“If you ain’t been here in twenty years things have changed. All these subdivisions, the way Moody is looking, and Jack’s Restaurant. New post office. New fire station. They have a new fire truck. And two new police cars. And they are about to annex Peaceful Meadows. They get that subdivision and Odenville will have close to twelve, maybe thirteen hundred people. And they fixed up the park. Used prison labor to get that back in shape. Did a good job, you ask me.”
Genevieve shakes her head, mumbles something, her tone thick and unfamiliar.
Bubba Smith rambles on, still excited, “You have to go down to Beaver Creek Shopping Center, that’s at 411 and 174. So much traffic they had to put in a stop light. And they turned Third Avenue into a one-way street. Ma’am, you said you was here twenty years ago?”
“It’s changed a lot.” Now her tone is clear again. Her eyes clear. Once again Doctor Genevieve Forbes. “There was nothing but churches and farms, haystacks and old barns, a few log cabins here and there. But yes, I do have memories of this area, of all these roads.”
“Ain’t that something? You have people from around here?”
“I was born here in Beaver Valley.”
“We all came out of Beaver Valley. Little joke, ma’am. Don’t mean nothing by it.”
Genevieve doesn’t hear him, is talking to herself, images and memories moving across her eyes like on a movie screen. “I grew up in what used to be called Hardin’s Shop.”
“Get out of Dodge. So you was born here.”
“Inside a trailer home that always smelled like fried gizzard and liver.”
“My wife makes the best fried gizzards. Lord knows that’s what got me hooked.”
Genevieve’s face changes, become softer, innocent, as if she is becoming someone else. Surrendering. Melting. In her eyes, I see a thousand memories returning to her mind, as she stares at places that she forgot were real, and her every breath thickens like Southern air.
Bubba Smith continues to pry, asks, “What’s your last name, ma’am?”
She pauses as if she has to think, looks at me, mouth open as if she can’t remember.
I say, “Forbes.”
She remembers, then nods. “Forbes.”
“Forbes. Don’t know any Forbes. You look familiar. Thought you might’ve been one of the Funderburgs. Not many people fly out here and come this way, not from Los Angeles. I reckon people out that way don’t even know about Odenville or any town out this way.”
My wife struggles to find herself, emphasizes, “Doctor Genevieve Forbes.”
“I might know your people. I know most everybody ‘round this way. Meant to say you looked familiar last night, but your last name, the name on my paperwork, it don’t ring a bell with me. Asked the missus and she didn’t know anybody last name Forbes out this way either.”
Genevieve sits up straight. “I grew up across from St. Clair High School.”
“Where exactly?”
“The trailer homes.” Genevieve glances at me, tries to read my surprise, then turns her eyes away and swallows. “Trailers behind the civic center. The Smith family.”
“Fred Smith ‘nem?”
“Yes.”
“What you to Fred Smith ‘nem?”
“I’m his granddaughter.”
“His granddaughter?” Disbelief echoes. “Who your daddy, you don’t mind me asking.”
“Roger. He was a musician at the church.”
“And he worked at a funeral home.”
“Yes. He’s incarcerated.”
“Roger Smith? Roger?” Bubba gets excited. “They call him Gravedigger.”
“Yes. Gravedigger is my father. He’s my daddy.”
Bubba Smith says, “Lord, good Lord. I’m a Smith. Bubba Smith. I’m your uncle.”
Genevieve doesn’t respond. I look at her. Her expression becomes void, a black curtain blocking out the heat and light of emotions, but heated tears are rolling down her face.
“We ain’t never met because… good Lord, good Lord, good Lord. You’re back to bury Willie Esther. Good Lord, good Lord. You… you’re the one… your momma… and Gravedigger…”
“It was the talk of the town.” Genevieve holds her left hand with her right hand, smiles a wooden smile, her voice cracks. “Daddy killing Momma. Black woman being killed by a white man who actually went to jail for it. White man killing a black whore. It was the talk of the town.”
“Lord, have mercy.”
We approach a road sign: odenville town limit.
A woeful moan escapes Genevieve. She diminishes right before my eyes.
I touch my wife. She moves my hand like I’m an electric shock, not to get away from me, but she’s struggling for the controls, letting her window down, the damp air flooding the car.
She raises her voice, “Driver, pull over please.”
Bubba Smith jerks, slows down, is rattled, voice shaky. “Ma’am?”
She rages, “Stop the car.”
“Yes, ma’am. There’s a Dodge truck riding a little too close behind me, have to—”
Genevieve is struggling to get her door open, her eyes filled with tears.
I pull her arm, yank her to me, shake her, snap her name, “Genevieve.”
