Backroom Confessions

by Rose Jackson-Beavers

  Anthony cooked for her and pampered her, complete with candles, wine, and smooth talk. One month after meeting him, she could not hold back her desire for him any longer. He looked so good with his handsome self, and he had the body to match. When he touched her, his fingers set her skin on fire with desire. She could feel her vagina turning into a hot furnace, waiting to be extinguished.

  The first time she was with him, he gave her so much pleasure with his tongue that she thought she would have to go the hospital to regain control of her breathing. She had never had an orgasm before, so it scared her yet felt so enjoyable. This confused her, because she couldn’t understand how something like a penis and a man’s touch could scare you yet give so much pleasure. This was the beginning of a first-rate sex life. After being married for sixteen years, it had finally lost its steam. She was worried that her weight was the reason. Most of the time, he was tired or she was too exhausted after a hard day at the office. There was not much time for sex that included foreplay, passion, and desire. Sex had become Anthony’s sleeping pill. He only wanted a quickie, which was to the point, to help him end his day in a peaceful and restful state. She was left very unhappy and unsatisfied.

  Chapter 7

  Megan picked up the phone to call her old friend Cynthia. “Girl, I haven’t heard from you in awhile. What’s been happening with you?” she asked.

  Cynthia responded, “Nothing much.” She didn’t want to say too much, because Megan had a knack for gossiping and starting problems, so when she called, it was best to basically listen. After their last conversation, she was being very careful with her words. “Have you heard from Ms. Parker yet?”

  “Not yet. But she’ll call soon. You know I got skills. Besides, if she doesn’t call me, there won’t be any skin off my back. After all, that’s my least worry. I’ve got enough money left to pay my expenses for the next ten years or so, if I spend it wisely. I’ve had several offers, but I’m just not interested in working any old place.”

  “Well, I’m sure Ms. Parker will call sooner or later,” Cynthia interjected. “Have you started dating yet?”

  “Not yet. Men are such a trip. Every time I see one, all I hear is, ‘You are so cute. You look so good.’ Girl, I get tired of hearing that. I don’t need someone to keep repeating that to me.”

  “It’s nice to get compliments.” Cynthia thought, What could have happened to make her feel like she has to be above everyone else all the time?

  “I'm so ready to do something. I get sick of sitting around the house all the time. It would do my heart good to help some of those public aid recipients find a job or do something positive with their lives. I really like helping them achieve their goals.”

  “You are good working with people. Everybody really likes you,” Cynthia said with a hint of jealousy.

  “I know, girl. But I get tired of just being the pretty one. I need more stimulation. That’s why I want this job so bad.”

  “Well, I’m sure you will get it. After all, you seem to get everything you want.”

  “You got that right. I am blessed.” Megan smiled thinking about her life. She had been laid off from her job that she had held for ten years. She was frightened and concerned about how others would see her. She wasn’t afraid of being broke because she had money, but she was embarrassed that something like that could happen to her. After all, she wanted the status of working hard like everyone else. Even though she lacked a college degree, she held many hours of training credits from various workshops throughout her community and had over nine hours in her chosen field. She was just as good and smart as someone who had a degree.

  Megan was a trained and experienced social worker. She loved working with families who were considered generational welfare recipients. She felt really good when she could “save” one more person from a life of poverty and need.

  Whatever she could do to help another sad soul, she would do, even if it meant going through her closets and giving the welfare recipients their first Chanel suit. She felt special when they hugged her neck and thanked her for believing in them. But what Megan really believed in was herself. She felt that she was given a certain power from someone higher because she had the ability to change people’s lives. She could make people walk on water if she wanted them too. If they couldn’t, it certainly wouldn’t be because they didn’t try.

  Megan had a positive attitude most of the time, which was meant to impress Jerickca or her former bosses. But when her employers turned their backs, she became like Sybil, cussing and disrespecting the very people she wanted so badly to help. She sometimes hated her clients and disrespected them because they didn’t want anything out of life. It bothered her that the only way they would move to get a job was by being threatened that their public assistance and food stamps would be taken away. She wanted them to do better because they wanted to, not because they were forced to do something about their lives.

  When Megan was a child, she was adored and loved by both parents. After they both died in a house fire, when she was in the fourth grade, she felt like taking her own life to follow them. Without any brothers and sisters, she was frightened and confused. How could the God she had been taught to love and obey take something so precious from her? She was angry and was quickly becoming bitter. Her parents had excellent, high-powered jobs. Her father was president of First Financial Bank and Trust Company, and her mother was a professor at the state university. Sent to live with her maternal grandparents after her parents’ death, Megan was broken in spirit and a sad, lonely child. Her grandparents were so loving and kind. They transferred the great love that they had for Megan’s mother, who was their only child, to their beautiful and talented granddaughter. It would be the only way to bring the innocent spirit of their only grandchild back to life.

