One House Over

by Mary Monroe

  “You’ll never have to worry about that with me,” he told me.

  Chapter 8

  Odell

  I DIDN’T LIKE WHAT JOYCE JUST TOLD ME. IT MADE ME MAD. I KNEW a lot of trifling men, but I didn’t know any who would take a woman to one of the most expensive restaurants in town and make her pay.

  “That’s a sad thing to hear but it’s funny, too. You must be joking,” I said, giving her a pitiful look.

  She shook her head. “I’m not joking. The last man I came here with claimed he’d forgot to bring his wallet. I had to pay for both our meals and the nickel tip. Then he borrowed a quarter to get some gas, and he never paid me back.”

  My jaw dropped so low, I was surprised it wasn’t touching the table. “What kind of niggers have you been fooling around with, Joyce?” When I realized what I’d just said, I held up my hands and gave her the most apologetic look I could manage. One thing I didn’t like to do was use offensive words in front of a lady. Especially one that the white folks hurled at us like rocks. “Excuse my language. And don’t think for a minute that I use that word on a regular basis because I don’t. The peckerwoods use it enough, but they don’t mean the same thing we do when we say it. But I call things the way I see them. Only a nigger would take a beautiful, intelligent woman like you on a date and expect her to pay for it.”

  “Oh,” she said again. For her to have such a decent education, she didn’t use a lot of big words like other educated people I knew.

  “That ain’t never going to happen with me.” I squeezed her hand one more time. For such a tall woman, she had small, soft, dainty hands.

  “Oh,” was all she had to say this time, too. “Excuse me while I go to the toilet.”

  Joyce was in worse shape than I thought. I really had my work cut out for me. But I didn’t mind. I’d been working hard all my life, especially when it came to women. While she was gone, my mind wandered back to people and events I didn’t like to think about too often.

  When I was a youngblood, I loved women so much I juggled as many as I could at the same time. That was only because I had never been able to find just one who could meet all my needs. About ten years ago, I’d latched on to a young lady who was so good in bed, I had to see her every single day. But she couldn’t cook worth a damn. My spare at the time, a stout woman old enough to be my mama, could cook up a storm. I used to show up at her house two or three times a week just in time for supper. My spare behind her was the kind of woman your mama would want you to marry. She was cute and smart and in the church. She didn’t drink or go to jook joints, or nag me. But the best thing she could do in bed was sleep. Making love to her was like flopping around with a plank. She was just that stiff. But I’d really liked that girl, so we’d dated for a whole year. She had a good job working in a garment factory and was real generous with her money. If she hadn’t took off with some railroad sucker, I would have asked her to marry me. The other two women I had been seeing at the same time eventually dumped me, and that’s when I started roaming from one woman’s bed to another. But that eventually got old. Now I had a itching to get married and raise a family.

  It had been a week since I got fired from Aunt Mattie’s place. Working as a bouncer/handyman in a whorehouse had been hard, but I’d enjoyed it. I’d never tell Joyce that, though. I wanted her to feel sorry for me, and I didn’t think she would if she knew how much fun I had had working in a whorehouse. The women who worked for Aunt Mattie liked my looks, so free pussy on the sly had been a nice bonus. And I got free alcohol when Aunt Mattie wasn’t breathing down my neck. She had let me share a pallet on the floor of her pantry with Rufus, the mulatto that played the piano during business hours. That old bitch was so greedy she made us pay two dollars a week for room and board. But I’d never complained because she’d let us have our meals for free. Almost every day by midnight, Aunt Mattie would be so drunk she couldn’t tell her head from her feet, and we’d have to carry her to her bedroom. And then me and Rufus and the whores would do whatever we wanted.

  I’d had a good thing going until I got greedy. I was sorry I had been careless enough to get caught going through the pockets of one of Aunt Mattie’s regulars. When she fired my dumb ass on the spot, I slunk out of that place like a shamed hound dog with all my belongings in brown paper bags. I moved into Miss Mabel’s boardinghouse—which was one step above a glorified flophouse—a few blocks away that same night.

