“Yes,” he responded. “The truth needs to come out.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” she said in a voice that I didn’t recognize.
Henry didn’t seem to notice the voice change but Meredith did.
“What happened to your voice?” Meredith asked.
Jude smirked at her but didn’t respond.
“Nothing happened to her voice.” I walked up behind her and whispered in her ear, “Who are you?”
She turned, gave me a smile that was more scary than pleasant, and brushed past me. She sat down in the armchair where I had been sitting and pressed the Stop button on the tape recorder. “We won’t need this anymore.”
I wanted to make a move to turn it back on but decided against it. It was obvious nothing critical would be said as long as it was on.
I asked again, this time louder, “Who are you?”
Henry exclaimed, “You mean there’s another one?”
“Shh! Don’t say anything!” I cautioned him. “Why don’t you tell me your name? I know you’re not Jonquinette and you’re not Jude, so who are you?”
She rubbed her eyes like she was tired. “I don’t have a name,” she finally responded.
“Everyone has a name,” I insisted.
“Not me.”
“Then make up one,” I said. “I need to call you something.”
She thought about it for a moment and said, “Just call me Jetta. I think that sounds mad cool.”
“Okay, Jetta. Tell me, were you the one who stabbed Henry in the shoulder?”
Jetta grimaced. “Damn right, I did it.”
Henry asked, “Why did you stab me?”
Jetta ignored him and started staring at Meredith. “You thought you knew everything that was going on in your house, didn’t you?”
“What do you mean?” Meredith asked. “Please tell me what you mean.”
“Did you ever suspect?” Jetta kept her eyes fixated on Meredith but nodded in Henry’s direction. “Did you ever realize that he was a pedophile?”
Henry collapsed onto the chaise while Meredith pulled herself up off the floor. She walked over to us and got close enough to smell Jetta’s breath. “Pedophile?”
“Yes, you know what that is, right? A person, or sick fuck as I prefer to call them, who has sexual desires for children.” Jetta glanced at Henry. “Now he’s sitting over there trying to play the pitiful act; probably thinking of a lie to tell, some excuse for why he did it.”
“What did he do, Jetta?” I asked, realizing we had finally made progress.
I had always felt there was at least one more personality living inside of Jonquinette. Jude professed to be all-powerful but something or someone had to be keeping her from taking over Jonquinette’s life completely. Now I knew her as Jetta.
“He molested Jon. What do you think he did?” she replied. “That’s why I allowed Jude to do what she did. I don’t even think she realizes what he did to Jon. She just hated him because he was trying to get rid of us. What she did was actually ingenious.” Jetta chuckled. “Wish I had thought of it. Instead, I tried to stab him to death but that didn’t work and I’m glad it didn’t. After it was over, I realized my mistake. I didn’t want Jon to end up in prison, along with Jude and the rest of us in tow, so I’m glad I missed his heart.”
Meredith looked at Henry in confusion. “Henry, is any of this true?”
“Yeah, Henry, is it true?” Jetta asked sarcastically. “Tell her the truth, Henry! Tell her about the bath-time fun when Jon was just four years old. Tell her about the fun in the shed in the backyard. That’s what you used to call it, right? Fun?”
Henry broke down and started sobbing. I went over to the chaise and sat beside him, rubbing his bare back. “By helping Jonquinette, you can also help yourself.”
“God help me!” he screamed out. “God help me, I did it!”
Meredith gasped. Jetta appeared sated and sat down.
“I molested my baby,” he continued. “But I couldn’t help it.” He pleaded with Meredith with his eyes. “Meredith, baby, I know I can never make up for what I did, but I tried. I did get help. I went and talked to someone and he helped me. That’s why I was trying to get you to get some help for Jonquinette, too.”
Meredith suddenly jumped on top of Henry and tried to choke him, knocking both me and him off the chaise. I tried to pry her hands off his neck. He was just willing to sit there and take it.
“This is totally your fault!” she screamed. “I’m going to kill you!”
Henry continued sobbing, Meredith continued choking and I continued trying to get her hands off him. “Jetta, help me,” I said. “You know this is wrong. It can’t all end like this.”
The situation seemed hopeless. Henry started gasping for air and I was stuck underneath him with all his weight on me trying to accomplish an impossible task.
The next thing I knew, Jetta screamed out, “Momma! Momma, quit!”
It wasn’t Jetta though. Jonquinette was back.
She pulled Meredith off Henry by the waist. “What are you doing, Momma?”
“Meredith, it’s Jonquinette!” I yelled out. “It’s Jonquinette. Don’t let her see this. She’s been through enough.”
Meredith’s eyes became glazed over as she let go of Henry’s neck. She collapsed backwards on the floor and whispered, “God help us! God help us all!”
39
jonquinette
After I was filled in on what had happened when Jude took over in Marcella’s office, I couldn’t find any words to express my feelings. I heard the tape, which cut off at the point where Jetta decided it would be cut off. Jetta? Things were getting more confusing by the second. But I wasn’t so much shocked about Jetta as I was about what she had accused Daddy of doing. In fact, I tried to defend him but he admitted that he had molested me as a child.
He said that his father had molested him, which is why he never took me to visit my paternal grandparents. After the Thanksgiving Day fiasco, Daddy came to the conclusion that he deserved to be alone and that karma had caught up to him. He returned to North Carolina and reopened his father’s auto repair shop as a means to punish himself for his own sins. A constant reminder of his sins would be his fate.
Marcella, Momma, and I listened intently as he described everything he had been through. He said it was a vicious cycle because his father, my grandfather, had been molested by his own uncle as a child. I still couldn’t imagine not remembering the things my father related in that therapy session. How he would do things to me when Momma wasn’t around, mostly when she was out spending money on things we didn’t need.
Marcella explained that Jetta had taken the abuse for me and Jude had become my protector, even though Jude never knew about the abuse. She also speculated that while she rarely made an appearance, Jetta was the one who really controlled things. She prevented Jude from making me completely disappear.
My main concern wasn’t even for me but for Flower. Daddy assured me that he hadn’t molested her but admitted that he had experienced some urges. Marcella told him that he had no choice but to come clean with Allison, Flower’s mother. She told him that there was always the chance that he would relapse in a moment of weakness and shatter yet another young life.
Needless to say, Momma called the wedding off. She left, stating that she was catching a cab home so she could take a tranquilizer and lie down. I told her that I would come by later to check on her. I couldn’t take any more for one day either. I told Daddy and Marcella that I had to leave. Marcella asked Daddy to stay behind so they could talk.