“Baby, that’s all right. That’s more than enough. I just thank you so much.”
“Don’t say that, Miss Opal. It’s what I’m supposed to do. I’m his wife. Was . . . his wife.”
After she hung up, she smoked another rock, and another one that night, because she couldn’t be high in the morning when she drove to the apartment of her husband’s mother and signed over the policy to bury her son. And she’d have to sit there for a while, too, and hold Miss Opal’s hand and listen to her cry. Lydia couldn’t allow her own grief to take over, because the woman who had carried him needed to be honored. That was the old way, and besides, Lydia had to find the words to tell Miss Opal she wouldn’t be at the homegoing. She couldn’t see Dante in his coffin. She’d been to enough funerals in Chicasetta. Lydia didn’t want to see Dante powdered and stiff, maybe even with a grin on his face, as some bereaved families requested for their departed. They wanted their loved ones to look jolly on their way to meet Jesus.
She stayed in the apartment, smoking up what Tim had given her, and when that ran out, she called Tim and gave him her gold wedding band as payment. In two weeks, the furniture was gone, carted out in pieces by Tim. The television. The stereo. The pots and pans because she didn’t feel like cooking and Tim would bring her candy and pop when he came by. She kept her clothes. She couldn’t walk around naked, but finally, she offered Tim the car. That should buy her enough for a month, but he told her he didn’t need that. He already had his own.
“What do you want? Oh! I got the cassettes!”
She ran to the bedroom closet and pulled down the shoe box. She came and set it on the kitchen counter.
“It’s some good stuff in here. I got Shalimar—old Shalimar, not new Shalimar—and I got Cameo.” She put the Luther Vandross tapes aside.
Tim put his hand on hers and curled the fingers around. She slipped her hand from his, and pulled more cassettes from the shoe box, but he told her, he wanted her for his woman. She was a lady, not one of these crack hoes, sucking dick for anybody with five dollars. That’s why Dante had married her, and Tim wasn’t even mad at her for coming between him and his partner. That Dante had cussed Tim out, saying he’d gotten Lydia hooked on crack.
He pulled the plastic bag from his pocket and opened it. He shook a rock onto the counter. She told him, leave that, and come back in a couple of hours. But then he picked up the rock from the counter, and she knew her gamble hadn’t worked.
When he came in for a kiss, she pushed at his chest.
“I’m not my best right now. I need to take a shower. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”
“That’s why I like you,” Tim said. “’Cause you say things like that. Dante was right about you. You’re a real good woman.”
After her shower, she dressed and braided her wet hair. She was grateful she still had a working phone: when she called her granny, there was no scolding or yelling about where Lydia had been, all this time. Miss Rose only told her granddaughter, come on, if she was coming, and Lydia took down her suitcase from the closet. She put her clothes and cassettes inside the suitcase. When she walked out of the apartment, she left the door unlocked. It was dark as she turned off toward Chicasetta, but she wasn’t afraid of the country roads.
At the farm, the porchlight was on, and Miss Rose was sitting on the porch. Lydia went to her and sat by her feet. She put her head on the familiar, fleshy leg, and her granny touched her hair. Then, she told Lydia, it was time to call her mother. She had been worrying herself sick, but Lydia shouldn’t be scared. Everything was gone be all right.
My Sensitivity Gets in the Way
Though no one used the term, there had been folks in Chicasetta who could be called “addicts.” For instance, there was Mr. Lonny the Wino. When he stood in front of the liquor store, sweeping the same patch of sidewalk, he was usually placid. But if he’d imbibed more than his share, Lonny’s personality would turn. He would block the entrance of the liquor store, snarling.
“Got-damn bastards! I’m coming for all y’all! You better watch out! I got something for you!”
Mr. Hurt, the owner of the store, would come outside, waving a baseball bat. “Go on, now,” he’d say. “I can’t have that mess ’round here. Go on.” And Lonny would amble down the street to return the next day, smiling affably, revealing toothless gums. He’d been a schoolteacher once, at Chicasetta Colored High School. A quiet man who dressed neatly, he’d taught math to his students, trying to explain the concepts of proofs and oddly shaped geometrical figures. It was a woman who had caused his fall, or rather, a girl. One of his students in eleventh grade who’d been too pretty for Lonny to resist. That’s what the men in town had said when the girl had reported Lonny to the principal. He’d touched her hair, before grabbing her and tearing her clothes. She’d kicked him in the privates before running away.