His First Wife

Everything started when a mother came to town. Quiet and all alone, she got off a Greyhound bus across the street from a conveniently placed strip club. Had on fake pearls and a blond lace front wig. Her daughter picked her up in a shiny new Jaguar with two seats and the top down.

Maybe thirty minutes of silent riding later, the mother was standing at the window in the big house—there were pillars out front and all. She was looking away from everything beautiful behind her. Clutching her purse like she wasn’t staying. Thinking. Trying to decide how she should tell her smiling baby girl, who always wanted more than she could hold in her arms, that she ought to get on the next bus and go back to Memphis with her.

“I don’t know why you didn’t accept the tickets I sent you. First class flight? I thought you’d like that,” Deena, the daughter, said. Maybe she was sipping mimosa or waiting for the maid to pour her another glass.

“Memphis ain’t but a stone’s throw away,” the mother mumbled. Her name was Mama Fee—everyone had always called her that, even before she’d had children. “Take more time to get on the plane and fly than it does to get on the bus and ride. And I don’t do big birds.”

“That’s old talk. This is a new world.”

“Is it? Is it really, Deena? You tell me.”

“Yes, Mama Fee. You still act like flying is just for white folks. Or rich folks—”

“Ain’t said nothing like that.”

“Well, that’s good, because it isn’t. As long as you can pay, you can play. That’s the Atlanta way.” Deena chuckled and looked at Lorna, the maid, holding the pitcher of mimosa to her glass to support the comedy of her play on words with laughter. “I mean, it’s 2012—not 1902!”

Lorna was only able to produce a half smile before Deena shooed her away with a tired wave. As soon as Lorna stepped over the threshold, the mother turned and looked at her daughter.

“Seems like you shouldn’t be drinking,” she nearly whispered. “Not in your condition.”

“Condition? Please! What do you know about it?”

“Plenty. Had you and your sisters. Doctor says it’s bad.”

“No. Doctor says it’s good. Helps to relieve stress. A little won’t hurt the baby at all.” Deena downed the last of her drink. There was an audible gulp that resonated with pangs of short nerves or anxiety. “And I need it today—with it being my wedding day and all.” She looked at the big blue diamond on her ring finger. She’d purchased it a week ago with her fiancé’s credit card and full blessing. “I need to relax.”

Mama Fee was still looking out the window and thinking. The shiny Jaguar was resting in the middle of a circular drive that was filled with perfectly shaped creamy stones and purple pebbles that made the whole world outside the house look like a giant fish tank.

“Maybe you should’ve waited until the baby was born,” she said. “At least until we could’ve had a proper wedding—your family come. You know? Like Patrice and Rhonda did. Still don’t see why you couldn’t invite your own sisters.”

“Would you stop it? I didn’t invite you here to go drilling me about everything.”

“I ain’t drilling you. They’re your sisters. You were in their weddings.”

“Yeah, and they married big, fat losers. Is Patrice’s husband out of jail yet?”

“You watch your mouth.” Mama Fee said, finally turning to look at her daughter. But she needed no confirmation that it was Deena who could bring up such a thing. Her youngest child was born spitting fire at anything that didn’t seem to pick her up in some way that she deemed acceptable. This might’ve been considered gross ambition or maybe even unapologetic drive if it wasn’t for the fact that sometimes Deena’s desire for uplift went beyond frustrated tongue lashings and straight to unmitigated evil—well, the kind of evil a girl from Memphis who’d hardly graduated high school could spin. When Deena was 15, Patrice had just finished beauty school and her prized graduation gift was a beauty box filled with emerald and sea foam and lavender and canary eye shadow. Lipsticks of every shade of red and pink. After Deena had begged to sit and try just one shadow, paint her lips in one shade of red, Patrice balked and hid the box beneath her bed. The next morning, the rainbow of shadows and lipsticks were floating in a river of bleach on the bathroom floor. Mama Fee nearly killed Deena with her switch in the backyard after that incident, trying to teach the girl a lesson. But

Deena didn’t cry one tear.

“Patrice’s husband is a fucking jailbird. Don’t blame me for that,” Deena said, nearly laughing.

“And what about you? What about your husband?”

“Fiancé. And what about him?”

“Well, where is he?” Mama Fee asked, fingering a small Tiffany frame she’d found in the windowsill. It was a picture of a handsome, brown man standing beside an older woman at what looked like his college graduation.

“He had to work this morning,” Deena replied.

“On your wedding day?”

There was a pause. And then, “You’re picking again.”

“I’m not picking. I’m just asking. It’s an obvious question.” She held out the picture to Deena. “This him?”

“Yes. Him and his raggedy-ass mama,” Deena snarled. “Hate that old bat.”