Free Monster's Chef by Jervey Tervalon Page A

the streets. You know how that works. All those media vultures waiting for me to slip, and camping outside the gates, waiting for the stray word on my collapsing marriage. Nothing is confidential, everybody has a price. You can bank on that. The truth is, I don’t think I can make her happy. That hurts me because I do love her and she’s the mother of my baby. I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I think she’s not into me the way she used to be. I get jealous thinking maybe she’s looking for something better.”
    Chopping nuts to keep busy, I glanced up and he twirled again and left the kitchen so fast I almost sliced my finger off.
    I WANTED THOSE MORNINGS with Rita to last, but I feared that at any moment Monster would fire me, thinking I was making a play for his wife. On the other hand, I thought maybe he didn’t care, wanted her off his hands and I was doing the job for him.
    Our lessons hadn’t been going on for very long, but already I longed for them, and it wasn’t because I wanted to perfect my sign language skills. One afternoon, in the middle of teaching me, she reached for my hands and held my fingers and stroked each one, and though it was awkward with Security being so close, I also found it tremendously arousing. Thank God she had to leave before I reached over and kissed her.
    Nights crept slowly by as I waited for sunrise and to see her again, incrementally more pregnant, enthusiastically trying to get me to the point where I could sign a basic conversation.
    I knew Security watched us, looking out over the courtyard and herb garden, never a private moment. I knew I could be fired, half expected it, knew it was coming like you know that when you fall out of bed you’ll hit the floor.
    What could I do? She sought me out. Was I supposed to tell her no, leave me the hell alone? We sat there on the bench with her fingers blazing away and me doing my best to understand. I’d slip a glance at her breasts and want to lower my head into her cleavage and rest there for a day. One morning she took my hand and placed it on her belly.
    She mouthed, “He kicks,” then smiled with delight.
    So, Monster was having a boy. That seemed wrong to me; maybe a girl could survive having such a strange man for a father, but a boy? I couldn’t imagine Monster showing up for Saturday morning soccer, scaring the butter out of all the nannies.
    She kept my hand on the drum-tight skin of her belly, and I was more than happy to have it held there.
    We kissed then, briefly, our lips hardly touching. I looked up to the alcove, but Security’s view was obscured by a stout avocado tree, or so I hoped.
    â€œYou are so beautiful,” I whispered to her. Somehow it seemed okay that she might not be able to understand.
    Maybe I didn’t want that, for her to understand me. Monster might have been drawn to the same thing, not having to explain yourself with spoken words. I pulled away from her and wrote a hasty note.
    Do you have to call him Lamont or Monster?
    She laughed wordlessly and took my notebook and wrote: What do you think I call him? I can’t call him anything.
    I shrugged and wrote another note.
    When you write to him how do you refer to him? You call him Monster or Lamont?
    Monster, she wrote. He is a monster. That’s what he thinks of himself.
    She smiled and leaned over and kissed my lips lightly and returned to the mansion.
    THERE WERE MANY THINGS I forced myself not to think about; why she was with Monster was one of them.
    For his money or fame or whatever—I didn’t want to know. I accepted that, at some point, Monster was the goal she had in life. Maybe she had been in a bad situation, and if she landed him, everything would make sense. I guess that bad situation changed into a fairy tale, and Monster transformed into a white knight in shining armor. It didn’t last, Monster being the strange cat that he was, and Rita went back to being the