too much to lose.”
I suddenly felt more at ease. “Well, I’m too old to let one of my mother’s men get caught up in something unholy with me,” I said stiffly, scratching myself between my thighs. It had been weeks since I’d turned my last trick, but I still felt unclean, no matter how much I bathed and scrubbed myself. After each bath, I sprayed my crotch with whatever smell-goods were available. Now I had to deal with an irritating inflammation that my excessive use of the sprays had caused.
“Look, girl. I ain’t got no kids of my own. I ain’t a young man no more, so I doubt if I ever will have any. But I still love kids. I helped my use-to-be business partner raise all five of his young’uns. Then, after he passed, I helped send all of ’em to college. Even though they don’t even call me or send me a card, unless they wantin’ money, I still care about them kids. I want to see all kids succeed in life. Black kids especially. Now the Lord done blessed me. I got a few bucks in the bank and I can’t take none of it with me when I lay my burdens down and go to meet my Maker. I want to enjoy life while I still can. All I want to do is make somebody happy. Right now that somebody is your mama…and you. If I ever say or do somethin’ you don’t like, you seem like the kind of gal would put me in my place. Your mama didn’t raise no fool. Am I right?”
“You’re right,” I said contritely. My head felt heavy as I bowed it. While I was between thoughts, I noticed some faint, inch-long, slightly crooked black lines on the kitchen wall I was facing. I rubbed my fingers across the lines until I realized they were the markings that Mr. Boatwright had made with a pencil to measure my height over the years. I snatched my hand back like I’d been burned. With my heart pounding against the inside of my chest, I realized Mr. Boatwright still had some control over me.
Even from his grave.
Before I could speak again, Mr. King did and I was glad. I wasn’t sure what was going to come out of my mouth anyway. Especially with additional thoughts of Mr. Boatwright, even more potent than the ones I’d had a few moments earlier, dancing around in the front of my mind.
“And you got too nice a voice to be soundin’ all grumpy anyway.” He laughed. “You ought to be singin’ in the choir. I’ll mention that to Pastor Jenkins.”
I was glad to know that Mr. King and I were on the same page. I knew that I was not the only girl in Richland to have had the kind of trouble I’d had with one of Muh’Dear’s men friends. Thank God Mr. King was bold enough to stand his ground.
That conversation broke the ice enough for me to accept Mr. King in my life. I regretted my behavior and wanted to retract my remarks but it was too late. However, it was not too late for me to change my attitude toward him. So I did, right then and there.
“Uh…I’ll tell Muh’Dear you called. And…Mr. King, you have a nice evening.”
Now that I was comfortable with Mr. King, I encouraged Muh’Dear to secure her relationship with him. It eased my mind to know that she would not be lonely when I did move away. Even though I didn’t know a soul in Pennsylvania, she surprised me by encouraging me to go.
I was bowled over when she surprised me with a ten-thousand-dollar cash gift from an insurance policy that Mr. Boatwright, of all people, had left for us. Now I felt even worse about selling my body. The money I had collected from all those horny men was pocket change compared to the ten thousand dollars. I was even more anxious to get away from the scene of my crimes now. I had to leave Ohio. Even if I had to flee on foot.
I left on a Greyhound bus, crying and waving to Muh’Dear until the bus turned the corner.
CHAPTER 17
So much happened to me during the years I lived in Erie, Pennsylvania. It was hard for me to keep the events in order when I allowed myself to think about them. I slid in and out of meaningless relationships with meaningless men and had a fairly active social life, but I continued to have nightmares about Mr. Boatwright. Some mornings I woke up on the floor, tangled up in my bedcovers from trying to hide from Mr. Boatwright’s ghost.
I joined a church and I got a job working on an assembly line in a factory, but I was not happy. I still missed Rhoda and Pee Wee. They had saved me in so many ways, so many times. In fact, it was a telephone call from Rhoda that had stopped me from throwing myself out of the window of a dingy hotel, during one of my many moments of despair.
Pee Wee was special in other ways. He had been the only boy that Mr. Boatwright had felt was sexless and harmless enough to be around me, not that any other boys had tried to get into my pants. The nights that Pee Wee had been allowed to sleep over at my house during our early teens, volunteering to sleep on our living room floor in his sleeping bag, Mr. Boatwright had insisted that Pee Wee sleep on a pallet on my bedroom floor instead.
Unlike some of the other boys from Richland who had been snatched up by Uncle Sam and dispatched to go fight a senseless war in a place a lot of us had never even heard of before, Pee Wee returned from Vietnam intact. I was pleasantly surprised when he paid me a surprise visit one night when he came to Pennsylvania to visit relatives.
I had several reasons for climbing into my bed with Pee Wee. His appearance was one. The army had recycled him. He was no longer the skinny, loud-mouthed, sissified little boy I had grown up with. He was at least four inches taller and had packed on more than sixty pounds. His long, narrow face had filled out and he had a sexy mustache. A pair of slightly slanted black eyes that I had never paid much attention to before now sparkled like diamonds. He was gorgeous. Especially naked.
He stood over me as I lay on my bed, naked, too, feeling as big as a banana boat. But my size didn’t bother him, so I didn’t care what I looked like as long as he liked what he saw.
I didn’t jump up and shout like I wanted to, though. I just gasped. When Pee Wee gave me an amused look, I pretended like I was reacting to the scorpion tattoo on his chest. I was already weak, so even without that bottle of wine we consumed, I couldn’t help myself.
After all the unfulfilling sex I had had with Mr. Boatwright and the other men, I never expected to know any physical pleasure, other than feeding my face. But Pee Wee was a wonderful lover. He even taught me a few tricks that he had picked up from the whores he had spent time with in Vietnamese brothels that he claimed he’d been “dragged” to.
Sex was such a mystery to me. It seemed strange that something that good could also be bad if done with the wrong person. Despite old Mr. Boatwright’s belief that I enjoyed his lovemaking, it had felt like hell to me. Here I was doing the same thing with Pee Wee, but it felt like heaven. Especially when I had an orgasm. It was the first one in my life and that made Pee Wee even more special to me. It was almost as sacred as sharing my virginity, a prize that Mr. Boatwright had helped himself to.
I felt like a big fool doing some of the things I did with Pee Wee that night. And I knew I probably looked like a big ox in some of the positions I let myself get coaxed into. I was like a dope fiend, devouring Pee Wee for the next few hours like he was a drug. I licked and humped like I was getting paid to do it. He laughed when I humped him with so much vigor he fell off the bed.
“Just relax, girl,” he told me, jumping back on top of me, stabbing deep inside of me with his finger. We spent a whole night wallowing in each other’s arms.
By the time Pee Wee rolled off me, I was practically delirious. But my rapture was temporary. He left the next morning before I even woke up. I was alone again, except for the bruises on my body and the fear of Mr. Boatwright’s ghost coming back to haunt me some more.
Not long after my passionate rendezvous with Pee Wee, another man eased his way into my bed, one I thought was just as ready to get married and settle down as I was. I was half right. Levi Hardy up and married another woman while he was still involved with me. I was devastated. I felt like the woman men avoided in public, but could tolerate enough to use for their own selfish needs. I felt like a urinal, just another place for men to dangle their dicks. I didn’t know what was so wrong with me that only Rhoda could see the beauty in me on an ongoing basis. That’s why it had always been so easy for her to control me.
During