“Thanks, Uncle O, but I’ll have a Shirley Temple.”
Otis beamed. As Sterling arranged herself at the bar, he noticed how clean her hair looked, how her skin seemed taut, her eyes rested. He smiled and got up. “Excuse me for a moment, ladies,” he said, and headed for the bathroom.
Otis felt temporary release from his despair about Spice. He’d looked after her daughter. That mattered. It had to matter to Spice. Maybe if he showed Spice, brought Sterling back to her, she would understand how deeply he loved her.
As he was returning to the bar, he saw Shaylynn handing something to Sterling. He quickly drew closer and realized it was money. The woman was obviously offering Sterling money to leave—the old “get lost, little sister” trick.
“What’s going on here?”
“Uncle Otis, get this bitch out of here.”
“Sterling,” Otis said admonishingly. “Excuse me, Shaylynn, I think we need to say good night.”
Both Sterling and Otis watched the angry woman’s face as she picked up her purse. Shaylynn rolled her eyes hard at Otis as she twisted off the seat and left. When she was gone he turned to Sterling. “Whew, that was close. What brings you out tonight?”
“I went to see the play Your Arms Too Short to Box with God, at the Fisher Theatre. I had a hunch I’d find you here—”
Otis fingered his drink. He knew that she was lying about where she’d been—Bennie’s apartment was only five minutes away. But he couldn’t deny how good she looked.
“So, Sterling, you look like you’ve cleaned up.”
“Yeah, Uncle O—thanks in large part to you. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Sterling, you know I’d do anything for you. You’re like a daughter to me.” Otis’s heart tweaked as he said the words—he knew the depth of their truth. “You really do look wonderful. I am so proud of you.”
“Thanks, Uncle O. Actually, I have some good news. Besides the getting clean part.” She paused. “I’m pregnant.” She was smiling.
“Well, I guess that’s good news, Sterling.”
“Oh, it is! I think I’m finally going to be happy.”
“Does your mother know about this?”
“Yeah—not that I told her. You know how she has a sixth sense about things.”
“What did she say?”
“She didn’t have to say anything. You know and I know how she feels. She doesn’t trust me, believe in me, so why would she believe I can take care of a child?”
“Sterling, you need to trust her. Give her a chance.”
“Why should I?”
“Because she loves you.”
“You mean because you love her?”
Sterling’s words were angry but true, and they cut through Otis’s heart like a scythe. He downed his drink and ordered another.
“Your mother had a hard life, Sterling.”
“Oh, I’m sick of that shit—just because she didn’t have a mother! Well, neither did I. Why do you stick up for her? She treats you like dog shit. She doesn’t give you any respect—you should hear what she says behind your back.”
Otis felt something boiling deep within his stomach. Was it true? All these years caring for Spice, and what does she do?
Sterling was still ranting. “She’s nothing but a whore. Why bother?”
Otis was very still as his rage surfaced. “You’re right, Sterling. Your mother is nothing but a whore. Once a whore always a whore.”
Sterling looked at Otis as if he were possessed. Maybe he was. Something was triggered, and he couldn’t help himself any longer. He gulped down his drink and ordered another.
“She made a better whore than she ever could a mother.”
“What did you say?” Sterling’s eyes narrowed.
“She’s gone back to her roots, cavorting all over the city with a man at all times of the day or night, a man almost ten years her junior. No class, acting just like a whore.”
Sterling shrugged, assessing the strained expression Otis was wearing. Spice and Golden’s engagement was in all the papers. The story had even managed to make People magazine’s hot singles list of 1997.
“I don’t get it, Uncle O. You weren’t calling Spice a whore before she decided to marry that preacher.”
“You don’t know the half of what I know about your mother.”
“Maybe we should stop, before this conversation gets ugly.”
But Otis couldn’t contain himself. “There’s lots you don’t know—like Mink’s daddy was her pimp.”
“What?”
“She’s just a low-down whore.”
