Gonna Lay Down My Burdens by Mary Monroe

Author:Mary Monroe [Monroe, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Romance, General, Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 0758200242
Google: aLMPlCbbLI8C
Amazon: B0035P41IO
Publisher: Dafina Books
Published: 2003-08-02T04:00:00+00:00

Again she held me hostage at the kitchen table in a pre-dinner discussion. She told me in a voice barely above a whisper, “When you do get married, the least you can do is marry a local boy. One that won’t grab ahold of you and drag you to some faraway-off place like Babette’s husband did.” Mama stared at me for an uncomfortably long time and it made me nervous. But not nearly as nervous as what she said next. “I’m so proud you didn’t turn your back on poor Burl the way his other friends did after he became disabled. Devotion is a virtue. People know they can always count on a truly devoted friend.” Mama patted my hand and gave me a conspiratorial smile as Daddy entered the kitchen from the garage.

“Whose goose y’all cookin’ now, and how much is it gwine to cost me?” Daddy asked, wiping his hands on an oily, wrinkled rag. The evening shadow of brittle whiskers, more gray than black, almost covered the bottom half of his face.

“Carmen just promised me we don’t have to worry about her marrying and moving halfway around the world,” Mama chirped. Her eyes sparkled; her lips curled up at the ends.

Complete exasperation was the best way to describe the look on Daddy’s face. After a quick peek into the oven, he dismissed us with a brief but effective scowl and a wave of his hand.

I chose not to have a party to celebrate my eigh-GONNA LAY DOWN MY BURDENS

209

teenth birthday a few weeks later that March. My last year of school had not been what I expected. I spent too much time being depressed and worried to enjoy it.

Several boys had asked to take me to the prom, but I’d chosen to attend the all-night Marx Brothers film festi-val with Burl. Desiree turned down a few boys and spent prom night with Baby Red. Afterward, she had convinced her daddy that she and I had gone to the prom with two boys from our graduating class. Regina went to the prom with a mailman she had been eyeing for months. “Girl, senior prom is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You gonna regret not goin’ when you get old,” Regina insisted.

Old? At eighteen I felt like I had already lived a hundred years.

I was in no hurry to continue my education. School had been a necessary burden, but it was one I wanted to put aside for a while. Surprisingly, my parents did not pressure me to go to college. They had ridden Babette’s back like a mule throughout her high school years until she broke down and decided to go get her teaching credential. I figured out why they didn’t jump on my back, too, when I overheard part of a tense conversation between my parents the last week in May.

They had been giving me suspicious looks during dinner one evening, so I decided to investigate by lurking outside their bedroom door to see if I could hear what they were cooking up.

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