by Mary Monroe
“You don’t ever have to worry about me backing out. I wanted to get married to you the first time I saw you,” I confessed with a laugh. “I thought you’d never get around to asking me,” I told him. “Even if you decide you like the military life and want to stay longer than a few years, I’ll wait for you.”
“I am going to make you real happy, Lo. I swear to God I will,” Floyd assured me. I was convinced that he was sincere. No boy or man had ever looked at me the way he did. And despite what Valerie and a few other girls had told me about how I would never know for sure if I was getting fucked right unless I tried a few other men, the sex life I had with Floyd was good enough for me.
“But you are only seventeen, Dolores. Give yourself some time,” Viola said when I told her that Floyd and I had decided to marry in a few years. “I didn’t tie the knot until I was twenty-five.” We were in her living room with me rolling her hair with large, pink sponge rollers. I stood over her as she sat on the same couch that Floyd and I still rode each other on when he didn’t have motel money.
I gasped. “I can’t wait that long!” I hollered, dropping two rollers to the floor. “I don’t want Floyd to get away,” I added, leaning over to pick up the rollers.
“Get away from what? You? If you think that boy truly loves you, why are you worried about him ‘getting away’ from you? Ow! Don’t roll my hair too tight.”
“Poor Floyd. He thinks I might run off with another man while he’s in the service, but I won’t. But I don’t know about some other woman snatching him up. Something else might make him change his mind,” I admitted with a worried tone of voice.
“That’s all the more reason why you should wait. Date a few more men for a few years, and if you feel the same way then, and if Floyd’s still in the picture, marry him then.”
I hurried to finish Viola’s hair. Even though I dismissed her comments, and I knew that I was going to do what I wanted to do anyway, I respected her opinion. I was going to marry Floyd and that was that. Other than death, nothing was going to make me break my promise to him.
CHAPTER 14
Living in the same house with a fool like Mr. Zeke had a strange effect on Valerie. At least that was the way it seemed to me. As good looking as she was, that man had that poor girl believing she was ugly. “Mornin’, frog eyes” was how he often greeted her, just because she had big eyes. “Is it just my imagination, or are you uglier today than you were yesterday?” Mr. Zeke’s assessment was the furthest thing from the truth!
It helped when I told Valerie she had the same eyes that Diana Ross had. People sometimes stopped my girl on the street and asked if she was a model. When she told them she wasn’t, they told her she should be. None of that seemed to matter. Valerie hated herself and had a hard time believing that she could be loved. Boys approached her all the time because she was so pretty, but the minute they realized how needy and insecure she was, they fled the scene. However, there were always a few horny boys willing to do anything to fuck Valerie, so she really could have looked like a frog for all they cared. A hasty fuck was all she got from them. But once they got what they came for, those boys fled the scene, too.
I used to think that any boy would be glad to have a trophy like Valerie on his arm. I was wrong. If her experience with the opposite sex was not proof that looks weren’t everything, I didn’t know what was. She had been fooling around with the same three boys off and on throughout our last year of high school. When it came to our upcoming prom, neither one of them asked her to go. And when she asked one of them to go with her, a week before the prom in the middle of lunch one day, he was horrified. “Girl, I know you don’t think I’m going to walk up into that prom with your used-up whore pussy self on my arm!” Rudy Morgan told her to her face, right in front of me and a couple dozen of our classmates. “And another thing—get your black ass outta my sight and stay out!” I could not believe that anybody could be so callous. I couldn’t figure it out. It was not like Valerie was some wart-faced frump that no boy wanted to be seen with. There were a few other girls whose track records with boys were just as bad as hers, and they were even more insecure and needy than Valerie. But those girls were not nearly as good looking as Valerie. I couldn’t believe that being insecure and needy could ruin a girl’s life in such a profound way. And Valerie couldn’t either. Poor Valerie slunk out of the school cafeteria that day with her feelings so hurt, she didn’t come back to school for two days.
As tight as my relationship was with Floyd, there was never any question about who I was going to go to the prom with. As a matter of fact, I was now spending more time with him than Valerie. We walked to school together, spent all of our spare time at the movies or hanging out at a mall, and fucked our brains out any and every place we could. We even went to church together, and that kept Glodine and Viola happy.
