Mark your TERRITORY, Part II.

(**Warning: loose language here. Don't have a frickin' cow, it's not my fault, just trying to be true to the story and uhhh, this Ms. Clara... Trust me, mere words can't really describe this woman in total (you had to be there), but I try my best here.)
Click here for "Mark Your TERRITORY, Part I
So…

We made the drive down to Louisiana…
Me in my Old white 1973 Nova, Oldboy in his tinted down T-Bird.
We left on a Saturday, around 10 in the morning and planned to get there sometime in the late afternoon.

I’d made plenty of tapes for both my man’s car and my own.

(Funniest line driving down: Me and Oldboy pulling over at a rest stop, him wiping sweat from his brow and saying “Girl, give me another mixtape, because if I have to hear Snoop Dog talk about how he gonna pull that Tre-eight out his mutha******* waist one more time, I’m gonna hurl myself out the car!”)

LOL!

(I was a fan of gangsta wrap. He listened… very reluctantly).

We finally got to Ms. Clara’s boarding house. It was early November, albeit warm outside. I had on a pair of sweats. Oldboy had on a white wife beater (tight white tank t-shirt) and some green sweats.

I peered at him curiously, still wanting to take a razor to his head and shave off the thin braids. I wanted to throw a three piece suit on him.

I was scared all the way up to the front door.

“Calm down, Lee,” he said. “LadyTee got you all scared! Calm down.”

We knocked on the door, and there she was… Ms. Clara.

She was an older lady, looking to be about 60 years old or so. She had long brown curly hair, definitely dyed away from her regular gray. She was short, about 5’3”, and chubby.

“Helloooo!” she said. Her teeth were yellow and crowded. ‘”Bout time you got here. I’m Ms. Clara!"

She had one of those big booming voices. Talked like she was yelling.
We introduced ourselves, sat down on the sofa in the living room.

One thing I must say about my ex-husband, Old Boy: that dude never met a person he didn’t like or didn’t like him. (Well, he didn’t like one of my friends. I must tell that story one day, lol.) I’ve always told him, “You can go in a room full of non-English speaking Chinese folks, and don’t mind it at all. As long as they have some beer, you’re gonna have a GOOD time.)

And he and Ms. Clara were like peas and carrots.

Man, she talked and talked and talked. They laughed together so hard. I was all stoic. I’m the type to be quiet and observe when I don’t know you.

I couldn’t wait to tell LadyTee that Ms. Clara didn’t go get her shot gun and run us off.

Ms. Clara’s boarding house was a simple 4 bedroom ranch home in what seem to be a predominantly white suburb. She mostly had some of the “offshore” construction workers as boarders, but at the time, I would be the only one there. She showed me to my room. It was a good size room, with a twin size bed, an oak dresser, and matching chest of drawers. The theme was blue and white flowers. Real girly. There was a 13” television sitting on a shelf high in the closet facing the bed. It was equipped with all the cable channels (and that was a plus.) I had my own private blue and white bathroom (That’s a good thing. I already had my bottle of bleach ready EVERY time I even so much as looked at the bathroom if I had to share with other people.)

She explained that she would clean my room twice per week, changing the sheets and cleaning the bathroom.

Yes, I was happy about that. And this worked out well. Even though I had only $800.00 to my name, I would get $4000 in cash and starting bonuses in about 3 weeks from my post-doc position.
So this was a fly set up.

Old Boy whispered, when we were unloading my clothes and stuff from the car..

“Yeah, you know she cleaning your room so she can make sure you ain’t got no guns, and you not selling drugs out her house.”
I gave him the *gas face* for that one. He knew I was antsy about how this chick would accept me. But he continued to chide me, nevertheless.

She gave me a house key, and she walked us out to the car. I told her that me and Oldboy were going to a hotel for the night. She suggested the Travelodge down the road.

“Let me take a picture of the two of ya, hon,” she said.

Me and Oldboy smiled real big for the Polaroid camera.

She shook the picture hard and blew on it. “Oh, that’s a fine picture there.”

She showed it to us. Yes, we looked good… tired, yet happy.

So, me and Oldboy went and got dinner and went to bed.

“You know why she took that picture of us, right?” he said.

“Why?”

“Just in case we come back and rob her, she got a picture of us laying around. Just in case we get the notion to come back and pull a 1-8-7 on her.”

I bristled. He laughed.

(I have no idea why he was trying to scare me. I think he and LadyTee were double teaming me.)

I saw him off the next morning, then went back to Ms. Clara’s boarding house. It was a Sunday, November 7, 1998, I believe. I was supposed to start work that first thing that Monday morning. (Yes, I know that’s cutting it close and what not.)

Ms. Clara had these two dogs. They were minature Shet.land shepher.ds. You know, they looked like “Lass.ie”, just real small like poodles. They barked like hell. And when I got back to the boarding house, Ms. Clara was there to tell me the whole story behind these dogs.

She let me know how much she liked Old Boy.

“Hon, that’s a nice fella you got there!”

I nodded.

“I took a picture of you two because that’s a rule of mine. Just in case you two are crazy and come back and try to kill my ass, I have some proof of who you are.”

