jezebel waiting

She was sitting by the window, just as she’d done every day for a month. She was twirling the razor blade in her fingers, just as she’d done every day for five months. It just seemed more logical to do it here by the window, as opposed to cowering in the bathtub like before. At least if she got the nerve up, bled out, and slumped in a heap in the flower bed, the mailman would see her eventually. She couldn’t say the same if she were lying in four inches of her own viciously red lifeblood. She sighed, took a sip of her iced tea, and waited.
She wasn’t sure at all what she was waiting for. She just had the overwhelming sense that she must wait, and so she did. She had never been the type to second-guess the promptings of Mother Nature. And it was Mother Nature who had advised her to wait in the first place. She had been standing on the porch, watering her hanging vines, when a small songbird pranced up the stairs and looked up at her from it’s perch on the peeling planks of wood.
“Wayyyy,” it sang. She asked it politely to sing again. “Wayyyyt,” it repeated.
“Did you say ‘wait’?” she asked incredulously.
The little bird dipped its head in a nod, or more logically to pick an invisible bug off the dry, cracked wood. “Wayyyt. Wayyyyt.” It whistled a few more times before nodding once more and flying away in the direction of the river. She had stood on the porch, watering can in hand, and waited for the rest of the afternoon. She told herself that if nothing noteworthy had occurred by sundown, she would resume waiting the following morning. This pattern had repeated itself every day for the past twenty-nine. Jezebel was tired of waiting.
She was watching a dragonfly maintain it’s place above the bobbing heads of her violets, when the telephone rang. With a displeased sigh at having been interrupted, she stood and walked to the dividing wall in the kitchen. She placed one hand on the back of the fading yellow phone and lifted it from the hook and to her ear.
Without a word, she waited for the caller to make him or herself known. “What’re you waiting for, Jezebel!?” the voice asked sharply.
With her mouth in a perfect O, Jezebel looked at the receiver and tried frantically to place who was calling. “Well. I can’t rightly s—”
She was cut off. “It’s me, Joe Abernathy! I’m in town and I was ‘spectin’ to see you, young lady! Get your britches down to the post office so’s I can give you a squeeze!”
Jezebel placed her razor blade on the counter and lifted her free hand to her neck. “Joseph?” she asked, very quietly.
“Yeah! Joseph. Joe. Who else would it be? Why you sound like you just seen a ghost, Miss Jezebel?” She hoped he’d continue, but he honestly wanted a response.
“Well, I never did expect to hear from you again, Joseph. That’s all. And you do sound so… clear.”
At this, Joseph James Abernathy let out a deep laugh. “Well, yeah, Miss Jezebel. It’s these new-fangled phones they have. Don’t even have a cord. You just punch in the number and they’ll connect you to anyone, anywheres. Inn’t that something? I just picked me one up a couple months back and I have been burning up the phone lines. Guess I shoulda called you sooner, but I haven’t been in town.” He paused. “Am now, though, so get your britches down here!”
Jezebel was tempted to remind him she was a proper lady and wouldn’t be caught dead in britches. She smoothed one hand over the back of her skirt and mumbled that she’d be right down. Without waiting for another bright, positive word from Joseph Abernathy, she hung up the phone, picked up her razor blade, and returned to her perch by the window.
It wasn’t long before the mailman, Mister Arthur Winslow, came whistling and high-stepping up to her front porch. He twiddled a few fingers through the window at her, and set about putting the bills in her mailbox. It took a great amount of effort on Jezebel’s part, but she stood and rushed to the door before he’d finished.
“Mister Winslow,” she began, nearly out of breath and flushed in the cheeks.
“Why, good day Miss Jezebel. What can I do you for?” He smiled and removed the end of his gnawed cigar from beneath his thin white mustache. He waited for her response with gentle eyes.
“Actually, Mister Winslow, I have quite a favor to ask of you.” She realized she was still flicking the razor blade between her fingers, and with a small gasp tucked it behind her back. “I need a ride to the post office. Joseph Abernathy is there waiting for me, and I don’t think I could make it walking.”
Arthur pondered this a moment before nodding, his smile widening. “Sure thing, little miss. These letters n’ things can wait for tomorrow. Let’s get you to your groom.”
Jezebel felt her cheeks flush at this. She thought of protesting, but decided against it. Joseph’s return would cause enough of a stir without her denying everything he was probably saying right this moment at the post office. God only knew what kind of damage Joseph James Abernathy could cause on a Thursday afternoon.
“I’m just going to step inside and collect my things. You wouldn’t mind pulling the truck around, would you, Mister Winslow?”
