Deliver Me From Evil

by Mary Monroe

  Maria and Denise looked at each other, then at me. They shrugged their shoulders at the same time. “We do it because everybody else is doing it,” Denise said with a heavy sigh. That was one of the reasons I did it when I did.

  Not only was sex with Wade the first time painful, but it looked downright ridiculous. That was bad enough. But the way that he behaved during the few minutes that it took to get it over with—yelling, making faces, and humping like a mechanical bull—you would have thought that it was painful for him, too.

  After Wade had what I thought was some kind of spasm, the way he started jerking and hollering even louder and slamming into me, he gave me a few sloppy kisses and told me what a good piece of pussy I was.

  My jaw dropped open, and it took me a few moments to compose myself enough to speak again. “What happened?” I asked.

  “What do you mean by that? Don’t you know?”

  “Uh, I thought you was, like, dying or having a heart attack or a stroke or something.”

  Wade chuckled and tapped the side of my head. “I came. I got my nut.”

  “Oh,” I mumbled.

  “Didn’t you get yours?” He sounded disappointed.

  “Uh-huh. I got mine, too. You really know how to do it ….”

  He belched and then let out a loud breath. “I know. That’s why these damn girls won’t leave me the hell alone. They get some good sex, and they just about go crazy. Following me around and shit ….”

  “I know what you mean,” I managed. I didn’t have the nerve to tell this boy that I’d had better sex with a pillow than I’d had with him.

  After he let out a few more belches and a couple of farts, he just lay there on top of me, breathing loud through his mouth. His body jerked a few more times. Once Wade returned to his senses, he leapt off the mattress and turned on me like a snake. Not only was he mad because I’d made him forget about some ball game, but he cussed me out for getting blood on his mama’s sheets, too.

  “Oh shit! Damn you, girl! I done missed my basketball game! And, you are going to get me in all kinds of trouble with my mama! Look at all that goddamn blood on them sheets!” he screamed, struggling to zip his pants. “Go home and take a douche!” He gave me a sharp look, and then he laughed. He laughed like I was the biggest joke he’d ever seen.

  To this day I can still feel the sting of those words. Knowing that he’d been amusing himself at my expense didn’t make it feel any better. That day, I knew that I’d have to figure out a way to put men in a place in my life where they did me the most good. It was the first goal that I’d set for myself. But I had still managed to smile at Wade after his outburst.

  “All girls bleed the first time. Didn’t you know that?” I said, sliding back into my panties.

  “Huh? Yeah, I knew that. But not the girls I been with!” he clucked.

  “Do you mean to tell me that I’m your first virgin?” I asked, feeling more special than I thought I would.

  Wade shifted his eyes, then gave me a thoughtful look. “Uh, yeah.” His voice had softened. He even smiled as he sat down next to me on the messy mattress. “You ain’t never done it before? You let me be the first?” he asked, with a proud look on his face.

  I nodded, giving him a shy look.

  “It was kind of good, huh? I think we should do it again. Spread open them legs,” he ordered, glancing at a clock with a Mickey Mouse face on the wall facing his bed. “Hurry up!”

  “Do we have time? What about your mama? What about your basketball game?”

  “My mama is at the nail shop. And that game is over with,” he said, tugging at my panties.

  “It still hurts,” I confessed, making a face and rubbing my crotch. I slapped his hand away.

  “Oh, that’s right. Okay, then,” he muttered, clearly disappointed. He perked up almost immediately. “Suck my dick then,” he suggested, with a shrug, licking his lips.

  I shuddered and made another face. “I never done that before,” I whimpered. Despite what my girls had told me, and what I’d seen in some of the nasty magazines they’d shared with me, sucking dick didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t want anything to go into my mouth that I couldn’t swallow, and I told him so.

  Wade talked me into doing it, anyway. He talked the whole time I was down there between his thighs, my head bobbing up and down like a cork. He told me which way to do it, and which way not to do it. Except for sore cheeks, I wasn’t getting a damn thing out of this dog and pony show. But I did everything I could to keep Wade from realizing that. I grinned like a joker when he squirted everything he had into my mouth. It was the most disgusting thing that had ever happened to me.

