| |
Charlie
Eight Years Earlier
“Get out of my room,” I said, squeezing the towel tighter around my body.
“You ain’t got nothing I ain’t ever seen before, sweet Charlie.”
“Get out!” I yelled, my skin crawling. I knew this was coming. I’d felt it for months. The way he looked at me. The way he found a reason to touch me – my hand, my hair, my backside.
“You’re a woman now Charlie. And do you know what a woman has that’s special?”
“I’m warning you,” I said, shaking, looking around for anything I could use as a weapon as he took slow steps into my room.
“What’s between her legs. That’s a goldmine. You can make a lot of money with that sweet prize. And I can show you how to do it,” he said, stopping right in front of me. I balled myself into a corner as tightly as I could, tears running down my face in anger and shame – and he hadn’t laid a finger on me – yet.
He reached out and put his hands through the wet strands of my hair. Almost like he was in a trance, he said, “Sweet young pussy. Give me some Charlie. I can teach you things ...”
“No! No! No!” I screamed, one hand hitting out at him as the other held the only piece of cloth between him and my naked body.
“You knew this was coming. I saw how you been looking at me. You want it as bad as I do, don’t you Charlie baby,” he said, reaching for the towel and snatching it from my body in one swift move.
My hands immediately flew to cover my lady parts. I crouched down.
“I’ll tell mama,” I said desperately as he pinned me in the corner of my bedroom – the room that was supposed to be my teen-aged sanctuary. I know I’d never think of it the same again.
I could smell the tobacco on his breath. “Go ahead,” he whispered in my ear. “Who do you think she’s gonna believe? Me, or you?”
***
“HE TOLD ME YOU MIGHT try to pull a trick like this,” mama said.
“What do you mean? This ain’t no trick. He put ... he tried ... if Adam hadn’t come home when he did, he would have raped me. I swear. I’m not lying. Mama please, you have to believe me.”
“Adam?!” mother yelled. “Adam?!”
“Mama please no. Don’t say anything to him.”
“He can back up your story, right? So why wouldn’t you want me to say something to him.”
“Because he’s only nine years old. No nine-year-old should have to think about stuff like that. I don’t want him thinking he did something wrong.”
“Or you don’t want him telling the truth ... that you’re a liar. It’s like you don’t want me to be happy. If it wasn’t for that man you’re accusing of trying to rape you, I wouldn’t be able to put food on the table and keep a roof over you and your brother’s head. And because you don’t like him, you go and make up a story like this. He warned me. He’s been warning me for months that you had it in for him.”
“Have I ever said anything to you about him?” I asked. I hated him, but I had always just kept my distance because mama seemed happy, even if I thought he was a creep. But I hated him from the day she let him move in. My then fifteen-year-old brain couldn’t put my finger on why, because he hadn’t done anything to me. But my flesh literally crawled from the way he looked at me
“You didn’t have to. I saw the way you looked at him,” mother replied.
“With disgust!” I yelled at her. “That’s the only way I’ve ever looked at him,” I cried. “Did you see that? Don’t you see he’s been setting you up all along because he knew that this is the bullshit he was gonna pull!”
I grabbed the right side of my face, feeling the fingers of the imprint my mother’s hands left their from her blow.
“Don’t you ever talk to me like that, you little heifer. I carried you. Gave you life. You will not disrespect me in my own damn house!”
“I will not stay under the same roof as that man,” I said to her, my disgust with her boyfriend beyond my fear of her. “I will not.”
“Then get your shit and get out. You wanna be grown. Then go be grown, cuz nobody sets the rules in this house but me.”