The skin around Arthur’s blue eyes crinkled as he looked at the damaged girl. “No, not at all, Miss Jezebel. I’ll be waiting just out here.”
She retreated into the house and wondered very briefly what sort of things she should take with her to meet Joseph. She had an overnight bag packed, as her mother had always advised. But she didn’t want to appear presumptuous. She had a handbag, but there wasn’t much in it but several Crush bottle caps and a few crumpled, unused tissues left over from her father’s funeral service. She set the razor on the seat by the window and decided to take both the handbag and the overnight bag. Mama had always said there was no such thing as being too prepared.
She slipped her coat over her dress, despite it being a pleasant 76 degrees outside. She never had been good with predicting the weather, and it could turn to rain any time of day or night. She locked the door and patted her pocket to make sure the key was there. When she felt confident that all was right inside her little house, she made her way to where Mister Winslow was idling his mail delivery truck.
“All set, Miss Jezebel?” he asked, putting one hand on the gear shift and extending one to his fare. She accepted his hand and pulled herself into the shredded fabric seat. It smelled of exhaust and stamp glue, and Jezebel felt a little more at ease with the whole situation. “Do forgive me, these things don’t come equipped with belts. If we do get in any kind of situation between here and the post office, I’ll be sure to hold onto you real tight.”
Jezebel was startled at the realization that an automobile might not be completely safe. She tried not to let her alarm show, and sat back in the car seat. She held onto her handbag and pinned her knees together around her overnight bag, so it wouldn’t slide. The ride to the post office was only about five minutes with the way Mister Winslow drove, and Jezebel was grateful for that. She was never any good at conversation, especially around people she admired as much as her mailman.
When they arrived in front of the short, squat building that housed the post office, Jezebel thanked him and politely extracted herself and her bags from the vehicle. She took a deep breath and headed for the sagging steps of the little government building. She made it just to the top step when the rusty hinges of the door burst open and there stood the love of her short life, in all his glory.
“Well I’ll be damned if it isn’t my Miss Jezebel Baker,” he sang, holding his strong arms out wide.
Her cheeks flushed again and she avoided looking into those silver eyes. “You watch your mouth, Joseph James. I’m likely to think you’ve spent the last seven months dealing with sailors.”
“And how you know I hain’t?” he asked with a wicked gleam in his eye. “You get your cute ass up here and hug me proper.”
Jezebel reluctantly let go of both her bags, and stepped the remaining two feet to where Joseph stood, waiting. She smiled shyly and wrapped her arms around his trunk. She could barely touch her own fingertips around the girth of him, and she felt herself warm all over at the memory. She rested her cheek on the pane of his chest and breathed in the scent of man and adventure and dusty things. She also paid very close attention to how his arms fell around her. At first, he was cautious, moving his arms gently around her upper back. But when he realized he wasn’t about to break her in two, he swept her up into his arms and twirled her around one, despite her shrieks of delighted protest.
“My Jezebel,” he breathed upon placing her back on the boards. “Look at you, pretty lady. They been telling me you bin keepin’ yourself holed up in that old house. What kinda thing is that to do with the beautiful face God gave ya?”
Her cheeks colored for the dozenth time. “You know me,” she said quietly, not really wanting to elaborate or explain what, to Joseph, might seem like peculiar behavior.
“I’m not so sure,” he said after a little too long. “Girly, when I met you, you were something else entirely.”
Jezebel waited a beat as well. Then she brought her swimming brown eyes up to meet his. “You know what they say,” she said quietly. “Time changes a person.”
And with that, Jezebel picked up her bags and began the trek back to her little old house. As she walked, feeling the heat on her hunched shoulders, wishing she had chosen to leave the coat at home, she realized that if Joseph really meant the things he had said to her all that time ago, he knew just where to find her.

It was nearly eight p.m. when Jezebel arrived, sodden wet, to her house. She was no longer regretting the rain coat, but if she was being honest, it hadn’t helped make the trek any less humiliating. She dropped the bags on the floor, just as she had upon seeing Joseph, and stepped up to the door. She pulled open the screeching screen door and went for her key. Her heart skipped when she realized it was no longer in her pocket.
“Oh, Jesus!” she cursed, half-praying and half-damning. “How could I be so foolish!” she shouted, fists balled and eyes welling up. She stomped her feet several times before slumping down in the porch swing. The runoff began dripping from the roof right into the back of her rain coat. She couldn’t catch a break. She tried to ignore the filthy trickle of the dusty water running into her coat as she hung her head into her hands and began sobbing.
She was thinking of how wretched her meeting with Joseph had gone, and regretting terribly the weakness she felt in all her extremities, when she heard a creak on the porch step. She whipped her head up to see who it was, but the cloud cover and the late hour didn’t help in identifying her visitor.
