sex—Clinton and Tonya together—she just didn’t care. Ten years ago she would have been filled with jealousy. She had thought that making love to Clinton was central to her life. Now she didn’t even miss it. Sleeping beside him was bad enough. Sex would be … well, she was too angry, too tired, and too disappointed in him to want it.

Jada didn’t think Clinton loved her. He just needed her, wanted her to love him. And she couldn’t. Clinton sometimes still wanted to make love to her. Clinton had wanted their baby. Clinton took good care of the baby now. But Jada didn’t feel like making love to him, and she didn’t feel like taking care of him. She wanted him to take care of her. She’d lost respect for Clinton and perhaps she had some responsibility for this pathetic affair with Tonya.

Jada had only been surprised that Clinton had bothered to tell her at all. He’d never bothered before. Surprisingly, she had merely thought, “One fewer thing I have to do. Let Tonya listen to his bullshit rap about the next useless, unrealistic scheme he’s going to fail at.” Jada realized then that she hadn’t really listened to him in years, after dozens of plans she had listened to, had critiqued and prayed for, had ended in nothing. Yet men had to be listened to by someone.

What she had to have, what she was working herself to the bone for, was a stable family. She wanted to live in their house, the house Clinton had begun but still hadn’t ever finished, and she wanted to see the kids do well in the community and really well in school. She wanted to see Shavonne win the local ice skating finals and go to the prom. She wanted Kevon to get his math scores straightened out and wind up with a scholarship to a really good college. She wanted the children to grow up with a father, as they’d both pledged before God. They all needed him there. He had to watch the baby while she worked. He’d promised to help raise the children. She didn’t think about the quality of her marriage—what was the point? But they had to have this Talk. Too bad she was so damn tired. She was always tired. Jada got to the door of their bedroom, and Clinton was right behind her. “I’m getting ready for work,” she said.

“I thought we were going to talk,” Clinton said.

Of course, he was right. She had begun this, but somehow between the kitchen clean-up, the dining room, the laundry check, and the assorted other things she had tried to get done, she had very little energy left. “You’re right,” she admitted. “I did say that.”

“I’m going to make up my mind,” Clinton said. “I promise you. I’ll get my life in order.”

He was making her crazy. “Déjà vu all over again,” Jada said without attempting irony or humor. She turned around and faced Clinton for the first time since they were in the kitchen and realized she still wanted to slap his face. “Do you realize that you said the exact same thing, in this exact spot, in the exact same tone of voice, one month ago?”

“What are you talking about?” Clinton asked, already defensive. The man was DAS—dumb and stupid—if he didn’t see what was coming.

“Let me refresh your memory.” Jada started straightening up the bed. She hated to lie down in a rat’s nest of messy bed clothes. It amazed her that Clinton couldn’t even pull up the sheets and blanket when he got out of their bed—hours later than she did—each morning.

“You explained about Tonya back then,” Jada said, keeping her voice neutral. “When you started drinking truth serum along with your Bud Lite in the afternoon.” It was unproductive to use sarcasm, she reminded herself. She stood on her side of the bed. But Clinton didn’t react. This man was oblivious to everything. “Clinton,” she said to him, “to tell you the truth, I don’t care what you do with your johnson. But I do care about this family. And I’m not letting your selfish-ass ways destroy it. I’ve given my blood for this family. I’ve given up my personal life, I’ve given up my outside interests. I get up in the dark and leave my babies sleeping in their beds to put food on the table. I don’t like my job. Never have. I never wanted a career. I never wanted to be successful, to be a boss. I only did it out of necessity—”

“Okay. Enough,” Clinton interrupted. “I remember. Don’t try to make me feel worse than you usually do.” Clinton looked down. “I try hard.”

For a moment Jada was filled with enough anger to really smack him up-side the head. As if she was saying any of this to make him feel bad! With Clinton, everything was always about Clinton. Try hard? The man didn’t make the damn bed! “Shut up, Clinton. Give your excuses, run your mouth to Tonya. What I’m saying is that you can move in with her and I can go on with the kids, or you can give her up and try to keep us together, as a family. What’s it going to be, Clinton?”

