Free Young Wives by Goldsmith Olivia

on the table yet?”
    From the time Clinton’s business had begun to fail, it had been one long slide on his side. Bit by bit. First he stopped bringing home money, then he stopped looking for work, stopped coaching Little League, stopped doing carpentry around the house. He’d even stopped what, in her opinion, was a married man’s most primal task—taking out the garbage.
    Her parents’ marriage hadn’t prepared her for this. Her mother and her father loved and respected each other. They’d been bitterly disappointed when Jada married an American black man. Though she’d been born in New York, Jada’s parents were Bajans and they still thought of Barbados as home. “Americans. Forget them. They have no drive,” her father had said. “They have no morals,” her mother had warned her. Jada felt they were old-fashioned and definitely prejudiced, even more so against blacks than whites. Most of all they were prejudiced against other Islanders: they despised Jamaicans, were competitive with Antiguans, and were suspicious and contemptuous of the French islanders. American blacks were beneath them all.
    It was ridiculous. Jada had laughed at them. But now occasionally Jada wondered if her parents hadn’t been right, at least about Clinton. She hoped her marriage calmed down again, because she didn’t look forward to giving them bad news. She wasn’t certain about all American black men, but hers was undependable and lazy.
    Maybe it wasn’t true, but it felt true now. Maybe there had once been some kind of equilibrium between her and Clinton, when her giving had been balanced by Clinton’s money-earning and the wonderful loving, but both had ended long ago. He hadn’t earned even a dime in almost five years and they hadn’t made love in almost three (except for the New Year’s Eve when both of them had been drunker than they should have been and Sherrilee was accidentally conceived). They hadn’t had sex in so long that her diaphragm must have been torn. She wasn’t sure how it happened, but she’d gotten pregnant and—after what had happened once before—she couldn’t bear the thought of not bringing the baby into the world. She’d prayed over it, and God, or her heart, had spoken. Sherrilee was an adorable baby, good as gold, and though it had been difficult to work through her pregnancy and was difficult now to leave the baby behind when she went to work, Jada didn’t regret her decision. She had thought the baby might bring them closer, and Clinton had acted delighted and involved. But, as with most things, Clinton didn’t follow through and now she wondered if she had done the right thing.
    “Jada. Please have patience. I need you,” Clinton said.
    Need? Jada had been so damn needed that she’d run out—not out of giving, but out of feeling happy about doing it. The children had shown her that it was as natural as breathing to give to a nine-year-old, but definitely unnatural to have to give in the same way to a thirty-four-year-old man. Natural or not, Jada was damn tired of it.
    “Yeah. You need me. But you say you love her.” Jada couldn’t believe he’d told her about this latest affair. She hadn’t wanted to hear a word, but he’d insisted. “Go need her,” she told Clinton, and turned her back.
    Jada stuck her head into Shavonne’s room looking for dirty laundry, Clinton behind her. She picked up the pile and moved down the hall. Tonya Green, the woman Clinton was seeing, claimed to love children, though Jada had heard that her two were living with her mother. What did she do all day? Jada wondered. She didn’t work. She had a reputation in their church for being very pious. She taught Bible school. Did she go to prayer meetings? Hang out in bars, hoping to meet a buff married man? Maybe she alternated. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, prayers. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, her prayers were answered.
    Jada snorted. The oddest part of all this to Jada was that when it came to the