The Cost To Play (Slivers of Love) (9 page)

Toshi saw the look on her face, allowing his eyes to trail to the gun.  She sat down the weapon. He used both hands to pull her in close, pressing her back to the fridge.  He laid one on her that made her right leg shake like a dog having his belly stroked. She accidently pressed the ice dispenser, causing ice cubes to shoot everywhere.

“Good night Jayne,” he said as he released her to let himself out of the front door with his to go plates in hand. “Call me.”

Toshi was grinning as he walked away.

Yep. He is using a new tactic.
Unfortunately for Jayne, this one was working much better. She even liked the new approach. He just upped the ante. Her next move was going to cost a few more chips.

The grinning had not stopped when he went by his parent’s home on Thursday.  The lawn care company hadn’t done a very good job and the gutters were brimming over with pine straw. He parked his car, using his house keys to let himself in the back door. His old bedroom hadn’t changed very much and spare sets of clothing were still in the closet.  Toshi made a quick change into a long sleeved work shirt, a pair of faded sweats, and some old sneaks, then he put his ear buds in his ears and headed to the shed. Gloved up and on a ladder, he started on the far corner and worked his way toward the back door, singing along with tunes from his iPod.

Hirishito Yamaguchi arrived home after a grueling day of irrelevant meetings which had accomplished nothing more than increase his desire to retire. It angered him that the staff wanted to corporatize his operation. They suggested that he place tablets on each Hibachi station so that the patrons could place their orders.  Bah!  The pleasure of dining at a Japanese steakhouse is the experience, the togetherness, and the joy of watching fresh food being prepared before you.  His operations manager also wanted to cut food costs by buying pre-made sauces and precut vegetables.  Hirishito’s was built on his blood, sweat, and precise knife cuts. He nearly fired the punk on the spot.  A sigh escaped his lips as he shuffled through the front door on legs with broken veins and swollen knees. He suffered pains of the trade of a chef, who stood on his feet for too many hours a day. He would soon retire. Soon Kunio would be finished with medical school, married and starting a family of her own. Then he could sell the whole chain, move to Florida, and spend weekends with his grandchildren. Another sigh escaped tired lips. Kunio would be their only hope. He wasn’t sure what was going on with his son.

As he entered the kitchen, he heard an odd sound as his wife and daughter stared out the kitchen window. “Eri,” he asked. “What is that dreadful sound?”

Kunio answered, “It is Toshi.
Otousan,
he is singing.”

“And cleaning out the gutters,” Eri added.

Hirishito stepped up to the window and stared out as well.  His son was singing and dancing in a way that was not proper with women watching, or for cleaning out the gutters! At the age of sixteen, Toshi had used his allowance to pay his friends to clean out the gutters. Even when he started his job at the university, he hired a lawn care company to come by and handle the yard work. Hirishito was shocked to see him on the ladder.

“What is all of this about, Eri?” he asked his wife.

“I don’t know, but he looks…” she paused, exhaling in disbelief. “…happy.”

On cue, Toshi turned and spotted his family in the window. He gave them an ear to ear grin and waved.  All three onlookers shrank back as if watching a 3-D movie with an axe flying at their faces. In between bagging damp pine straw, he would stop, freestyle dance, then get back to the task at hand.

Eri understood what was going on and did not hesitate to speak her mind. “He is having weird sex with the black woman.”

Kunio shook her head. “I don’t think so
Okaachan
. If they have, it was recent, because last week she averted her eyes when he came out of his room partially dressed.  I don’t think she has seen him naked.”

Hirishito was shocked at the conversation between his wife and daughter. “Kunio! You have met this woman that Toshi is seeing?”

“I have,
Otousan.
She is nice, pretty, and he really likes her. She makes him smile.”

Hirishito tried not to be prideful at the cordiality and warmth of his wife and daughter. Toshi was completely the opposite.  He trusted few, spoke to even less, and rarely cracked a smile. In elementary school, the principal wanted him tested to make sure he wasn’t suffering with a form of Autism. The battery of tests proved the opposite. His son had an extremely high I.Q.

When Hirishito enrolled him in martial arts classes, he would win tournaments because his unwavering gaze intimidated the other opponents, resulting in forfeitures. He and Eri spent many nights worrying if he would ever be successful or find a wife, since he went through women like wine. He was bored of them after only a few months. Even when he broke his wrist and had to leave medical school, his face registered no emotion. Toshi shifted his focus and trudged on, never discussing the issue with any of them.  There were still days when, as his parents, they felt they did not know their own son. Hirishito looked out the window again, just to be certain of what he had seen.

He was still singing and dancing. Eri opened the back door. “Toshi, are you staying for dinner?”

