Читать книгу Who's Loving You - Mary B. Morrison - Страница 19

I’d brought my girls from Las Vegas to Atlanta, and it was my responsibility to make sure no man ever exploited or violated them again. Thus far, it’d only been a few weeks, but they were becoming bored being at home most of the day. I was, too. And a few of them had added on a few pounds. I was not going to have a house filled with overweight, unhealthy women. They’d already eaten breakfast, but come lunchtime, I was ordering Subway sandwiches. I was the only one with transportation, and Onyx was the only one allowed to drive my car. Maybe I should hire a personal trainer to work them out in the morning and an intake specialist to train them on how to properly document cases in the afternoon. Then they could practice interviewing one another in the evenings.

Sitting downstairs, in the family room, which I’d converted into my home office, I turned on my laptop. I positioned my hand above the keyboard, daze at the peach trees in the backyard. What would I say to the women who walked through the doors of Sweeter Than Honey? What were my beliefs?

Just as I began typing, the phone interrupted my thoughts. Checking the caller ID, I saw it was a 404 area code, but I didn’t recognize the number. Was it Grant? Oh, my, God. I should be pissed at him. But I wasn’t. My heart started racing. I took a deep breath, exhaled, then answered. “What’s sweeter than honey and more valuable than money?” I was hoping to hear the same response he’d whispered in my ear earlier.

“My daughter,” a woman replied.

Frowning, I replied, “Of course, she is. Is she in trouble?”

“How much?” the woman asked flatly.

My eyebrows stretched toward my forehead as I shifted my thoughts to business. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t have a lot of money. How much will you charge me to find her son’s father?” The woman began crying. “It’s not fair that she has to work a second job at a strip club to take care of her son. We’ve got to find him, and you’ve got to help us.”

Wasn’t this why I had decided to start my business? But I had never envisioned tracking down deadbeat dads. “What’s your daughter’s name, and what club does she work at?”

“I named her Velvet Waters. Her stripper name is Red Velvet. She works at Stilettos. Her son’s name is Ronnie Allen. His no-good daddy’s name is Alphonso Allen. Oh, and Alphonso is a married man. We live in Atlanta, but my baby, Velvet, met him almost six years ago in Los Angeles, when she was auditioning for a movie. How much?”

I had no idea how much to charge this woman. “Pro bono,” I said. “E-mail me right away with the details. Include your contact information, and we’ll handle the rest. Have a sweet day.”

Wow, my first case, I thought. I had to make a good impression. Actually, I was rather excited about finding this Alphonso guy and hearing what his excuse was for not taking care of his son. And if his wife didn’t know about Ronnie, she was about to find out.

I believed women deserved to have their fathers and the other men in their lives lift them to the highest heights, not deny, degrade, or disrespect them. What happened to the women who were repeatedly stampeded for years, were fucked for free, with nothing invested in them, and then were dragged through the venomous quicksand of deception? If they survived before turning stone-cold, were they living or simply sustaining themselves on an invisible respirator, or had they become mush, like those rotten peaches soaking up the soil in my backyard?

They say tears cleanse the soul, giving clarity to new beginnings. Suddenly, raindrops the size of silver dollars pounded against my patio window. Yesterday the weatherman had predicted clear skies for today. Grant had promised he’d never leave me. I rolled my computer chair to the window, then watched the wet circles until they either disappeared or were replaced by new raindrops, kind of the way I’d seen men treating women. Beyond the patio, a barrier of Georgia peach trees secluded me from my neighbors.

Oh, I didn’t need to go out in the rain to witness what was on those trees, just like I didn’t need to travel the world to know millions of women were suffering in silence from neglect, abuse, rape, post-partum depression, and the blues. Not the kind of blues that Barbara Morrison imparted in her lyrics to “You Don’t Know What Love Is.”

Women were suffering from the kind of blues that made the marrow in their bones shrivel; the kind of blues that twisted already-driven stakes deeper into their broken hearts; the kind of blues that scarred from the inside out, aging them seemingly overnight; shoeless blues that left footprints in the icy snow; the kind of blues that didn’t make the headline news until they killed themselves, their mates, or, even worse, their children. I knew those things were real because not so long ago, I was a blue woman.

Not anymore. Now I was plum purple, with the kind of bruise that temporarily clotted the blood but would fade with time and eventually heal. My problem was I couldn’t purge myself of the beautiful memories I had of Grant. I was determined to get my man back while rescuing as many suffering women as I could.

