Love Licks (till death do us part)

"Hows your breakfast, honey?"
Jarred Gainer placed his paper down and turned to address the high shrills that echoed over the chaotic clamor of silverware and pots being thrown into a running sink of water. Miranda stood, with her head cocked to the side, one eye was nailed shut, as sweat cascaded down her forehead.
The sun beamed, blistering, into the window over the sink, but she had learned to deal with the headaches that it caused, having been married to Jerred for nearly six years. He was such a particular person. Everything had a special way and order. He liked to read by sunlight rather than the sixty watt bulb that dangled over the table, providing light with the simplest tug of a string. The light from the window across from the table was too much light for him, and dried his oatmeal. Even when Miranda tried to compromise, drawing only the thin, silk curtain shut, he would complain that the type in the funnies was too small . She would be subject to his wrath.
"It'll pass." he replied, though he had yet to take the first bite. After catching a glimpse of Miranda, wiping sweat with one gloved hand, and digging her panties from deep in her private creases with the other. He was at a lost of appetite.
"Pass for what, honey, a decoration? You haven't even tried it, jarred! Now, I got up early to cook this just for you! You mean to tell me you're not going to have just a little bite, Sweetie?"
As long as you stop pointing that filthy finger at me, he thought almost aloud as she walked closer and closer, wriggling it before him as if scolding a disobedient child.
"I aint much in the mood for food, Miranda. I still got gas from those stuffed peppers you tried to make last night! I swear those ghott-darn thangs are still trapped somewhere between my chest and my throat. "
"Father Frank seemed to like them". she smirked to herself, awaiting his reaction.
The mere mention of Father Frank's name sent Jerred into a cursing rage. He, like most every man in Frank Earlham's congregation hated frank with a passion. There was something mysterious and unnerving about the way he was able to get their wives and daughters to perform, perfectly the first time, chores that they would have to at least result to threats to get, with the simplest as a smile and a touch on the shoulder.
Jerred had witnessed the severity of the situation when he returned home one day, to find his sister fanning Miranda and exclaiming, "Get up sugar, Father Frank needs the rest of those pies. I know you're in the family way, but Mary was too, and she walked a long way to that stable to deliver Jesus and do God's work. All you got do is help me bake six more pies in time for the church picnic this afternoon!
"I think you're using this heat for an excuse to lay around and indulge in sloth and greed! Think about Father Frank and how disappointed he'll be! You know I can't make crust, Miranda! If you don't get up in ten seconds, I'm taking this ice cream back to the kitchen!"
She didn't have to, the mention of frank being disappointed was motivation enough to make Miranda ignore the dizziness and the kicking that caused her to feel discomfort. Jerred had seen the look of longing in her eyes when Shelly had mentioned Frank in their way of mentioning him. He knew, before she attempted to roll her pregnant belly from the sofa, that if he did not put his foot down that very minute, she would be up on her swollen feet, baking for that devil. She would be too tired to do the wash or cook for the rest of the week. That is when he forbid her and Shelly to speak the name in his house again.
He snatched Miranda from the church, as four of his friends also did their wives. Shelly was single, and not even Jerred could keep her from attending Frank's place of worship. Miranda would just have to praise, vicariously, through Shelly's retort to, "What did father speak on today?" , Whenever they were far enough away from Jerred to prevent his hearing.
"What did you just say woman?" he asked, digging his sweaty shirt from the pockets of his rotund stomach.
"I say I gave the rest of those peppers to Frank, Jerred. You didn't seem to enjoy them much, and he doesn't got nobody to cook and clean for him like you got me. I was just being Christian like."
"Christian like, eh?" Jerred smirked, brushing sweaty brown tangles of curls from his sunburned face. "Well if those peppers do that snake in god's garments half the ail they caused me, that just may be the most Christian thing you done in your life!"
Miranda felt her heart retreat from her chest and go into its dark place. Not even frank had worked that time. Maybe Mammy-rose was right, he just didn't care anymore.
"Yeah",she tried again, attempting to be more subtle. "I have been screwing up a lot of things lately, I don't know what's ailing me, the heat must be making me stupid."
"And all winter it was the cold, huh?" He chuckled, sending the smell of black coffee and cherry tobacco echoing through the kitchen.
The laughter was stifled as Jerred folded the edge of the paper down and caught a glimpse of Miranda. The sun flooded her thin slip, showing sharp knots of bone protruding from her back as she bent, scouring pots. It was the most horrific sight in the world. It reminded him of his brother, Nathon's wife, Elsie, who had run off , leaving Nathon to raise eight children alone. The oldest five of the children were all boys, which meant they were no account when it came to helping to care for the three babies.