  While Wade was on his back, hanging off the mattress, breathing through his mouth hard enough to blow out a burning bush, I was quietly spitting his juices onto the floor. Then I swiped my lips with the corner of the sheet, wondering what I had got myself into.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Mama, I’m home,” I yelled tentatively, letting myself in the front door of the second-floor apartment we lived in on Prince Street, in a big, brooding beige building facing another building that looked just like it. There was nothing but plain-looking apartment buildings on our block. From the outside, most of the buildings looked presentable. Some even had an orange, a lemon, or a palm tree or two. But in some, where the stairwells had no lights and the halls that separated the units were so eerie, you could hear the wind howling through cracks you couldn’t see. There was also a sense of despair that seemed to cover our building like a shroud. Some days I got depressed as soon as I opened the front door.

  But not today.

  My neighborhood was located near Shattuck, Telegraph, and Alcatraz, three of the most well-known streets in Berkeley. Shattuck contained a lot of business offices, our main library, and several restaurants and movie theaters.

  Berkeley was still one of the most prestigious college towns in the country, despite that ruckus that the hippies and the demonstrators had caused during the sixties. And, a lot of those activities had occurred on Telegraph and Alcatraz years before my mother brought me into the world, after enduring forty-eight hours of labor.

  Things were fairly quiet in Berkeley now. But the city still had a dark side that could not be ignored. There were a lot of crimes committed on our street, often in broad daylight. Just last week a man down the street had been attacked and robbed in his own garage in broad daylight by two men in ski masks. The thieves had made off with the man’s wallet, his watch, his briefcase, and his new shoes.

  I’d been lucky, so far. I had managed to avoid the pedophiles and other garden-variety thugs that had given our part of Prince Street such a bad name.

  Before I’d left Wade’s house, I’d rinsed out my mouth with warm, salty water, but I could still taste him. Wade had cooled me off, but my crotch still felt like it was on fire. That didn’t bother me half as much as the turmoil that was going on in my mouth. I wondered what kind of nasty-ass motherfucker had dreamed up oral sex!

  Even though where I lived sometimes depressed me, I was glad to be home. This was the only place in the world where I knew I could hide not only myself, but my feelings, too. My parents didn’t bother me, and I didn’t bother them.

  I didn’t know what it looked like inside the other three units in our building, but ours was pretty dull. We had dreary plaid furniture that didn’t match, a goose-necked lamp with a 40-watt lightbulb in a corner in the living room, roach paste on the walls in every room, and carpets so thin, you could see the hardwood floor beneath.

  I peeked into the living room, where my mother and my father were watching reruns of old television shows from the fifties on a nineteen-inch black-and-white TV.

  “Mama, Miss Louise wasn’t home, but I left her roasting pan and the money she wanted to borrow with her son. You remember Wade? He’s a nice boy,” I said, grinning. I had gargled so hard with the salt water and rubbed my lips so hard, they were numb. And, my throat was so dry, it ached when I swallowed.
/>   “Did you shut that front door?” my father asked, not even turning around to face me. From the back, Daddy’s head looked like a large peanut, and the front of his head didn’t look too much better. Daddy had never been a handsome man. At least not that I could remember. His looks had slid even further down the drain. He looked like a hound dog, and I didn’t know when that had happened, because the last time I took a long look at him, he’d looked all right to me. Unfortunately, Mama was the female version of Daddy. They had been together so long, they now looked alike. As a matter of fact, they’d always looked alike as far back as I could remember. They both had nut brown skin and large, sad, droopy black eyes that looked like they’d just been carelessly dug into their long, narrow faces. Mama and Daddy even had the same kinky gray hair, which they covered in stocking caps every night, when they went to bed.

  “Yes, sir. I did shut the door. And, I would have been back home sooner, but I ran into some girls from my gym class,” I volunteered.