Jada thought of a proverb her mother had told her. It might have been from the Bible or it might have been an old Bajan expression. “A drink that is given when it isn’t asked for is like milk. The same drink given only when it’s asked for is like water. But a drink you have to beg for, that’s given resentfully, is like blood.” Jada had to ask and ask Clinton for even the smallest thing, and then half the time it remained undone. Her house still needed flooring in the kitchen and a dozen other finishing touches. Jada knew that Michelle didn’t have to ask for anything. A moment before she even knew she was thirsty, Frank would offer that girl milk. Jada tried not to resent her friend, but sometimes it was hard.

“Jada, I know you’re hurt. I know you’re frightened.” He climbed back into bed, under the blankets, as if he needed to be shielded from her. That enraged her. She needed protection from him, not vice versa.

Jada opened her eyes wide. “Clinton, I’m not hurt over this. I’m hurt that you won’t work to keep this family together.”

Clinton lifted his head from the pillow and started to say something, but Jada raised her hand and opened her mouth in time to stop him. “And I was afraid when I thought I couldn’t earn a living. But I’m not hurt and I’m not afraid now, Clinton. I’m just telling you again, straight and plain, that you have a choice to make.” She began to strip off her walking clothes but then, suddenly, felt that she didn’t want to be bare in front of him. He was still a good-looking man. His chest was flat and wide. His stomach was tight even with his weight gain. His skin never chapped or grayed, while she had stretch marks and wrinkles. It was a strange feeling—modesty in front of her husband of so many years. “It’s you that’s breaking a commandment, not me. I’m trying to live righteous.” Jada opened the closet door and stood behind it as she struggled into her work clothes.

“Jada, you don’t understand … this thing with Tonya and I isn’t just about the flesh. We have a spiritual connection.”

Jada put her head around the closet door and stared at him. Mercy! Sometimes she couldn’t believe the bullshit that came out of this man’s mouth. Sweet Jesus, you made this man, she thought. Now make him see the light. Or, alternatively, pluck out his eyes. She thought of her parents. On Barbados, a small island where everyone knew everything, people learned compromise as an art form. Not Clinton, though.

“I can forgive you,” she said. “I can live with you. And I can try, even harder than I have, to keep this family together. But not if you talk to me about that woman’s spiritual qualities. Everyone has to draw a line, Clinton. I don’t want to hear one damn thing about her. Don’t insult me with a comparison.”

“I wasn’t comparing,” Clinton began, his version of an apology, then saw her murderous expression and stopped. “My family means everything to me,” he added quickly. “You know that. Maybe we haven’t been getting on so good, but there have been times when it was smooth and times when it was rough.” He rubbed his long fingers through his hair, then held the back of his neck as if it ached. Too bad he was DDG, Jada thought. “It can be smooth again,” he said. “I know that. I hope for that. That is where my commitment comes from. But with Tonya … well, I feel like what happens there is for me. Not for my children, not for the family, not to keep the mortgage paid down. Just for me.” He paused. “And I feel like I deserve something.” He shook his head. “This is making me unhappy. And it’s making you unhappy. And Tonya, she’s a good woman. It’s making her—”

“Don’t tell me how she feels, Clinton. That is not a way to open my heart,” Jada snapped.

“It isn’t easy to be a black man in a white man’s world,” Clinton said.

“Oh, spare me. It isn’t easy to be a black woman. And I’m starting to think it isn’t easy to be a white woman, either. It isn’t easy to be anything in this world, Clinton. That’s why we have churches.”

“Jada, I have prayed over this. Tonya and I have prayed over this together.” Jada rolled her eyes, but Clinton ignored that. “All I want to do is try to explain how hard it—”

“Stop explaining, start deciding,” she said. “Look on the bright side, Clinton. You have the choice—your family or your mistress. That’s a lot more choices than most people get. But I’m telling you, you can’t have both. So if you don’t make a decision, I’m making it for you. And this time, Clinton, there is no flexibility. Next week I move all your stuff out of here and into the garage. I’ll tell the children and I’ll tell Reverend Grant. I’ll go to a lawyer. So by next Wednesday, your decision is made, either by you or by me.” She turned her back on him and tucked in her blouse. She did it so hard she broke a nail and caught it on the waistband of her pantyhose. Well, first her marriage, now her nail was broken. And it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Beside it was a photo of Shavonne holding Kevon when he was an infant.

