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The problem started in the first grade. At age six I had a crush on Willie, a little redheaded boy who could jump hopscotch as well as any boy on our block. When I kissed Willie on the mouth, Dad was furious but Mom told him that he was just being ridiculous. We were just kids doing silly kid things.
Things were pretty cool until seventh grade when a boy named Ernest moved to Dayton from a small town in Virginia. It took me a couple of weeks to work up the courage but I finally confessed my feelings for him. He beat the living shit out of me and told his parents. I lied my ass off when Dad confronted me. It was my word against Ernest’s and, since Dad couldn’t prove anything, he let it go. But he watched every move I made after that. Mom did, too.
In high school, my speed and build made me the football team’s star quarterback. The fact that I never asked my dates for any poontang earned me a reputation as “Dayton’s perfect gentleman.” Dad was real suspicious of that reputation. His solution? He took me to a whorehouse and left me in a raggedy-ass room with an ugly-assed old woman that I wouldn’t have touched for any amount of money in the world. In fact, I reached into my pocket and gave her every cent I had. All she had to do was assure my father that I was straight and one hell of a stud.
That stunt bought me two years of peace and a genuinely warm friendship developed between me and Dad. I adored him and reveled in the pride he felt about my grades and the legendary moves that I made on the football field.
On the night of my high school graduation, all hell broke loose.
Young, drunk, and careless. That is the only way to explain why I got caught in the backseat of a car with my tongue halfway down the throat of a guy I had been seeing on the quiet for about six months.
Dad caught me and told me to get out of Dayton and keep going. He didn’t care where or how. But if I ever set foot on his property again to say good-bye to Mama, get my clothes . . . anything. . . he would blow my brains out and turn himself in to the cops.
So I left home wearing a suit underneath my liquor stained cap and gown with only twenty dollars in my pocket. My lover bought me a bus ticket to New York.
Dayton, Ohio, had not prepared me for hustling through a series of odd jobs in Times Square or the flophouse that was the only place a minimum wage slave like me could afford to stay in. The only good thing about that period of my life was the freedom to date any guy who appealed to me without worrying about Dad’s eagle eye.
I called Mama a couple of times but she hung up every time she heard my voice.
“Phil, don’t cry.” Hugo was kneeling on the floor with his head on my stomach. Cry? I touched my face. It was wet. My chest was heaving. “Hugo, go on home. I need to be by myself.” The voice didn’t sound like mine. It sounded heavy, raspy.
“No,” he said. “You might do something crazy.”
So we cried together until the sun came up.
Chapter 32
EVELYN
Since I was doing the four P.M. to midnight shift as a favor for someone else, I was still in bed when Mama, who was dressed for work, peeked into my bedroom. “Honey, Phil is downstairs. Is he sick or something? He don’t look too good.”
Phil? He was supposed to be on eight A.M. to four P.M. today. I looked at the clock. It was eight-thirty. “Maybe he has a cold or something. Don’t worry about it.”
She kissed me on the cheek and left.
I yawned and took a moment to brush my teeth and run a wet cloth over my face before going down to the kitchen. I expected to find him boiling water for tea or something. Instead, he was pacing back and forth, mumbling to himself. He looked at me and then down at the floor.
“Good morning, sweetie,” I said with a smile. I reached forward to hug him and he stepped back like I had leprosy.
“Sit down, Evelyn. We need to talk.”
It had been thirty-two years since I’d felt this type of burning in my stomach. Back then, the fire that licked at my guts was caused by the tear-filled eyes of a camp counselor as she took my hands and told me that my father was dead but I had to be brave for my mother’s sake. From the expression on Phil’s face, I knew that the bad news had something to do with Saundra. I gripped the edge of the table for strength.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“Well, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?” He tried to smile but couldn’t.
Making any type of decision was simply impossible. Not with Phil’s puffy bloodshot eyes shifting from side to side. Not when his shoulders were slumped forward so far that he was almost toppling over. Not with his hands shaking like those of a thirty year alcoholic in need of a drink.
I felt woozy.
Phil sighed and looked away. “It’s like this . . . um . . . Josephine is never going to come through with her share of the money so . . . um . . . so I’m going to give it to you. It doesn’t mean we’re business partners and it’s not a loan. It’s a gift. Okay?”
On any other day, I would have been clicking my heels in the air but the air was loaded with something else. Something tragic. It made me mute.
Phil cleared his throat. “That’s the good news. But . . . um . . . look here, Evelyn . . . the bad news . . . well . . . It’s about you and me . . . Well, I’m sorry but . . . um . . . we have to break up.”
I was thunderstruck. “What?”
