By Cindy Wiggins Tapia
After the machete incident, Nabo did all those things a man does when he’s plunged knee-deep in snickerdoodle. Gifts of jewelry, a leather coat, romantic dinners with Mexican violin players at our table. He and his big puppy-dog eyes asked for my hand in marriage. What. After he pulled a broad knife on me? What. In the wise words of my little great nephew Gabe, Uh, no.
We got blood tests at the Health Center on Sawnee Avenue, pawned the title of our car to buy the rings, and were set to strap a collar around his neck on an April Friday.
The day started off with a bang at 3 a.m. when the cat gave birth under our bed. It was as hot and humid as the devil’s armpits, but I wore a wool skirt, sweater, and spike heels because that’s all the dress up I had. Nabo wore black cowboy boots, black jeans, and a Hawaiian shirt. I smoked like a chimney, and he held onto his seat with his eyes bugged out all the way to Lawrenceville. He was scared to death that in my excitement I would forget to use the brakes. We parked at the end of the lot. The cobblestone forecourt and my spike heels were enemies at first click. The guards at the scanners made Nabo unbuckle his belt.
We filled out papers, paid our license fee, and headed to magistrate court.
“Do you want a long ceremony or a short one?” I thought the judge asked.
So, I replied, “You better make it a short one, I’m deaf.”
I looked at the judge while repeating my vows.
“No, look at him.”
“I can’t read your lips and look at him at the same time.”
I could have read his lips and then looked at Nabo, but my brain was dead. Nabo forgot all his English. The ring wouldn’t fit. The judge finally lost it and burst out laughing.
We stopped at Ryan’s Steakhouse in Buford for our wedding supper. I got a baked potato and a porkchop hard enough to break a window. For the first time in my life, I forgot to eat dessert. We stopped by Mama’s. She sent me off to Wee Willy’s to get her a case of beer.
“Sorry, I don’t have money for a wedding gift,” she said. Uhhhh.
That night, Nabo took the mattresses off our bed.
“Why’re you doing that?”
“We’ve never been married before. The bed might fall and keeell the keeetteeeies, smush.” He gathered them up and laid them in the nest I’d made in the spare room.
It had been coming on for two weeks, heralded by little pulls in my calf, echoes of that wedding walk across the stony forecourt to the courthouse. Sure enough, at 4 a.m. one morning, I woke up screaming, “Get me a book! A book! A book! A hardback book.!”
Nabo jumped out of bed, and the cat came running and stood in the doorway while Nabo pressed the spine of a hardback book against the bottom of my foot until the cramp untangled. Three-feet tall fat women should never walk across cobblestones in spike heels.
