The Honey Well

by Gloria Mallette

  “Come on, baby, just touch the tip of your tongue to the head. It’s soft, you’ll like it.”

  Trena tried harder to pull away from Andrew’s iron hold on her hand and arm. “Wait. I ain’t never done nothing like this before.”

  “That’s okay, baby, you got the best teacher in the world.” He took ahold of the back of Trena’s head and pulled her into his penis. She squeezed her eyes shut. She pressed her lips tightly together as the warm flesh slid alongside her left cheek. “Open your mouth,” Andrew said in a hoarse whisper.

  Trena started pushing hard against Andrew’s stomach and pelvis. “No! No! I don’t wanna do this. Stop!”

  The more Trena pushed, the firmer Andrew’s hold was on her head. “Aah, c’mon, baby. Don’t do me like this. When we was dancin’, you was rubbin’ your hot little body all up against me. I been on the bone for you for damn near an hour. I gots to get me some of this sweet honey tonight.”

  Trena started to cry. “But I ain’t never did this before. I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can, baby. I won’t hurt you. I promise. Queen Esther said to be real gentle with you because this is your first time.”

  “But . . . but . . . I’m scared!”

  Andrew suddenly released his hold on Trena’s head. “Okay, okay. I tell you what.”

  Trena tried to get up but Andrew held onto her as he sat down next to her and tightly wrapped his arms around her. She couldn’t stop crying.

  “Okay, Trena, baby, stop crying. You don’t have to give me no head, okay? Let’s forget about that. I won’t make you do nothing you don’t wanna do, okay?”

  Trena’s whole body heaved from her gasps for air as she sobbed.

  “Are you listening to me? No dick sucking, okay? I know you’re all right with that, ain’t ya?”

  Nodding, Trena stopped struggling to get away. She felt Andrew’s tight embrace loosen as she lay against his muscular chest. He began to gently rub her arm, moving up to her shoulder and then across to her breasts. That didn’t feel so bad so she let him finger her nipples until they were tight. Before Trena realized it, Andrew had pulled her breasts out of her bra and had begun to tongue her nipples. She closed her eyes as she felt his hand slide down her stomach to her triangular patch. Trena’s thighs were close together but she didn’t resist when Andrew pulled her thighs apart and slid his hand under the side of her G-string and his finger found her slit and he began to finger her. Omar had never actually touched her naked clitoris, he had always massaged her through her panties. Oh, but she was liking it this way much, much better. There was a tingly sensation in the pit of Trena’s stomach. She felt her clitoris throbbing. Tensing up, she clasped her thighs tight around Andrew’s hand and began to grind herself into his hand.

  “Yeah, baby, you’re hot. Daddy got something that’ll put out that fire.”

  Trena moaned. With her eyes still closed, she let Andrew lay her back on the bed. She felt like she was floating. She felt him pull her G-string off. She felt him pull her thighs farther apart, and she felt him stretch out alongside her. She felt his hardness on her thigh.

  Although she felt like she was in a dream, Trena opened her eyes. “Queen Esther said you have to use a condom. I got some in the top draw,” she said, pointing to the night table.

  Andrew rested on his left elbow. “I will, baby, in a minute. Right now, I’m just gonna use my finger for awhile. See?” He held up his long thick middle finger and showed it to Trena. She saw the finger and watched as he began to gently push it into her vagina.

  “Damn, baby, you’re tight. You’re genuine, ain’t ya?”

  Because she was so wet, Andrew’s finger finally slipped right in. Trena shifted her hips.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, moving his finger slowly in and out of Trena. “Man, this is gonna be some good shit.”