  It had only taken a few more minutes of my time for me to suck Wade’s dick long and hard enough for him to come. But he’d enjoyed it so much, he invited me to stay with him and cuddle on the bed for a little while so he could share his thoughts with me. He made some popcorn and split the last Pepsi in his mama’s refrigerator with me.

  “I don’t tell too many people, because they make fun of me when I do, but I am going to be a big movie and television star some day,” he told me, with his arm around my shoulder, as we lay on the bed. “I play a lot of sports to get in shape so I can do my own stunts when the time comes.” The smile on his face was contagious.

  It pleased me to know that he was ambitious. I smiled, even though there was popcorn stuck to the roof of my mouth. Of all the junk food at my disposal, popcorn was one thing that I didn’t care much about. But in this case, I ate it, anyway, even though half of it was still unpopped, because it seemed to please Wade.

  “Let me get you some more popcorn,” he offered, rising.

  “That’s all right,” I said fast and loud, holding up my hand. “I’m not that hungry.”

  He lay back down, tilted his head to the side, and gave me a guarded look.

  “Uh, why would somebody laugh about you wanting to be a star?” I asked.

  “You know how these kids around here be tripping. They think acting is sissified,” Wade said, with an angry tone in his voice. “Same as hairdressing and ballet dancing. They think any dude that do shit like that gots to be a fag.”

  “Do these same kids go to the movies?” I asked, sipping from the can of Pepsi, which I didn’t care that much for, either. This one had an odd taste. I glanced at the side of the can, not surprised to see that the soda was diet. I drank some more, anyway, because it helped rinse the taste of Wade’s juices and that half-cooked popcorn out of my mouth.

  “You know they do,” Wade said, rising up enough so that he could look at my face. The expression on his face told me that he was wondering where I was going with my end of this conversation. “What’s your point?”

  “Well, Al Pacino and all the rest of those big stars had to start somewhere. I bet the kids in their neighborhoods didn’t make fun of them when they first started talking about going to Hollywood. And, what about those real mucho macho stars, like Sylvester Stallone and Clint Eastwood? Nobody in their right mind would call them sissies.”

  Wade gave me a thoughtful look. “Shit,” he said in a low voice. He smiled and blinked twice, looking at me like I had just revealed the secrets of the universe. “Girl, I never even thought about things like that. Them big stars did have to start somewhere. They had to tell their relatives and friends what they wanted to do. You don’t think I’m talking crazy?”

  “No, I don’t think you are talking crazy. I think it’s cute that you want to be a big star,” I said, caressing Wade’s face. That was not what he wanted to hear.

  “Fuck you, bitch!” he screamed through clenched teeth.

  “What?” I managed. My mouth dropped open and stayed that way as I watched Wade’s face turn into one of the most frightening things I ever saw. His gray eyes looked black and evil. Both of his cheeks twitched, and for a minute, his nose looked like it was going to wiggle right off his face.

  “What’s wrong with you, girl?” he roared, pushing my hand away.

  “What did I say?” I gasped, surprised and frightened.

  “Cute? You think what I want to do with my life is cute? Winnie the Pooh is cute. A poodle in a dress is what you call cute! I ain’t going down to Hollywood to do no Disney movies or Sesame Street or nothing like that. I want to be taken serious. You understand?”

  “I understand,” I muttered. I was glad when Wade laid his head back down. “Uh, do you want me to go now?”

  He rubbed his chin, sighed, and shook his head. “Naw,” he said, waving his hand. “You can stay, but just watch what you say to me from now on. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” I muttered, my head bowed like a puppy.

  Wade cleared his throat. “You know what? I do kinda like you, Christine. You are cute—uh, not cute—you are a real fly girl. Turn over here so I can lick your pussy.”

  “Huh?”

  “This old, funky college girl that I hang with, she told me that most women like getting licked better than they like getting fucked. She showed me how to do it real good.”

  “What about the blood down there on me?”

  Wade let out a sharp laugh and made a face like he was in pain again.

  “Damn! I forgot about that,” he hollered, slapping the side of his face with the palm of his hand. “Well, I’ll do it some other time when you ain’t bleeding. But guess what? I wouldn’t mind having my dick sucked again before you go home.”