“I would love to!
Haha
! Are you making my favorites?” He flashed her a wide grin.

Eri nodded and closed the back door, then looked at her husband. “What are his favorites?” She then burst into tears.  Her son was 30 years old and she did not know what he liked to eat, because anything you put in front of him, he would devour.

Hirishito took her in his arms. “Whatever you cook will be fine.” One thing was certain. They had to meet this woman in Toshi’s life.

“Grammy, it’s me!” Jayne called out as she entered the front door of her family home.  The pound cake she had baked for dinner the other day was taunting her and she felt it best if it found a new home.  Grandpa Joe loved her pound cake, mainly because she only made it on special occasions. When Grandma Pearl saw the cake, she went into the closet and started praying.

Jayne knew better than be disrespectful and interrupt a woman conversing with the Man upstairs, but she wasn’t certain what had inspired the sudden need to open the line of communication. She refused to eavesdrop and set about slicing a piece of cake for Grandpa Joe to go with his afternoon cup of decaf. She even heated the apples adding a smidgen of the whipped cream.

Her grandfather was not really a man who watched television with the exception of an UGA football game or some really good fly fishing. This evening he was watching Duck Dynasty and laughing like it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. “Grandpa?” she asked. “What has Grammy so upset that she is praying? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Grandpa took a big slice of cake and shoved it between his bushy mustache and grey beard.  Somewhere, in betwixt the scraggly hair resided his lips and mouth. “
Chile, she’s praying for you!”

Jayne’s eyebrows shot up. “Me? What did I do?”

Grandpa waited for the commercial before answering. “It is not what you have done, but what you are thinking about doing girl.”

She closed her eyes, saying a silent prayer herself. “What is it she believes I am about to do Grandpa Joe?”

This question caused a roar of laughter from the old man. “She thinks you are about to do the young man you cooked this cake for, Chile.”  He started to laugh again.

Grandma Pearl knew a great deal, but she didn’t know everything. Jayne wasn’t sure how she felt about Toshi yet, although she did like kissing him. Sleeping with him hadn’t entered her mind. She understood that her Grammy worried about her and men, especially considering what had happened with Jayne’s mom, but she and Lillie Mae Carter Wright were two different women.

Lillie had also been a different woman before she met and fell in love with Malik Terrell Wright. The newlyweds had been inseparable and madly in love which led to the birth of their first child. A boy named Darnell.  A year later, a girl child was stillborn, which began Lillie’s concern for their fitness as parents.  It helped very little that each time the couple came to visit her parents, her mother would leave the room and spend thirty minutes in the closet in prayer.  Grandma Pearl did not like Lillie’s husband and felt the man had a wandering eye and a lustful heart.  There must have been some truth to what Grammy believed, because a few months later, Lillie came home from work to find Malik in his tool shed with the neighbor, Shanice Longmire. She was playing with his tool. 

Lillie forgave him, while blaming it on the loss of the daughter. The constant illness of little Darnell, was putting a strain on their relationship.  Six months later, Lillie found herself pregnant with little Jayne, who was born the following summer, weighing in at seven pounds six ounces. The little bundle of joy caused friction between the couple, because Lillie had given the girl a
white
first name and Malik gave her the
black
middle name of LaQueeda. This was the one thing that Grandma Pearl agreed with Malik on.  Heck it was the only thing she agreed with him on.  Once Pearlie Jean Carter made up her mind on something, there was no turning back, no changing it, and no convincing her otherwise.  Lillie had given up listening to what she considered nonsense from her mother and set about living her life and raising her family.  If Malik was unfaithful, she saw no signs of it.  Grandma Pearl told her she couldn’t see the signs no more than an ostrich could see the hyenas coming up on it with its head stuck in the ground and his ass tooted in the air.

Lillie’s head came out the sand when Malik was supposed to be watching his children. Five year old Darnel
l left through the front door and wandered into the streets. The driver never saw the child chasing the ball. Darnell was killed on impact.  Darnell had brittle bones, digestive issues, and underdeveloped lungs which made him far smaller than your average five year old. It also hastened his arrival to the pearly gates.

It was the sirens and ambulance that brought Malik out of the shed with the neighboring women, Molly Cartwright and Imani Jackson. The irony in the whole mess was that Shanice Longmire was the one who heard Jayne’s cries and came out to investigate.  Lillie came home to find her husband being comforted by the two women he had been with and a deceased son. What made it worse in her eyes, was that her husband was not even holding his own daughter.