“You’re drunk, Uncle Otis.”
Otis gulped down his drink. “David knew what Spice was before he married her—a common whore. He told me all about it. Hell, the whole town of Midnight knew. Why do you think she and Carmen are such good friends? They’ve got a lot in common.”
Otis’s mind was flailing, the alcohol making his thoughts incoherent.
“Why should I believe you?”
“You’ll have to. Her past has a lot to do with you, and Carmen.”
“Are you trying to tell me something, Uncle O?”
Otis looked at Sterling. What had he just said to her? Had he really betrayed Spice? Suddenly he felt nauseated. He removed a fifty from his pocket and threw it on the bar.
“If all this is true, Uncle O, then how come you want Spice so bad?”
Otis again looked at his niece and said without any emotion, “I love her.”
STERLING
The plays of natural lively children are the infancy of art. . . . Children live in a world of imagination and feel ing. . . . They invest the most insignificant object with any form they please, and see in it whatever they wish to see.
—ADAM GOTTLOB OEHLENSCHLÄGER
T he next morning, Sterling woke up early. Her head was clear, but her heart was heavy. Had Otis spoken the truth? What did he mean about Spice having been a whore? Could it really be true? She rubbed her hands over her stomach and imagined it swelling, growing as her baby grew within her.
Who was her father? Sterling picked up the phone and called her sister.
“Mink, it’s Sterling.”
“Well, well.”
“How are you?”
“How am I? Since when did you think to ask?”
“I think about you, Mink.”
“And what about that promise you made to Azure? Sterling, children have very good memories.”
“Mink, there’s something I’ve got to tell you. It’s important. It’s about Spice.”
“I don’t want to hear about your problems with Spice, Sterling. You need to grow up. I’m not getting in the middle of this shit. I’ve got enough problems of my own. I can’t—”
“No, it’s not about me. Well, not directly.” Sterling paused. How was she going to say this? “I saw Uncle Otis last night and he was drinking—I guess upset about Spice and Golden getting married. Anyway, he said something about Spice, about when she was younger.”
“What, Sterling? Just spit it out,” Mink said.
“He said that Spice used to be a prostitute.”
“Sterling, you’re on drugs—why don’t you get a real life!”
“No, it’s true. I think it’s true. She and Carmen—when they were young and living in Mississippi.”
“That’s bullshit. I don’t believe a word of it!”
“Uncle Otis said that David told him.”
“I don’t believe a damn word. How dare you! How dare Otis talk about Spice behind her back?”
“Think about it. Neither one of us knows who our real father is.”
“You know what, Sterling? I’ll soon be thirty years old. And if a son of a bitch came up to me now saying he was my father, I’d just as soon spit in that bastard’s face as call him Daddy.” Her voice was shaking now. “I don’t care what Spice has been or was. I don’t give a fuck about some man who shot his seed into my mother’s womb. The only thing . . . the only t
hing I care about is the people I’ve known and loved all these years. Anybody else can kiss my ass.”
Sterling held the humming sound of a dead receiver in her hand. Her sister’s rage seemed big enough for both of them. Mink was right, she thought. Otis was probably lying about Spice. Then again, what did it matter? She had more important things to think about. She had the father of her own baby to deal with. Pushing the button to clear the line, she dialed Bennie’s number. She had to tell him about the baby.
Bennie picked up on the second ring.
“Bennie, I’ve got something to tell you. It’s important.”
“What’s up, Sterling? You sound so serious. Are you sick?”
“No. Can you come over?”
“Give me an hour.”
That was too easy, Sterling thought to herself. Why? She pushed her doubts aside as she started building a fresh fire in the living room grate. She covered the lamps with wispy red, black, and silver silk-printed scarves. From the back corner in her bedroom closet, she removed a huge white sheepskin rug and centered it before the burning fire. Next she doused a drop of Chinese silk oil on the rug, the light bulbs, and into the burning embers. She put on a jazz CD and turned the lights low. The effect spelled sex, which was exactly her intention.