“Wh-who’s there? Who is that?” she asked, too sad and weak to bother standing to face her intruder.
“Don’t you worry your pretty head, Jez. It’s just me, Joe. Joseph.”
Jezebel’s heart returned to it’s steady beating pattern before racing again when she realized that his presence was almost worse than that of a stranger’s. “What are you doing here, Joseph James? I think I made myself very clear at the post office that I don’t want to see you.”
She could almost make out the crease of his forehead as she watched him. “I do beg to differ on that, Jezebel. You made yourself ‘bout as clear as mud, is what you did. If you’ll let me in to dry off I promise I’ll try n’ explain it all to ya. Please, give me a chance to do that much.”
She didn’t say anything for a while. She listened to the rain drip off the porch and water her flowers for her. That was one less chore she’d have to do in the morning, she told herself. “Fine, Joseph. I would let you in, I’ll give you that much. I’d let you in but I don’t have my key. It seems to have slipped from my pocket at some point between the post office and my front door. So if it’s all the same to you I guess we’ll just have to speak out here and wait for our death to find us.”
Joseph stepped closer, his round shoulders silhouetted against the dim ambient light of the world outside her front porch. “Now don’t get all worked up, little lady. I found yer key in the mud just before the sun gone down. How else you think I was gonna get inside if you locked me out?”
Jezebel battled momentarily with relief and utter disdain at his sneaky ways. She decided there was no use being angry at him for helping her out. She plucked the key from his thick, square fingers and turned sharply to the door. She inserted it forcefully into the lock and turned. “Grab my things,” she ordered haughtily before entering the house. She listened with satisfaction as the screen door banged closed behind her.
Ten minutes later, Jezebel was changed into a long nightdress, sitting in front of the fire with a cup of hot tea in her hands. Her feet were tucked under her bottom and her eyes were bright as she looked across the room at Joseph. He was sitting Indian-style on the bare patch of floor, trying to dry off. He wasn’t doing anything but looking at the flicking flames, thinking.
“Well,” Jezebel began after some time. “I do believe I let you in to explain yourself, not just sit there looking like… like…” She couldn’t finish out of embarrassment.
Her flustered accusation brought Joseph’s sparkling grey eyes across the room to rest on her. He smirked just the slightest bit. “Like what, Miss Jezebel?” He wasn’t teasing, he was genuinely curious and Jezebel felt her cheeks heat up. They always did when he addressed her directly. It reminded her of so many times before when he had whispered her name that very same way. The intimate times.
“I lost my words. That’s all.”
“I plead with you to find ‘em,” he said, his smile sweet and honest.
She took an indignant sip of her tea, enjoying the sweet refuge of the sugar melting over her tied tongue. It seemed to loosen it just a bit, and she admitted, “I was going to say you look just like Christ come on Easter morning, that’s how handsome you are. Satisfied with yourself?”
What had been intended as a playful jest on Jezebel’s part seemed to strike a chord within Joseph. He lowered his eyes and slid them back to the lazy, licking flames of the fire. “Not at all, Jez. Not in the teeniest, tiniest bit. I bin downright rotten.”
The confession caught Jezebel off guard. She thought about readjusting her legs, sitting forward with her elbows on her knees, but thought better of it. Perhaps if she played it casual, he would continue. Perhaps he would apologize. She didn’t want to do anything that might break this strange, conspiratorial spell around her and her husband.
He took a deep breath, but kept his eyes glued to the fire. He began flicking his thumb against the inside of his index finger, like he usually did when he was nervous. He even had a callus from it, if Jezebel remembered correctly. She had always adored his hands.
“I know you probably got a million and two reasons to wanna be rid of me, girl. I know you got all sorts of reasons flying around in that head of yours, too. But sometimes, the worst part of it all, is that you don’ even know why I left. Do ya?” He still didn’t look at her, just waited for her response.
“Suppose I don’t, Joseph. Why don’t you just tell me, then?” She couldn’t help the bite in her voice. She hadn’t seen the man in seven long months. She had survived a hundred things without his help, and wasn’t so sure she needed him around after all. But it was at that moment, as she watched him in the firelight and remembered what the small bird had said, that she realized perhaps this is what she’d been waiting for after all. She swallowed the lump in her throat and set her tea on the small table beside her chair. She waited.
“Your father,” Joseph began darkly. “I hate to be a cliché, Jez, I really do. But you know better’n most that man was a sonuvabitch. I jus’ couldn’t be around him no more. I had to get out and get my head cleared.”
“And leave me here with him?” she asked quietly.
