My My Little Prince

by Rod Lacy Rod Lacy

  He always made promises that he never kept, so I never expected we would really go. We went that day though. Mom went too. I love that park. It’s near the beach; lots of swings and people everywhere having fun; families all laughing and playing in the sand.

  I loved the sand too. I could sit for hours and make castles and watch the waves wash them away. It was magical for me. To see the waves wash away all the sand was like washing away all the problems and starting over, again and again.

  It seemed so easy. If you did not like what you had built, just call to the waves and you could start again, but this time bigger and better. It was a beautiful time of the year.

  Dad continued drinking and finally stood up. He gave a look like he was angry at my mom about something she had done.

  I didn’t care. I was dreaming about the waves and happy people. I tried not to listen to them, but they got louder and louder. I went into my world. I suppressed his anger; smothered it with hope. Castles in the air for me or the sand anyway.

  I always hoped we would go to the park. It was so pretty there. I could pick flowers and sing with the birds. And best of all I could play in the sand.

  Dad calmed down, Mom and Dad sat and talked ... or Mom talked anyway. Dad just sat there like always, letting her walk all over him. I remember that morning because that was the day they decided to separate.

  It was a good thing Mom said. Dad just continued to drink his beer and didn’t talk the whole time we were there. I played on the swings and built sand castles and watched the waves wash them away. I was washing away the memories of that life I guess; because we were about to start another. Mom said it would be better, just like the sand castles. Better each time.

  When I woke the next morning I woke with bite marks on my arm. I was angry with Michelle. I didn’t understand. She had never hurt me before. But I forgave her. I could never hold anything against her.

  She told me I was crazy for thinking that she would bite me while I was sleeping. She wanted to prove that the marks were not hers by biting me on the other arm to compare the marks. I chickened out because I do not like pain. Pain hurts and I only want to feel good. I hate pain. I´d do most anything to avoid pain.

  I asked Michelle what it meant to get a divorce and she said “We will not be seeing daddy much now, he is going to move to a different house.” She shrugged and said, ¨maybe he will call us when he is not drunk.¨

  My mother said, “It will be better; we will move to a smaller house and start a new life.” I wanted to cry but no tears came. I almost felt better. It was a strange feeling. sad and happy at once. Almost like two people inside me begging to be heard.

  I felt confused until I started playing a game in my head. I would let my happy side build the perfect castle in the sand and then, it would never last so I’d let my sad side wash over it and cleanse it away. It passed the time until I would fall asleep. I played my sand castle game to myself whenever I was confused. I was confused a lot as a child. As I got older I figured out my situations easier. I understood everything as I got older. I could control everything. I learned.

  My Mom said we would move and we did. It was not into a nice house like she promised. But at least the fighting stopped. That was good. I played my game less often.

  The house was bad. I hated the color of the walls. Ugly dark blue with grease stains. I wanted pretty light blue with clouds. Mom said it would just be for a little while.

  But it wasn’t.

  5

  Years earlier the job Evon had for years wasn’t much. She worked in a small curiosity shop on Merritt Island, just a few blocks from the mall there. It allowed her to meet lots of men that live in the area though; rich men. She was still pretty then, so over the years she met many men. But, none wanted to be with her for more than a short time. As pretty as she was, it’s hard to be with someone who thinks she is smarter than she is, and never afraid to let you know. She was overbearing, a one-woman stampede.

  That is until she met Smitty. He was different. After their first date she told Sherine and Michelle, “This one’s the one, girls. As soon as I seen him I said to myself ‘Grab on to that one Evon, he’s the one!’” She spent most of her spare time with him. They never went to his house and that seemed weird to Sherine.

  Evon would tell them that someday they’d move to a big house on the water and have Smitty as their new dad. That scared Sherine a little so she played her game. She went into her world where everything was fine. She fantasized and her happy side told herself, “our new dad will be handsome. He will love us and take us places we have never seen and we will all be so happy.”

  That was the opposite of what her sad side told her. Her sad side said that he would be mean and spend all his time with Evon. It told her she would not get any attention; no love. The waves crashed.

  Sherine and Michelle’s father never called much and when he did he rarely ever talked to the girls. Sherine struggled with this. “What did I do wrong? Why does he reject me?” she wondered to herself. She cried and blubbered “I’m sorry Daddy!”

  So, that’s the way it was, he seldom called, but when he did, Evon would usually end up hanging up on him. Then she’d sit and stare at nothing for hours. If she did call him once in a while, it was only to bitch him out. Once Sherine heard her say, “If you don’t pay for your daughter’s school clothes you will never see them again, I’ll make sure of that!” She was always so loud. She slammed the phone and cried.

  At first, Sherine would try to soothe her. “It will be OK Mom, we don´t need Dad. He´s always drunk anyway.” On those nights she built castles for hours before dozing off to dreamland. Dad disappeared after that. It just seemed that one day, he was no longer there.

  Sherine remembered when her mom met Smitty. One day they didn’t have school and they had visited the store for the afternoon. Evon was talking to a tall man. He was slim and very good looking.