  I had seen the STOCK BOY WANTED sign in MacPherson’s window a couple of days before Aunt Mattie fired me and was glad to see it still there the day after I’d moved into the boardinghouse. I’d immediately looked into it. As soon as I told Joyce’s gullible daddy that I’d been “laid off” and was about to be homeless, he hired me.

  He’d sat looking like a giant blob in a squeaky swivel chair at an unorganized, wobbly metal desk. His wife had stood over his shoulder with her thick arms folded in a small, cluttered room in the back of the store that they called an office (it was supposed to be a storeroom). She didn’t say nothing until after I’d accepted the job. “Most of the boys that stock our shelves still in school, so they’ll work for almost nothing,” she pointed out.

  “Ma’am, I’ll mop the floors and haul out the trash, too, if you want me to. I just need a job and I don’t care what you pay me. No matter what it is, it’ll be more than what I got.” There was a pleading tone in my voice and a desperate look on my face.

  “We can’t pay too much. I’m sure you know times is still real hard. Would thirty cent a hour suit you?” Mac asked with a look on his beefy face I couldn’t interpret.

  “Yes, sir! That’ll suit me!” I had not expected that much to start because the few stock boys I knew made only twenty cent an hour and some made even less.

  “Good. We need you to start straightaway,” Millie told me. “Come on and let’s go get you a smock, and we expect you to wear it the whole time during business hours.” She unfolded her arms and waved me toward the door.

  I was pleased as punch to have a new job stocking shelves. I had just been talking off the top of my head about me mopping floors and hauling trash, too, but when they told me that those two chores was also part of my responsibilities, I didn’t care.

  Just thinking about how easy it had been to win Joyce’s parents over had given me a lot of confidence in my ability to talk a good game. I knew that if I told Joyce what she wanted to hear, I’d have her deep down in my hip pocket. But I had to move faster because I wanted to get her sewed up real soon.

  When she got back from the toilet, the top button on her blouse was unfastened. I was not surprised because the blouse she had on looked like it was a size too small anyway. Her bosom looked like it was about to bust out, and I was enjoying the view. My mama told me once that when I was a baby, I’d loved being breastfed so much it had took her two years to wean me. If I got my mouth on Joyce’s titties, it would take even longer for her to wean me. I had to hold my breath to keep from laughing at my own joke.

  “Odell, did something funny happen while I was gone?” she asked, plopping back down in her seat.

  “No. Why?”

  “You looked like you was about to laugh.”

  “Oh, I just thought of something funny Buddy told me yesterday.”

  Joyce rolled her eyes and shook her head. “That Buddy. He ain’t got a lick of class. I wish he would spend more time being serious about his job than cracking jokes.” She picked up her napkin and started fanning her face. “I know they’ve already added up our check, but if you don’t mind, can I have some dessert? Mosella makes a mean blackberry pie. I forgot it was on the menu for today.”

  “No, I don’t mind at all. That sounds real good to me, and I wouldn’t mind having some myself.” I beckoned for our waitress.

  After we ate our pie and scarfed down a few scoops of Mosella’s homemade peach ice cream, Joyce wanted to hear some music, so she trotted over to the Mason jar and dropped in a nickel. She took her good old time choosing the five rec
ords she wanted to hear. After that, she left the table to go use the bathroom again. She was gone so long I thought maybe she had got nervous about going to my place and had chickened out and snuck out the back door. Or maybe she was just stalling because she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to be alone with me.

  “Joyce, it’s getting late. If I don’t get back to the boardinghouse before nine o’clock, they lock the front door and I won’t be able to get in,” I told her when she returned.

  “You forgot to bring your key?”

  “I ain’t got one. The landlady only give keys to tenants after they been boarding three months.”

  “Oh! Then we’d better get going,” she said, looking frazzled. “You should have told me sooner.”

  “I didn’t want to rush you.” I paused so I could regroup my thoughts. “Um . . . I just need to make sure you really want to go home with me tonight. This is our first date and all.”