*silence*

I got up for work the next day. Got up extra early because I wanted to make sure I got my makeup on right and looked a bit professional. I heard her shuffling around in the kitchen, and when she saw me come in, she was so shocked because I suppose I looked totally different.
"Oh my God, LadyLee, you're just so gorgeous."
"Uh... thank you," was all I could think to say.
"Because you look nothing like you did yesterday. Today you look really nice." She proceeded to follow me around and just... stare at me.
(What in the world? I was almost afraid she uh, had some lesbian tendencies or something. LOL!)
I made it in to work that morning, and got settled into my office and lab and whatnot...

That first week was interesting. I was the "Blue Boarder". I got accustomed real quick to the idea of living in the “blue” room. Being the blue boarder meant that anything that was blue in the kitchen was mine. I had a blue shelf in the refrigerator. I had eating utensils. I even had blue plates, bowls, napkins and glasses.
I sat at the dining room table in the blue chair, and I even had a blue placemat.
(This was cool, because my favorite color is blue, you see.)

I never ate breakfast alone, no matter how early I got up. Ms. Clara was always there, smoking a cigarette, drinking cup after cup of coffee...
...and talking up a STORM.

And Ms. Clara cussed like a sailor. I mean every other word was a cuss word. Goodness. I cussed much back then too, but shoot, she took it to a whole nother level, using combinations of cuss words that blew my mind. And you can tell, she was the Queen of the Cuss. She’d been cussing since the day she was born.

I was lectured much about letting her know of my whereabouts at all times. This was cool, since I didn’t know anyone. I’d begin meeting people at work and all. (They doted on me at work, thought I was a young college student doing an internship or something. When the new phone list came out, and “Dr.” was beside my name (yeah, management was snobbish about that- I got chastised when people called me "Lee-Lee" in the hallways), all the black folk were treating me like a movie star. LOL!!!)

Anyway, like I said, Ms. Clara was on a mission with the lectures.
“LadyLee, if I don’t see you for two days, and you haven’t call, I go straight to the city morgue. Got a picture of ya, hon! Don’t bother me one bit to go and identify a body.”

“Yes Ma’am,” I’d say. (Honestly, what do you say to such craziness?!)

“And if you get locked up, or pass out drunk somewhere, call me. Don’t bother me one bit to come get you, hon. Had a fella boarding here who like to go to some backwoods bar over in Mississippi. Use to have to go drag his drunk ass out of there and bring him on home. Cussed his ass out the whole drive back, but I got him here safely. Don’t hesitate to call me, now.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” (What else DO you say to such madness??)

"If you go wash clothes, take a left up on Esplanade, and go down there by the Winn-Dixie. Got a good laundromat down there, hon. Don't go right on Esplanade. You'll get hurt down that way. Don't want to get stabbed or shot, ya know. Can't be nothing worse than getting your head blown off while trying to wash your panties, hon!"
*crickets*
I got use to this. I'd just sit there at the table and eat and read my research articles or magazines. "Yes Ma'am," became my favorite two words.
In the midst of our many conversations, I learned that she was Jewish. So one day I asked her if I could cook some pork chops.

She took a long drag on her cigarette, and cocked her head and just stared at me. I thought that she was just suprised that I had more words in my vocabulary than "Yes ma'am"...
... or maybe she was about to open her Book of Cuss because I mentioned the word "pork".

“What, Ms. Clara?” I asked. “I just know you’re Jewish, and you don’t eat pork. I don’t want to be disrespectful and cook pork in your house if it bothers you.”

“Hon, I don’t give a f*** if you eat a pork chop. I’m Jewish and all, but hell, even I like to put up a nice Christmas tree for the Christmas season from time to time. Eat your damn pork. I don’t give a f***. Just clean up after yourself is all I ask.”

She took a sip of her coffee, stared at me with the hard frown. Mumbled to herself.

That stunned me.

I fried my pork chop, nevertheless.

It was quite good, it was.

And I was used to her cussing up a storm. Got really accustomed to it, even though it irritated me.

Now, this chick told me allllllllllll her business, all about her family and such. She was living alone and was widowed. Her husband was outside chopping wood one morning, and had a heart attack. He sat on the front steps and died. Her daughter, a nurse, was my age (28), and lived somewhere out in California.

I swear, that woman talked allll the time.

So…

I would come in from work sometimes and she’d be relaxing on the couch, smoking a cigarette, and watching Oprah or the news. She would smile real hard when she saw me (she wore dentures, and she uh, rarely had those dentures in her mouth. YIKES!)

I didn't want to be disrespectful, so I would sit down with her for a few minutes… and listened to her talk, talk, TALK.

If I had some research articles to read, I would sit there and read while she talked. I was working in an area I wasn’t familiar with, working with a termi.te nutri.tionist, trying to figure out what the term.ites liked and disliked, and coming up with plans and ideas for my own research. So let’s just say I was bringing my work home with me each night.

Well, we were watching the evening news… Some brothers had gotten into a shoot out of some sort. Killed a bunch of folk. There was a big car chase with the cops and what not. Real crazy stuff. Top of the news, of course…

Ms. Clara turned to me. She got a weird look in her eye, and I soon saw that she was on the verge of getting worked up. I looked back down at my papers, continued making “to-do” notes in the margin.

I still felt her eyes on me. She was mad, indeed.

“Uh, that’s terrible right there, Ms. Clara,” I said. “Real bad.”

“Sure is,” she says. “I tell you, I just don’t get it. What’s wrong with you black people. I don’t understand that sh**. What the f** is wrong with you all?”

**crickets**
I thought she was talking out loud to herself or something, but she was staring at me…

Waiting…

… for an answer…

To be continued.