Читать книгу Deliver Me From Evil - Mary Monroe - Страница 20

“Mama, I’m home,” I yelled tentatively, letting myself in the front door of the second-floor apartment we lived in on Prince Street, in a big, brooding beige building facing another building that looked just like it. There was nothing but plain-looking apartment buildings on our block. From the outside, most of the buildings looked presentable. Some even had an orange, a lemon, or a palm tree or two. But in some, where the stairwells had no lights and the halls that separated the units were so eerie, you could hear the wind howling through cracks you couldn’t see. There was also a sense of despair that seemed to cover our building like a shroud. Some days I got depressed as soon as I opened the front door.

But not today.

My neighborhood was located near Shattuck, Telegraph, and Alcatraz, three of the most well-known streets in Berkeley. Shattuck contained a lot of business offices, our main library, and several restaurants and movie theaters.

Berkeley was still one of the most prestigious college towns in the country, despite that ruckus that the hippies and the demonstrators had caused during the sixties. And, a lot of those activities had occurred on Telegraph and Alcatraz years before my mother brought me into the world, after enduring forty-eight hours of labor.

Things were fairly quiet in Berkeley now. But the city still had a dark side that could not be ignored. There were a lot of crimes committed on our street, often in broad daylight. Just last week a man down the street had been attacked and robbed in his own garage in broad daylight by two men in ski masks. The thieves had made off with the man’s wallet, his watch, his briefcase, and his new shoes.

I’d been lucky, so far. I had managed to avoid the pedophiles and other garden-variety thugs that had given our part of Prince Street such a bad name.

Before I’d left Wade’s house, I’d rinsed out my mouth with warm, salty water, but I could still taste him. Wade had cooled me off, but my crotch still felt like it was on fire. That didn’t bother me half as much as the turmoil that was going on in my mouth. I wondered what kind of nasty-ass motherfucker had dreamed up oral sex!

Even though where I lived sometimes depressed me, I was glad to be home. This was the only place in the world where I knew I could hide not only myself, but my feelings, too. My parents didn’t bother me, and I didn’t bother them.

I didn’t know what it looked like inside the other three units in our building, but ours was pretty dull. We had dreary plaid furniture that didn’t match, a goose-necked lamp with a 40-watt lightbulb in a corner in the living room, roach paste on the walls in every room, and carpets so thin, you could see the hardwood floor beneath.

I peeked into the living room, where my mother and my father were watching reruns of old television shows from the fifties on a nineteen-inch black-and-white TV.

“Mama, Miss Louise wasn’t home, but I left her roasting pan and the money she wanted to borrow with her son. You remember Wade? He’s a nice boy,” I said, grinning. I had gargled so hard with the salt water and rubbed my lips so hard, they were numb. And, my throat was so dry, it ached when I swallowed.

“Did you shut that front door?” my father asked, not even turning around to face me. From the back, Daddy’s head looked like a large peanut, and the front of his head didn’t look too much better. Daddy had never been a handsome man. At least not that I could remember. His looks had slid even further down the drain. He looked like a hound dog, and I didn’t know when that had happened, because the last time I took a long look at him, he’d looked all right to me. Unfortunately, Mama was the female version of Daddy. They had been together so long, they now looked alike. As a matter of fact, they’d always looked alike as far back as I could remember. They both had nut brown skin and large, sad, droopy black eyes that looked like they’d just been carelessly dug into their long, narrow faces. Mama and Daddy even had the same kinky gray hair, which they covered in stocking caps every night, when they went to bed.

“Yes, sir. I did shut the door. And, I would have been back home sooner, but I ran into some girls from my gym class,” I volunteered.

It had only taken a few more minutes of my time for me to suck Wade’s dick long and hard enough for him to come. But he’d enjoyed it so much, he invited me to stay with him and cuddle on the bed for a little while so he could share his thoughts with me. He made some popcorn and split the last Pepsi in his mama’s refrigerator with me.

“I don’t tell too many people, because they make fun of me when I do, but I am going to be a big movie and television star some day,” he told me, with his arm around my shoulder, as we lay on the bed. “I play a lot of sports to get in shape so I can do my own stunts when the time comes.” The smile on his face was contagious.

It pleased me to know that he was ambitious. I smiled, even though there was popcorn stuck to the roof of my mouth. Of all the junk food at my disposal, popcorn was one thing that I didn’t care much about. But in this case, I ate it, anyway, even though half of it was still unpopped, because it seemed to please Wade.