“Pull over.” She gives up, puts her head between her legs. Her voice fades. She stops fighting, looks dizzy, lost. “I need… pull… stop… please stop… need to get out.”
I snap, “Stop the damn car.”
“Can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”
The car stops. Like time.
Like I should’ve as I walked toward Kenya’s room a few hours ago.
TWELVE
TWO HOURS AGO.
Before Genevieve’s memories overwhelmed her and sent her into a panic attack.
Two short hours ago.
I stand up and go to Kenya’s room.
I get to her door, knock once, and prepare to call this insanity off before it starts.
She opens the door.
I expect her to have eyes filled with buyer’s remorse, to look at me and shake her head, the better part of an hour being enough time for her to consider the consequences of her actions.
Her hair is down, wavy, no longer in a braid, no longer in the style of a schoolgirl.
She wears a smile, one more stunning than the one on her zed cards.
The air is on, room chilled, most of the lights turned off, and a candle is lit.
She has on high heels and black lacy boy shorts. Nothing else. Her skin is fresh, can smell the brand-new scent from her quick shower. Her flesh shines, her lotion fruity, it glitters. The panther on her shoulder, the sun on her belly, her belly rings, everything about her glistens.
Her legs look so long, like forever in brown.
Her breasts, brown and free, soft and firm, nipples erect and as dark as my intentions.
One glance at her and I forget how my wife and I used to wake up drinking coffee, making plans to change the imperfect world into a diamond. I forget not to lust. My moral center moves away from me. I try to follow my own righteousness as it turns and races away from Kenya, from that woman who has the gray eyes of a cat, the smile of a witch, but centrifugal force throws me in a straight line of travel toward her.
Her scent comes to me, soft and gentle, lavender, so sensual. Her energy, so erotic, and that overwhelms me, floods me, almost capsizes me.
She says, “Close the door.”
She walks away. With the eyes of a thief, I glance down the hallway, close the door.
Kenya moves across the room, slow steps, then she turns around, again smiling.
It’s as if I’m lost and what I see in her eyes is the beacon to lead me home. What I feel in my belly, it’s as if I’m still moving, going too fast on that unpaved, oil-slick road, and approaching a treacherous curve, afraid to look ahead at my destiny and unable to turn my head away. All I can do is hold on and hope for the best. I want to scream her name.
I look away only to be pulled toward her gray
eyes again.
She smiles, sashays around the room, her movements subtle and sensuous, dreamlike with a little twitch in her step, her hips and breasts and backside moving like a song. Parts of her apple bottom hang below the border of her boy shorts. My eyes follow her rhythm. She stands still, surreal and dreamlike. I ride the glance beyond the border of decency, allow my gaze to become an unabashed stare. Mouth open, barely blinking, thoughts written all over my face, I ride this precarious road from curiosity into the land of obsession.
I ride and I ride.
I should run, but I ride.
What lives beyond obsession? Sheer madness. I’m on the border of that… that heated sensation that is both exhilarating and terrifying, when she glances my way, again, measuring, and she freezes. Small mouth, full lips that turn up into a never-ending expression of pleasantry.
I close my mouth. I blink. I swallow. I look away.
“Do you and Sister have sex a lot?”
“Not really.”
“You know why married people stop having sex?”
“No, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“Marriage legalizes sex. Anything legal is banal.”
I think about my wife. I use to feel that way about her. How I lived to have her breath on my skin. How I wanted to be inside her every waking moment. How I loved to swim up her river and drink from between her thighs. Everything has changed. Things are not bad. Just different.
We love. We share. We grow. We are friends.
But with Genevieve the urgency for emotional eroticism is gone.
I close my eyes, wish this away.
When I open my eyes, her gray eyes are still on me.
Her glance meets my eyes and she rides her own expression.
Her face is unreadable, opaque.
She asks, “You and Sister still kiss?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Then there is hope.”
“Based on what?”
“The first thing to go is the kissing. You kiss less and less. Even when you have sex the kissing becomes less and less. Soon it’s just sex. You might suck a dick, he might eat you out, but there is no kissing. Even the sucking and eating becomes less. But the kissing is usually the first to go. Less and less until it’s gone. Sex with no kissing. You become each other’s whore.”
“I love kissing.”
She smiles. “The way you move your tongue, you love more than that.”
What is this tingling, this fire I feel when I look at her? It’s in my loins, but not only in my loins. It radiates, consumes me. A soft moan rises inside me. I clench my teeth and swallow my own madness. The fire stays. Spreads. Grows until it numbs me and awakens me all at once.
The power of a glance.
We stare.
Sinful thoughts rise like the sun on a Sunday morning.
I imagine her in ways that make my heart race, that embarrass me to no end.
She says, “You’re afraid.”
