Satan's Sisters

by Star Jones

  Heather was so blown away by what she had read that she had to put the book down. She knew exactly where this was heading and she couldn’t believe it—the black father of Missy’s child was her lover, not her rapist? Heather shook her head, confused and stunned by the revelation. How could Missy have let this whole thing spin so out of control? She let a man go to prison to cover up her story? Heather was furious at Missy . . . how could she be so dismissive of another human being? She had to make herself calm down so that she could continue.

  After Rayford went away, everything changed for young Missy. Within six weeks, she realized she was pregnant. She was traumatized, apoplectic, dazed. She refused to eat or even get out of bed for two straight days. Her parents considered bringing her to a psychiatrist to find out what had overcome their child. After another week, while lying in bed with the television on, Missy came upon an old movie, To Kill a Mockingbird. She was desperate for an answer to her dilemma, and she was so afraid of what her parents and friends would say about Rayford and that they would call her a slut for getting pregnant. So she came up with the fateful idea that would trap her for the next fifteen years of her life. She told her parents that she had been raped by a black man while she was out riding her bike a few weeks earlier.

  Heather put the book down again. She was breathless, disbelieving that her good friend could commit such a dastardly deed. And that she had gotten away with it for so long! And what had become of Rayford? Heather took a deep breath and went back to the pages.

  Missy’s parents, eager for an explanation for her bizarre behavior, never doubted her story. Though the medical examination could find no sign of rape, it did reveal that Missy was pregnant. Finding her rapist became a top priority of the town police department. When they found a young man who fit the vague description Missy had provided, she was so caught up in her tale that after a while she almost felt like it had really happened. This allowed her to feel no remorse when she testified at the trial and saw an all-white jury convict the young man. Though it was the 1990s, this area of Alabama still hadn’t shaken the remnants of the segregated South. Her parents helped her raise her biracial child, Corey, while she graduated from the University of Alabama and then Vanderbilt Law School in Tennessee. When she moved to Atlanta to take a job with the U.S. attorney’s office, she brought Corey with her. Her startling success in the courtroom was followed by a startling rise on television, eventually leading to The Lunch Club couch. Missy was taken aback by her popularity among the nation’s Republican right; at first she was just speaking her mind, not really advocating any political causes. But her antiabortion views and her cover-girl looks were an irresistible combination.

  It was past one a.m. when Heather came upon the Maxine section of the book. She was giddy when she saw that Missy had pulled no punches in providing a blow-by-blow accounting of how Maxine had blackmailed her into leaving the show and then forced everyone around her on the cast and crew to cosign her move—people whom Missy had grown to love and consider her closest friends. It was a brutal accounting of a heartless, egomaniacal despot at work. Heather loved every word of it.

  “Yes!” Heather cried out to the beige-colored walls and ceilings of her large living room. “She got her!”

  Heather was stunned by what she read next. After Missy left The Lunch Club, she received a phone call one day that changed her life again. It was Rayford, her old boyfriend. His military career was over, his marriage had ended, and he was curious about what his first love was up to. Missy was shocked to discover that Rayford had missed all the coverage of her rape and had no idea that she had even had a child. While stationed in Asia, he happened to stumble upon The Lunch Club one day and recognized his old girlfriend. On a whim, he decided to see if he could track her down again. He said it took him a year to get a phone number for her. They had no mutual friends, but there was a guy he had befriended in the navy who was from the same hometown and went to high school with Missy. That guy eventually gave him enough contacts that he was able to find one who could provide him with Missy’s number. Rayford was living in Washington, D.C., so Missy said she’d be willing to meet him if he came to New York. Within thirty minutes, they realized that their old feelings were still strong and vibrant. They started dating and soon were professing their love for each other again. All the old passions came rushing back. They were both giddy that they had been able to do something everyone thinks about but no one is ever able to pull off: to go back to high school and recapture your first true love. But as the relationship got deeper and Rayford pressured Missy into introducing him to her son, Missy realized she would have to tell him everything. Frankly, she was surprised that Rayford hadn’t googled her by now and read the many magazine accounts of her life story.

  With her heart pounding in her chest, one day she sat Rayford down and told him the story of her life after he went into the navy. Rayford at first didn’t even want to believe it. How could the woman he loved do something so cruel, so despicable? And he was devastated when she told him that the man was still in prison. How could she even begin to try to have him freed at this late date without being publicly revealed as a fraud? But it was the last part of the story that stopped Rayford in midsentence.

  “You know I had a child,” she told him. “Well, I told everyone that it was the rapist’s baby, but it was yours.”

  “So wait, your son is actually my child?!” Rayford asked, wild-eyed.