  Evon was extremely pretty too and she could attract the attention of any man if she wanted. She had long golden hair, and a good figure. She was smiling and giggling as he was talking. Sherine heard her say to him as she reached across the glass counter and stroked his arm, “OK, I´ll meet you, but just for coffee.”

  He laughed too. He turned and saw Sherine sitting in the corner. He turned back and winked at Evon, “Now who is this gorgeous little creature?” His smile was so bright and his eyes so penetrating that Sherine stopped swinging her legs for a minute and brazenly looked back up at him.

  “I’m Sherine” she told him and slid off the counter and held out a small hand.

  “Well aren’t you just about the prettiest girl I’ve seen in a long-long time?” He took her hand in both of his and knelt down to look her in her eyes. Sherine was mesmerized and could only smile up at him, twisting a pale blond tress in her slender fingers.

  Sherine tried to memorize a poem she had seen in one of the books in the store. It was about a pretty girl that had special powers. She could make the sun shine on a rainy day. It was so pretty. She had to leave before she could memorize all of it. But she did remember it started by saying, “Even on a cloudy day, if one looks between the mists high in the sky you can see the shimmer of God’s eye.” After that all she remembered was something about rain drops are tears from heaven that are sent to us ... .

  Later, Evon talked incessantly about the man she had met. His name was Michael, but ‘everyone’ called him Smitty. She and Smitty spent a lot of time together and, as Sherine had worried, her mom had less time for her. Sherine and Michelle were always together whenever they weren’t in school; or at least when Michelle was not sneaking off to see boys.

  It was not long before Smitty moved in. One day, he was just there, toothbrush in the bathroom and dirty underwear in with their laundry.

  Michelle told Sherine right after he moved in, “he is evil! He only brought those gifts because he knew that Mom would fall in love with him if he was nice to us.” Sherine liked the gifts and the attention Smitty ga
ve to her. She did not really remember her father much. Michelle missed their father more than Sherine. She had known him longer; before Evon’s constant browbeating drove him to drink so much. She was older and remembered the better days. “He was not always a drunk, Sher; only during the last couple years mom and he were married.”

  When Smitty was with Sherine he would whisper in her ear, “oh Sherine, my little princess … .” That was his private name for her. He always whispered it and never repeated it to anyone else. He said to her “it’s our little secret name my little princess; only ours.” She thought he meant it. She thought she was special.

  She hated it even more when he would tuck her in for the night, then leave and go into Evon’s room.

  Smitty often took all of them to dinner and Evon would always tell the girls to thank him. “Tell him how much we enjoyed the food and appreciate his help girls.” Even at this young age, Sherine knew he was paying the bills. She understood that that made Evon happier, so she kept to herself and did as she was told to.

  Michelle brought Spinner home one day; her new boyfriend. Evon hated him immediately. He was about eight or ten years older, dressed bad and did not have a job. She said to Sherine, “I do not know what to do Sher. That sister of yours is not listening to me and I will not have her act like this.” Sherine kept her mouth shut.

  As the months passed, Michelle’s time with Sherine grew less and less. All she could talk about was Spinner and his friends. At times he and his friends would drive by their house on their motorcycles and do circles on the yard. He would make so much noise that the neighbors would call and complain. Evon would tell them that she would stop the noise, but she never did; never could.

  Once the old man next door stepped outside and started yelling at Spinner. Spinner told him to shut up and mind his own business or he would come over there and shove his fist down his throat. Spinner and two of his friends drove over to his yard and tore up some of the lawn. The old man ran into his house and never came back out.

  Smitty always acted as if he actually cared about the girls. Sherine loved the attention. She began to crave the attention although it was not often and very sporadic. Evon seemed to always interrupt the few times she actually had with Smitty.

  Sherine cried herself to sleep many nights, especially when Smitty said good night to her and then retired in the master bedroom with Evon. She dreamed that she would tie him up so he would never leave. She knew it would never happen, but she also knew that someday she would get him all to herself and be able to do whatever she wanted with him. She made it happen with every castle she built.

  She sank back into her game. She let her happy side tell her all about what it would be like when he was all hers. The castles grew more and more majestic. But her sad side told her that he was dangerous, like Michelle says, very very frightfully dangerous. “He may even kill me,” she thought, and somehow even that thought soothed her. “He scares me.”

  “He pretends to protect us,” she continued. He would say, “I don´t want you girls here alone. This is a bad area of town and I would feel terrible if anything would happen to you.”

  That was his excuse so he could be alone with them during the day when Evon would go to work. He manipulated them in many ways. He brought books to read. He said they should read and not go outside. Michelle said he had no right to tell us that we could not go outside. All the other kids could go outside. Since Michelle was older she would not listen to him at times and she would do what she wanted. That left Sherine and Smitty alone. Then, he was with her only. Mom was not there. They would spend hours together. Only at these times would he seem to let his guard down, would seem to relax although she knew he had an agenda hidden within his mind that she wanted to know and maybe even understand.

