Red Light Wives by Mary Monroe Read Free Book Online

called her behind her back) in our neighborhood. But most of the other loose women tried to hide what they did. My mother didn’t.
    For Mama, life was all about having a good time, and she did that in three shifts. She would leave me alone with my grandparents for days at a time. Then she’d stagger into the house looking like she’d been mauled by a grizzly bear.
    â€œLula Mae, don’t you be lookin’ at me like you crazy, girl. I’m young. I’m goin’ to enjoy myself while I can. Help Mama to bed, baby.”
    When Mama was home, she spent most of her time in the bedroom she shared with me, lounging up under one of Grandma’s goose-down quilts or getting dressed to go back out again. I got used to her shenanigans fast. Some nights I’d even help her put on her makeup then I’d lie awake most of the night waiting for her to come home.
    When my mother’s behavior got to be too much for her family and their constant put-downs got to be too much for her, Mama found us an apartment across town on St. James Street next door to a convenience store.
    â€œNow we can worry about your whorin’ behind day and night,” my grandmother said, crying hard as Mama ran around our bedroom, snatching our clothes out of drawers. As much as Mama and I irritated my grandparents, they didn’t want us to leave.
    â€œY’all ain’t got to worry about me and Lula Mae. I’ll be takin’ care of myself and my child by myself from now,” my mother shot back, adjusting one of the many headbands she wore to hold her unruly dyed brown hair in place. Like my grandmother, my mother was a petite and pretty woman. With her big brown eyes and dazzling smile, she didn’t have to do much to make herself attractive. But that didn’t stop her from wearing the tightest, shortest dresses she could squeeze her sexy body into. It was no wonder men couldn’t keep their eyes and hands off her.
    â€œHa!” my mama’s daddy screamed, stumbling into the room on his thick, crippled legs. “You mean that other woman’s husband’ll take care of y’all. This girl,” he pointed at me with the cane that he needed to get around with, “she’ll end up just like you, if you was to take her away from here where we tryin’ to set her a good example.”
    Mama snapped one of our suitcases shut and then folded her arms, looking from her mama to her daddy. “Well, it didn’t do me no good livin’ all these years with y’all. All them preachin’ sessions and Scripture readin’ about somebody in the Bible begattin’ this or that, and chattin’ with a God they couldn’t see just made me want to do the opposite. Lula Mae, go empty your bladder and your bowels, so we can get up out of here. I’ll go crazy if I stay in this house another minute.”
    As I ran to the bathroom down the hall, I heard my grandmother say to Mama, “Lula Mae is gwine to end up just like you. Layin’ up with men for money. Mark my word.”
    It would be more than twenty-five years before my grandmother’s prediction came true. But a lot of other things happened along the way that drove me to that point. Things that I had tried to do to make sure that I didn’t end up laying with men for money like my mother.
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    My daddy, George Maddox, was married to a woman named Etta. Etta was not a bad-looking woman. She had a nice body for a woman her age, smooth high-brown skin, bright hazel eyes, and thick black hair she always wore in a braid wrapped around her head. She read her Bible every day and had a few good qualities, but people overlooked all that because most of the time, she was mean and hostile to people she didn’t care for. Like me.
    Etta Maddox knew all about my mama and me. But she left us alone as long as we stayed out of her way. I don’t know what she would have done if she had known that every time she