  As a child, Megan had it all. She was sent to the most prestigious private schools and was allowed to participate in all kinds of extracurricular activities. To ease her pain from losing her parents, Megan was allowed to take swimming lessons, tap, and modern dance, and she played the violin with such grace that she would be asked often to play at weddings, receptions, and church functions. With such a busy life, the pain of losing her parents began to lessen while her anger with God diminished. She loved and missed her mother and dad but she found that she could go on because she had her grandparents, who loved her more than life itself.

  When Megan wasn’t shopping for more toys and new clothes, she was practicing the violin or taking swimming lessons. She wanted to be an Olympic swimmer, and if that failed, a dancer. She was kind to all people. Whatever she had, she would share with them. As a young girl, she was taught to help those who had less than she. Her parents and grandparents taught her to share, because as an only child, she had been truly blessed. Now that she was older and wiser, she believed that each man needed to take care of himself, because she wouldn’t.

  “Cynthia, you know I have truly been blessed and I thank God all the time. I’ve been through so much and God has truly helped me to overcome,” Megan said with pride.

  “I know what you mean. He has given you strength when you were weak.”

  “Yes, God did, especially when my parents died and then my grandparents.” Megan became silent as she held the phone thinking about her grandparents.

  Her grandparents owned several dry cleaners. They were popular people who attended church often. Jim and Willa felt that they doted too much on Megan and wondered if it would affect her later in life. But after much consideration, they felt she needed all the attention they could give her because she had indeed suffered such a great loss. Jim and Willa felt that since Megan had no one who was as close to her as her parents, there was nothing wrong with them being there for her.

  When Megan was eighteen and in her first semester of college, her grandfather died of a massive heart attack. It brought back all the pain and misery that she had experienced when she lost her own parents. Grandma Willa was devastated. Megan decided to quit college to h
elp her grandmother manage the dry cleaners. Grandma Willa died of natural causes two years after Grandpa Jim, and Megan took over the cleaners. Eventually, she became bored working in their business, sold the cleaners, and pursued other avenues.

  She worked as a social worker until she received a lay-off notice that the organization she currently worked for would be merging with a larger one. Megan and her co-workers would be assisted with job placements through the human resource department. Megan thought long and hard. She could easily stop working because she had plenty of money, but she sought fulfillment through working with others whom she felt would need that extra push to succeed. Megan was great at getting people to move toward their goals. At least that’s what she thought. Most of the time, they moved not because of her skills, but to get away from her self-promoting attitude and her projection that she was better than everyone else. Megan’s clients quickly tired of her bragging about her clothes and money.

  “Well girl, I guess I better get off this phone. It was nice talking to you. Thanks for listening,” Megan said.

  “You know you’re welcome,” Cynthia said as she hung up the receiver. Thinking about Megan, she said to herself, She could be such a good person if she would just get her act together.

  While searching for a job, Megan’s friend recommended her to the Department of Public Aid. Once she aced the test, which she felt was easy, her name was put at the top of the list of people to be called for the next available position. It took three months before she received her call to report to work. By that time, she had been offered another job with the Department of Adolescent and Children Resources.

  On her first day of employment, it became apparent that the other workers envied her. They would always stare at her, and when she would catch them looking, they would quickly turn their heads. She recognized their looks of envy because she had seen it so many times before. Everybody, it seemed, wanted what she had: the cars, clothes, and money. For a social worker who did home visits, she was considered over-dressed and lacking in real social work skills. The other workers wondered if she really worked when she went into the homes of her clients. After all, some of the clients lacked good housecleaning and personal grooming skills and had no idea how to keep their children fresh, clean, and well groomed.

  Staff sometimes wondered why Megan dressed the way she did, with the possibility of getting dirty during a home visit. None of their concerns mattered to Megan, because all her life, people perceived her differently from what she really was until they had a chance to get to know her. With time, they would all be eating out of her hands.

  The Interviews:

  How it all started

  Chapter 8

  When Donna Sanders contacted Jerickca to inform her that she wanted to basically give her agency money through the collaboration, she was both thankful and happy. This grant would secure several of her current staff a job for the next six years. This was a research demonstration grant and based on their performance, they could be rewarded an even bigger amount of funding in the future. The first thing she needed to do was to read the proposal and develop job descriptions.

  After reading and comprehending the purpose of the grant and meeting several times with Donna, Jerickca wrote five job descriptions. She wrote one for a trainer/group facilitator to train the clients in developing job-readiness skills, a social worker to assist clients in adjusting to their new jobs while losing their public assistance benefits, and a recruiter/job-developer to enroll clients and assist in finding employers who would hire individuals with limited skills. She also wrote one for a manager and one for a supervisor.

