“Yeah, but we don’t want you to be supporting no man.”
“If it doesn’t bother me, it shouldn’t matter. Don’t y’all want me to be happy?”
“We do.” Mama looked at the floor and shook her head. “But . . .” She stopped talking and just sat there staring at me.
“But what?”
“We thought that if you went out with Odell a few times, he’d pull you out of that shell you been hiding in all these months. He did, and I give him credit for that. Your disposition is a lot more sweet-natured on account of him.”
“That’s true. Odell brought me out of my shell and sweetened my disposition, so I don’t see anything wrong with us wanting to get married. He’s a good man and it’d be a shame if I let him get away. A lot of women would jump at the chance to marry him. Besides, we all need to think about what’s best for the baby I’m carrying.” I was close to tears again, but I refused to let Mama see me break down. If Odell changed his mind and ran, I’d break down in a way that I’d probably never recover from. And I wasn’t going to let that happen without a fight.
Mama blew out a loud breath and gave me a weary look. I was surprised when she smiled and reached over and rubbed my knee. “Me and your daddy been wanting to retire for a real long time. We need somebody who can jump in and manage the store for us.”
I racked my brain for a few seconds, but I couldn’t figure out why she had suddenly taken such a drastic detour in the conversation. “Don’t look at me. I told you and Daddy years ago that I didn’t want to keep working in the store. I love my job at the school and I’m going to stay there as long as they let me.”
“That ain’t what I was getting at. I was thinking about what me and Mac could do to help Odell.” Mama took another detour, but at least it was more related to me and Odell. She really had my attention now. I wasn’t going to get too excited about it because I had no idea what direction this one was going in.
“Oh?”
“With a little help from me and Mac, he could be a real good catch.”
“We’re not talking about a fish, Mama,” I said with my jaw twitching. “And I’ve already caught him.”
Mama exhaled and blinked several times. “Even though he didn’t get far in school, Odell is real smart and is better with numbers than me and your daddy put together. He wouldn’t have no trouble keeping our books straight and doing all the other paperwork we been struggling to keep up with all these years. He can read real good and he know the acceptable way to talk to white folks. Every time one of our regular white customers come in the store now, they go right up to him and start chitchatting like magpies about everything from the price of cotton to the best brand of doughball to fish for catfish with. Besides all that going for him, he ain’t shy about working hard, and ain’t missed a day or been late since we hired him.”
“Mama, I wish you would get to the point. I’m tired and I want to get some rest.”
“Me and your daddy had a long talk before I came in here.”
“About what? And what did you mean when you said you and Daddy could help Odell? Help him how?”
“If you really want to marry Odell, we know we can’t stop you. But we can make sure he’d be able to take real good care of you and our grandbaby.”
“What are you trying to tell me?” I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from Mama’s mouth.
“Like I said a little while ago, me and your daddy been itching to retire. We know you ain’t going to change your mind about managing the store. And Lord knows we can’t put more responsibilities on Buddy and Sadie. They’d run the place into the ground because if they was in charge, they’d spend even more time gossiping with the customers than taking care of business. Me and Mac will talk to Odell tomorrow and see if he would be willing to take over for us. He so smart, it wouldn’t take long to train him. I doubt if he’ll need a backup manager to assist him. We’ll let him decide if he do or don’t. Now you get some rest; I’m fixing to do the same.”
* * *
I wanted to get married right away, so we weren’t going to have a big church wedding. But the main reason I wanted to do it so soon was because I didn’t want to take a chance on Odell changing his mind.
We didn’t bother to send out invitations. Most of the people we knew showed up at weddings whether they’d been invited or not. Mama and Daddy told everybody they knew that I was getting married. Buddy and Sadie took care of everybody else. We had the ceremony in my parents’ living room a week after the conversation in my bedroom with Mama.
It turned out to be a big wedding anyway. There was standing room only. People I didn’t know, or couldn’t remember, showed up. Mama and a lady from our church had spent the day before cooking up all kinds of dishes for our guests to gobble up at the reception. But Mosella also brought several platters of food straight from her restaurant. “Since you one of my best customers, the food I brung here today is all on the house,” she told me. Winking her lazy eye she added, “I closed down my restaurant today—for the first time since I opened thirty years ago—because I had to come in person to see this wedding with my own eyes to believe it.”
