“I understand, I have two boys. They leave their stuff everywhere.” Of course Madeline didn’t mention that she had a fulltime nanny or a biweekly cleaning lady. There had never been toys left out at Madeline’s house.
The house was still dark with only one lamp on in the corner, making it difficult for Madeline to get a good look at Hunter’s wife. She wasn’t sure how to read her yet. She seemed younger, tired, like she wasn’t impressed with anything.
“How did you and Hunter meet?” she asked while Rhonda walked into the kitchen to grab two cups of water. Maybe the small talk would give Madeline a few more moments to decide what to say.
Rhonda scoffed. “Oh you don’t remember?” She placed the waters on the coffee table in front of them and then turned on the lights in the living room. The flash made Madeline’s pupils narrow and an image flash through her mind. She saw girls at the community center dancing around an old boombox, stepping to the beat and moving their bodies in ways Madeline never could.
“At the community center?” Madeline answered. “You used to go there.”
“Mmhmm.”
“How nice,” Madeline responded into the silence. “Well, I should explain why I am here.”
“You don’t remember me, do you?” Rhonda cut her off with a big smile on her face. She sat on a chair next to the couch and shook her head side to side with her eyebrows raised. “You don’t remember me at all.”
Madeline had always tried hard to remember people. It was an important skill for a politician. And at this moment she was more than embarrassed by Rhonda’s statement.
“To you, I was just another little black girl. One of your projects,” Rhonda said, the smile still big on her face.
“I’m sorry Rhonda.” But then it all came back to her. The look on Rhonda’s face when she picked her up that morning. The sweat from her palm as she held her hand tight in the taxi. The way she quivered when she signed the forms at the clinic. How she looked disgusted as she ate her Tasti D-lite. Rhonda, with her long braids, red nails, had grown up. “Rhonda…” Madeline repeated. “I remember. I remember, everything.”
This realization was quite a shock to Madeline. She had pictured Hunter’s wife a million times, but she had never pictured the young girl from that day. The young girl who needed help. Who had seemed so lost. Who Madeline had helped. In her mind, Hunter’s wife was nothing like that girl. She was a tough, strict mother, TSA agent with a scowl and bone to pick.
This changed things for Madeline. She wasn’t exactly sure how, but the conversations she had played out in her head before coming in seemed completely irrelevant.
“Well, what do you want anyway?” Rhonda asked. She was picking at her nails, which were still long and perfectly manicured, but in a color much less flashy than what Madeline had remembered. “I told you, Hunter ain’t here. And if he did come here, I’d kick him out all over again.”
This was the opening Madeline had been looking for. “What happened?” The moment she said it though, she thought it was a mistake. Was she bringing up something that would turn Rhonda against her? “Was it…because of me?”
“Because of you?” Rhonda laughed harder than she would have allowed anyone else to laugh while her daughter was asleep. She clapped her hands hard and shook her head, before almost reprimanding herself for the loud noises. Her head glanced toward the hall where her daughter’s bedroom was and then she looked back at Madeline. She continued speaking in a whisper. “Girl, not everything is about you.” Although in her mind Rhonda was nodding hard. “You see that’s the problem with people like you. You think that the world revolves around you. That you are the catalyst that causes everything to happen.”
The truth was that Rhonda had no idea that Hunter had strayed. She may have accused him of cheating hundreds of times, but in her mind, she never believed it was a real possibility. Not Hunter. He was a gentleman, if she had ever met one. He wasn’t like other guys she knew in Harlem. Hunter may have been a lot of things, but Rhonda did not think that a cheater was one of them.
Instead, she blamed Madeline for the invisible influence she had over her husband. She was sure it was Madeline who inspired his political career, who taught him how to find loopholes to jump through, who gave him the courage to do what he did. Surely that all came from his previous relationship with her.
“You’re right,” Madeline said. “How selfish of me. Do you want to tell me what happened?”
Rhonda shook her head, but began talking anyway. “Well, maybe you are right. Maybe it was because of you.” She leaned back and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “But I don’t need to tell you nothing.”
“Right. I’m sorry for prying.” Madeline sat quietly and sipped the glass of water Rhonda had put down for her. The two women sat in silence for a few moments before Rhonda spoke up.
“Why are you here?”
“Well I heard about your divorce, and maybe it is too intrusive, but I want to help.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Well Hunter does. He asked me for money to help pay for the divorce.” Madeline bent the truth for Rhonda, still unsure of her involvement in the blackmail.
“He wants money for the divorce? Well that is a laugh, ain’t it? Our divorce is the least expensive thing in his life right now. You think I’m paying a fancy lawyer? My lawyer’s face is on a bus stop.”
“So
