She raises a palm. “Let me finish, please.” Lord knows what’s coming. I may as well forget Usher. “I think she asked me that, not because anything is wrong with you, but because of your heart.” Now the tone in her voice changes. The sweet Aunt Fee shows up. “She knew you’d be taking care of everybody else but you. She knew you wouldn’t be thinking about yourself—” I try to object but she holds her hand up again. “Andshe knewsomebody needed to point it out to you.” Then she just looks at me.
“I think about myself a-plenty.”
“No you don’t. I know you love our girls, but you’re selling yourself short. You are smart, Pearl May, and you know it.” She raises her finger. “You’ve been working at Alpha Delt since you were nineteen years old. That’s almost twenty-five years. And what do you have to show for it?”
“What do you have to show for thirty-two?”
“Not a damn thing. And that’s my point. No retirement. No health insurance. Granted, we get paid time off at Christmas, spring break, and Thanksgivin’, too. But look what happens in the summer. Nobody can live on unemployment.”
“Tell me about it.”
“They’re talkin’ all about Obama’s care. We can’t even afford that. Then get penalized for not having it.Shoot.I can’t give up one more penny of my check. And neither can you. Your check less than mine.”
“At least I get a tip every now and then.”
Fee’s lips press into a straight line and she gawks at me with eagle eyes. My tongue has slipped into muddy waters. “You better hope Uncle Sam never find out about that.” An arthritic finger wags my way. “And that’s another thing. You get all kinds of tips and fine, pretty things. But they don’t come for free.” She picks up one of the throw pillows on my couch. Then gives me the hard stare. “You’re workin’ overtime for every one of these. Have you thought about that?”
I don’t say anything. But I know she’s right.
My lips part to ask what she thinks I’m supposed to do about it, when her tone softens. “You’re workin’ too many hours, baby. And you don’t take time for yourself. I want more for you than all this. Your mama would, too.”
After laying my sandwich back down on the plate and wiping my hands with a paper towel, I pat her on the knee. “Thank you for loving me like you do. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She smiles, puts her arm around me. “Your mama knew you were a rare treasure the day you were born.” With her other hand she touches the pearl dangling from my neck. “I remember the day she had your pearl made into this necklace. She carried me along with her to the jeweler. It was your sixteenth birthday. Ain’t that right?”
I nod. “Seems like yesterday.”
“That jeweler said Mississippi pearls are extremely rare and very valuable. Just like you. You make sure you hold on to it, you hear?”
I give it a feel. “Don’t you worry. I’ll never let this go.”
My great grandmama and her people liked to go “musseling.” They’d wade out in the Mississippi River feeling for freshwater mussels with their toes. In all her years of exploring she only found one pearl. Now it’s mine—baroque witha pink cast. Due to the mother-of-pearl button craze back in the thirties, Mississippi River pearls have all but vanished from the riverbeds. All the freshwater mussels and clam beds were depleted and never replenished. No wonder they’re so valuable.
I figure now’s as good a time as any to drop the bomb on her. “Mama Carla asked me to fill in for her this weekend.”
With a gasp, she rears back. “Say what?”
“Said she’d give me a hundred fifty dollars extra.”
I watch a cautious smile sneak onto her lips. “You may as well have told me I have the power to fly.”
“You and me both.” My mind’s been battling ever since Mama Carla asked me. One minute I’m imagining myself at the front door of the Alpha Delt House as the full-time housemother, the next I’m in the middle of a swarm of angry bees with their stingers pointed straight at me, daring me to disturb their hive.
“That Mama Carla is a nice lady. She knows a good thing when she see it.”
I smile back at her. Mama Carla drips with honey. She’s not one of the bees I’m worried about.
“But what’s that new House Corp President gone say? What’s her name? Lilith Whitless?”
I laugh so hard I snort. “Mama Carla acted like it was her decision, not Miss Whitless’s.”
“Maybe so.” She raises her finger. “But you be careful. You know what I’m sayin’?”
“I know what you’re saying.”
She shudders, then recoils back into the sofa. “There ain’t no tellin’ how that snake might strike when she finds out. She slithers into my kitchen, poking her pointy head into our business like she’s Queen of the House and we’re her subjects.”
“She thinks she is, anyway. But I’m not afraid of her.”