  This is what Trena had been wanting for a very long time. She closed her eyes and opened her thighs even wider. Arching her back and gyrating her hips, she let Andrew have his way. He wasn’t hurting her and when the hardness of his finger filled her vagina and pushed harder and farther up into her, the little pain that came barely made her gasp; it was feeling too good to hurt. Trena squeezed her eyes tighter. But then Andrew’s finger seem to push all the way to her back. She was moving with him until he lifted her hips up off the bed and then she wondered how he could do that if he was resting on his elbow and fingering her with his free hand. She opened her eyes and saw Andrew above her; his eyes were closed, his teeth were bared, and his head was back. Trena looked down and saw the shaft of Andrew’s thick, wet penis gliding smoothly in and out of her vagina. She gasped from the sight and from the orgasm that snuck up on her and made her scream. It had yet to register that she had lost her virginity to a man she had just met and he wasn’t even wearing a condom.

  Twenty-One

  Every time her bath water seemed to cool, Trena drained some of it out and ran fresh scalding water back into the tub. She had done that several times. It didn’t matter that it was three in the morning, she was in no hurry to get out of the water. She felt like she had to soak. Andrew Pebbles didn’t leave until two-fifteen. He said he couldn’t get enough of her “sweet pussy,” and he meant that. Between eating and sleeping, he had sex with her five different times. By the time he was finished, she was sore and scared out of her mind. Not one of those five times did Andrew use a single condom. What if she got pregnant? What if she got VD? Queen Esther must have told her ten times to make sure Andrew used a condom. What was she supposed to do when he wouldn’t?

  “Please, Andrew, put a condom on this time.” Trena held the condom in her hand. He wouldn’t take it.

  “I don’t like those things. They dull the feeling.”

  “But, Andrew, Queen Esther is gonna be mad at me if you don’t use a condom.”

  “She won’t be mad if you don’t tell her.”

  “But, what if I get pregnant?”

  “You won’t. I just busted you for the first time. Virgins can’t get pregnant when they’re first busted, their eggs ain’t ready to be fertilized until they’ve had their tenth orgasm. How many did you have?”

  Trena started to count in her head how many orgasms she’d had. “I think I had . . . Wait a minute! I ain’t never heard that before. I learned in biology that I could get pregnant from the time I started getting my period. Having my period means that I was ovulating and that meant that I could get pregnant.”

  Andrew back-flipped his hand at Trena. “That’s not true for everybody. Besides, that’s old biology. It’s like old math.”

  “No, my doctor told me—”

  “Look, if you get pregnant, don’t worry about it. I’ll be there for you.”

  “But I don’t wanna get pregnant and Queen Esther—”

  “Trena, if you tell Queen Esther that we did it without a condom, she’ll put you out of here like she did Kitt, the girl before you.”

  That was the last thing Trena wanted.

  “You don’t wanna be put out do you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then, don’t tell. It’ll be our little secret. Here.” Andrew peeled off a single fifty-dollar bill. “Go buy yourself something pretty and wear it for me next week. I gotta jet.”

  Trena took the money and at the door, puckered her lips to kiss Andrew on his lips. He pulled back.

  “Naw, baby, I don’t kiss no hoes. Y’all tongue too many dudes. Besides, little girl, this ain’t about a love thang, it’s about the booty.”

  Minutes after Andrew was gone, Trena still stood looking at the door he had gone through. Andrew was the first man she had gone all the way with and he had called her a whore. She hated him. She was never going to have sex with him again. He made her feel nasty and worst of all, he was going to get her in trouble with Queen Esther. She couldn’t tell Queen Esther about Andrew not using a condom, she would put her out for sure. And what if she got pregnant? Her mother would kill her if she got pregnant, and Cheryl would get a
kick out of being proved right. She’d call her a whore, and this time, she’d be right.

  Trena covered her face with her washcloth and cried.

  Twenty-Two

  If there was a heaven on earth, it was being stroked and rubbed down by a masseuse. Arnell had yet to find anything more divine. As she had done every day for the past week, Arnell immediately began to doze under the strong, soothingly soft hands of Helga. The first thing she did after she registered at the New Age Health Spa was sign up for daily massages with Helga as she had done every one of the four other times she had been at the spa. After she’d done thirty minutes of aerobics, an hour of yoga, which truly stretched her out and relaxed her, Arnell sweated thirty minutes in the sauna, and then she ended her day with a massage. If only her life in the real world was this pleasurable.