Nathon was no Father Frank when it came to looks or manners, so the towns women, needless to say, only offered empathy in the forms of comments such as, "It's a shame somebody doesn't at least go warsh those little girls up for'em and do their hair."
They all would agree, and continue to rock and fan, refusing to be the one to volunteer . They watched Nathon and his dirt clan wander up and down the unpaved roads. Maybe that's why Nathon was so eager to welcome Elsie back, when she returned, strung out on all kinds of substances, suffering from the loose waman's itch, and skinny and frail,like miranda appeared now.
Miranda definitely did not have the loose woman's itch. When he was not there to keep her under control, he had a neighbor assigned the task of watching both entrances to his house. Nobody had been in or out of his house besides Shelly. That was the honest word of Mrs. Pearl, who had practically helped raise Jerred and Nathon.
"Whatever diet you're on ends right now, Miranda! You look like a garsh-darn skeleton!" He cringed, "I didn't marry you for your looks no how; you know that! You didn't mind walking around, looking all sorts of terrible before I said I'd take you! Why start now?"
"Alright!" she agreed, though she had never been on a diet.Jerred's unexplained nights away from home had been the only thing keeping her from eating or sleeping for the past three months. On top of things, mammy rose had began to talk to her again.
She couldn't tell Jerred. She couldn't take being locked up again. There was never enough air in that small room, and the only time light ever came in was when the nurses would pop in, only for a minute or two, to give her a new shot or pill.
"I'm making roast and potatoes tonight, Jerred" she spoke, removing his untouched plate from the table. "sure hope I don't burn that like I did this mess of eggs and bacon.
"Look thar, at all this I got to throw away". She tried again, with a deep sigh, as the plate
fanned before him. "Shame to throw away all this food, the way you work so hard and all".
"Give it to the damn dawgs, Miranda!" He fumed, pushing her and the plate far enough away to allow his corpulent gut room enough to emerge from the table.
A might early for him to be leaving on a Saturday, aint it?
Miranda wrapped the dishtowel tighter around her wrist and squeezed, the pain was the only thing that took the bad thoughts away when she couldn't control them. Sometimes her thoughts were not thoughts at all, and she was aware, Mammy-rose had gotten stronger and smarter. She would hide, deep in the wrinkles of Miranda's mind, and whisper bad thoughts. It wasn't until Miranda was all alone that Mammy-rose would make herself visible.
Thar's somebody else alright, youngen! Why do you think he don't care what you say or do no more? Aint no point in trying to make you better; he done give up on you and moved on to somebody that already be perfect!
"Why don't you just shut up? You're driving me crazy!"
"Huh?" Jerred, halfheartedly enquired, as he waddled towards the front door, his tool box tucked under one unwashed armpit, a copy of Trading Post under the other.
"I keep hearing this little cricket" she trembled, "Darn thing must've hopped up through the drain or something, it's driving me nuts!"
"If it's driving you, and nuts is the destination, it won't be needing much gas!" He howled with laughter, pushing the cherry cigar back into his mouth, "Talking to bugs? Woman you're near as Looney as a damn tune, aint you?"
"I reckon so", she sighed with defeat.
Yep, Mammy-rose was right! She closed her eyes and wrapped the dishtowel tighter still around her wrist, until she was sure she had drawn blood. Not even that silenced Mammy's cackle that time. She was already out. She had heard Jerred leave.
"Not so much as a smack on the face, let alone a kiss" she heard Mammy-rose taunt. She turned, to find Mammy, squatting on the counter top, next to the pancake box she had climbed from.
It was the damndest thing! No matter what she did, Mammy-rose seemed to get stronger and stronger. After Mammy had become mean and started to call her names, provoking her to talk back to Jerred, she had cut the wide, smiling lips from the pancake box. The voice disappeared for a day, but it was back louder and clearer the next. It became evident that she would never get rid of Mammy until she had done exactly what Mammy demanded.
"You talk too much sometimes Mammy!" She said softly. She always minded her tone around Mammy. Mammy was no ordinary colored woman. She was strong and towering. Her presence demanded respect, because she was magical.
"Maybe you're right. You always are, but do you have to rub it in so deep?"
"Humph!" Mammy chuckled, stretching her long, muscular legs from her tangle of checkered skirt. The legs let Miranda know that she had not made Mammy-rose up, she was very much real. On the box, only Mammy's bust was apparent. Miranda didn't have the slightest hint of an imagination, and according to Jerred (and several doctors), she lacked the potential for abstract thought.
