Rhonda & Reggie would be half sister and brother but our mother couldn’t ever tell them since at the time Reggie was formed, Mama was going with Bear Robinson, the plumber and to tell the truth, after fifteen years, she still wasn’t sure who the father was, my dad or the plumber. The plumber and dad are brothers, which wasn’t discovered until Mama and Daddy was discussing family backgrounds at the kitchen table one afternoon after I got home from school. Suddenly dad said, “Yeah, that Bear Robinson keep approaching my son like the boy belongs to him.” He and Mama had a good laugh but when mama looked over at me, the laughing stopped. Daddy must have thought we was in on some secret, so he slapped her and then me.
My momma didn’t take lightly to being slapped in the face. After all, it was her face that got her whatever she wanted in life, that and her big behind. She grabbed a spatula and started cracking it across my daddy’s head. The skirmish didn’t last long, but I think it scarred me forever, that fight. It was so sudden, so surprising and so unlike my daddy. At that particular second, I learned to distrust men, and I thought I knew why my momma was always returning smiles willingly provided by men as she walked me down the street. She was looking for a replacement. But my daddy seemed to have it right. He once told Reggie, “Always respect your mama and if you get married, make sure your wife respects your mama, too. If you make a woman respect your mama, she’ll respect you, too.” I don’t know if Reggie remembered but I know I did. I liked knowing the rules, but as a girl growing up, we never had rules, at least not ones we could understand. Instead, we had quotations and old sayings to live by.
"Keep your legs crossed and your dress down," I heard the women say. But I always wore jeans. I noticed as soon as I got breasts, boys started whistling at me. I hated the sound of snakes hissing, and hated myself for attracting them. Ronda is three years older than Reggie and is pregnant already. The man promised to marry her, though.
"All a woman needs is a good man to provide for her. She’ll learn the rules later." This is what my Aunt Dottie said when my mama told her the news. I miss my auntie a lot now that she’s dead. With my sister planning to marry before the baby started to show and Reggie now officially gone girl-crazy, I was beginning to feel lost.
Note to reader: Feel free to comment on any aspect of this story in progress. It's a short short story, which will end very soon. If you want to suggest an ending, feel free. Or you can add a very short story of your own, which I will post on this blog. Thank you for visiting this blog site.
(c) M.D. Johnson (2013)
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