Each of those peaches clinging to my trees represented beautiful women, bruised women, succulent women, spoiled women, sexy women, ripe women, and premature women. The fruit that had fallen from those trees, decomposed, and returned to the earth, were the women I wanted to help the most, before they let go of life. No man should ever savor a bite of a precious peach without first caressing her in the palms of his hands, cleansing her soul, appreciating her, and giving thanks for all that she’d given him, especially if she was his mother, daughter, sister, significant other, wife, or friend.

Ka-boom!

Backing away from the window, I gasped at the crackling thunder, which shook my mansion from the ground up. I beheld a ray of sunshine beaming brightly through the pillows of dark clouds. It left a warmth across my face, and a remnant of the one woman I’d never forget appeared in the silhouette of an angel. With just a few blinks of my eyes, Mother Nature had shrunk the raindrops to speckles and dissolved the black clouds, clearing the way for blue skies. I guessed the weatherman was right, after all.

Closing my eyes and then slowly opening them, I glanced at Sunny’s picture resting on my desk, accepting that I was the reason my favorite escort had been shot in the head the day before her twenty-first birthday. I couldn’t bring Sunny back, but I felt obligated to keep a close watch on her identical twin sister, Summer, who was pregnant with Valentino’s twins. Looking out the patio window and admiring the green leaves, I squinted and noticed the streaks remaining on my windowpane, which were as visible as my flaws. That was a good thing. No longer would I hide my past from anyone, especially Grant.

Peaches couldn’t grow on trees that had no roots or had roots that had no soil, or in soil that had no nutrients or had nutrients but no water, or with water that had no clouds or under clouds that couldn’t give way to the sunshine warming my face. Like those peach trees, a woman without the basic elements of life would die before she blossomed.

I’d heard that people who were too proud, too embarrassed, or too afraid to cry in front of others were hiding something. Shame. Guilt. Insecurities. Vulnerabilities. Secrets even. At one point in my life, I had experienced all of that and added a few more reasons why I incarcerated my salty sadness. I’d turned away from life, not wanting anyone to look into my eyes. I was afraid they’d see I’d been molested, abused as a child, beaten by my ex-husbands, and assaulted by some of my johns.

The real reason I killed Reynolds wasn’t because he’d raped Onyx. I shot that motherfucker in the head because I was tired of men who felt justified forcing their dicks inside of women to bust a fuckin’ nut or to establish dominance. Punk-ass, bitch-ass men deserved to die. If I saw Reynolds in the afterlife, I’d kill his ass again.

Women weren’t put on this earth for men to control them. God gave men women to love. For Reynolds’s death, I had no remorse. I had no blood on my hands or my conscience. If I ever got arrested, my trial would undoubtedly empower women everywhere to stop hanging their heads and stand up for themselves.

You could tell a lot by looking into a woman’s eyes, especially if that woman had low self-esteem or if she was smiling from her nose down, struggling to keep from crying. There’d been a haziness obstructing my judgment of others. At first, all I’d wanted to do was please people, hoping that would make them like me and, if I was lucky, love me. The harder I tried, the less they cared about me.

The men, oh, how the men had loved the way I circled my juicy tongue around their dick heads, letting them shoot cum in my mouth. For eleven years, I had been their fantasy come true, granting their deepest desires, the ones their wives or girlfriends wouldn’t. My pussy had possessed the kind of power that made men sign their names to payday loans so they could experience my unforgettable lingam massage.

Unconsciously, I’d picked up Sunny’s picture and placed it inside my top desk drawer. Before closing the drawer, I took it out and put it back. Today was as good as any day to stop living inside my head, to stop agonizing over Grant, to stop dwelling on depressing memories, to get off of my ass, and to go out into world and save Red Velvet.

I went upstairs to the entertainment room, where the girls were gathered, and announced, “I have a surprise!”

They all stopped watching Oprah and stared at me. “This had better be important,” Onyx said.

“Forget it. I apologize. I shouldn’t have interrupted,” I said. “Go back to watching television. I was going to buy each of you your own car today and give you each a million dollars as I’d promised, but Oprah can do that for—”

“Aaahhhh!” they all screamed at the same time. Titties and asses joyfully bounced up and down.

It wasn’t the money or the materialistic luxury cars I was giving them that excited me. I was giving each of them their independence. Having enough money to enjoy life did good things for women…Money empowered women. If women had the right amount of money, they could buy themselves a few good men. But the one thing money couldn’t buy was love.

“Oh, shit,” I said, laughing. Instantly, I found myself buried under eleven very excited women. For a moment, in that moment, I couldn’t say we all loved one another or that we had anyone out there that loved us, but I knew in that moment, we were all truly happy.