The air in the room went still. Silent. It felt almost as if Cleveland Baker had walked right through the front door. Jezebel’s heart stilled at the horrible idea, and she began kneading her hands, wishing she had the comfortable edge of her razor to occupy her fingers. She looked frantically at Joseph, silently pleading that he’d bring his eyes to hers. It seemed to work, and those bright, clear orbs of light looked right through her.
“What did he do to you?” he asked darkly, the flames reflecting in his eyes in such a way. He looked like the fury of the Devil was in him. Jezebel knew better than to be frightened of Joseph, but the whole situation was just too tense for her. Her bottom lip began to quiver and she folded her arms around her upper half. She shook her head once, as if to signal that the conversation was over. He was welcome to leave.
“No chance, Jezebel,” Joseph said in his throat, looking at her for all the answers. “You tell me what he did and I’ll do anything I can to fix it. Anything. I done wrong leaving you here with that monster. Tell me.”
Her thoughts were swirling and colliding within her head. They had a habit of doing that, creating an impossible whirlwind that left her confused and dizzy. She sometimes wished she were a bull rider with a lasso, so she could swing in there and grab the thoughts she wanted. She shook her head, hoping the debris of her mind would settle into something she could manage. “Take me to bed,” she finally whispered, not daring to look at Joseph.
“Jez, that’s not gonna help matters. We need to dis—”
“Take me to bed, damn it!” she shouted, still looking at the pattern in the carpet. She felt the flames behind her own eyes, and wondered if it would be enough to persuade her husband. The air was still as quiet and still as before, but Jezebel felt a strange sense of control now. “I’ve been waiting for you for eight months, Joseph James Abernathy. You come into my house tonight and ask me what happened while you were gone? Well all that can wait. First, I am going to get what I want. You are my husband, and you take me to bed.”
It amazed Jezebel that after all that time, and all those feelings, the sensation of her body against Joseph’s never really changed. She could be stark, raving mad at the man one minute, totally head-over-heels in love with him the next, and spectacularly indifferent right after that. But when it came time for lovemaking, Jezebel and Joseph Abernathy were completely and undeniably in synch.
The way she slid her delicate fingers over his chest and stomach and groin made every hair on both their bodies stand on end. The way her mouth moved around the landmarks—his lips, nipples, fingertips—made them both vibrate with excitement. The warmth and depth of their kisses reminded them both that no matter what kind of rough patches they hit, they would somehow make it out, hand-in-hand, on the other side.
They brought each other to euphoria several times that first night. By morning they were completely exhausted both physically and emotionally. The only logical choice was to sleep through much of the day. It wasn’t till well after noon that Jezebel finally declared it time to have the discussion.
“Joseph,” she began softly, in a tone that almost suggested another roll in the sheets. “Why did you leave me alone with him?”
He kept his eyes closed, obviously lost in thoughts that teetered on the edge of the relationship they were just now rebuilding, and the one he had thoughtlessly knocked down months before. He began flicking his finger again. Jezebel reached over and placed her hand in his, to quiet it. She admired the calluses, rough and dry as they were against her frail hands.
“I woulda killed him, Jez. I woulda killed him, no doubt an’ I sure as hell don’t know what that woulda done to you.”
She thought about how to proceed carefully. “Would that not have been better?”
She thought she saw Joseph’s eyelids flutter, but she must have been mistaken. If anything, he closed them tighter. “Okay, even if my killin’ Cleveland woulda made things better sooner, it woulda been a whole diff’rent game if I’da been hauled away to jail. You know that.”
She imagined Joseph being locked behind bars, the blood of her father staining his clothes and his hands and his reputation. He was too good a man for that kind of fate. At least he had been before. She wasn’t sure exactly what kind of man he was anymore. She sighed and realized he was right. Maybe leaving had been the only option.
“You really ought to have taken me with you,” she said quietly, not wishing to upset her husband, but not willing to let the words go unspoken. She was very determined to get the point across to Joseph: Never again in their marriage would he leave her behind.
He sighed, still refusing to open his eyes and face the world around him. She wondered if he was imagining he was somewhere else. Many nights she had laid down alone, she had imagined she was back in her childhood home, swaying in the hammock with her mama, listening to the crickets chirp and the water lap against the shore of the river. Some nights she had imagined she were back in the bed of her honeymoon, those pale blue sheets hugging her and Joseph like a cocoon.
“I know I shoulda. I know it now, but I din’t know it then. I din’t even know where I was headed, Jez. How did I know I coulda kept you safer out there with me than you were here with him?”