"You gonna just give up and let him get the upper hand again, aint you youngen?" Mammy observed, shaking her head with such force that her red bandanna almost came tumbling from her nest of graying curls.
"No mam, Mammy! I aint! I told him I was making roast tonight! Thats his favorite food. I know he'll eat that."
"If'en he come home!" Mammy added.
"He'll be back! Jerred loves my roast, Mammy!"
"Yes, but you not the only woman cooking roast for'em now, youngen! You know that! You should've listened to me and put it in his coffee!"
"I know mammy!" Miranda balled, lying her head on Mammy's checkered lap. "I know I shouldn't love him no more, if he don't feel the same way, but it's so hard!"
"And that's how he wants you to feel!" Mammy cooed, wiping sweat from her forehead. "Child close them damn curtains and shut out some heat!"
Miranda quickly obeyed, for she had began to fear Mammy's temper worse than Jerred's. Jerred could only perform acts of violence upon her. Mammy had the power to make her perform acts of violence upon herself, and other people.
"You's a fool if'en I seen one in all my days!" Mammy tortured, "That man keep you locked up in this house all day while he be out doing what he want!"
"A good woman is glad to stay in the house and make it a home, Mammy!"
"This aint never gon be your home!" Mammy spat back, slapping her so hard that her eyes teared. "How you going to make home with a man that don't care if'en you lives or dies?"
"He cares, a little", she tried to reason. "He sounded worried about me, losing weight"
"He worried that some other man might get to thinking that it's good you losing weight! Mens is like that, youngen! Even when they through with you, they want you to be through wit everybody but them!"
"I'm going to do it right now mammy!" She promised, rummaging around in the drawers for the little clear vile of liquid. She was not completely sure of how the bottle of strychnine appeared in her cupboard. She could not remember purchasing it on any of her voyages into town, and Mammy never left the kitchen.
"Good girl!" Mammy cackled. "Then you get exactly what you want. Be no Jerred to get in your way, and no widow's tale will lay sweeter on Frank's ears. He'll be all yours! No more competing with that trashy, no good, Mary Douglass!"
"How do you know about her?" Miranda squinted, "I aint ever said nothing to you about Mary; not about Frank neither!"
"And you aint have to, Chile! A woman knows a woman's heart!"
Miranda basked in the comfort of silence, as she sat between Mammy's big thighs and felt comforting hands brush her hair back. She thought about what Shelly had told her, imagining Mary Douglass, swishing her big hips into church, Sunday after Sunday, wearing a big bruise around her neck or face---any place she knew Father would see it.
It was never enough, for a woman like Mary, to have a man who cared enough about her to still want to better her and leave passion marks all over her body. She had to show those marks to Father Frank, taking his attention from the love deprived women like her, who really needed him.
"It aint fair one bit mammy!" She trembled pulling the dishtowel tighter around her wrist. This time it was to stifle her own anger, not mammy's.
"It aint fair at all! Shelly says frank been having all kinds of meetings and conferences with that woman! Her man is always there! She doesn't need him! She don't need my frank at all!"
"Womens like that always likes to have a li'l more than what they needs!"
"And aint that the truth!" Miranda thought aloud, picturing Mary, batting her blue eyes at frank and exposing her big, bruised cleavage, exclaiming "I promise I fell, Father! I'm just so clumsy some times!"
Frank would be wooed by her bruises. He would want what another man cared so passionately about, and long to caress and suckle those red spots until her pain subsided.
She couldn't compete with Mary. Her Jarred had lost his passion for her nearly two years ago. Every since she had returned from the home, Jarred had seemed to regard her as less of a woman. He had accepted that she would never be what he wanted and given up trying to change her, or so she felt. It was the most delicate and humiliating experience in the world. Not even burned bacon could summon a response, violent or otherwise, from Jarred.
"So, what you down their draining your eyes for, Chile? That roast aint getting itself cooked up for that man, now is it?"
"No mam, Mammy. It certainly is not!" She giggled, wiping her face in the hem of her slip.
Mammy was fairly quiet as Miranda prepared Jerred's last supper. Except for the occasional gospel hymn, she never uttered a word once Miranda had set into action.
Miranda thought to herself that once again, it had slipped her mind to ask why mammy insisted on being called Rose, when the box proclaimed, in bold letters, that her name was Jemima. It was too late to worry about that now. Rose had retreated back to her box, and she never came when Miranda called. Her visits were of her own accord.
"Pretty as a picture!" Miranda thought, as she put the steaming slab of beef on the table to cool.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd slice you up and eat you myself; you know that?" She spoke to the roast, basting it with more juice, just in case the injected poison had cooked out.