I was excited about the prom, even though I knew I wouldn’t really enjoy it knowing that Valerie was sitting at home that night, probably caught up in another one of Mr. Zeke’s attacks. She had been talking about going to the prom since tenth grade, and that made it even worse. She wanted to go more than I did.
As it turned out Valerie asked some cockeyed, homely boy from church who had never even had a girlfriend to go with her. And as hard as it was to believe, that knucklehead had the nerve to let her know in advance that he expected her to be “nice” to him afterward. “The only body part on me that that sucker is ever going to see is my black ass, and that’ll be for him to kiss it!” Valerie yelled into the telephone as she shared her story with me. She canceled that date.
“Well, you can always ask one of your cousins, or even your little brother,” I told her.
“I’m not that desperate.” She laughed. “I’d ask one of Floyd’s homies first.” And that’s just what she did. She asked Floyd’s best friend, Ollie Reed, to take her to the prom. He was no prize, but he had a nice body, and Valerie had already told me that she wouldn’t mind getting some of that body. Ollie agreed to be Valerie’s date, but it was not just because he knew he was going to get some pussy. She paid for his tux and “loaned” him a few dollars to put gas in the car he was going to borrow for the night. But the main reason Ollie agreed to give up a rap concert to go to the prom was because Floyd and I practically begged him off and on for two days before he agreed to do it. Everything was all set. Or so I thought.
“I can’t go to the prom,” Valerie told me an hour before Floyd and Ollie were supposed to pick us up. I already had on my low-cut, off-the-shoulder pink dress and had started peeping out the window in my bedroom, anxious to see Floyd trot across the street when it came time for him to pick me up.
“Oh, hell no! You better have a damn good reason for backing out this late in the fucking game, girl!” I screamed. I stumbled from the window to my bed and plopped down so hard I almost fell onto my back. I clutched the cordless telephone with both hands. I blew on my nails to help dry the pale pink polish that I had applied a few minutes earlier.
“My stepfather is drunk,” Valerie revealed with a heavy sigh.
“So what else is new? The man’s been drunk for ten years! What’s that got to do with you not going to the prom? How much longer are you going to let that motherfucker ruin your life?” I yelled, blowing on my nails some more. It had taken two trips to two different malls for me to find nail polish the same shade of pink as my dress. I wanted everything to be special and perfect tonight. “Look, girl. I don’t care what you have to do, you are not going to let that motherfucker ruin this night,” I vowed. “I wouldn’t put up with that shit for one minute if it was me! Mr. Zeke doesn’t own you!”
“You ain’t got to worry about putting up with none of my shit, you black-ass bitch. I wouldn’t have your skank ass if you was served up on a platter!” I had not heard Mr. Zeke pick up the extension, but I wasn’t surprised. His voice was already like the roll of thunder. It sounded even worse when he got mad. Well, madder than he usually was. Lately it seemed like every single time
I saw that man he was mad. “Get your ass off this phone!” he roared. I didn’t know if he was talking to me or Valerie.
“Mr. Zeke, can I talk to you for just a minute? I don’t know why you won’t let Valerie go to her own prom, but her going means as much to me as it does her,” I wailed.
“That heifer ain’t going noplace with her ugly self!” he roared, talking so hard and loud he had to stop to cough and catch his breath.
“You’re not her father!” I reminded, rising from my bed so angry my legs buckled and I almost hit the floor. “I don’t know who in the world you think you are, mister!” I knew he couldn’t see me, but I was shaking my fist at him even though it caused me to smudge several of my freshly painted nails. That aggravated me even more because now I’d have to remove the polish and paint them again.
“Girl, as long as you live on this planet—don’t you never sass me again. This is my house and what I say goes!”
“Nuh-uh, Mr. Zeke. That’s Miss Naomi’s house,” I reminded.
“What’s hers is mine! And—what the fuck business is that of yours? You ain’t nothing but a damn teenager! You ain’t got no business getting up in my business in the first place! Get your ass off this phone, gal!”