She was nervous. Maybe just one hit and I’ll be okay. Just one won’t hurt the baby.
It had been five weeks since she used any drugs. She’d kept a half ounce of heroin wrapped inside a sock in a shoe in her closet, just in case. Now with shaky fingers she inhaled the heroin and sat back on the bed, reveling in the sublime feeling flowing through her body.
Afterward she took a shower, then checked her watch. Bennie was due to arrive in ten minutes. Sterling prepared two drinks and set them on the ceramic mantel.
When Bennie arrived, Sterling was floating. She greeted him with a warm kiss on the mouth. “What’s the big secret?” he asked, handing her a small bag.
“I’ll tell you later.” Sterling led him by the hand to the rug on the floor before the fireplace.
The music in the background covered all the communicating they needed to express at the moment. Cupping her hands around his chin, she slowly brought her hands to either side of his face, then higher to his forehead. Without applying any pressure, she used the tips of her fingers, followed by her palms, to caress his face. Then she kissed him.
Sterling felt his hand roving, probing her back and buttocks, as she slowly inserted her middle finger inside the fullness of his mouth. Moving her body to the rhythm of the music, she touched the inside of his lips, his gums, the inside of his cheeks, luxuriating in the wetness she found there. Each beat of the music heightened their growing excitement as she removed his clothes and he removed her robe.
In the throbbing firelit darkness, the air was suffused with the erotic scent of Chinese silk. Sterling felt as if she were floating on a sacred river. The tenderness she felt for Bennie could only be expressed by how they loved each other’s bodies.
“I’m going to make love to you all night, baby,” Bennie said, reaching over to retrieve the brown bag. “Tonight, like no other night.”
Again Sterling felt a twinge of doubt. Why was he so enthusiastic tonight? What was going on? He seemed genuinely happy to be with her.
Inside the bag were black figs that could have come only from the South. He laid her back on the furry rug. With his teeth, he peeled back the skin of a ripe fig. After opening it, he split it into four sections, revealing the glittering, rosy, wet, honey-petaled fruit. He took the wonderfully moist fruit and inserted it inside her hairy veil. Moving the fruit back and forth inside her, he teased her warm pink slit with its coolness, while licking her lips and tongue into a mad fury.
One by one he fed her, then himself, the sweet fruit, now scented with her. When he finished, she felt his eyes feasting on her body, moving from her heaving breasts to the juncture of her thighs.
Pressing his mouth against her lower lip, he touched her with his tongue, pressing hard until he heard her scream.
While placing his head above hers, he made a necklace with their arms, inhaling her sweat-soaked silken hair. “Your sweat is the odor of sweet musk,” he said.
She exhaled and closed her eyes. She wondered if he noticed her swelling abdomen.
With the burning flames of Bennie’s fingers and the throb of the fruit, which pulsated in and through her, she came with a thrilling tremor, shaking from head to foot. Before she could recover, Bennie buried his face between her legs, kissing the length of them, sinking his nose in the tender curls of her vagina, until she fell back, her ivory thighs opening and her hands clutching the hairs on his head as she sank deep into the fur rug’s deep pile.
Seconds later, she came again. Leaning back on her elbows, she admired the gleaming energy of his erection, throbbing proudly at her. At that singular moment her body as well as her mind was weak with the desire to give more, more—so weak now that she confused her body with her soul.
Then she felt him. Thick fingers slid inside her vagina, smoothly, fully, and began to move up and down. Though her head shook backward and forward, she could have sworn she was frozen with pleasure.
Reaching down, she pressed her long nails against her outer lips, feeling his fingers touching hers, felt the pressure of his fingers about a third of the way inside her vagina, stroking her inner muscle. She began to fondle herself to the same rhythm.