Lillie never recovered and Grandma Pearl would not let her live it down.  Since Pearlie Jean seemed to know what was best for everybody, Lillie packed up Jayne’s meager belongings and took them to her mother.  She handed Pearlie Jean the custody papers and the bag of diapers along with a wide eyed Jayne.  Lillie climbed into her car and drove to Gwinnett County, far away from her mother’s prayer circle and checked into the Summitt Ridge Mental Health Center where she stayed for four years.

Malik sent a monthly check to Grandma Pearl for Jayne’s needs, but Pearlie Jean put it in a savings account.  When Jayne graduated from high school, her college fund was fat, full, and ready to support her four years at the University of Georgia.  Jayne had earned a few scholarships as well, so the Darnell Wright fund also paid for graduate school.

Jayne rarely spoke to her father. He never remarried, because Lillie would never grant him a divorce on the grounds of her mental instability. He sent birthday and Christmas presents, but stopped calling when she was about 12 years old. Ironically, he also sent her the first set of acrylic paints and brushes.  Infidelity had cost him his family and his need to play with the neighborhood women, had cost him his son’s life.

He was never truly a part of Jayne’s life and it was fine by Jayne.  Grandpa Joe had been a much better father and Grandma Pearl had become less crazy in her religious zeal, especially after Lillie told her all her praying didn’t save her grandson.

Grandma Pearl had finished her conversation with the Almighty and she joined Jayne and Grandpa Joe in the living room with a slice of cake and apples. It only took her two bites before she said, “before it goes any further, we want to meet this young man.”

“Grammy. He and I are just friends.  He came over for dinner on New Year’s Eve and I cooked for him. That’s all.”

“Chile, who you think you fooling?  You were with the water headed fella George for nearly a year and you never made him your pound cake,” Grandma Pearl said with a touch of sarcasm.

Grandpa Joe interjected, “she got a point there Girl!”

“Grammy!” Jayne struggled to find the right phrasing, but in looking for the correct word in one sentence, she said the incorrect one in the second sentence. “Grammy, he cooked dinner for me on Christmas Eve.  I returned the courtesy and cooked dinner for Toshi the week after.”

Grandpa Joe sat up in the recliner, lowering the leg rest, and jumping up in one motion.  Grandma Pearl sat her cake down before she pretended to faint and fall to the floor.  Grandpa tried to get Pearlie Jean off the floor while at the same time, grabbing at his heart, Fred Sanford style, bellowing, “we are being invaded by the Japanese again, Pearlie Jean!”

The smelling salts were retrieved from the first aid kit to be waived under Grandma Pearl’s nose.  Jayne knew the woman hadn’t actually passed out, but it made her feel better to stick the pungent bag under her nose to get her up off of the floor. Once up righted in her Queen Anne chair, Grandpa Joe fussed over his wife a bit, then gave Jayne the stink eye.

“Toshi and I are just friends. Nothing more.” She tried to comfort her grandparents.

Grandpa Joe was the first to speak. “Chile, men of other races may date you, but they won’t marry you.”

“Men of my own race aren’t marrying me either,” Jayne blurted out.

“Don’t sass your Grandpa, girl!” She received the reprimand from her grandmother and disliked the taste it left in her mouth.  Jayne decided she wasn’t going to swallow what these two were trying to feed her.

She sat on the ottoman, leaning forward to touch both of their hands. “Dating has changed so much in the last ten years and finding a good man is difficult.”  Jayne went on to explain to her grandparents that there were more black men in prison today than there were in slavery in 1850.  Grandpa Joe gasped. She wasn’t done hitting them with some other cold hard facts. “The black men who are free are either gay, pretending to not be gay, or so bullheaded you can’t stand to be around them for more than fifteen minutes at a time.”

“There are still some good black men out there, Chile. I know of several in my church,” Grandma Pearl insisted.

Jayne countered her argument. “They are in church to prey on those women who go to church to find a man.  More than likely Grammy, those same men are having relations with at least two to three women in your church.” Grandma Pearl’s hand flew to her ample bosom as if she were completely in disbelief.

Grandpa Joe was nodding his head because he knew it was true.  “Grammy, a decent brother knows he has his pick and is often shared with more than one woman.  You see it all the time on these reality shows. Women fighting over a scrap of man.”  She repeated the mantra that her Grandma had taught her, about having a piece of man.

“
Chile, if you are ready for a good man, then you should get on your knees and ask the Good Lord to send you one.” Which was her grandmother’s fall back answer to everything.  Jayne was about to out maneuver the old bible thumper.

“I did Grammy,” she told her as she looked from her grandpa’s face to her grandmother’s. “And Toshi showed up.  I am moving slowly, taking my time, but as I said, we are just friends.”

She knew Grandma Pearl would not have a comeback for that one.