Rhoda because I believed that my presence was important to maintain the relationship I had with her. It was not long before they stopped inviting me to go out with them, but that didn’t matter—I just invited myself.
Otis was nice to me at all times, no matter how much my presence annoyed him. When he didn’t think I was looking, out of the corner of my eye I saw looks of exasperation on his face. His parents gave him plenty of spending money and he spent as much of it on me as he spent on Rhoda.
It was then 1967 and Vietnam was a household word. Jock was threatening to join the army. The Nelsons, especially Rhoda and Mrs. Nelson, were horrified. Three boys from Richland had already died in that war. Uncle Johnny was the only one who supported Jock’s plan. “The military makes men outta boys,” Jock announced with an exaggerated salute one evening in the Nelsons’ kitchen in front of Rhoda, me, and Uncle Johnny. “Yeah. Look at me,” Uncle Johnny hollered, raising his fist. Rhoda had told me that Uncle Johnny had been dishonorably discharged from the army for sexually harassing WACs on several occasions, then punching an officer in the nose when he confronted him.
For the past few weeks, Jock had been trying to teach Rhoda how to drive. She was having a hard time learning, and it drove him crazy. She told me, “Oh I can get the hang of it if I wanted to. I’m just fuckin’ up so that Jock will be around longer. At least until that damn war is over. It would kill Muh’Dear if he did end up in Vietnam and somethin’ happened to him.” Each time after Jock and Rhoda returned from the Pine Street cemetery where he took her to practice, she called me up. “I almost hit a tree, I almost knocked over a headstone, and I backed into a truck on the way home,” she complained to me one Saturday evening. Otis and Uncle Johnny, who had his license, didn’t want to be bothered trying to teach Rhoda how to drive. She had a learner’s permit and could drive as long as there was a licensed driver in the car, which was usually Uncle Johnny or Pee Wee. One Saturday a few days before Labor Day, she invited me to join her for lunch. I got in the front seat of the Ford with her and Uncle Johnny got in the back.
“Where are we going?” I asked. Rhoda was treating me, and I was hoping she would say we were going to Antonosanti’s or one of the other nice restaurants. It was warm and I had on a sleeveless blouse and jeans. For some reason my weight had remained the same for more than a year now, 254, even though I ate as much as I normally did. Muh’Dear said it was because my hormones were changing. Rhoda said it was the stress I brought on myself over her and Otis. I didn’t know and I didn’t care what it was that was keeping my weight at bay.
“I feel like some soul food today,” Uncle Johnny yelled, his arms on the back of the front seat, his hot foul breath on the back of my neck.
“Sounds good to me,” Rhoda chirped, wrestling with the steering wheel. It seemed like the car was all over the road. She stopped so abruptly to avoid hitting a man riding a bike on the sidewalk, my head barely missed the windshield. Uncle Johnny’s head hit the back of my seat.
“Girl, pay more attention to what you’re doin’! I ain’t ready to die yet,” Uncle Johnny yelled at Rhoda, rubbing his forehead.
She pulled into the parking lot of the Buttercup restaurant located in the same run-down neighborhood I had moved from in 1963. There were several Black-owned soul food restaurants in Richland, but everybody said that the Buttercup was the best one. Some Black people insisted that it was just as nice as Antonosanti’s, even though they had never been inside Antonosanti’s. I didn’t know what to expect. The owner, a man named Robert King, had relocated the restaurant from Cleveland years before Muh’Dear and I moved to Ohio. Unlike some of the soul food restaurants I’d seen, with paint falling off the building and boarded-up windows, the outside of this restaurant was impressive. It was a small well-cared-for gray building with large clean windows and a big black sign