Suddenly the urge to doll herself up overtook Miranda as she looked at how perfectly the roast had turned out. This was going to be a special meal indeed. She needed a new dress, and maybe a rinse and curl at the local beauty parlor. Maybe Jerred would be so excited about the beautiful roast that he wouldn't notice her blatant waste of his funds. Even if he did, it wouldn't matter too long, not after he tasted the roast.
She was busy, twisting her red mane about her head, imagining how she would look, when the sound of the door opening caused a slight gasp of shock to escape her throat. She turned, expecting it to be yet another of mammy's new entrances. After all, mammy was getting stronger and stronger. Perhaps she was able to leave the kitchen now.
"I do declare, big sister!" Shelly sang, perching her slender hips against the screen door, "you got the whole neighborhood with their windows up, drooling at the mouth and wondering what that is you're cooking!"
"Just a roast for Jarred!" Miranda replied, as though Shelly's comment had been accusatory.
"Well you sure are going to have one happy husband tonight!" Shelly teased, blowing smoke over her shoulder as she made her way down the hall.
Miranda envied Shelly's freedom as deeply as she was disgusted by it. She wondered what Jarred would say if she took to painting her face or puffing on a cigarettes, like some juke joint harlot. The thought was quickly dismissed. She didn't care too much for the smell of tobacco, and having so much gunk on her face seemed uncomfortable. She realized that after the dinner she had just prepared, it wouldn't matter much what Jarred thought of anything soon.
"I'm fixing to go into the town, shelly!" She called, pulling her long coat on. She decided that it was too hot to put a dress on over the slip, especially since she was going to buy a new dress. She would simply leave the coat buttoned until then.
"Bring me back a co-cola and a pint of whisky," shelly called out. She didn't move to offer any money, and she never did. Being Jarred's little sister meant that she was free to waste his money on all the things Miranda wasn't.
"And a pack of rolling papers!" She added too late. Miranda was thirty seconds out of the door .
"Did you get the last thing I said?" she asked, heading into the kitchen, where the screen door had been left to swing in the breeze.
"I do declare, that girl is the most peculiar minded sober person God did create!" Shelly laughed, pinching a piece of the roast from the bone. It was delicious.
The thought occurred to her that Jarred had not been home for dinner in the better portion of three months. She had seen Miranda sob as she heaped dish after dish of untouched delicacies into the trash. She would not let that happen to this roast. Even if Jarred did come home, he deserved to go to bed hungry, for his treatment of the simpleton he'd wedded.
The thought of father Frank, alone, warming television diners, set her to dialing his number . She paused for a moment, thinking of what would happen to Miranda in the event that this was the night that Jarred decide to come home for dinner. It was too late to hang up. Frank had already said hello, and she couldn't resist that voice.
Miranda was so simple minded that she could convince her that she never did cook the roast, just as she had done with the two pies and the ham she had smuggled off to Frank's last week.
"Well, hello there Father!"
"Well, Shelly Gainer!" His voice boomed from the receiver, "What a coincidence; the lord had just placed you on my mind, for some odd reason?
"Well, maybe the reason wasn't so odd at all father! Perhaps he knew we was having the same needs and desires at the same time?"
"Sister Gainer?!"
"The desire for company and sustenance, Father!" She smiled, mopping pools of sweat from her forehead. Frank's voice had never had such a profound impact on her bodily functions before. She could feel him making her dizzy. She had to clutch the side of the wall to retain her balance.
"I was just taking a roast out of the oven when I says to myself, 'shelly', I said, 'now, how Godly would it be to let such a big meal go to bad when Father Frank don't have anybody to prepare such good things for him?"
"Mmmmm; roast sounds terrific!"
She could hear him suckle his teeth on the other side of the phone, imagining her excellent cooking.
"Why don't you drive that brand new Ford of yours 'round yonder and scoop me and the dinner up, Father? That will give Miranda and that brother of mine some time to be alone. Maybe they can work out their kinks".
"Sounds delightful. What time should I come?"
"As soon as you hang up, Father!" She smiled, "And you might want to hurry! This roast is looking better and better to me by the minute. I just may eat the whole pan!"
She thought of how desperate and greedy her last statement must have made her appear to him, but it was too late to retract it.
"I'm on my way, Sister Gainer. Promise to save me just a smidgen?!" He teased.
"Oh I will, Father I promise!" She laughed hanging the phone up.
The room began to spin as she made her way to the table, but she ignored it, passing it off as the results of the bottle of gin she'd just drained.
"Frank, you are just going to die when you taste my roast!" She laughed, waving whiffs of the steam towards her face, "I just know you will!".