“J.R., I need to talk to you,” I yelled into my cellular phone, struggling to control my anger and frustration. But I was losing the struggle. I wanted to scream my head off. I couldn’t believe what was happening this time. I was still in my car, sitting in front of my house, watching Mel, Adele, and the twins haul more boxes from Mel’s van into my house.
“Baby, we are real busy right now,” Jesse Ray said in a nervous and weak voice. I had a feeling that he already knew why I was calling. “Can I call you back in a couple of hours? How about us having dinner at the Hometown Buffet?”
“Fuck the Hometown Buffet!” I shouted.
“Oh Lord, you are in one hell of a bad mood!”
“You’re just now noticing that! I’ve been in a bad mood ever since your savage family moved in! I’m beginning to feel like I landed on the Planet of the Apes!”
“I’ll call you back in a couple of hours, when you’re feeling better.”
“Feeling better? Why the fuck do you think I will be feeling better in a couple of hours?”
“We’ll talk then, anyway. Now will you let me get off this telephone?”
“Oh, hell, no! Fuck that fucking shit! Don’t you dare hang up this telephone! If you do, I am coming over there!” I roared, slapping the dashboard so hard with the palm of my hand that the windshield wipers came on. The irritating noise that they made scraping against the dry window made the situation even worse. My head was spinning like I’d just tumbled sideways off a merry-go-round. I thought that I was losing my mind for sure this time. I thought I was turning off the wipers, but I ended up turning on my lights. I fumbled around until I located the wiper switch, but I was still in such a wild state, I left the lights on.
“Christine, you know I don’t like to hear women cuss. And, you, you got way too much class to be acting like one of those heifers from the ’hood,” Jesse Ray said in a gentle voice. The fact that he could speak so calmly when it was obvious that I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown compounded a situation that was already out of control.
“Fuck this shit! We need to talk, and we need to talk right now. I am sitting here in my car in front of the house, watching Adele and the twins help that punk-ass Mel carry boxes and bags into our house. Either Mel is moving in, too, or they’ve been on one hell of a shopping spree.”
“Mel couldn’t make his rent this month. He hit a jealous coworker and got fired,” Jesse Ray said, with a hopeless sigh.
“The man delivers pizzas for Domino’s. Who’d be jealous of that?” I screeched.
“I don’t get up in the brother’s business. I just know what he told me.” Jesse Ray stopped talking for a moment and cleared his throat. I think he did that because he had to pull his foot out of his mouth. But that pause didn’t do him much good, because he kept talking crazy. “Mel’s family, my only sister’s husband, and he needs my help, too. He just needs a place to stay until he can get himself another gig.”
“Well, that’s his problem. He’s got family everywhere except Mars, so why is he not moving in with them?”
“Now, baby, you know Mel doesn’t get along with his folks. And, he wants to be with his wife so they can work things out. It’ll only be for a little while, baby. I promise.”
“Your promises aren’t worth a counterfeit food stamp. You said the same thing about Adele and the twins. Exactly what do you call ‘a little while’?” I yelled. “Adele and the twins were supposed to be with us for ‘a little while,’ and they’ve been with us for over a month now.”
“What do you expect me to do, Christine? I am not going to stand by and let my family end up on the street. You know how I believe in family. If you can’t count on family, you can’t count on anybody. If you don’t do for your family, who will you do for?”
I didn’t like it when J.R., or anybody else for that matter, started talking about family this and family that. I couldn’t make that claim, so I would never really know what it was like to feel that family loyalty that some of the people I knew experienced. Nita and Jeanette both had relatives all over the place. Once Nita dragged me to a family reunion that involved over three hundred of her relatives. It saddened me to know that even though I still had my parents, the only other family I would have was J.R. and his. I had accepted the fact that I would not have any biological children, and the way things were going, I was glad that I only had to worry about myself. If worse came to worse and I had to run away, it would have been a lot harder to do if I’d had a baby to drag along with me.
“Besides, I believe in giving back,” he mumbled.
“What the fuck are you talking about, man? Giving back what and why? What has your sister done to deserve all you’ve given her? You paid her American Express card last month—over three thousand dollars. Her claim was that she’d only used the card for some emergencies. Well, I happened to see her bill from last month, and all of her emergency charges were made at Disneyland! The dates of the charges was that same weekend that she and the kids said they were going to L.A. to visit some old friends that she went to school with. They all went to Disneyland, and we ended up paying for it! Not just for Adele and the twins, but her friends, too. That makes no goddamn sense to me. What is it going to take, and how long is it going to take, for you to see that these people are milking us dry?”
“Us? Look, lady, you need to stop right now before you go too far. We need to get one thing straight right now. Nobody’s taking anything away from you.”
“It’s our money that’s paying for your sister and half of the Bay Area to live so large. We are the ones paying for it all.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said in a steely voice. This conversation was already on dangerous ground, and it seemed to be sinking fast.
“And just what do you mean?” I wanted to know. My head was still spinning, and now I was gritting my teeth and twisting around in my seat. I didn’t want to know what this mess was doing to my blood pressure.
“Correction. I am the one paying. You keep forgetting who is bringing home the money in this deal. You don’t have a damn thing to be complaining about, woman. You got it better than every other woman I know. You don’t even have to work. You don’t have to get up out of the bed until you feel good and ready. What more do you want?”
My mouth was hanging open so wide and I was sucking in so much air, I could barely breathe. “I don’t believe my ears. I spend my days and some of my nights feeding and bathing your mama. I can’t leave the house during the day unless I find somebody to come stay with your mama. I haven’t been able to sleep as late as I wanted since your mama had her stroke. And, if you think I don’t do any work, what do you call all the cleaning and cooking I do for your family?”
“Baby, please—”
“Please my ass! Do you think it’s easy for me to drag myself up and down the aisles at Safeway, buying groceries to feed a house full of people who are all too lazy to help me go get groceries and too stingy to contribute a nickel for all the junk they put on the grocery list? I never had to buy sunflower seeds, licorice, and chicken gizzards until they moved in and started demanding them.”
“Christine, please calm down—”
“Calm down my ass! Your family complains about my cooking, yet they all but lick the plates clean after one of my meals. And, did you know that your nephew stole a pair of my panties one time? Did you know that I caught him peeping through the keyhole in our bathroom while I was taking a shower one night? And, don’t get me started on that sister of his—”
“Christine, like I said, I am really busy right now. You go in the house and have a big glass of wine. Go in the den or our bedroom, and watch one of your videos. Don’t let Adele and the kids and Mel bother you. We are going through this together.”
“Together? And that’s another thing. How can you say we are going through this together when ninety percent of the time you are not even in the house? I can’t take too much more of this,” I wailed. I felt like I was coming undone. No, I had already come undone. My head had stopped spinning, but now it felt like it was about to crack open. The back of my neck was itching, and my stomach felt like somebody with big-ass feet was inside it, stomping on my insides.
It took Jesse Ray a while to respond to my last comment. “Are you making plans that don’t include me?”
“What do you think?” I choked.