“Mr. Zeke, I didn’t mean to sass you,” I muttered in a meek voice. “But just this one time, let Valerie go with me to our prom. Please. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. We’ve been looking forward to it for a long time.”
“Now if Valerie knew how to show some respect for me, she could do whatever she wanted to do. Anytime and anyplace. But I ain’t no fool. I know she been humping everything but that fire hydrant out there on the street. This out-of-control heifer been getting dick-slapped ever since she figured out what her pussy was for! I let her get away with a lot of stuff ’cause, I knew she was going to do it anyway. Well, this is one thing she ain’t going to do.”
“But why? This is our senior prom. Don’t you realize how important this is to us? All kids want to go to their prom!”
“Prom shrom! Fuck that shit! I didn’t go to no prom!”
“I’ll call you in the morning, Lo. You can tell me all about the prom. Tell Ollie I’m sorry,” Valerie whimpered. “Bye—”
“Don’t you hang up this phone, girl!” I screamed. I didn’t realize how loud I was talking until Viola came stumbling into my room in her nightgown. Her large, pink sponge rollers decorated her head like rocks.
“Who in the world are you talking to, Dolores?” she asked, walking up to me. I gave her an exasperated look, held up my hand, and shook my head, but I kept talking into the phone.
“Mr. Zeke, can I come over and talk to you? If you won’t do this for Valerie, please do it for me. I swear to God I’ll never ask you for anything else as long as I live,” I hollered. Mr. Zeke responded by slamming the telephone down on me so hard my ears rang.
“What in the world is going on, child?” Viola demanded, her hands on her hips.
“Mr. Zeke said Valerie can’t go to the prom,” I said in a weak voice, blinking so hard my eyes stung. I was so angry it was a struggle for me to keep talking. “I’m going over there,” I said, dropping the phone onto my bed.
“No, you ain’t! That nigger’s crazy. It’s bad enough he uses his own family for a whipping post, but I’ll be damned if I allow you to go over there at a time like this. It sounds like that man’s on a rampage. There ain’t no telling what he might do.” Viola placed her hands on my shoulders.
“You don’t have to worry about me. I can take care of myself,” I insisted. “This won’t be the first time I went over there during one of his rampages. He’s never raised a hand to me and I know he’s not stupid enough to start doing it now.” I was so angry I was trembling. I gently removed Viola’s hands from my shoulders. “If Floyd calls, tell him I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I smoothed down the sides of my dress and glanced at my watch.
“I don’t want you going over there, Dolores. Now I ain’t never had no trouble with you minding before. Don’t start now,” Viola pleaded, shaking her head so hard her pink foam rollers were dropping off her head like leaves. She followed as I ran from my room and downstairs toward the door. Not only did her heavy bare feet sound like a mule running across the floor, she was huffing and puffing like one, too. Because of Viola’s declining health and age, I didn’t like to upset or excite her. But this was one time it couldn’t be helped. “Dolores, just be careful,” she wheezed as I ran out off the porch.
“I’ll be right back,” I hollered over my shoulder, running across our yard and then the Scotts’ yard next door. Instead of using the sidewalk, like the elderly Scotts had told me and the other kids time and time again, I galloped across their neat lawn, trampling old lady Scott’s rose garden—which shouldn’t have been in the middle of the yard in the first place.
I didn’t know what to expect when I got to Valerie’s house. Her brother and sister were spending the night with relatives. Lately they had been doing that a lot more than usual. To me that was a sign that things were getting worse in that pretty white house directly across the street from our church. All because of Mr. Zeke.
Even though it was none of my business, I was glad to know that those kids had other places to go where they would be safe. Too many times Binkie and Liz had gotten caught in the crossfire during one of Mr. Zeke’s tirades when it didn’t concern them. I had never heard him as mad as he sounded on the telephone tonight. There was no telling what he was going to do this time. My hope was that with me in the house, he wouldn’t do too much damage to Valerie and her mother.
I knew that other than Valerie, her mother, and that punk-ass Mr. Zeke, Valerie’s grandfather was the only other person in her house. I prayed out loud all the way over there that Paw Paw was somewhere in the house where he wouldn’t get hurt.