  Rayford broke down in tears when Missy nodded her head. He was childless and, now in his late thirties, had been wondering if it would ever happen for him. To discover now that he had a son who was nearly a grown man was almost more than he could bear. Missy managed over the next few months to show Rayford how deeply sorry she was about everything that had transpired. And when Rayford met Corey, he fully forgave her. Despite the incredible facts of their story, the unlikeliness of it, Missy, Rayford, and Corey had somehow become a happy family. Missy and Rayford had been married now for a year and were still passionately in love. In the end, Missy said she was ashamed of many of the things she had done and said in her past, including many of her more intolerant political stances, but that she was now going to devote the rest of her life to fighting injustice and making sure that her story could never be repeated in America.

  When Heather finally put the book down on the coffee table at 3:30 a.m., she had cried so much over the past two hours that she didn’t think she would ever be able to shed another tear. She was spent, twisted into an emotional pretzel by her friend’s mind-blowing, illogical, unacceptable, unbelievable, but ultimately moving and redemptive tale. As she got up to head for her bedroom, she knew that Missy had a sure bestseller on her hands. And she was glad she had gotten behind the book. But Maxine and the rest of the Lunch Club would be devastated. Missy had told many behind-the-scenes stories of shenanigans off the set of the popular show. Many feelings would be hurt. Secrets would be revealed. Some marriages were sure to end. A few heads would certainly roll.

  AS LIZETTE MADE HER way back to her office after the Thursday morning show, she couldn’t help but notice that Karen looked distracted. She had noticed the same thing the day before, but she dismissed it. Everybody had bad days now and then. But it was unusual for Karen to look so disturbed for a second day in a row. Lizette felt she was close enough to Karen to ask her what was wrong.

  “What’s going on? Is everything all right? You are looking very, uh, distracted these days.”

  Karen stared at Lizette as if she were looking right through her.

  “Karen!” Lizette said. The volume got Karen’s attention.

  “I’m sorry, Lizette,” Karen said. She smiled sheepishly. “I guess I was off somewhere else. What did you say?”

  “I asked if anything was wrong with you, that you seem very distracted lately,” Lizette said.

  “Wow, it’s that noticeable?”

  Lizette nodded. Karen let out a slow, heavy, resigned sigh. She looked up and down the hall nervously and gestur
ed for Lizette to follow her. Lizette frowned at Karen’s odd behavior, wondering for a brief second if perhaps the director was having some kind of emotional problems. They made a few turns and wound up at Karen’s office. She motioned Lizette inside and shut the door behind them.

  “Karen, what in the world is going on?” Lizette said as she sat down.

  Karen shook her head. “I had a meeting a couple of days ago with Maxine. Believe it or not, Riley Dufrane told her that we need to make a change on the couch. Our ratings are slipping and he wants to do something to gin up some excitement.”

  Lizette’s heart skipped several beats. This was horrible news.

  “Wow, really?” Lizette said. “It’s definite? Is Maxine gonna go along with that?”

  Karen shrugged. “It’s definitely happening. Maxine wasn’t acting like she was going to try to fight it. I mean, he’s the network president. How are you going to tell him no—even if you’re Maxine Robinson?”

  Lizette sat back in the chair, trying to come to grips with this development. While the women in the cast weren’t her best friends in the world, it was painful for her to consider that one of them would be tossed out onto the street because of ratings. None of them deserved that. Wow, television was such a harsh business. That’s why they called it “show business”—it wasn’t about friends. It always came down to business. She was quickly realizing that in this business they will fuck you over three minutes after they’re fawning over you. And as for how it would affect her personally, her world would be turned upside down for months if they were bringing in someone new. True, it would be great for publicity and ultimately for ratings, but it would be hell to manage it all.

  “Wow,” Lizette said again. Then her mind drifted to the real question: who would go?

  “So, what is the thinking about who would go?” Lizette asked.

  Karen shrugged again. “Maxine actually asked for my help in trying to determine that. I guess that’s why I’ve been so distracted. This is a pressure I do not need. I can’t really tell which way Maxine is leaning. For each woman, I can come up with a thousand different reasons why she can’t be fired. So I really don’t know how to make this decision. But that’s not doing my job. So I know I have to come up with something. I just hope that Maxine isn’t setting me up to be the bad guy.”

  “You think Maxine has a problem with being the bad guy?” Lizette said with a slight smirk.

  Karen looked up, to make sure her colleague was joking, then she laughed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. She’s never had a problem with that in the past, has she?”

