she? I saw it comin’. We tried to get her to leave that beast she married. We tried to tell her to get some help.” I sighed, feeling a sharp pain in my chest and thinking that there were some people that simply couldn’t be helped.
Viola shook her head and let out a long deep breath. “She won’t be needin’ no help now,” she told me.
I froze, staring at Viola with my mouth open and my hand in midair. “He finally killed her, didn’t he?” I asked softly, tears forming in my eyes.
Viola shook her head again. “She put a pistol in her mouth last night and blew her brains out.”
CHAPTER 52
I didn’t go to Cynthia’s funeral. Not because I didn’t care but because I had received too much disturbing news all within a couple of days, and it was too much for me. I was afraid for Rhoda’s brother, I was angry with Levi, and I was thoroughly saddened about Cynthia’s suicide.
The funeral was the following Wednesday. I still had not heard from Levi, and I was too overwhelmed to call his house again. We had a brief memorial service for Cynthia at work in our breakroom the day after her funeral, and I attended. Viola had taken her friend’s death so hard, she had to take off the rest of the week. Just seeing all the grief Cynthia’s suicide had caused made me recall the night I almost ended my life. I could not imagine the pain the people who loved her were in. For the first time I tried to imagine the pain my suicide would have caused the people who loved me. I called in sick that Friday. I spent the day going through my apartment gathering up everything Levi had given to me, a cheap clock radio, a few articles of clothing, some Mahalia Jackson albums, a prayer cloth he had ordered from Reverend Ike, and a few other odds and ends. Instead of putting the items in boxes, I stuffed everything into large trash bags. We had taken a picture together at the Blue Note one night. First I tore the portion off with him in it. After thinking about it for a second I tossed the whole thing into the trash, frame and all. Saturday morning I took a cab across town to Seventh Street and left the trash bags at the Salvation Army donation drop-off. After doing that, I rode cabs all over town looking for sales to replace everything that I had just gotten rid of. Before I got into another cab to go home, I went to Kroger’s to pick up some greens. I already had a chicken in the freezer. Levi or no Levi, I was still going to enjoy my favorite Saturday night dinner.
Minutes after I had sat down to enjoy my dinner, the doorbell rang. “What the hell are you doing here?” I snapped, my mouth full of food. It was Levi clutching a bottle of wine.
He gasped and gave me an incredulous look before speaking. “What’s wrong with you, girl? I come every Saturday,” he said seriously, waving the bottle so hard the red ribbon around its neck came undone.
“Except last Saturday when you were off getting married,” I seethed, shaking my finger in his face.
He dropped his head and scratched the side of his face. “Oh,” he muttered.
“Is that all you have to say?” I swallowed my food and slapped my hands on my hips. “How come you didn’t tell me you were getting married, Levi? How come you didn’t tell me you were seeing another woman?”
He shrugged. “That didn’t have nothin’ to do with me and you,” he said, shaking his head and shifting his deceitful eyes.
Mr. Boatwright was the last person I’d given the cold mean look I gave to Levi. It was a look that was so intense, he flinched and moved back a step.
“I was goin’ to invite you to the weddin’,” he said contritely. I continued to stare at his face in stunned disbelief.
“How could you do this to me, Levi?”
“Well”—he shrugged casually—“my son needed me.”
“Son? What son?”
“I got a boy a year old.”
“You mean to tell me a full year into our relationship you started up with this other woman and had a baby?” I screamed.
“Somethin’…somethin’…like…like that,” he told me.
“You son of a bitch,” I said evenly, stumbling against the doorway. I slapped his hand when he reached out to grab my arm. “You better get home to your