I don’t answer, just stare as if I’m watching a provocative display at the Erotic Museum in Hollywood. She looks away first, takes small steps, moves in the opposite direction, her back to me. I remember to breathe. Making myself look away was a battle in itself.
My insides fall apart, tell me that I’m back to speeding on that oil-slick road, hydroplaning toward a brick wall. My stare is intense enough for her to cry foul, to tell my wife she is offended.
My fear rises.
She does something I don’t expect.
She takes off her boy shorts.
Now she’s only wearing her heels.
I blink a few times, then my smile rises.
She chuckles, raises her hand in a sensual motion.
I set free a soft laugh.
She walks to me.
Her lips part and she shows me the pinkness of her tongue and her tongue ring. I’m transfixed as that pinkness moves across her bottom lip, licking away her private thoughts.
She says, “We’re supposed to kiss.”
“Yeah.”
She takes my fingers in her mouth, sucks them one at a time, two at a time, three, then again one at a time, giving oral stimulation from tip to root. She licks my palm. I moan. She sucks. Sucks until I can’t stand it. I pull away. Her hand grazes my face. I ache. Her touch kills me a thousand times, maddening. I pull her to me, cover her mouth with mine, begin kissing, first softly, then with voraciousness I’ve never experienced. I touch her vagina. She pulls away. I pull her back. We play that game until… moans and touches… until… she feels so good in my hands… until my explosion rises. We kiss. We kiss. And we kiss. Then we catch our breath, gaze into each other’s eyes and see the inevitable, feel our wretched destiny approaching.
She whispers, “Come fuck me.”
I stare, watch the leopard on her shoulder, hear it growling at me as she moves away.
“Fuck me or leave. Your choice.”
She gets on the bed, dark skin on angelic sheets, legs apart. Her vagina is clean-shaven. Small lips, very tame, very beautiful. A five-star delicacy with excellent presentation.
I tell her, “Turn over.”
She does, ass in the air, her face turned toward me, watching me.
I say, “On your knees.”
She does. It’s sheer beauty. A sea of black mystery resting on a white pearl. I undress.
She shudders, holds me tight, lets out a wonderful sigh when I break her skin.
I love that sound. I have missed that sound.
I pull out, go in again.
Again she sighs, convulses in a way that hardens me more, melts my inhibition.
She curses, sings, “Oh god oh god oh god.”
I pull out to the tip, ease part way in, do that over and over, too many times to count.
Her face tenses, back arches, ass rises up against me as her hands grab fistfuls of sheets.
I am naked, erect, deep inside her sanctuary, swimming inside her moist heaven.
That blessed place feels like home.
Kenya moans like she’s on a tropical island, in warm waters, a place where you can see schools of fish and rainbow gardens of soft coral. She wipes the sweat on her brow like she is wiping ocean water away from her face. She looks back, whines, her face a wonderful ugliness as she anticipates my next thrust, and she stares deep into my eyes, moves her hand to where we are connected, and massages the ring on her clitoris as we dance the dance of illicit lovers.
She says, “Damn.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You kiss like a soap star… and… fuck like a porn star.”
“Is that good?”
“Un-fucking-believable.”
She moves against me and I hold her waist, make her sing like an angel, then she turns over, gets on top of me, rises and falls, moves like the devil, gives heaven and hell all at once.
Her dance is good. So good that I cannot stand the way she controls my pleasure.
I wrestle with her, get on top of her, put her legs up around my neck.
I thrust with urgency, as if I need to get this fire out of my body.
She moans, “Is this pussy good?”
I moan in return, “Yes.”
“Is this pussy good?”
“Yes, your pussy is good.”
“You’re hurting me so damn good.”
The sun is scorching my soul.
Madness.
Air leaves her lungs on the wings of a sensual sigh. Her legs fall and I crawl on top of her, my hands underneath her backside, pulling her into me over and over. Arms out at her side, pulling the sheets, she becomes my savior, my salvation, her body in the pose of a crucifix, all of her moans calling out for her god and his son, then her curses demanding me not to stop, not to slow down, to keep my pace, to go as deep as I can, to make her come over and over.
“Harder, fuck me harder, harder.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I want to be hurt.”
“Why?”
<
br /> “So I can forget. Harder, please? Harder.”
She pulls her knees to her chest, her feet on my shoulders. I give her deep penetration over and over. Then I’m on fire. Terrified and excited all at once. This is wrong. I cannot stop. Harder. She wants it harder. Flesh slapping. I groan. Her moans so provocative. I want to take her from so many positions, but this is not the time, this is raw, this is urgent. Alabama’s humidity makes it hard to breathe. In no time, so much sweat covers our bodies that it feels like we’re dipped in oils, slipping away from each other.
Genevieve Page 15