The house was quiet when I stumbled up on the front porch, and for a minute I thought it was deserted. But the lights were on and the door was unlocked when I turned the knob. Even though I wore the dress that I was wearing to the prom, I had on the well-worn flip-flops that I usually wore around the house. “Val,” I hollered as I padded across the living room floor with my shoes flapping. I almost stepped on a broken wineglass in the middle of the floor. The television was on, but it had been muted. I stopped for a moment, looking toward the staircase that led to the rooms on the second floor. I gasped when I saw what appeared to be a bullet hole in the wall by the doorway leading into the kitchen. Then I heard what sounded like somebody choking. It was hard to tell what direction it was coming from, but I moved toward the kitchen anyway.
I was glad that I was still young enough to blame my stupidity on my youth. First of all, under the circumstances, I should not have entered that house. Seeing that bullet hole in the wall and hearing somebody being choked in the kitchen and me still staying on the premises said a lot about me. Either I was too stupid for my own good or I was willing to die for my best friend if I had to.
I froze. I knew right then and there that in a few moments somebody was going to die in that kitchen that night, and it could be me.
CHAPTER 15
The way that Hollywood depicted black neighborhoods in L.A. like ours, you would have thought that black people were used to seeing people get killed. I wasn’t. I could not stand the sight of blood or anything that involved violence. The few times that I’d been challenged to fight, I had chosen to walk away. I had seen a lot of violence at school, and at some of the rowdy rap concerts, and parties I’d attended. Not to mention the wrath of Mr. Zeke. But I had never witnessed a fatal situation until now.
I don’t know how long I stood in the kitchen doorway unable to speak or move. But it could not have been more than a couple of minutes. The first thing that stunned me was Mr. Zeke’s appearance. At first I didn’t recognize him. I honestly thought that some other thug had got loose and stormed Valerie’s house.
Since the last time I’d seen Mr. Zeke, he had shaved all of his hair off the sides of his head a
nd was now wearing a Mohawk. A Mohawk! I didn’t care what anybody said, that was one hairdo that I didn’t think looked good on anybody. Not even Mr. T or the Mohawk Indians, who should have been the only ones wearing it in the first place as far as I was concerned. Mr. Zeke was already ugly, and had been since the very first time I laid eyes on him. Now he looked so straight-up fierce that it almost hurt my eyes to look at him. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of long, wraparound sunglasses. On one side of his bald, shiny head was a loathsome tattoo of a snarling pit bull.
Mr. Zeke was straddling Miss Naomi’s chest, with his long legs splayed as if he were on a horse. His massive hands were wrapped around her neck so tight, it looked like they were growing out of her body. Valerie was stretched out on the floor herself, on her back with her eyes closed. I didn’t know if the girl was dead, unconscious, or just playing possum. But she was not moving at all. The only sound in the room was Miss Naomi gasping for air and trying to pry Mr. Zeke’s hands from around her neck.
“Oh my God!” I didn’t realize I was the one talking until I bit into my tongue. I was surprised that I was finally able to speak again. Mr. Zeke took his time looking at me. “Mr. Zeke, please stop that!”
“Get the fuck up out of here, girl,” he ordered. I couldn’t believe how calm he sounded. But the look on his face was demonic.
“Do you realize what you are doing?” I hollered, hopping from one foot to the other.
“I realize you might be next!” His chilling threat made me shudder even more. His dark glasses fell off as he whipped his head back around to face Miss Naomi. He was choking her so hard, her body was jerking and trembling as if she were being electrocuted.
“I’m calling the police!” I yelled, running to the phone on the wall by the stove.
“Naomi, I done told you, and told you to stop pushing my buttons, and you wouldn’t listen. Look at you now! You bitch!” Mr. Zeke suddenly stopped choking Miss Naomi, and he stopped talking. He took a few deep breaths, and then he started mumbling gibberish under his breath between growls. He shook his head so hard that sweat dripped off his forehead like raindrops. I stood there in slack-jawed amazement when I realized he had only paused to rest for a moment, and to catch his breath. He glanced up and ignored me. Then he put both hands back on Miss Naomi’s neck and started choking her and talking again.