  “Odell, I really do want to go to your room with you tonight.” Every time Joyce smiled, she looked even better to me.

  I paid for our dessert, gave our waitress a generous dime tip, and we left. When I turned onto the street where the run-down boardinghouse I lived in was located and parked in front of it, she touched my arm. “Is this where you live?” she asked with a mild frown on her face. “I thought the city had condemned this place.”

  “Uh-huh. It ain’t much, but it’s all I can afford right now. You told me it was okay to come here. You changed your mind?”

  “It’s all right. I can’t think of no other place I’d rather be.” She leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. After a little pause, she kissed me again. This time she wrapped her arms around my neck. I pulled her into my arms and held on to her like she was some kind of life jacket. In a way, she was. I was convinced that I was headed in the right direction. If I stayed on course, my troubles would soon be over. “I just hope I don’t disappoint you,” she whispered in my ear.

  “I feel the same way,” I whispered back.

  For Joyce to be such a meek and prim and proper woman, she was a ball of fire in bed. I wouldn’t have cared if she’d been as passionate as a dead fish because after I’d made her squeal like a pig, I knew then that I had the key to her heart. And I was going to hold on to it with both hands.

  Chapter 9

  Joyce

  I HAD HAD SEX A LOT OF TIMES SINCE I WAS FOURTEEN. BUT NONE OF my exes had ever made love to me properly, so I’d never enjoyed it that much. I had no idea what a climax felt like because I’d never had one. From what a couple of my female associates had told me, it was the most wonderful experience in the world. What I had enjoyed was being so close to a man’s body. The physical connection and seeing the way their eyes rolled back in their heads when they climaxed had been enough for me. I had accepted the fact that that was the only ecstasy I’d ever get out of sex.

  Tonight, Odell showed me what all the fuss was about. When he made me have my very first climax, I almost humped him off that rollaway bed in his closet-size room. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Every inch of my body was tingling.

  “Baby, take it easy,” he laughed after I had calmed down. He rolled off me and sat up on the side of the bed with his back to me. I couldn’t believe the damage I had done to his back. I had clawed and scratched him so much, I’d broken off three of my fingernails. I was happy to see that my wild-woman behavior didn’t seem to bother him. He got back in the bed and started stroking the side of my face and nibbling on my ear. “Ain’t you never had no good loving before?”

  I was almost out of breath, so it took a few seconds for me to answer. “No. I . . . I didn’t know what good loving was really like.” My mouth was dry and my voice hoarse from all the hollering I’d done.

  “Now you do,” he chuckled. “And once we get used each other’s bodies, it’ll be even better.”

  And it did get even better. By our fifth date in less than a week, which was a record for me, I didn’t think I could live without Odell. I enjoyed everything we did together. He took me fishing, blackberry picking, picnics, and on long drives. Sometimes we just stayed in his room listening to his radio and making love. We’d been back to Mosella’s several times since our first night there together. Each time the waitresses and waiters, other customers, and even Mosella herself, raised their eyebrows or gave us curious glances. I knew they were all trying to figure out what was going on, especially since Odell was the only man they’d ever seen me with more than a couple of times.

  When he told me he wanted me to meet his daddy, I knew our relationship was something special.

  Odell’s daddy, Lonnie, and his wife, Ellamae, lived on a dirt road at the bottom of a hill in a run-down three-bedroom house on the outskirts of town. It was about a quarter of a mile from one of the same sugarcane fields where he and most of his family used to work. When we pulled up in the front yard, a three-legged hound dog hobbled up to the car and started sniffing at my door. “Odell, I’m scared of dogs. Make him go away,” I wailed.

