Voncille sat quietly listening to the ladies as they chatted about their week. The conversation was filled with complaints about wayward, spoiled, and irresponsible children at their age. Grown. Yet they fussed about them not growing up, dishonoring commitments to their children, wives and husbands. Most of them seemed to be disasters in the making.
Mothers with broken hearts are pitiful creatures. Voncille fought hard not to be pitiful, full of complaints and remorse like most women. Listening to their whining turned her stomach.
Voncille has said that she basically does not like women and that her friends are men. She gets along better with them for some reason unknown to her. At the age of sixty she never really had a girlfriend that she could confide in, or someone to listen to her complaints how her man done her wrong.
She was raised by her father, her mother disappeared many years ago leaving her in diapers, a runny nose and an empty bottle, as she lay in the crib crying, wet and hungry, she just up and walked out the door. She never uttered a word to anyone about leaving, or if there was something wrong. She never looked back, never came back or inquired as to the care of her baby, if she lived or died the day she walked out. She just vanished never to be heard from again.
“I guess, she just couldn’t take it no mo, me being a baby and making demands on her body and soul.” She just wanted out, never to be seen again, but vaguely remembered by the daughter who would cry for days, snot running into her mouth full of rage because there was no response from the person who cared for her, looking for that special love from a mother. The love never came and left one day.
Voncille often thought, “maybe I don’t like myself, cause I’m mad at my momma. Cause she just up and left her baby with no thought about who would care for me like a mother, who would feed and clean me and hold me when I cried…’
Voncille had large hands and large feet, and had dark skin. She was also cursed with a big nose and eyes. She had a big butt with narrow hips. Her Gran told her she was built more like a man, her daddy in particular. Her daddy was a hard workin man, he kept her and taught her manly ways of life. That’s why she is more manly than womanly.
She watched him drink hard liquor and curse like a sailor, and that’s what she did when she was old enough. He father owned a bar and she was with him everyday after her mother left. It was her home. Women came into the bar, but it was the men who nurtured her. From them she learned what it was like to be a man. Her grandmother raised hell with her father, she could often be heard saying, “ain’t no place to raise a chile,” she would fuss. “In a bar, no tellin what gone happen to that girl when she grown.”
She grew to be a woman and not particularly happy about her lot in life, so she made the best of it. When her papa died, she took over the bar, made a few changes, and actually made a nice living. She bought a house, it was plain like her, but it was comfortable. She worked from dawn till midnight, bone tired when she arrived home. She didn’t trust anyone to take care of the bar but her, that’s what her papa told her. “This heah bar is yo’s now, don’t trust nobody, no man, no woman wit you money. It’ll make you a good livin, ‘n don’t give away free liquor,” he fussed as he continued saying, “colored peoples always wantin a free drink or a handout.”
“Yes papa.”
“’N watch out fo the men folk, they be tryin ta get unda your skirt ta get ta yo heart. Don’t be no foolish woman now girl.”
“Yes papa.”
He told her about men, and he told her about women, she didn’t much like women because of her momma and all.
On one of the few occasions that she did go to church, she heard the minister preach on women who don’t like other women. “ Well,” that preacher said, that the woman who don’t like other women, don’t like theysef.”
“Hmmpf,” was her reply, “I likes mahsef jus fine.”
She is retired now and finds her views on men and women have softened a great deal. She no longer hates her mother who deserted all those years ago. She never heard a word from her and no one ever saw her again, just like thin air, “whoosh, she was gone.”
She learned to dress herself in the latest styles by looking at magazines and the way some of the other women dressed. She had her hair pressed every two weeks, and took to wearing a little lipstick. Some of the men in the bar made passes at her, but they fell on deaf ears. She just wasn’t interested in no man, in the past she would over hear them making light of her manly ways. Once a drunk said to her, as he staggered on his feet, “you sho looks and acts like a man in a dress, wit you big, feet and hands… and that big juicy butt uh yo’s. Mmm, mmm, mmm.”
“Weelll, seems ta me like you mus like men the way you be watchin me and my butt.” The whole bar laughed and goof hawed.” That shut ‘m all up. She never heard a peep outta any of them from that day forward.
She tired of working and turned the bar over to a female cousin to run. She had a good head on her shoulders and didn’t try to cheat Voncille. She paid her well, and lived off the rest after seeing to the bar. Life was good. She wanted a change so she came to the tea one day and has come back every Thursday since.
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