Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [130]
“Why, sure, Officer,” I said, wanting to kiss him, “do you have a pen and a piece of paper?”
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MOST OF MY LIFE, I was a very jealous person, but I tried hard to hide it. I was afraid that if someone knew I was jealous, he or she would use it against me. I’m different now; I’ve realized that jealousy is a pointless, wasteful emotion I can’t afford, but it wasn’t easy for me to give up the emotions of a lifetime.
Weonna was as jealous and mistrustful as I was, and the other women in my life made her angry—sometimes, though not always, with justification. Late one night, before I installed barbed wire and an electrified security fence around my house, we were awakened by a noise and saw a woman standing at the foot of the bed.
“Who are you? What do you want?” I asked, holding the covers up around my neck like ZaSu Pitts in an old movie.
“Who am I?” she responded. “Who is she?”
She pointed her finger at Weonna, who was as startled as I was. I couldn’t collect my thoughts and kept saying, “Who are you? What do you want? Who are you?”
“What do you mean, who am I? I suppose you’re just saying that because you don’t want her to know who I am.”
Weonna was starting to look at me suspiciously.
“Look,” I said, “I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here.”
“I suppose you didn’t see me at the bus stop this afternoon.”
“What bus stop?”
“What bus stop?” She laughed sarcastically.
“Look, you’re going to have to get out of my house right now.”
“I’m not going anyplace,” she said. “You’re getting rid of her, that’s what’s going to happen.”
“Okay, I’m calling the police.”
Weonna got out of bed shaking her head in disgust; she thought that I knew the woman. I grabbed her and said, “Wait a minute, Weonna … wait one minute. I don’t know this woman. I’ve never seen her before in my life.”
Then the bed jiggled and I turned back and saw that the woman had stripped off her clothes and slipped naked into bed beside me.
“Would you get out of here?” I said. “Now. How dare you?”
I was mustering the most theatrical show of vocal force and righteous indignation that I could manage at that hour of the night, but Weonna said wearily, “Never mind, I’ll go. There’s no sense getting excited, I understand. I’ll go.”
“Weonna, Weonna … I do not … I …” I was as tongue-tied as if I’d been hit over the head with a skillet by a linebacker. Finally I managed to pick up the phone beside the bed, wave it at Weonna to show her I was serious, and said, “I’m going to call the police, who will come here and remove this woman. You have to believe me.”
I reached over and pushed the naked body out of my bed. She fell halfway to the floor as I said, “Get out of here,” then dialed the police station, told the desk officer that someone had broken into my house and wouldn’t leave, and asked him to send a policeman to take her away.
In five minutes, a patrol car arrived with two policemen. “Do you want to press charges?” one asked as they escorted the woman out of the bedroom after she’d put her clothes on.
“No,” I said, “just take her away.”
I spent the next fifteen minutes insisting to Weonna that I didn’t know the woman. Her response was an ever-so-slight curl of her lips denoting suspicion and disbelief, as if the incident confirmed her conviction that I was unfaithful and a masterful liar and manipulator. I couldn’t blame her because in those days that’s exactly what I was. Still, I finally managed to calm her down and we drifted back to sleep. We were snuggled together an hour later when we heard another noise and woke up simultaneously to find that the woman was back in the room, her face ablaze with anger. She glared at Weonna and said, “Haven’t you gotten rid of her yet?”
I said, “Look, we’re not going through this again. I’m going to call the police, and this time you’re going to go to jail; this time I’m going to press charges. Do you understand?”
I dialed the police department and talked to the same