  “Shoo, shoo, Duke!” Odell yelled and honked the horn. The dog howled and backed away, so I opened my door and piled out. When my feet hit the ground, Duke trotted up to me and started sniffing my leg. Drool was trickling off his lips, so it was a good thing I had decided to wear pants. I also had on the same low-cut blouse I’d worn on my first date with Odell because he liked it so much. I’d recently ordered three more just like it, but in different colors. “Don’t worry. Duke don’t bite and he ain’t got no fleas,” Odell laughed. And then he rushed around to my side and grabbed my hand. After taking a deep breath, he led me up onto a rickety front porch with a rocking chair on one side and a foot tub filled to the rim with soapy water on the other. “Daddy’s mind comes and goes, so I guess he done got a little senile, but it ain’t nothing to be concerned about. He still got a good disposition. My stepmama had a slight stroke two years ago, and it had a bad effect on her brain. She ain’t too hospitable, and never was much in the first place. These days there’s enough bad blood between me and her to flood the Dead Sea. Once you meet her, you’ll see what I mean, and you probably won’t want to stay longer than a few minutes. But if you want to leave sooner, just look at me and blink three times to let me know and we’ll haul ass straightaway.”

  “Odell, be nice now. I’d like to stay long enough to get acquainted with your daddy and your stepmama,” I insisted.

  When we got inside, I understood why he thought I wouldn’t want to stay long. A heavyset, elderly woman in a ratty gray housecoat and a plaid bandanna tied around her head stood in the middle of the floor with her hands on her hips. Her dusty bare feet looked like bear claws. There was such an annoyed look on her plain, round, reddish-brown face, I thought she was in pain.

  The first words out of Odell’s stepmother’s mouth made me want to run back out the door. “I just mopped this floor! Look at all that sand y’all done tracked up in here!” she snarled. She looked me up and down and frowned when she got to my feet. Now that I had a man who was so tall that I had to look up at him, I had purchased my first pair of high heels. They were comfortable and looked good on my long feet. But the way Ellamae was staring at them, I wished I had worn a pair of shoes that wouldn’t have drawn so much attention.

  “Uh, hello, Ellamae,” Odell greeted in a gentle tone. “I’m sorry about tracking up the floor. Next time I’ll make sure we wipe our feet before we come in.” He stopped talking and glanced from me to Ellamae. “I want you to meet Joyce MacPherson, my new lady friend.”

  I reached over to shake Ellamae’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.” I forced myself to smile even though she looked mad enough to bite off a snake’s head.

  She ignored my hand. Instead, she reared back on her knotty bowed legs, looked over my shoulder, and shaded her eyes with her hand and stared at the car. “That jalopy y’all rolled up in belong to you, Joyce?” she asked, looking me up and down some more with her eyes narrowed.

  “No, ma’am. It
belongs to my daddy. He lets us borrow it when we go out so we won’t have to walk or take the bus,” I replied.

  “How old is you?” For such a grumpy old woman, she had a pleasant, young-sounding voice.

  Just as I was about to respond, Odell answered for me. “She’s thirty, a year younger than me.”

  Ellamae folded her arms. Her eyes were still on me. “Thirty? Humph. Well, I do declare. I never would have guessed that. You look a heap older than that.”

  “That’s because I’m so tall,” I said, grinning. “When I was a little girl, I was so much taller than the kids I played with, some people thought I was a lot older than I really was.”

  Ellamae turned to Odell with an impatient look on her face. “Your daddy ain’t here,” she barked. “And I hope y’all don’t plan on staying for supper on account of I didn’t cook enough for four.”

  “We already have plans for supper. I came at the spur of the moment because I was anxious for you and Daddy to meet Joyce.”

  Right after Odell stopped talking, a back door slammed. An elderly dark-skinned man, who was even taller than Odell and just as handsome, shuffled in holding a bucket of blackberries. He was barefooted too. He set the bucket on the floor and wiped his hands on his overalls. “Ellamae, I didn’t know we had company coming,” he grunted.

  “I didn’t know neither,” she growled.

  “Who is these people? I ain’t never seen them before,” Lonnie grumbled, pulling a pair of glasses with taped frames out of his shirt pocket.

  “It’s me, Daddy,” Odell said in a loud tone. He walked toward his father heaving heavy sighs all the way.