Borrow Trouble. Mary Monroe

tossed a pillow at Leon’s head. “You could have waited until I got out of the shower. I wanted to be the one to tell her.”

      “Well, I didn’t. Now get dressed so we can go out and get something to eat,” he ordered, rising.

      “Baby, wouldn’t it be nicer if we stayed in and ordered room service? Don’t you just want to lie here and…uh…you know.” I winked.

      “Come on. We’re going out to get something to eat,” Leon replied.

      “What if I don’t want to go with you?” I said, folding my arms defiantly, my bottom lip poked out like a five-year-old’s. I couldn’t believe we were already having our first disagreement as a married couple.

      “You’re going. Now get your lazy butt up and get dressed. Put on that lime green dress I like so much. Sisters with your bronze tone complexion look so damned good in green.”

      I removed a pair of jeans and a beige silk blouse from the small suitcase that I had packed. Before I could get dressed, Leon snatched the clothes out of my hand and tossed them to the top of the dresser. With a mischievous grin on his face, he flipped open my suitcase and fished out the lime green dress he liked so much and tossed it on top of my head. I slid into the dress without saying a word. I was in too much of a romantic mood to argue any further.

      I didn’t like the fact that Leon was already making decisions without any input from me. Robbie Dunbar would never have done that. As strange as it seemed, I really missed Robbie. I knew that I was going to spend the rest of my days wondering what my life would have been like if I had married him. Poor Robbie. I prayed that he would find a suitable mate.

      By the time Leon and I got to the Full Moon restaurant three blocks from the hotel, I had calmed down. Right after our stiff-lipped waiter dropped menus on our table, I excused myself to go to the ladies’ room. By the time I got back to the table, Leon had ordered for me.

      “I didn’t want an omelet,” I protested, pinching his arm. “I wanted pancakes.”

      “Well, the next time we go out to eat, I advise you to order before you run off to the ladies’ room to primp,” he said, looking at his watch. “And hurry up. There’s a game coming on in a couple of hours.”

      I took a sip of water and forced myself to smile. It dawned on me that Leon was showing me another side of himself, and it was already making me uncomfortable. He liked to be in control, and that was one of the things that had drawn me to him. However, that quality had been a lot more subtle before I’d become his wife.

      A cramp shot through my stomach like a comet. All of a sudden, I was concerned about my future with Leon. As much as I had always wanted a man who had more of a backbone than Robbie, I didn’t want a man who made all my decisions for me.

      Leon had made it clear that he was in no hurry to have another child. He had a nine-year-old daughter by a woman that he had lived with for several years. He loved his child, and he took good care of her, but even though she was only nine, Collette was a mess. Not only was she moody and materialistic, she had a hard time getting along with other kids. She had been kicked out of every elementary school in Butler. Leon had just enrolled her in a swank private school in Cleveland Heights. More than once he had told me that he was glad he had only one child to deal with.

      But I wanted a child, and I wanted one soon. That’s why I flushed my birth control pills down the toilet as soon as we got back to our hotel room.

      CHAPTER 13

      Inez stayed in Barbados for ten days. I received a postcard from her, letting me know that after she left that island, she was going to stop off in Jamaica for an additional few days. Unlike Inez, I didn’t like to run away from my problems. I liked to sit down with someone who cared about me and talk things over. Inez was the best listener I had ever known. There was not a psychiatrist, or a bartender, in town that I would rather tell my troubles to before Inez.

      I was glad that I had made the decision on my own to try and get pregnant, but this was something that I wanted to discuss with my best friend. Not that I wanted her to give me any advice, but it would have been nice just to have her around to listen to me.

      I enjoyed being married. I felt like a totally different woman. I looked and acted differently. And other people noticed, even some of my second-grade students. “Miss Beakes, why come you all the time smiling and humming stupid songs now?” asked Walter Marrell, the most obnoxious youngster in my class this year. Walter looked like a gnome, with his lopsided head, long ears, and round, flat nose. But he still liked to draw attention to himself. His small black eyes seemed to look right through me as he anxiously awaited my response.

      “Walter, you must remember that I am Mrs. Webb now. No more Miss Beakes. I got married,” I said proudly. I stood in front of my class, with the latest Harry Potter book in my hand, preparing to read a few excerpts to them.

      “Why did you get married, Miss Beakes?” the same boy asked, with a giggle, his two front teeth missing. “Now you got to sleep in the same bed with a strange man.” The whole class snickered.

      “Walter, married people sleep together. Now if you don’t mind, let’s confine our attention to our good friend Harry Potter,” I said firmly, holding up the front of the book. I didn’t read much for my own pleasure, but when I did, it was usually a novel by a popular African American author, like Carl Weber or Mary B. Morrison. I’d already read most of the classics and more textbooks than I could remember, so Harry Potter was as much a treat for me as it was for my students.

      But Walter seemed more interested in my story than Harry’s. He occupied a desk at the front of the classroom, right across from my cluttered desk, so he was hard to ignore. “My daddy makes all kinds of strange noises when he’s in the bed with my mama,” Walter announced, facing his classmates. Then he turned to me. “Miss Beakes, do you and your husband make a lot of strange noises in the bed?” This time the class roared with laughter.

      The bell rang before either Walter or I could say another word. And the subject was never brought up again. At least not in my classroom. I wanted to share cute little stories like this one with Leon, but he didn’t have a lot of interest in what went on in an elementary school. I didn’t bother to tell him about little Walter’s comments. However, I told him about the time that Mindy Stargen came to school with a condom she’d found in her father’s pants pocket, blowing it up like a balloon during show-and-tell. Leon didn’t laugh or even comment about that incident, or any of the others that I shared with him, even though I gave him my undivided attention all the times he held me hostage for hours on end, repeating conversations he’d had with difficult taxpayers. Inez seemed to be the only one who was genuinely interested in my day-to-day life, and that’s why I spent so much time hanging around her nail shop.

      The two sisters that Inez employed, Pat Jenkins and Shonda Jones, got sick of me coming into Soulful Nails while she was still out of the country, whining about how I needed to talk to Inez. Their impatience and exasperation showed on their faces each time they saw mine. But I didn’t let that stop me.

      “She didn’t tell you what hotel she was going to be staying in?” I asked, looking from Pat to Shonda. Both of them had on more make-up than Ronald McDonald. Like Inez, they thought their shit didn’t stink, but in a good way. I was one woman who was not afraid to admit that I admired and envied confident women.

      Impatient customers were lined up in chairs along the wall like convicts. Pat and Shonda were both frantically filing and buffing the fingernails and toenails of the two women who occupied the seats in front of them.

      “Inez didn’t want nobody to know how to find her,” Shonda said, tossing her head back so that her blond weave flopped and fluttered like a scarf. She handled the nail drill like it was a Gatling gun, looking up from the customer in front of her just long enough to glance at my shabby nails and give me a disgusted look.

      “If Inez calls, tell her to call me,” I ordered, curling my fingers into a fist to hide my raggedy nails.

      Just when I was about ready to start climbing