Her babies. Her family. Jada knew the last few years had made her hard, and she didn’t like it, but there was nothing she could do about it now. Meanwhile, if she could only save her babies, give Shavonne and Kevon and Sherrilee something more to start their lives off with. She couldn’t let this decision be made for her as Clinton dithered and the clock ticked.

She found the strength to turn around and look at her husband. “Clinton, just think a moment. Your daddy ran out on you. His daddy ran out on him. You’re free to run out on your children, too. But that’s not what we promised them. They’re your babies, too. I think you want something better for them. I know I do, but I’ll take what you give me, Clinton. It’s just that I won’t put up with you and Tonya together, and have all of them at church talking. Plus allowing you here, takin’ up space in my house and my bed.”

“It’s my house, too,” Clinton protested. “For Christ sake’s woman, I built this bed.”

“Then take the damn bed over to Tonya’s,” Jada snapped. “And don’t take the Lord’s name in vain in this house. Point is, you can live here with me and the children if you want to try again to be a family. Or you can live with Tonya. She’s got kids, don’t she? Two? Three? Four? By how many men? Well, you can have them or yours. You just can’t have both.”

“I don’t want both,” Clinton whined. “I just don’t know what I want.”

As if she cared, Jada thought. “Well, you have a week to figure it out,” she told him. Dressed now, she clicked across the floor in her high heels. She was in the hallway before she remembered, turned back, and put her head back into the bedroom. “Oh, and Clinton,” Jada told him. “You better begin to find your own gas money.” She slammed the door and went to say good-bye to Sherrilee before she left for work.

8

Economically containing both Michelle’s bustier and bust

Michelle squatted to the floor to pick up yet another Disney action figure, pushing the bones of the bustier she was wearing up into her ribs. Don’t do housework dressed like Nasty Spice, Michelle told herself. This is what you get.

Ah, the pull between passion and prudence. Of course, she could just leave the stuff lying around, but though she sometimes wanted to dress like a high-class hooker for Frank, Michelle knew beneath her uplifted cleavage beat the heart of a very tidy housewife. In fact, she was probably a little neurotic about it. Having grown up with filth around her, as an adult she was constantly cleaning. Maybe she should get a French maid’s costume. She smiled at the thought as she picked up the red plastic toy. Frankie had so many of the things Michelle couldn’t tell who they were anymore. Was it because he was a boy or the second child? Back in Jenna’s day, Michelle had known the difference between a Little Mermaid and a Belle, but now the Hercules/Aladdin/Moses continuum was too confusing. She sighed, and guiltily wished Frankie had stuck with the Lion King. Somehow he had more toys but less attention than Jenna had gotten.

Once down at carpet level, Michelle noticed half a dozen Legos under the ottoman—good thing she hadn’t vacuumed. She’d hoovered up more Micro Machine pieces than any Electrolux could be expected to eat. Pookie was chewing on his plastic bone and growled at her. Michelle shook her head at the dog, throwing back her hair, left down for Frank. Then she reached past Pookie for the Legos and gathered them in her right palm, balancing them with the action figure—she thought it was Jafar—in her left hand. She managed to straighten up in a single movement without using her hands from her squat on the floor. Not bad for a thirty-one-year-old woman.

She turned her head. Over the back of the sofa she could see Frank’s dark hair, and the very top of Jenna’s head, leaning on his shoulder. Jenna was clutching Pinkie with her right arm. Frankie must be lying across his dad’s lap by now, lulled to sleep long ago by the bleeps and yeeps of whatever Nintendo game his dad and sister were playing. Michelle smiled. They had all had a good night; Fridays were always good nights. She and Frank had split a porterhouse and pasta while the kids had had hamburgers, their favorite. Frank had played wiffleball with Frankie for almost half an hour, then he’d suffered through a Rug Rats video, followed up by a Nintendo marathon. Jenna had let her brother play with Daddy while she helped Michelle clean up the dinner things. Her reward was getting Frank all to herself for the last hour while Michelle policed the area. Mich’s reward would be her time alone with Frank in bed. Her smile, which created a parenthesis on either side of her wide mouth, deepened.

She moved to Frank and, very gently, touched his shoulder. She’d learned a long time ago not to come up behind him and touch him too hard—it really startled him. Now Frank bent his head back against the sofa cushions and looked up at her, though neither Jenna nor Frankie made a move. Nothing moved except the dancing Zelda image on the TV screen. The kids were both sleeping and Frank was playing the idiotic game alone!