  “What you got to be smiling about?” Mama asked, bringing me back to the present.

  “Nothing,” I mumbled, my eyes on the floor.

  I could not imagine what my parents, especially my mother, would say if they knew what I’d done with Wade. As a family, we rarely talked among ourselves, anyway, about anything. I never knew what they were thinking and vice versa. Sometimes it seemed like I lived with mute strangers. Sex was a subject that was never discussed in our house. As a matter of fact, the closest that my mother ever came to discussing sex in my presence was to tell me about all of the difficulties she’d endured to bring me into the world, always including the fact that she’d had such a hard life that she’d never wanted a child in the first place. She always made the forty-eight hours of labor, loss of blood, and extreme pain sound like it was something that I had caused on purpose. And, each time I ended up apologizing to her for being born. It was one thing to know that I’d been a “mistake.” But that didn’t stop me from making enough mistakes of my own along the way. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but Wade would turn out to be the biggest mistake I’d ever make in my life.

  CHAPTER 15

  I dreamed about Wade that night, lying naked on his back in a field of roses, beckoning me with his dick. I woke up with my face glazed with sweat, a pillow clamped between my thighs, and a wicked smile on my lips. I couldn’t wait to see him again.

  I didn’t care if we had sex again or not. The more I thought about that, it wasn’t such a big deal, anyway. I had more fun with a pillow between my legs. But pillows couldn’t talk or do other things to a girl that a boy could do. I liked lying in Wade’s arms and talking to him. He was one of the few people who actually listened to what I had to say. I knew boys who liked to feel me up and down for hours on end, and a minute later they couldn’t remember a single thing I’d said.

  I went to Wade’s house three times after school the following week. But the only person I’d been able to see was his mother. Each time she told me that Wade was out with his friends. On the third day, I got bold enough to ask her exactly where he was with his friends. Miss Louise was a mean old woman, at least to most of the kids in the neighborhood. When she caught kids stealing oranges off the tree in her front yard,
she chased them with a broom.

  She had gray eyes like Wade, and she had a pretty face for a woman her age. But she wore a wig that was so fake looking, it looked like it belonged on a rag doll. She wore clothes that looked like they belonged on a female my age, so not too many people took her seriously. I sure didn’t, but I treated her with respect because she had something I wanted: her son. And, I had something she wanted: money. Not much. Sometimes less than a dollar. But Miss Louise was the kind of moocher who would take candy from a baby. My parents always broke her off a twenty or a fifty loan at least four or five times a month, so she was fairly nice to me.

  “Christine, you are going to worry me to death over that boy of mine. Now if he wanted to see you, don’t you think he’d let you know that?” Miss Louise told me, giving her wig a strong tug. “What do you want with him, anyway?”

  “Uh, I just wanted to talk to him. He told me about his plans to go to Hollywood,” I said in a cheerful voice.

  “Oh?” Miss Louise said, fanning her hand out like she wanted to make sure I saw she’d just gotten her nails done. She stepped out onto the lopsided wraparound porch hugging the front of her house like an ill-fitted bra.

  “He’s going to be a real big star one day. I told him so to his face,” I added, pleased to see that she was feeling more cordial. A smile from her, even to me, went a long way.

  “He sure enough is, baby. And I know my boy. He won’t forget the folks who was there for him on his way up. I am sure he appreciates your encouragement and support.” Miss Louise sniffed, patting her chest.

  Miss Louise was a strange woman. She had a lot of relatives in the area, but the way she talked about Wade, you would have thought that he was the only one she had left. I didn’t know much about Wade’s father other than Miss Louise’s claim that he was a “low-down, funky black dog.” Miss Louise was a waitress, and she had a few men friends here and there, but she still couldn’t make ends meet without borrowing money. But even though she struggled to make ends meet, she had some expensive habits. She liked designer clothes and fancy restaurants, not to mention the extravagant things that filled her shabby house. Like a big-screen television set, state-of-the-art computer equipment, and leather furniture, which she liked to replace ever other year.