“Suppose you didn’t,” Jezebel conceded. She picked at a loose tie in the quilt and cast her eyes to the ceiling. “I guess I just need to hear you say you aren’t going to do it ever again. I just need to know for sure that you won’t abandon me again. I almost didn’t make it this time. Lord knows I won’t make it if you do it again.”
This statement, this final admission, was enough to draw Joseph from the sanctuary behind his eyelids. He turned his head just a bit and stared at her over her shoulder. “What you mean you almost didn’t make it, Jezebel? What do you mean by that?”
She sighed, not wishing to admit her weakness to this man who she truly believed could move mountains. But in the eight months she hadn’t uttered a word to him, she had certainly thought of this conversation enough to know she couldn’t keep quiet. She focused intently on the loose knot in the quilt. The yarn was red and frayed at both ends. She brushed the soft fibers against the pad of her finger and said quietly,
“You left a couple of your straight razors in the bathroom. I used to sit there on the toilet seat staring at the sharp edges, just dreaming I could escape. After a couple weeks of that, I picked the razor up. I would twirl it in my fingers and think of how easily it could slip and take me away. You probably never hit desperation like I hit, Joseph. You probably think I’m a crazy for even thinking these things, let alone saying them to you now.”
At some point during her confession, Joseph had slid up in the bed and was now sitting with his back against the headboard. His back was hunched, rounded by the weight of his thoughts. “Jezebel,” he began testily.
“No, sir. Keep quiet. I am not done.” She paused to make sure she had his cooperation. When he didn’t say another word, or even breathe, for that matter, she continued. “It wasn’t long before he began knocking down the door, telling me I had no business taking so long in there. I’d come out, do his bidding, whatever it was, and then I’d go back in there to stare at the razors some more. These days I’m quite good at twirling them between my fingers. Sure, I get nicked every once in a while, but I keep plenty of Band-Aids. I don’t think I’ve cut myself once since he passed. Just one of the small mercies that’s come from it, I guess.”
Joseph shrugged. “And you got me back.”
This surprised Jezebel a little. She wasn’t sure to that point exactly what had brought him back. “Is that so? You heard he died and came rushing back here? You know he’s been in the ground five weeks now.”
“I know that,” he said quietly, sadly. Perhaps he felt he should’ve been back much sooner. “I was quite a ways away when I got the news. I couldn’t just jump on a plane then. I had to find my own way back.”
Being as this was the first indication Joseph had given regarding his whereabouts, Jezebel chose to tread very lightly. Or as lightly as she knew how. “Where were you?”
Joseph sighed and thought for some time. Without a word he reached out and stroked the back of Jezebel’s arm with his knuckles. “You know I love you, Miss Jezebel. You know nothin’ could change that.”
She didn’t look at him. “Where were you?” she repeated impatiently.
Another sigh. “I was in Californ’a.”
Jezebel’s heart stopped for a moment. No wonder he’d been so reluctant, so silent. She knew, as did every other person in town aged twelve or greater, that Donatella Montego—previously Debbi McDaniels of local beauty pageant fame—lived in Los Angeles, California. Everyone else also knew that back in high school, Joseph and Debbi had been inseparable. Jezebel worried she might be sick. But Joseph swooped in with a quick save.
“It ain’t what you think, Jez. I never even saw Debbi outside them newspapers they keep by the check out counter at the supermarket. Boy, is she makin’ a mess of the life God gave her. That ain’t why I went there. I just thought—” He paused and looked more childish and sheepish than Jezebel had ever seen him. Her heart resumed beating and melted like sugar in the rain. “I thought I could make a better life for us, is all. Inn’t that where the American Dream comes from, anyhow? The sandy shores of Californ’a?”
Jezebel was quiet a moment. “I can’t rightly say. My American Dream has always been right here beside you.” She turned to look at him over her right shoulder, and wasn’t surprised to see the look of warmth and bashfulness on his handsome face. She laid back until her head was resting against the crook of his shoulder. She watched his strong fingers come up and brush a wisp of her hair out of her face. He bent down and placed a kiss on her forehead. She looked up at him at such an angle it was giving her a headache, but she ignored it. “So did you bring me anything?”
Joseph smiled and shook his head slowly. “I did get ya a necklace, but it din’t survive the trip back east. I had to barter it for a bus ticket somewheres in Texas. I’ll make it up to you, Jez. I do promise you that.”
While she was mildly saddened to learn of the necklace she’d never receive, Jezebel couldn’t deny having her husband back was worth it. “Well, that’s good. You can start by making me breakfast.” With another kiss on her forehead, Joseph extracted himself from the bed and made his way to the kitchen. Jezebel watched the movement of his buttocks with a warm smile on her face and a glow in her heart. She didn’t have to wait any longer.