“Let me get you some more popcorn,” he offered, rising.

“That’s all right,” I said fast and loud, holding up my hand. “I’m not that hungry.”

He lay back down, tilted his head to the side, and gave me a guarded look.

“Uh, why would somebody laugh about you wanting to be a star?” I asked.

“You know how these kids around here be tripping. They think acting is sissified,” Wade said, with an angry tone in his voice. “Same as hairdressing and ballet dancing. They think any dude that do shit like that gots to be a fag.”

“Do these same kids go to the movies?” I asked, sipping from the can of Pepsi, which I didn’t care that much for, either. This one had an odd taste. I glanced at the side of the can, not surprised to see that the soda was diet. I drank some more, anyway, because it helped rinse the taste of Wade’s juices and that half-cooked popcorn out of my mouth.

“You know they do,” Wade said, rising up enough so that he could look at my face. The expression on his face told me that he was wondering where I was going with my end of this conversation. “What’s your point?”

“Well, Al Pacino and all the rest of those big stars had to start somewhere. I bet the kids in their neighborhoods didn’t make fun of them when they first started talking about going to Hollywood. And, what about those real mucho macho stars, like Sylvester Stallone and Clint Eastwood? Nobody in their right mind would call them sissies.”

Wade gave me a thoughtful look. “Shit,” he said in a low voice. He smiled and blinked twice, looking at me like I had just revealed the secrets of the universe. “Girl, I never even thought about things like that. Them big stars did have to start somewhere. They had to tell their relatives and friends what they wanted to do. You don’t think I’m talking crazy?”

“No, I don’t think you are talking crazy. I think it’s cute that you want to be a big star,” I said, caressing Wade’s face. That was not what he wanted to hear.

“Fuck you, bitch!” he screamed through clenched teeth.

“What?” I managed. My mouth dropped open and stayed that way as I watched Wade’s face turn into one of the most frightening things I ever saw. His gray eyes looked black and evil. Both of his cheeks twitched, and for a minute, his nose looked like it was going to wiggle right off his face.

“What’s wrong with you, girl?” he roared, pushing my hand away.

“What did I say?” I gasped, surprised and frightened.

“Cute? You think what I want to do with my life is cute? Winnie the Pooh is cute. A poodle in a dress is what you call cute! I ain’t going down to Hollywood to do no Disney movies or Sesame Street or nothing like that. I want to be taken serious. You understand?”

“I understand,” I muttered. I was glad when Wade laid his head back down. “Uh, do you want me to go now?”

He rubbed his chin, sighed, and shook his head. “Naw,” he said, waving his hand. “You can stay, but just watch what you say to me from now on. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” I muttered, my head bowed like a puppy.

Wade cleared his throat. “You know what? I do kinda like you, Christine. You are cute—uh, not cute—you are a real fly girl. Turn over here so I can lick your pussy.”

“Huh?”

“This old, funky college girl that I hang with, she told me that most women like getting licked better than they like getting fucked. She showed me how to do it real good.”

“What about the blood down there on me?”

Wade let out a sharp laugh and made a face like he was in pain again.

“Damn! I forgot about that,” he hollered, slapping the side of his face with the palm of his hand. “Well, I’ll do it some other time when you ain’t bleeding. But guess what? I wouldn’t mind having my dick sucked again before you go home.”

“What you got to be smiling about?” Mama asked, bringing me back to the present.

“Nothing,” I mumbled, my eyes on the floor.

I could not imagine what my parents, especially my mother, would say if they knew what I’d done with Wade. As a family, we rarely talked among ourselves, anyway, about anything. I never knew what they were thinking and vice versa. Sometimes it seemed like I lived with mute strangers. Sex was a subject that was never discussed in our house. As a matter of fact, the closest that my mother ever came to discussing sex in my presence was to tell me about all of the difficulties she’d endured to bring me into the world, always including the fact that she’d had such a hard life that she’d never wanted a child in the first place. She always made the forty-eight hours of labor, loss of blood, and extreme pain sound like it was something that I had caused on purpose. And, each time I ended up apologizing to her for being born. It was one thing to know that I’d been a “mistake.” But that didn’t stop me from making enough mistakes of my own along the way. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but Wade would turn out to be the biggest mistake I’d ever make in my life.