Crave

by Laurie Jean Cannady

  Pee Wee walked over to the chair. His feet, dragging along the floor, sounded like the swish of the broom. He sat on the loveseat and told me to go into Momma’s room and get her brush. I quickly moved, skipping into the room, hoping he’d reward me with a glass of juice afterward. I was already planning to rub my liquidy treat into Champ and Dathan’s faces as one skip after another carried me into Momma’s room.

  I looked for the brush on the dresser, but it wasn’t there. Then, I went over to the nightstand because I thought that it had fallen on the side of the bed, but it wasn’t there either. Then, I remembered I was watching Momma brush her hair in the bathroom before she’d gone to work that day, so I turned and bolted for the door, but there Pee Wee stood between me and the open space in the living room. For some reason, he was bigger than I remembered, as if he’d grown ten feet from the time I left him in the living room to that moment when he was standing between me and the door. His face was different too, darker, and his eyebrows were so close they could have been kissing. I stopped, mid-sprint and said, “Excuse me, Pee Wee. I think the brush is in the bathroom.” He didn’t move.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Pee Wee,” I said again and attempted to step around him. I flinched, as he sharply dropped to his knees.

  “Laurie, are you scared of me?” he asked. Normally, I would have said “no,” because Momma would have been there to save me if Pee Wee or anybody tried to hurt me, but this time, I wasn’t sure of what to say. I’d always been able to joke with him and he often laughed whenever I said something Momma considered grown, but this wasn’t Pee Wee kneeling in front of me. This was a dark cloud of a man that could hurt me because Momma was at work and Champ and Dathan were outside. Since I was on my own, I replied with a nod of my head.

  “Do you think that I’d ever hurt you?” A sharp smile appeared on his face, but his eyebrows were still crowded at his forehead.

  I nodded again. The smile then faded.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I would. Do you love your momma and your brothers and sister?” he asked.

  I nodded again.

  “Then you better do exactly what I say and if you tell anybody, I’m gonna kill them all and then I’m gonna kill you. You understand, Laurie?”

  I did understand. I’d never known of anybody being killed before. Other than Uncle Junie dying of Leukemia in 1980, I’d never seen a dead body. I didn’t know Uncle Junie was dead until at his funeral I yelled for him to get up and stop acting like he was asleep and Momma slapped me hard across the side of my face. Only then had I seen what death looked like, drenched in pain and sadness. As I stared at my uncle in that casket, I was glad I had never told what Pee Wee was doing.

  “Laurie,” he said, “I want you to lay on this bed and be quiet. Don’t say nothing and don’t you cry. Just lay here and I’m going to lay on top of you. You hear me?” I nodded again.

  I was actually relieved all I had to do was let Pee Wee “do-the-nasty” to me like Ryan had. With Ryan, I’d never gotten the satisfaction of sinking my teeth into the dirty flesh of the potato, but at least I’d have my family if I let Pee Wee do what he wanted. So, he grabbed me by my wrist and led me to the bed. I wasn’t even afraid, even though I didn’t have Champ to count down from ten for me.

  “Lay down,” he said as I plopped my torso onto the bed and turned my head toward the open window.

  “Open your legs.”

  I moved my right leg sharply to the edge of the bed as if I were opening a pair of scissors.

  “Move your hands off your chest.”

  I quickly pulled them close to my sides and grabbed my shorts. Pee Wee then grabbed my shorts and underwear in one fist and pulled them down to my ankles. The heat contained in the fabric radiated across my skin. I was confused; “doing the nasty” had never required the removal of clothing, especially underwear. I didn’t know what Pee Wee was planning on doing, but I wanted so badly to tell him he was doing it wrong.

  The house went silent and I could only hear the hum of the refrigerator cycling on and off in the kitchen. Pee Wee then laid his body on top of mine. The heat of his skin made me feel sticky. If I turned my left foot inward, I could feel the joint clinking in his right knee. He was still for a moment and then began deeply inhaling and exhaling as his stomach muscles pressed into my chest. He moved his hand down and began rubbing on something; I was almost certain it was his penis or “dookey” as Champ and I often called it. I smelled the lotion Momma always rubbed on us after we took a bath and wondered why he was rubbing it there. Momma had always told me and Champ never to put anything on our private areas because it could make my “biscuit” and Champ’s “dookey” sick. I began to wonder why she’d never told Pee Wee that.

