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He slid easily between the sheets and turned me to face him.
Slowly, Victor began to touch my stomach through the nightgown. Gently his big, dark hands moved up to stroke my hefty breasts. Then with exasperating self-control, he moved back down to my thighs, parting them, teasing the flesh.
“Victor,” I arched my back, breathing his name softly over and over again.
“Just relax, sweetheart.”
Victor swayed over until he was on top of me. I could feel his erection against my pubic hair, yet he only tongue-kissed me while running his fingers through my long braids. His tongue tasted sweet.
I took hold of his erection and my hand went up and down, “Victor, I want you to rip my gown off.”
He did and the way I sang put Aretha Franklin to shame.
5
WEIGHT WATCHERS?
Mama was getting thinner. I could feel it that Sunday when I hugged her and see it when she took the bag of fruit from my hand and walked away.
My childhood home was a shotgun-style apartment. This means that all the rooms are in a straight line. If you stand at the front door and pull a trigger, the bullet will go straight to the back of the place without hitting any walls or doors. It was real old-fashioned, and there was no privacy at all because you simply walked through each bedroom.
Mama had tried hanging curtains at the end of each room one time, but it just made our home look more depressing so she took them down. The old furniture was gone, replaced with semi-expensive beds, sofa and matching loveseat, and a warm wood kitchen set. I had refurnished the place during my first year at Welburn Books when I was finally making some decent money. The old linoleum was gone, too, and now the place had red carpet on all the floors except the kitchen, which was a dark green tile. Every one of the walls had pictures of me or me and Mama. It warmed Mama’s home but the photos of myself as an ugly, buck-toothed young girl made me shudder.
I hung my coat up in the living room closet, dropped my purse and overnight case on the sofa, and followed her into the kitchen.
“Are you okay, Mama? That housedress looks like it’s hanging off of you.”
She put the bag on a countertop and started taking the oranges and grapes out of it. “I’m just fine. Me and Elvira joined Weight Watchers. I’m glad to see that it’s workin’.”
Elvira was her friend from across the hall. “Weight Watchers! Mama, you’ve always been thin as a rail!”
“Maybe so but that’s the only new group down at the senior citizens’ place and me and Elvira is tired of just each other’s company.” She said this with a laugh. “We need some new blood.”
I didn’t believe Mama and made a mental note to get to the bottom of whatever was really going on. “Whatever happened to Bingo night at the local church for old ladies?”
She put the last of the fruit in the refrigerator. “Who you callin’ an old lady?”
She was only pretending to be mad.
“We’re tired of losing money at Bingo, so this is something different.”
“Well, all right then, but don’t get carried away.”
I followed her out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into her bedroom, where she took her customary seat in an ancient, white, overstuffed armchair. Mama had settled into a pattern of loneliness. When Elvira wasn’t around, she concentrated on a regular set of television programs with almost religious intensity. When I came over, it usually took her an hour or more to completely shift her focus onto my presence. I decided to use a few minutes of that time to call Alyssa.
“It ain’t me that you should be worried about, Jacqueline. You’re thirty-two years old and ain’t got no man that I can see. I still can’t figure out why you give Paul such a hard way to go when anybody with eyes can see he is crazy about you. If you don’t wanna end up all alone like me, you better get busy.”
No, I didn’t have a man and nasty sex dreams involving me and Victor didn’t count, although I had been smiling about last night’s episode all the way downtown.
“I’m working on it, Mama.”
“Good. I’d like to get a peek at a grandbaby before they put me in my casket.”
Mama had been talking about that casket and planning her funeral ever since I could remember. The details were seared into my brain: Her sisters from Memphis were to be seated in the back of the church behind her friends because they’d never bothered to get on a train and come see her; the choir had to sing “Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross,” and under no circumstances were they allowed to chirp one note of “Amazing Grace” because it was a song she detested; her casket was to be pink, not white; the dress she spent eternity in could not have one of those collars that went up to her chin and it had to be blue because it was a color that had always flattered her; most importantly, if my daddy showed up, I was to slap him silly.
I rubbed her short, gray hair and changed the subject before she could start reciting the grim details of her send-off once more. “What are you watching?”
The TV set was on and the volume was almost deafening, as usual.