  One day they all went to see where Smitty worked - or where he said he worked. He always seemed to have money but never really had a work schedule. He would leave often only to return when Evon was at work. He told us to never tell mom he had left work early. Sherine thought that they went to see his work place was because her mom wondered if he really had a job.

  She heard her asking him once about his work and it sounded to her like he was not telling her the truth. Sherine could hear her mom tell Michelle many times that he always had money but never seemed to have a real job. “Do you want to see where I work,” he screamed at her once.

  “We´d love to!” a disbelieving Evon said as she slammed the door behind her on her way to work one day.

  “Then let’s go tomorrow,” he screamed behind her. Michelle did not want to go. She never wanted to go anywhere with Smitty. She wanted to see Spinner and that was all.

  The next day Smitty said, “Get in the car girls.” He told them, “we’re going for a ride by the beach. We’ll have lunch and then I´ll show you where I work. Remember,” he continued, “it´s very secret, I work for the government.”

  “Ok!” Sherine said. She felt like she was with James Bond. She had seen some of the movies, and she felt important and sneaky because Smitty had told her he was a spy.

  They drove to the beach and Sherine thought, as always, that it was beautiful. “Wow, I want to make sand castles like I did when I was little,” she begged. It seemed like it had been a lifetime since she had done that.

  “Go on, have fun baby.” Mom and Smitty said at the same time. She thought “I bet I can build a big one now, so big that the waves will not wash it away.”

  She dug and dug and she built defensive walls, and moats, but the waves still came and washed her castle away. The more she dug the bigger the waves got. She did not understand about the tides then. She just thought it was her sad side telling her something. “My happy side never spoke,” she cried.

  Evon said, “Hey, what’s all this? Let’s have some lunch now and stop all this nonsense.” She said, “where do you want to eat hon? Smitty said anywhere was fine.”

  “Let’s go to that little deli behind your store Mom,” Michelle said immediately. She grabbed her towel and headed for the car, tugging on Evon’s arm.

  “If that will make you happy that’s fine with me.” She laughed. She pulled her arm back and began throwing things in their large beach bag. Smitty stood and pulled a tight t-shirt over his muscular torso. He looked down at Sherine and mimed for her approval.

  Sherine wiped her eyes with a sandy hand, “I´d like that, I want the biggest roast beef sandwich they have with a huge pickle and ice cream, I want ice cream.”

  They went to eat together and afterwards Smitty took them to his workplace. “Ok, here we are, that’s my workplace,” Smitty pointed as he put the Jeep in park. They had driven for a long time before they finally stopped in front of a large building. Sherine remembered it had said something about COMMUNICATIONS. “Top secret girls, otherwise we could go in,” Smitty said and winked at Sherine. Michelle mumbled, “yea, top secret.” They were less than impressed. It looked like a big ugly building to them, with no trees. Hot and ugly.

  After that day, they went to the beach pretty often. She did love going to the beach with Smitty. It was probably the best thing she liked to do with him, maybe the only thing. Smitty was always happy and calm there and Michelle and Evon enjoyed watching the men in their tight bathing suites. Michelle told her “most of the men that wear the tight suites are gay you know.” Sherine had to ask her what that meant and was told that they like men and not women. She was also told that some of the girls there like women and that they kiss girls. She remembered kissing Michelle one time, years ago. She liked that. “Maybe I´m gay,” she thought.

  As the girls got a little older, Smitty would take them to the billiards hall a few blocks from the house. When they were good, or on a Saturday afternoon when they had finished cleaning the house they would all load up and go. He never allowed them near it unless he was with them though. He said there were too many drug dealers near there and that they could get hurt. Many times Evon would come too. She loved to watch them shoot pool. Sm
itty was pretty good and he enjoyed teaching them, especially Sherine. He would wrap his arm around her and hug her. They’d laugh together as Smitty whispered in her ear. “my little Princess.” Evon just smiled and sipped her beer.

  She did not drink much, but at the pool hall she seemed to like beer more. Maybe it calmed her down a bit. Smitty was a good teacher. He showed Sherine how to reach almost all the way across the table to hit the cue ball. He would stand behind her and tell her to lean into it. “Lean more; come on, hit that ball … that a girl,” As she would stand up after her shot he would place his hands on her shoulders and tell her that he thought she was a natural. It made her feel wonderful. As she got older she could see the men in the hall going way out of their way to stand or sit behind her as she leaned into her shots. She sensed their lust and she loved it.

  She had watched her mom manipulate men many times over the years and often when Smitty was not with them. She grew bolder and she began to experiment. She learned quickly what men wanted, after all, it was no big secret. A couple times she even picked out a man who was with his wife. She would deliberately lean way over and catch his eye and to see if she could control him.

  It was like magic. Every time, whether the man was old, young, single or married, she could control his thoughts. Her mom had shown her it could be done, and she and Smitty showed her how. She was lethal. Every movement oozed sexuality. She was learning how to control men and get what she wanted, “just like mom,” she thought.