  Pee Wee then touched me and my body went into a spasm. No matter how many times I’d “done the nasty” with Ryan and Tyler, no one had ever touched that part of me. Pee Wee’s fingers felt like ice and I became happy my shorts and underwear were around my ankles because my feet were cold. Then, I felt something hot, even harder than his fingers pressing against me, my private spot, my space. His stomach muscles contracted. With a grunt from his chest he forced pressure into me. My legs attempted to snap shut, but met the resistance of his outer thighs.

  His rhythm made my body flinch. With each down beat, each pull, I knew the stinging, burning, pressure that would follow. Unlike Ryan, Pee Wee seemed to have a purpose for his pulsing, his pushing and each thrust cut a piece of me out of me. I wanted to scream, to release the pressure and the heat from between my legs into a howl, but I couldn’t; my family’s life depended on me doing exactly what he told me to do. So, I bit hard the inside of my lip and tasted blood running through me.

  I turned my head to the window, then back toward Pee Wee. All I could see was his neck and the dark lines that ran across it. Then I looked down at my belly, my once round belly I had relished on nights when Momma cooked biscuits from scratch and navy beans. I found it to be flat, empty.

  My fingers stiffly clenched my sides, grabbing onto skin with each thrust and releasing with each retraction. Then, I lifted my head from the bed, wanting to see what was causing so much pain—hoping I could find a remedy if I could see what the problem was. Then I saw him, disappearing into me. I’d only seen a penis when Momma made Champ, Dathan, and me take baths together in order to conserve water, but I’d never seen anything as dark and ugly as what was going in and out of me. I worried it would turn the bottom half of me black and everybody would know how bad of a girl I was.

  I was too afraid to cry tears, so I cried in my mind. I went back to a time when my cousin Tedren had taken me to a mall and decided to go up the escalators instead of the stairs. Somehow, I separated from her, but I saw myself as I stood, afraid of the moving stairs while she waited for me at the top. I, at the bottom, was too afraid to take that first step. I remember her looking down at me, clapping her hands, telling me it was safe. But all I could see were those silver, moving stairs swallowing me whole. So, I stood there and cried out with every ounce of fire I had until she came back down, picked me up, and took me safely up the stairs. Those tears stained my cheeks long after we left the mall, so I had no doubt there were enough to spare for the tears I could not cry while Pee Wee was on top of me.

  Pee Wee’s rhythm began to quicken and his breathing turned from intermittent grunts to long huffs every few seconds. Soon after, I went numb, unable to feel my hands, my feet, and anything in between. Suddenly, he lay completely limp on me and the feeling slowly returned to my body. I felt his sweat, his heat, latent against the inside of my thigh. He rolled off of me like a leech swollen with blood and lay flat on his back. Pee Wee then turned his eyes to me and looked right into mine. “Don’t forget what I told you,” he said, “If you don’t want your Momma dead, then you better not tell anybody.”

  He didn’t have to warn me again. I knew telling would only mean bad things for me. “Now go into the bathroom and pee,” he said.

  I was so grateful to be ou
t of Momma’s room, so afraid I would have to go back, that I forced urine out of me as quickly as my bladder would allow and wiped from front to back as Momma had always instructed me to. I felt a void, an absence of flesh in the middle of me, even though I saw red tears trickling onto the surface of the water. I wiped again, front to back, and then again, front to back, until the red trickles ceased.

  By the time I left the bathroom, Pee Wee was on the loveseat, watching television. His legs were in their usual position, draped along the arm of the chair and he had one hand resting on his belly, while the other one was wedged behind his neck.