  Arnell had left all thoughts of Esther and James behind her on the other side of the Hudson River when she crossed the George Washington Bridge. The farther she traveled along Route 17 up into the Catskills, the better she began to feel. She had turned off her cell phone before she left home and was even tempted to toss it out the window but changed her mind when she remembered the time she got a flat tire on the Southern State Parkway. The lug nuts were literally welded on so she couldn’t change the tire herself. Her cell phone battery was low and she hadn’t yet purchased a car adapter, but there was enough energy in the battery to call AAA. Having a cell phone was a good thing, especially when she could simply turn it off, and that she did.

  A phone wasn’t needed up in the mountains where fresh air filled Arnell’s lungs and long three-mile walks from the spa down to the Neversink Reservoir tested her legs and her will. Pounding down those narrow, steep sloping roads at a quick pace wasn’t so much the problem as trudging back up those same long, roller coaster–like roads was. Arnell’s calf muscles burned. There was no question that she was a city girl spoiled by the four-wheel lazy boy she drove every day, but she was determined to not let anything get the best of her. At the crack of dawn the first day, Arnell had ventured out on her own. It was fine going down to the reservoir, not too strenuous. The lush countryside made her feel one with nature. However, on the way back to the spa, Arnell found herself down on all fours trying to crawl the last two hills. And she thought she was in great shape! Hell, she was so exhausted after that walk, she fell out on her bed and blacked out. She missed her breakfast of fresh-juiced, muddy-looking, room temperature apple juice. Something as putrid-looking as that could only taste good when a person hadn’t eaten solid food for a while. By lunchtime, that apple juice looked and tasted like fine wine. When Arnell went out on her walk the next morning, she walked with two other brave souls who, in the end, locked arms with her and they helped each other climb the last two monstrous hills.

  Seven days into her ten-day stay, Arnell was feeling strong. She wasn’t hungry. All the kinks in her brain and in her muscles were worked out, an enema a day and one high colonic had cleansed her colon. She’d had a pedicure, a manicure, and two facials—mud and oatmeal. Tomorrow, she was getting her hair done in Woodstock. She was readying herself to go up against Queen Esther, the mighty queen bee. Arnell knew just what she had to do about Esther. Yes, she would first take away Esther’s trump card—she would indeed tell James the ugly truth about her life. Then she’d scare Esther’s clients away, and in the end, simply walk away herself. In time, Esther’s greed would be her own undoing, that is, if it was ever true that one reaps what one sows.

  The one bitter truth that Arnell came to understand while her mind and body were being purged of toxic waste, was that it wasn’t Esther that was holding her prisoner to her demands, it was Arnell herself. All these years, she was afraid to be alone. With no other family to fall back on, she had always been afraid of losing Esther. But it was Esther who was hurting her the most, and the truth was, she would have done better in life without Esther picking away at her flesh.

  “Miss Rayford, you have a telephone call in the office,” Mia, the receptionist, said from the doorway.

  It could only be Sharise wanting to know how she was doing. Arnell refused to open her eyes. “I’m not taking any calls.”

  “It’s a Mrs. Sharise Simon. She says it’s urgent.”

  Still, Arnell wouldn’t open her eyes. “Helga, how much time do I have left?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  Arnell wasn’t about to give up a minute of her massage time. “Mia, please tell Mrs. Simon that I’ll call her back in twenty minutes.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Mia closed the door and left.

  Arnell didn’t even want to begin to think about what the urgency could be. If it had anything to do with Esther, she didn’t want to know. Sharise and James were the only ones that knew that she was at the health spa, and she had sworn Sharise to secrecy just in case Esther lost her mind and called looking for her. James, she didn’t expect to hear from. Time would come soon enough when she would have to face him.

  A quick cool shower refreshed Arnell while her dinner of a glass of fresh, murky green spinach and carrot juice energized her. Using her cell phone, she placed a call to Sharise.

  “Sharise, it had better be life or death.”

  “It is.”

  Arnell’s heart skipped a beat. Sharise never joked about such things. “Is something wrong with the kids?”

