"Erica"

          The Book Woman Club was reviewing The Color Purple written by Alice Walker.  They had just finished reviewing I am the Darker Brother; an anthology of African-American authored poems from the Harlem Renaissance Era.   This was Erica's third Book Woman Club meeting.  She had never read any of the Harlem Renaissance poems, and she was sorry that she had joined the club on the second to the last day of their reviewing. The women were beginning to review a series of books featuring women characters in transformation.   Although she had seen the movie version of The Color Purple on television, she had never read the book.  In fact, Erica wasn't familiar with African-American literature at all.  Maybe if she hadn't dropped out of school at 14, maybe if she had used the birth control her friend Carmen had stolen for her, maybe if she had read more on her own, maybe if she had gone to college....Erica stopped herself from beating herself up.  "Can't change the past", she mused.  But to be out of the house today...away from the kids...wow!   Erica sighed with pleasure, the sound coming from deep in her lungs.  This time to herself was...well it was such a sweet treat!  She couldn't believe she was here with these smart women!  She was a little intimidated.  No!  A lot intimidated!  Erica had yet to open her mouth; had not added her voice to the others.  She was afraid her words would not be as powerful as the others, that she was not as smart as they were.  Many of these women were college students, teachers, and one was a Doctor.  Erica looked around the room, listening to the comments, in awe of these educated women...these intellectual voices!  It was so wonderful just being in their presence! 
          It was her friend Carmen, her best friend Carmen, who had invited Erica to the Book Woman Club.  Carmen had been trying to get Erica to go with her to a book club meeting for over a year!  "I'm not going to give up on you, gur-r-r-l!", Carmen would fuss.  "You need to get out of this house, away from these kids!  You need to have some adult conversations!"   It was always so impossible for Erica to get out of the house! There was always something that had to be cooked, or cleaned, or wiped, or polished! Erica rubbed her hands over the pages of her brand new copy of The Color Purple.  It sat open in her lap, the pages already dog eared and stained.  Carmen had given the book to her as a kind of "welcome to the book club' present.  Erica had read the book in one day, laughing and crying with the words.  She held the book in one hand, while she used the other to vacuum, dust,and  mop her floors, and then to feed her toddler Francisco.  Francisco was the youngest of eight children and the only one not yet in school.  His mashed-carrot covered fingers had grabbed the book, and he had tossed it into the applesauce globs that he had smeared all over the tray attached to his high chair!  Erica had patiently cleaned the carrots and applesauce off of her book and Francisco, laying loud kisses all over his giggled filled chubby face.
           Erica began to nervously chew the inside of her mouth, a spot located on her left cheek so ravished with layers of sinewy scar tissue that the area lapped over her wisdom teeth.  The chewed area was a topography of worry, inflamed and bleeding from when she had chewed her way through Wednesday's begging.  It took two arguments that day to finally get him to say he would stay home a third Saturday and watch the kids. One argument in the morning before Pedro left for his job as at Southeast Community Center, where he was an Aids Prevention Counselor and then one argument when he returned home from work, tired and hungry and angry.  "I work all day, pay all the bills, take care of you and the kids and you want me to give up the only day I have to myself?"  His words bounced off the kitchen refrigerator, off the pots and pans, and off the old-fashioned chipped porcelain counter-tops.  "It's just for a few hours. Please?  Don't be mad."  Erica's voice was low and calming; softly brushing Pedro with the intonations that were used to sooth and lull baby Francisco to sleep.   Erica would explain to Carmen that Pedro was just "old fashioned".  "Yeah, he's old-fashioned and outdated.", Carmen would answer.  "Outdated and hard, like those chipped kitchen counter-tops showing black-metal underneath that he's too cheap to replace!"  Carmen would ask Erica "When you going to stand up for yourself guir-r-r-l?" Erica would say that Pedro was just trying to be a man, like so so many men weren't.  That he felt that  a woman's place was in the home, not out in the streets like some hooker!  And Carmen would laugh and say with the rich sarcasm that only Carmen could inflict, "Yeah, he want you home, guir-r-r-l!  24/7!  You needs to get yourself out of this prison and leave his ass!"  Erica would shut her face down and tell Carmen to mind her own business.  "He just wants me to be a good mother, like his mother was!"  Yeah, guir-r-r-l...barefoot and pregnant!"
          "Barefoot and pregnant for the rest of her life!"  The words jumped around in Erica's head as she bit down on the inside of her cheek and missed.  Her teeth painfully caught the edge of her tongue.  She grunted and stuck a finger in her mouth to access the damage. Erica thought back on Wednesday night's argument.  She last week, in order to convince Pedro to let her go to the second meeting, she had down-played the intellectual reasons for wanting to go to be a part of the Book Woman Club.  She didn't talk about the need to be with other women and to think out-loud.  The need to be listened to, sometimes.  Too be taken seriously, sometimes, not like when Pedro and the older children belittled her thoughts and ideas.  Pedro didn't believe in women talking too much, being too smart, going to college or trying to be men!  "Women should be good wives...let men be the head!" he would lecture when he felt Erica was getting out of her place.  Erica had told Pedro that the Book Woman Club was where women talked about romance books, ate food and talked about the price of chicken versus ground beef.  "Oh, a "hen" party!", Pedro had said. "Yeah, you know, just women talking." she had answered.  And he had let her go to that second meeting.  And she had surprised him that evening, after the kids were all asleep, with the red nightly that he liked.
          But why had he said yes to this third meeting?  Erica again thought back to their argument, turning it over and over in her head, trying to figure out when he had changed his mind. No...she tried to figure out what made him change his mind and agree to stay at home.  What made him decide not go down the street to his favorite bar to watch the game with the boys, like he did every Saturday afternoon?  Miss a third Saturday out with the fellows?  She pulled at a thread of the argument, troubled, a faint alarm going off in her head.  She pulled at the thread, but it was thin.  It broke and Erica could not bring the edges back together.  She could not figure out what worried her about Wednesday night.  She could not figure out why he let her be here this afternoon.
          Erica absently pulled her finger out of her mouth and started to leaf through the pages of her new book, looking for a passage that Kadi-jah had just referenced.  Blood and saliva from her injured tongue trailed from her finger and down the edges of the book's pages, leaving a watery red stain that grew and grew as it seeped into the stark white paper.