  “Get me a cup of Kool-Aid, Laurie. Then you can go back outside. You can have a cup for yourself too.” I poured Pee Wee’s Kool-Aid in a glass that had a crack, which ran from the bottom of the cup to the brim. I stared at it curiously, wondering how it still had strength to hold itself together while so broken. Then I poured a cup for myself. I sat there and sipped the Kool-Aid, afraid if I gulped, I would choke. It was cold going down my throat, but it tasted saltier than it did sweet. I realized the sweet was mixing with the sweat on my upper lip, which made me think of Pee Wee’s sweat. After that, I couldn’t drink anymore. I tiptoed past Pee Wee, placed the cup on the coffee table, and found the once locked door, unlocked and slightly opened. I carefully went down the stairs and sat where the porch and the steps met. Champ and Dathan had finished their last match with Ryan and Tyler and were covered in dirt. They ran over to me on the porch, panting out words that were supposed to describe how they’d kicked Ryan’s and Tyler’s butts. Dathan spotted the red line atop my lip and asked, “Laurie, you got some Kool-Aid? I want some? How come you able to get some when it’s not lunch or dinnertime?”

  “Yeah,” Champ echoed, “How come you were able to get some?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I had no answer for what I had done, what acts had led to what I once thought was a gift. Champ then began making his way up the stairs, “I’m gonna ask Pee Wee can I have some, too,” he said, envy floating through his words.

  “Champ, you don’t want to do that,” I said, afraid Pee Wee would think I had told and Champ possibly wanted the same thing I had gotten.

  “Why not,” Champ asked, “If you got some, I can have some.”

  “Yeah,” Dathan said.

  “You don’t want it, Champ. It’s not even good. It tastes like it has salt in it, like he mixed it with salt instead of sugar. I put most of mine back. So, don’t ask him for any ’cause he’s gonna get mad if he knows you know.” Champ looked at me with skepticism, but eventually turned away.

  “Man, I don’t want no Kool-Aid anyway. Dathan, let’s go over to Ryan and Tyler’s and see if they mixed anymore of their daddy’s beer with Kool-Aid. Maybe they’ll give us some this time.” Both Dathan and Champ hopped off of the porch and made their way to the Wozniaks’ house. I, again, was alone.

  The sun shone so brightly, I could barely open my eyes. I felt as if I were burning, even though there was a small breeze caressing my skin. I sat on the porch and looked out at the cars zooming on the interstate. The reds, the blues, and the greens were all a blur. I wondered about the people in the cars and if some of them held the same secret I now held. I wondered if their worlds allowed people like me to live in them despite the awful thing I had just done. I thought about Pee Wee upstairs on the couch, gulping down the Kool-Aid, tasting every grain of sugar. I wanted nothing more than to be away from him, riding in one of those cars, transformed into a red, green, or blue blur. But I knew that could not be. There wasn’t a car big enough to carry my family and the secret I now owned. So, I sat on the porch and looked at the black oak, waving in the wind, strong, tall, solid. The opposite of me.

  Learning Curve

  There’s a learning curve to being a victim. It’s not something most people know how to immediately do well. Just as the first time a child sets out to ride a bike and her feet search for ground, there is a yearning for balance, a straggling between the lines of victimhood and survival. The abuse continued, but life happened in between. Pee Wee no longer had to threaten me. He could smell my fear whenever he hugged Momma or picked up Mary.

  After the first time, I knew exactly what would happen when Momma left the house. And when it didn’t happen, I wondered what was wrong, what had hindered him from calling me into the room and “doing his thing.” It was on those days fear set in. If he wasn’t doing it to me, whom was he doing it to? I started watching Champ and Dathan, praying I wouldn’t see the same haze in their eyes I imagined everyone saw in mine.

  On the days it did happen, I lay still, soaked in Pee Wee’s sweat, counting the birds that flew by the window, counting the pumps of his pelvis. I sometimes pondered what Momma was doing at work and if she was thinking about me. I wondered if she’d cook biscuits that night, and how I needed to work on my dough-rolling technique. I wondered when it would be over and then I wondered when it would happen again.

  As life grew from day to day, month to month, I learned my mind didn’t have to reside where my body did. If I tried hard enough, thought hard enough, there were other places in the world I could be. Like on Virginia Beach, sitting in the sand with Momma, watching her hair blowing in the wind and her flat stomach pressed against the front of her bathing suit. I wondered how we’d all fit in there, whether there was enough of her left inside after we left her body. I’d see Momma take two of our hands and then instruct the others to do the same. She’d take all four of us, all of her kids, and walk us into the ocean, letting the waves beat at our feet, then our knees, then our waists. The sun would shine so heavily on our backs and shoulders we’d retreat farther into the water, thwarting its attempts at burning flesh. We’d form a small circle, allowing the water to make us all one body, and we’d drift together, unafraid of the vast sea, keeping each other afloat.

