Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou [53]
I had never heard that. “No.”
“Well, let me tell you something. It's gauge that's breaking up my marriage.” He stroked my hand. “My silly dilly wife stopped letting me have any and she goes around laughing and giggling all the time. I've told her that I can't go on much longer. I'd hate to lose you too, Rita. Just after I've found you.” I thought he was sincere and I was sorry I'd upset him.
I didn't need to think long. The pot had been important when I was alone and lonely, when my present was dull and the future uncertain. Now I had a man, who talked sweet to me, made excruciatingly good love to me, considered my baby, and was going to make me his wife.
“L.D., when you take me home, I'll throw the rest in the toilet.”
He grinned and touched my face. “You're my Bobby Sock Baby. Now let's see what we have to eat.”
As we picnicked he continued talking about his wife (I hadn't expected to find My Prince without encumbrances). “She's a millstone around my neck. Sometimes I stay all night in the gambling house just to keep away from her evil mind and sharp tongue.”
“Why do you stay with her, L.D.?”
“She's older than I am, and she was good to me once. I never once forget a favor. Can't afford to. Now she's sickly. When I get on my feet, I'm going to send her back home to her folks.” He waited a minute, then took my face in his hands. “You're such a sweet baby, Rita. Let's don't talk about it any more.” I admired his restraint.
The naturally lonely person does not look for comfort in love, but accepts the variables as due course.
I thought I was making him happy. In any case I would have done anything to win a smile or hear him laugh and pat my cheek. The job had become so very tiresome. If I didn't have to work, we could spend more time together. I loved the movies and we'd never been; also I wanted to get into a dance class so I wouldn't get rusty. I knew it was a matter of time before he'd catch on to my hints about the job and order me to quit. I would get an apartment and furnish it with the ragingly popular blond furniture. My bedroom was to tremble with pink frills and lacy ruffles. My son's would be painted yellow and white, with decals of happy animals climbing the walls, expensive toys stacked neatly in a corner, and he would sit at a cute little table learning from clever educative books. Home-baked breads would give the kitchen a solid country air, and after my family had eaten and the baby was fast asleep, I would lie on my scented bed as L.D. loved his baby in the darkness.
Three days passed and L.D. didn't come to the restaurant. I was jittery with worry. He told me where he lived when he told me how hateful and lacking in understanding his wife was, but I didn't know the telephone number. Gamblers protect themselves from borrowers by having unlisted telephones. Before and after work I walked by the gambling joints looking for his car, then past his two-story house, which sat back in a yard of tended rose bushes. Ideas of all sizes and degrees of madness plagued me. He might have had an accident, fatal. Or he might have had a heart attack. Fatal. He might have tired of me and found someone else. I hastily discarded that one. It was better to picture him in a lovely coffin, “his small face narrowed by death and his thin lips at peace.”
“Baby, Daddy didn't mean to worry you.” Although his face was lined with exhaustion and he hadn't shaved, he looked beautiful. He had driven up just as I walked out of the café, and told me to get in the car.
“Things have been going badly for me. Very badly.”
I had no idea how a juvenile bride was to console her man. Should I pinch him and giggle or stroke him like a sister?
“I've been gambling for three days and I lost everything.”
Now I could say it. “You've got me, L.D.”
He didn't hear me.
“I lost over five thousand dollars.”
I nearly screamed. There wasn't that much money anywhere except in banks. He could have bought me a house with five thousand dollars.
“And I'm up to my neck. I was trying to win enough money”—he turned away—“to divorce