check was each month, but he bought a lot of nice things for the house that Mama had never been able to afford. He even bought us a new television and me a brand-new tricycle.
“Oh, Mr. Boatwright—you just like Santa Claus!” I said, hugging him for buying me the tricycle. “You more than a daddy!”
“See…I told you I would be.” He tickled my armpit and looked at me long and hard with his mouth hanging open. It was a look that made me so uneasy I suddenly had to pee.
“You want me to run to the store to get you some more Anacin or a bottle of pop or something, Mr. Boatwright? What you want me to do for you?”
“Uh…just gimme another hug for now,” he said, almost out of breath. He leaned down and I hugged him around his neck as hard as I could. He slapped my butt, then squeezed it. That’s when I excused myself to go to the bathroom.
He was fifty-three when the nightmare started. I had just turned seven. One evening in August, while Mama was still at work, he ambushed me in my room. I was shocked at the way he kicked open my door and just stood there in the doorway with his hands on his hips staring at me like I was something good to eat. I was lying across my bed minding my own business with a coloring book and some crayons I had found among a box of goodies donated by a woman Mama worked for. A mountain of candy bar wrappers lay next to me. I had stolen the candy from Mr. Boatwright’s room, and I assumed that was why he had entered my room like a bat out of hell—either to scold me for stealing the candy or to give me the rest of it.
“Uh…what’s the matter? Did I strap your leg on too tight?” I asked, smiling. He had never told me why his left leg was fake, but I thought it was one of the most fascinating things about him. I overheard him one day tell our preacher something about losing the leg in a world war. “What’s the matter?” I asked again. Even though he was a grown man, I could talk to him like he was my own age. He had taken me trick-or-treating the year before, and we had collected two big bags of candy that he let me eat all by myself. I liked helping him remove his fake leg and strapping it back on. It didn’t look like a leg. It just looked like a piece of brown wood. It was darker than the rest of him and thicker than his real one. It looked like wood but felt like plastic. I could tell that it was old because there was a lot of dents and scratches on it at the knee, where he strapped it on.
I didn’t have the time or interest in playing with the other kids in our neighborhood anymore. They couldn’t compete with this old man. Mr. Boatwright had become my best friend.
“Mr. Boatwright, why come you looking at me like that?”
“I seen the way you been lookin’ at me,” he growled. “In India, a girl get married by the time she your age. To men like me.” There was a look on his face I could not comprehend. Spit appeared in one corner of his mouth. I was scared and amused at the same time. I didn’t know whether to scream or laugh.
“Huh?” was all I could say at the time. Right after I said that, I giggled.
“Don’t you laugh at me, girl.” Dragging his fake leg, he started to move toward me, taking short, quick steps. There was now a glazed expression on his face. “Let’s make out like we in India.”
“What in the world—” I sat up so fast that my coloring book and the candy-bar wrappers fell to the floor.
“You want it bad as I do,” he told me. “It’s written all over your face. You been beggin’ for it, Buckwheat.”
Everybody I knew felt that Buckwheat was the ugliest black child on TV. Being called that truly hurt my feelings but I refused to show it.
“Want what?” I said levelly, tempted to roll my eyes.
He was now standing over my bed with his shirt unbuttoned and this suspicious grin on his face. There were beads of sweat on his hairy chest. His nipples reminded me of raisins, and his hands looked like paws. “You want it,” he insisted. “You want it more than I do. Oo weee.”
“I—what?” I was horrified. I looked in his dark, bitter eyes, and he looked in mine. His did not blink as he seemed to look straight through me. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “What are you talking about?” Grown folks never ceased to amaze me. If they were not drinking or starting a world war, they were talking a bunch of gobbledygook.
“I could hop on the Greyhound bus tonight to Hollywood and be with Marilyn Monroe, but I choose to be rightcheer with you,” he confessed.
Now I was truly confused. He had passed up a movie star for me. Was I that special? Things were happening too fast. To baffle me further, he leaned over my bed and squeezed one of my thighs. Then, he grabbed my other thigh and gently pulled both of them open. Since I was totally clueless as far as sex was concerned and had only seen dogs in action, I had no idea what he was up to. I just did what he told me to do.
“Take off all them clothes,” he ordered.
“For what? Am I about to get a bath?” A bath was the only thing I had ever undressed for—but never in front of anybody other than Mama. I started unbuttoning my blouse. “What—why come you feeling me all up and down like that?”
“I’m fixin’ to turn you into a woman.” He slid my panties off and dropped them on the floor, grinning all the while.
“Huh? What?” I gasped. I had no idea why he was unzipping his pants.
“Raise your rump. Like I said, you want this as bad as I do, and you know it.” He slapped my naked behind and made smacking noises with his tongue and lips.
“Want what—?” I didn’t like what he was doing. Mama was the only person in the whole world who had ever seen or touched my private parts.
“Shet up,” he snapped. Then, without another word, he pushed me down on the bed on my back and climbed on top of me. That was the beginning of a decade of horrors for me.
After he was done with me, I just remained on my back stunned, naked, and sore. I didn’t sit up until after he left my room. And when I did, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I almost fell when I stood up. I managed to locate my robe at the foot of my bed. As soon as I had it on, I ran to the bathroom.
Blood was dripping from between my thighs. Mr. Boatwright was coming out of the bathroom, smiling and humming.
“I’m bleeding,” I gasped. He led me to the bathroom and stuck a wad of toilet paper between my thighs, then he ran me a tub of bathwater.
CHAPTER 6
The next couple of days, I walked around the house in a trance. Mr. Boatwright acted like he normally did, whistling and yipping his spirituals, quoting Scripture from the Bible and cooking up a storm. During my next Bible lesson, he leaned over and kissed me on the mouth, forcing my lips open with his tongue and patting my crotch at the same time.
“Stop,” I whimpered, wiped my lips, leaned back in my chair, and squeezed my thighs together, forcing him to remove his hand.
“What? You done already forgot what I just told you about what happened to Lot’s wife in Sodom and Gomorrah?”
I sat in silence, with my eyes glued to the floor.
“Huh? You think it’s fun’s turnin’ into a pillar of salt, girl?”
“No sir…” I mumbled.
He finished my Bible lesson, we ate dinner, then he sent me to bed. This was one of Mama’s late nights. I was not surprised when he steamrolled into my room just minutes after I had turned in for the night. Without a word he wrestled my flannel gown and panties off me. I stared in horror and disbelief as he removed his clothes.
This was the second time, and it was worse than the first. I say that because the first time I was a virgin and I didn’t know what was coming. He talked during the whole rape. Two hellish minutes. And to my seven-year-old body, two minutes was a very long time.
“You clumsy heifer!” He was mad because