  On good days, I could make an image like that last from beginning to end. On not-so-good days, I was jolted out of my dreams and hurled back into a moment of stabbing pulses, splitting me like a nut. On those days, I felt everything, the softness of the bed as Pee Wee pushed me deeper and deeper into it, the saltiness of the sweat that dripped from his chest to my lips. I heard the panting from deep inside of him, smothering me with its weight. On those days I panicked. I feared I’d never feel, smell, taste, or hear anything else again.

  One night Momma agreed to let us put our mattress on the living room floor because Charlie Brown was coming on television and we kids had been celebrating since we’d seen the commercial. While Mary and I jumped around the room singing about Charlie Brown’s big head, Champ was trying to kick an invisible football. He kept falling on his butt, which caused all of us to grab our bellies and laugh. Just before the show came on, there was a hard knock at the door, one that made us scurry into Momma’s room where safety was supposed to be guaranteed. Momma had also heard the knock and quickly put on her robe, making her way to the door. Champ, Dathan, and I stood peeping out of her bedroom door, ready to pounce, but just as happy to remain in the quiet of the room. Momma opened the door and two policemen were standing there with hands on guns and scowls on their faces.

  “Ma’am,” one of them said. “Is Louis Thomas Carr here?”

  “No,” Momma replied, “I haven’t seen him.”

  “We have this as his address and it’s imperative we locate him.”

  Momma asked, “What’s wrong? Maybe if I know what’s wrong, I can get a message to him.”

  “We can’t share that with you, but I can say it’s extremely important we find him.”

  “Well, when I see him, I’ll be sure to call the police.” Momma softly pushed the door closed and then erupted into action. I couldn’t understand what was going on, but she was going through all of the papers in the living room, leaving whatever popped out of the drawer on the floor. Her hands moved so fast I could barely see them. She then went into her bedroom and combed through her junk drawer, which was filled with miscellaneous papers. Momma found what she was loo
king for and rushed to the door.

  “Champ and Laurie, watch the kids. I’ll be right back,” she said as she rushed out of the door. Champ and I stared at each other, looking for understanding in each other’s eyes. We sat alone for about ten minutes, watching the blue and red lights dancing around the walls of the living room. Momma came back in the house and ordered us to get on the mattress and turn off the television. There would be no Charlie Brown for us that night. Mrs. Walker, our next door neighbor, came back with Momma and tried to cajole us to sleep as Momma paced from room to room.

  Mrs. Walker was at least twenty years older than Momma and each line in her face and forehead proved that. She had a daughter, Towana, who was about six years older than me. I wasn’t fond of her because she liked pulling on the billowy ponytails Momma put on the top of my head and calling them “doo doo balls.” This angered me, but I’d then joke on the fact that her momma straightened her hair with old chicken grease and that’s why she was bald headed. Towana came over after her mother and sat with us. Mrs. Walker went into the kitchen with Momma where I heard hiccupping cries escaping Momma’s mouth. I began to cry too and the rest of my siblings followed. Towana whispered into my ear with a quietness she’d never had before:

  “It’s okay, Laurie. Your Momma’s okay.”

  “But, what’s wrong?” I asked. “What’s happening?” Towana looked over to the kitchen, making sure Momma and her mother couldn’t hear.

  “The police are looking for Pee Wee because they say that he grabbed a girl and tried to do the nasty to her.” I heard Momma pleading with Mrs. Walker in the other room.

  Towana continued, “They said he tried to kill the girl and threw her in a dumpster. He’s going to be in so much trouble when they find him.”

  I couldn’t believe Towana’s words, but I also couldn’t believe how conflicted I was about the news. I had so many questions gnawing at my mind: Would he go to jail? Would Momma be okay? Could he have really tried to kill a girl? Maybe she had talked when he told her not to. I was happy I hadn’t.