Excerpt:
Once I got used to the smell of my mama’s and
daddy's house again, I was able to fall into a pretty restful sleep. It always
smelled like a combination of moth balls and chicken grease in that house. At
one time, the smell was a comfort to me. Now it just reminded me of a time long
gone. My mama hadn't been able to safely cook in years, and Daddy was from the
old school. As far as he was concerned, any man that could cook anything other
than ribs on a grill was a sissy. I learned to cook out of necessity since any
relationship I ever had never lasted, and I'd never been married. But Mama
didn't teach me; she wasn't allowed to. I had to learn on my own. I supposed
that one of the aides who took care of Mama did the cooking around this place
now. Either them or Aunt Erma. But knowing how she felt about my daddy, that
wasn’t too likely.
Around five the next morning, a damn rooster
woke me out of my sleep. Daddy didn't have a rooster or a hen for that matter,
so I knew it had to belong to the folks that lived behind our house in a little
shack my daddy rented out.
I sat up on the side of the twin bed I’d slept
in as a boy, frustrated and sleepy, and stretched. Then I walked the three
steps from my room to the only bathroom in the small house and damn near jumped
out of my skin. There, sitting on the toilet, was my daddy.
“Daddy! You scared me! When did you get here?”
“How the hell I’m gon’ scare you in my own
house, sitting on my own toilet? When you get here anyway?”
Daddy had the bathroom lit up. I held my
breath as I backed out of the doorway. “I’ll wait until you get finished.”
“Might be a while. Been eating a lot of pork
lately. Got my bowels locked the hell up.” He emphasized his statement with a
painful sounding grunt.
I thought to myself that it smelled like his
bowels had definitely broken out of jail. I nodded, closed the door, and walked
through the kitchen and out the back door. My bladder wasn’t going to let me
wait until he finished unlocking his bowels. I faced the back of the house and
relieved myself. I stepped back into the kitchen and looked around, hoping
against hope that my folks had a coffeemaker when I knew better. They didn’t
have a microwave, either, or even a tea pot. So I had to boil water in a sauce
pan. I guess I should’ve been glad they at least had a jar of coffee in the
cabinet, even though it looked like it was older than me.
I had just sat down to drink my coffee when
Daddy walked into the kitchen wearing a dingy white t-shirt and faded, striped
boxers. One look at my daddy and anyone could see why he was so popular with
the women. Even at seventy-something, he still had the same smooth, ruddy skin,
gray eyes, wavy black hair, and bone structure that made most women swoon. The
story had always been that my daddy’s daddy’s daddy was a full-blooded Quapaw
Indian. My grandfather could never confirm this fact, because he never knew his
father. But looking at my daddy and the chiseled features I’d inherited from
him, I believed the story was pretty close to the truth.
Daddy sat down at the table with a grunt and a
sigh.
“Where you been, Daddy?” I asked.
He looked at me for a second. “Here and
there.”
“Mama’s sick. She’s in the hospital.”
“Yeah, I figured something like that was going
on when I saw her bed empty. Plus, you here. You don’t come around no more
lessin’ it’s something going on.”
I nodded.
I sat there and looked at him and waited for
him to show an ounce of concern for the woman who’d borne him two children and
had been his wife for the past forty-some-odd years. I waited for him to ask
about her or something. But he just
sat there, grinding his teeth and scratching his head. “Any more hot water? I
think I’ma make me some coffee,” he finally said.
He didn’t wait for me to answer. He stood from
his chair with another grunt and checked the pot for himself. Then he pulled a
coffee mug from the cabinet and started noisily making himself a cup of coffee,
huffing and puffing and grunting the whole time. I cleared my throat and took a
deep breath. My face was heating up, but I was determined to keep my composure.
Daddy wasn’t going to make me lose my cool. Not this time.
“She got ahold of a bottle of laxatives and
took all of them,” I said.
“Umph,” he grunted. “She always gettin’ into
something.”
I took another deep breath. “Yeah, um, the
doctor’s talking about sending her home this afternoon.”
“Umph.”
He sat back down across from me and loudly
slurped his coffee. So we sat there in silence except for his slurps.
Slurp…
Slurp…
Slurp…
Finally, I stood from the table. “I’ma go take
a shower so I can head on up to the hospital to check on Mama. You wanna ride
with me?”
Slurp.
“Naw, you go ‘head on. I’ll see her when she come home.” Slurp…
I sighed. “All right, then, Daddy.”
Blurb:
For ladies’ man Ivan Spencer, there really
is no place like HOME.
A family emergency brings former rapper and
current real estate mogul, Ivan Spencer, back to his long-abandoned hometown.
While there, he must deal with his confused mother, his elderly, philandering
father, his flaky sister, an unreliable aunt, and a face from the past who
makes him question some of his earlier decisions. All he wants to do is to get
things squared away and return to his life, but as it turns out, he must deal
with his own issues first.
Amazon / Amazon UK / Barnes & Noble / Kobo
Adrienne Thompson has worn many titles in her lifetime–from teenage
mother to teenage wife to divorcee to registered nurse to author. This mother
of two young adults and one teenager currently resides in Arkansas with her
daughter where she writes and publishes her stories full time.
You can connect with her via:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/A_H_Thompson
Instagram: http://instagram.com/ahthompsn/
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/ahthompsn/
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