  They both chuckled, enjoying their private joke at Maxine’s expense. If there was one experience that everyone shared on the set and in the offices of The Lunch Club, it was the occasional wrath of Maxine Robinson. No, being the bad guy seemed to come quite naturally to her.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, LIZETTE snuggled under the covers with her boyfriend, giggling as he pressed his nose against her neck. Lizette had forgiven Channing the next day after their fateful “pre-engagement” dinner, partially because she loved him madly . . . but mainly because she loved his dick more. Slipping between the sheets with Channing was a quick and easy way to get her mind off the imminent changes on The Lunch Club. Lizette was extremely ticklish and couldn’t stop laughing whenever Channing made any moves in her neck area. He said he loved the way she smelled, so he was always poking his nose around her. But she stopped giggling when his nose moved from her neck down to her naked breast. He opened his mouth and took her nipple inside, twirling his tongue around the tip and sending tremors straight down to her groin. She moaned softly, encouraging him to keep doing what he was doing. Lizette’s entire breast region was very sensitive, one big erogenous zone, but her nipples were so responsive that she had even orgasmed a couple of times just from having them nibbled and sucked. This used to be a source of some embarrassment for her, but Channing had put an end to that. He said her orgasmic breasts were God’s gift to the two of them—he loved her beautiful breasts and couldn’t get enough of them, and she loved it when he worked his magic on them. “It’s the perfect arrangement,” he said.

  Channing steadily increased the intensity of his licking and sucking, making Lizette start squirming and moaning even more loudly from the vibrations rumbling down her body. She wanted him to move his head farther south, to bury his face and tongue between her thighs and make her scream at the ceiling—but then again, she didn’t want him to leave her breasts. Like ever.

  After a few more minutes, she couldn’t take it anymore. She had to feel him down below. “Channing, I want you to eat me,” she said softly, sexily. She knew that he loved it when she talked nasty to him. She heard him emit a low, guttural groan as he obeyed her instructions and moved down between her legs. She heard the fairly loud sound of Channing moving his tongue amid her wetness down there. She also used to be embarrassed by how wet she got when she was turned on. A former boyfriend had once called her “Niagara Falls.” He had quickly become an ex after that remark. But Channing said it made him proud to know that he could turn her on so much that she was literally “gushing.” Lizette loved being with a writer, who was always quick to come up with fun and interesting new ways to describe these things that had always been a part of her. “Gushing” was a good example. Within five minutes, Lizette felt a quake starting to build from her toes, working its way slowly up her legs, picking up steam at her thighs, branching out to her midsection and arms, tingling down through her back, and finally releasing throughout her entire body in an explosion of pleasure.

  “Oooh God!” Lizette screamed. She reached down and grabbed Channing’s thick head of hair and pushed down as hard as she could, not even caring whether he could breathe. She let the waves run through her, wash over her. Finally, when they had run their course, she slowly let go of Channing’s hair and felt her toes uncurl, easing her way back down to earth.

  “Wow!” she said breathlessly. “That was unbelievable!”

  She exhaled. “Mr. Cary, you got skills.”

  Channing’s head popped up, wearing a big grin. “Why thank you, Miss Bradley.”

  “Let me catch my breath, then it’s going to be your turn,” she said. “Then I want to feel you inside of me.”

  Channing slid up the bed until his head was next to Lizette’s. She put an arm around him and moved her body closer. She suddenly felt a chill, so she pulled the covers up around her neck. They lay in silence for several minutes, Lizette basking in the after-orgasm glow, Channing proudly enjoying his work. As she stared at the ceiling, Lizette slowly felt the latest drama from The Lunch Club creep back into her consciousness. The beheading soon to come.

  “I just found out today that somebody from the show is about to get fired,” Lizette said.

  She felt Channing stir alongside her. “Really?” he asked. “What’s that all about?”

  “Well, I think they’re concerned about the ratings. We’ve been slipping over the past year, losing ground to Regis and Kelly in some markets, even to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in some places. And even The View is now gaining on us. Riley Dufrane, the president of NBN, told Maxine a few days ago that we had to do something to shake things up, to bring some new energy to the show.”

  “Wow,” Channing said. He tried to sound nonchalant, but his mind was racing as he listened to Lizette. He wished that he had a recorder with him so that he wouldn’t lose a word.

  “I don’t think they’ve decided yet who’s gonna go,” Lizette said, anticipating his next question. “Or maybe they have and Karen just didn’t want to tell me. I’m a little surprised that she told me as much as she did. I think Maxine has kind of put her in charge of making the decision, or at least helping Maxine decide, and it seems to be kind of stressing Karen out.”

  “Well, who do you think they might get rid of?” Channing said. He was trying to breathe evenly, but he knew that this story on his site could drive traffic into the stratosphere. This might be good enough to get
him to his next big bonus.

  “I don’t know,” Lizette said. “I’ve been thinking about it constantly for like the last five hours. I think Whitney is maybe the most vulnerable, since she’s been on the show the longest. But she brings the show a certain amount of credibility. I mean, besides Maxine, Whitney is the only real journalist we have.”

  She heard Channing snort. She knew he didn’t have any respect for television journalists. “Yeah, yeah, I know you don’t think she’s much of a journalist. After all, how could she be a real journalist if she works for TV, right? Anyway, for that reason, I can’t imagine how they could get rid of Whitney. And then there’s Molly. She’s so damn funny, she’s like too important to the show to lose. But I guess they could always bring in another comedian. They could also bring in another real journalist to replace Whitney, but how exciting would that be? I mean, a journalist would just be too boring!”