As Bennie speeded up his thrusts, her excitement grew with each motion. Knowing she was about to come, she stopped. Inserting one knee between his thigh, she urged him to turn over onto his back. Straddling him, Sterling eased her buttocks closer to his face, then lowered her head toward his feet to feel the tip of his member with her tongue. She felt him, at the same time, stimulate her clitoris with his teeth, mouth, and tongue.
Kissing each side up and down and around, she made her way to the silky tip and felt its heat on her tongue. Taking his organ halfway inside her mouth, she sucked hard. Then, feeling him enjoy the sensation, she shook his entire organ into her mouth, feeling him pushing, pushing it farther and farther back, as far as it would go, as if he wanted her to swallow it. With his pulsating organ, warm and wet inside her mouth, her lips engorged, she lavished the tightness of his mushroom tip, dragging her lips slightly over the smooth surface to create friction.
He shuddered.
Tasting the sweetness of his first orgasm, she shuddered as well. Her vagina throbbed as she felt a waterfall of orgasms spill over her.
Bennie lifted her naked body to the leather chair and sat her down. After placing a pillow beneath each knee, he pulled her hips forward until she felt the full extent of him enter her. With his stomach rotating in and out he stroked Sterling until she cried out for release.
“It’s not over yet, baby,” he said hoarsely.
Crossing both her legs, he raised her feet over his shoulders and quickly eased back into her wet triangle.
His powerful thrusts left her weak. She felt as if a part of her had separated, then dissolved, her own molecules like motes of dust, every atom of her being completely blown apart and then recombined. With less than a second to recover, she felt another spasm of pleasure, a final surrealistic shudder pass through her body—lasting seconds—lasting forever—the sound that came from her like a death knell.
Knowing Bennie was prime for his final climax, Sterling, thoroughly exhausted, held him inside her, drawing him in tighter, like a repeated suction, squeezing and again holding him within her for a long time until she felt him stiffen, then felt him coming inside her in hot spurts: one, two, three times it came out. With her hands on his buttocks, she felt him quiver, then stiffen again. Bennie fell forward on the chair beside her, his breath coming in short pants. After a minute he looked over at her. They both smiled and fell into a deep sleep.
* * *
When Sterling woke up the next morning, Bennie had already showered and dressed.
“I’ve got to make a run,” he
said to her as she sat up in bed.
“How long will you be?” She still hadn’t told him about the baby.
“A few hours. Then I’ll be back.”
Sterling left the bed and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Don’t you love me, Bennie? Don’t you want to marry me?”
He slapped her naked buttocks softly. “I know what I promised, Sterling. We’ll get married soon.”
“Then I can count on you to keep your word this time?”
“Absolutely, babe,” he said, kissing her on the forehead. “Gotta go.”
This time would be different, she thought, because soon she would tell him about the baby.
When Bennie finally turned up a few days later, Sterling pretended as if nothing had happened.
“Are you coming in or what?” She forced a smile on her face.
Wearing his impeccable manners on his sleeves, he looked cool in his lemon polo shirt and matching cotton twill slacks. The smooth copper-toned skin of his face was covered with a six o’clock shadow. His perfectly symmetrical dimples were balanced by the cleft in his chin. He looked good enough to eat, Sterling thought. He stepped inside, both hands in his pockets, sunglasses pushed down on his nose, totally nonchalant.
“What’s up, Sterling,” Bennie said as he automatically went to the refrigerator for a soda. He had a way of walking around the place as if he owned it. He never asked for anything. Whatever Bennie wanted, he could have. He seemed to have known that from the start.
“Why are you playing games with me, Bennie?” She sat on the leather chair, opposite the sofa where he was now seated.
“If you want to know why I haven’t returned your calls, say so, Sterling. Don’t try to get coy with me. It’s not you.” He sipped the soda.
It was ten o’clock at night. Her skin and hair were glowing: inside, she felt like shit. “Are you still planning on moving in or not? It’s been almost two weeks since you promised.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” He pulled her toward him.
“When?” she asked, relaxing into his embrace.
“I’m already packed.” Bennie was smiling.
One Better Page 25