  “Thank God, no. It’s your mother. She’s been calling for three days leaving messages.”

  “She must be desperate.”

  “I thought she had lost her damn mind. In fact, I ignored the first two messages for you to call her—I was screening my calls—but today, she’s been calling since early this morning. I finally took her call and I was about to tell her about herself, when—”

  “You mean you didn’t?”

  “Arnell, the queen was crying.”

  “Boy, was she running a serious game on you.”

  “Not this time.” Sharise paused. “Arnell . . . Tony’s dead.”

  Arnell inhaled sharply.

  “It’s true, Tony’s dead. I’m sorry, Arnell. I know you liked him a lot.”

  Not Tony. Tony really was one of the nicest people Arnell had met in the mansion besides Sharise. God, Esther must be devastated. If Esther could have truly loved any man, it would have been Tony.

  “Arnell, I thought I’d never live to see the day that Queen Esther would shed a tear.”

  “Oh, my God. Do you know what happened?”

  “Queen Esther didn’t say. She just kept saying that she needed you.”

  “Damn.” Arnell checked her watch. It was three forty-five. It would take her almost three hours to drive down from the Catskills. “Okay, I’ll call her.”

  “Arnell, don’t let that woman sucker you in. You know how manipulative she is.”

  “I know,” Arnell said, going to the closet and pulling out her suitcase. “Sharise, I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”

  “You better. Drive carefully.”

  When she pressed the end button on her cell phone, Arnell saw that her hands were shaking. She pushed the recall button and zero-one to instantly call Esther but ended the connection after the first ring. She wasn’t ready to talk to her. Not yet. Besides, talking to Esther would hold her up from packing and getting on the road. She never did like driving on the roads in upstate New York after dark—too dark, too scary. They were not lit up like in the city. She could drive off the road and not even know it until she landed at the bottom of a cliff.

  Arnell packed quickly and was on the road by five-thirty. Her drive home would not be leisurely as she had planned. Now she was in a hurry to find out how Tony died.

  Twenty-Three

  As she had always done since she moved out, Arnell entered the mansion through the kitchen door. At first it was because it was convenient, now it was to avoid bumping into any of her old clients. She didn’t want any of them seeing her and maybe propositioning her.

  Melvina was in the kitchen. As was her norm, Melvina was coo
king or baking—the baked goods being for the clients who were not in a hurry to leave after being with their lady of the evening. There was always something deliciously sinful to eat but the girls were forbidden to indulge as Esther had strict rules about gaining weight.

  “Arnell, where ya been, girl? How ya stay gone and not call ya own mother?” Melvina scolded, her hands on her hips.

  Taken aback by Melvina’s scolding, Arnell almost laughed at how Melvina’s accent had thickened, but she saw the anguish in her eyes. “My goodness, are things that bad around here?”

  “Yes, girl. Your mother need ya. Her heart broke. Her hurtin’ somethin’ awful.”

  “So it’s true. Tony is really dead?”

  “Dead and gone. Three days now.”

  The thought of Tony being dead had filled her mind all the way back into the city, but that optimistic side of her had hoped not. She thought that maybe Esther had made it up to get her to come running. It was an awful thing to think that Esther would be that cruel, but she could never say what Esther wouldn’t do to get her to jump through hoops.

  “Don’t ya stand there, girl, ya mother need ya with her,” Melvina said. “Queen Esther take not a bite of food into her mouth in three whole days. I make her drink water and tea. She paining real bad. Go to ya mother, Arnell, she waitin’ on ya.”

  If what Melvina was saying was true, then Esther was taking Tony’s death hard but Arnell wasn’t in a hurry to see Esther. “How did Tony die?”

  “It’s not for me to say, girl. Go let cha mother tell ya.” Melvina picked up the large spoon she had been using to stir the bowl of yellow cake batter.

  Arnell just looked at Melvina. By now, she should have been used to Melvina treating her like Esther’s wayward child. Esther had told her once that Melvina thought her an ungrateful daughter.

  “Go,” Melvina said, shooing Arnell with the large spoon dripping with batter.