  Next, Jerickca developed a hiring scale. She knew that a lot of people would be applying for available jobs, because the salaries posted were better than average. Those selected would be paid based on experience, and raises would be given to encourage job retention throughout the duration of the grant. She had to pay excellent salaries, because Denver had written in the initial proposal that these salaries would encourage employee satisfaction and retention. After all, she wanted the workers hired to attend to the client through the six-year grant period.

  To assure that she would get the best workers, Jerickca developed the employment scale so it was similar to the civil service one. She knew that her intuition would be her best measure of a person’s character, and this had not failed her yet. She developed an evaluation form that would be easy to rate and would document the categories should someone decide to challenge her decisions. She knew that her scale would be based on experience, education, and location. Location was important, because those hired would receive higher points if they had lived or worked in the area previously. She scheduled the interviews to begin the following week.

  Jerickca decided to conduct individual interviews. Those who were accepted during the first round would be scheduled for a group interview with other candidates, as well as several other supervisors. Her main goal was to find a group of people who could get along with each other while working to achieve common goals. She wanted to see how well they interacted with each other. She wanted to observe whether they assisted each other when they needed help and to watch their non-verbal communication. The first interview was with Denver. She knew Denver would meet her qualifications as well as her expectations since she had authored the proposal.

  Chapter 9

  The night before Denver’s big interview, she lay next to Latham and gently caressed his body. His smooth silky skin was supple to her fingers. She bent over and kissed him by first taking her tongue and circling her lips. Then she plunged her tongue into the depths of his mouth while gently sliding her hands up the middle of his thighs to the trophy she wanted to win.

  Latham moaned, “Baby you sure make me feel good.”

  Denver whispered, “Kiss me you fool.”

  Latham slid two of his fingers into the warmth of Denver’s essence, while telling her how much he cared about her. Her center core tautened around his fingers, as they pumped deeper inside her searing, sticky, wet oven.

  Almost losing her breath because of the intense passion rising in her chest, she begged him, “Please make love to me now.”

  “Baby you feel so good,” he said as he glided his love tool into her toolbox.

  Satiated and satisfied, Latham left Denver lying there fresh from screaming for her mama, daddy, and anyone else whose name she hollered out when she had her orgasms. His love made her weaker by the moment. She couldn’t wait to become his wife someday, and he assured her that soon they would become man and wife. She couldn’t wait until that happened, but for now, she would just go to the interview she had scheduled with Jerickca Parker.

  When Denver walked into the interview, she was surprised to see an African-American who held such a high position in a large organization. Not only that, but Jerickca Parker was in her late thirties and appeared well educated based on the plaques that hung on the wall. She was articulate, and Denver was impressed with her the moment she met her. She knew immediately that she would learn a great deal from her. Denver received good vibes from Jerickca, not as a person who was pretentious or stuck-up or who thought she was better than others, but as one that projected confidence and commitment. Denver’s former boss, Donna, said that Jerickca was good to people and she would be someone that would allow Denver to achieve at her highest level.

  Jerickca introduced herself to Denver and extended her hand to shake. “Please have a seat,” she said.

  “Thank you.” Denver smiled as she took her seat.

  “Congratulations on writing such an excellent grant, Miss Anderson. The research was outstanding, and I was very impressed with the benchmarks you developed to measure the success of the program. What made you decide to target parents with children thirteen and under and those who did not have a GED or high school education?”

  Denver adjusted her skirt by pulling it down. She looked directly into Jerickca’s friendly eyes and said, “I was interested in parents with children thirteen an
d under because I knew that those were the clients who would be losing their assistance when their child reached eighteen. I wanted to see those parents who didn’t have an education have an opportunity to get one by working long-term with social workers who were also skilled in job placement and counseling. Since the federal government decided on time-limited benefits and many of those recipients would be losing their benefits within five years, this targeted population would be the persons who needed help now to develop skills to find a job. At the same time, they would pursue their GED so that they could become more marketable. I also know that these are the people who have received public assistance the longest and thus would need to be motivated to move forward.”

  Jerickca responded, “I’m very impressed with your writing skills and would like to include you on our grant-writing team. Would that be something that you would be interested in doing?”

  “Yes, Ms. Parker. I would be happy to be included,” said Denver.

  Jerickca paused briefly and finally said, “Well, I do have one question about case management. I see that you have limited skills in this area. How do you feel about making home visits?”

  Denver looked down at her shoes and then at Jerickca. “I do like visiting families to find out more about their living arrangements and to see how they interact with their children and other family members. I believe that if you really want to make an accurate assessment of your clients, you have to go to their homes, where they are most comfortable. I have absolutely no problems with doing home visits.”