1976, seventeen years old
Our mouths consumed each other, searching for the other’s soul. My hands touched Jackson’s abs; his hands were under my shirt. We fell back on my bed, with Jackson on top of me. He had just unbuttoned my shorts when the door opened. We froze. Teenage desire hung thickly in the air but not thick enough that we couldn’t see Dodge swaying in the doorway, bloodshot eyes growing redder by the minute, lips pulled back in a snarl.
I pushed Jackson off and he rolled to the side. No one moved for about a half a second. Jackson and I watched Dodge. He looked between Jackson and me as if trying to decide who he would go after. He chose me.
“You slut!” Dodge ran toward me. I wasn’t sure what he was going to do once he got to me, but I didn’t want to find out. I bounced behind the bed, so that it was between Dodge and I, and quickly buttoned my shorts. Jackson ran at Dodge and pulled him from behind.
“Get off!” Dodge yelled. “Raqi, get over here!”
Dodge’s bloodshot eyes bulged from his head, and his thin graying hair stood straight out like a Halloween wig of a mad scientist.
“Run!” Jackson yelled. He pulled Dodge away, leaving a small opening for me to run past and out the bedroom.
“Whore! Opening your legs for this piece of—” I didn’t hear any more as I closed the front door behind me. I jumped on my Ironhead and sped off, breathing hard and fast. It was still light outside, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I had a few bucks in my pocket, so I went to a burger joint.
“Whore whore whore” appeared in scraggly red letters on the backs of my hands and forearms as I ate chili-cheese fries. I wiped the words away, but they kept appearing. Dodge was with different women every week, and he thought I was the whore? I wasn’t like those girls or even him for that matter. I loved—or liked—or something—Jackson. We were dating and had been for seven months. I wasn’t messing around with other guys. And even if I was, it didn’t make me a whore.
When I was about done with my fries, I wondered where I should go next. I usually went to Jackson’s if I needed to get away from Dodge for a night and shared a bed with Bethie. The thought of seeing Jackson right now made me squirm. I could go to Eddie’s. It wasn’t the first time I had to stay with him. Sometimes, Dodge went on runs that I couldn’t go on because of school, and Dodge wouldn’t let me stay at his house alone. One of the few “normal” parental things he’d ever done.
I paid, got on my Ironhead, and rode to Eddie’s.
When I knocked on Eddie’s door, Mike—Eddie’s friend—answered. He swayed in the doorway with a beer in hand then leaned on one arm against the door frame. Mike’s breath smelled like deception and oranges left to rot on the ground. I took a step backward.
“Hey, Dodge’s little Mexi-girl.” His eyes went straight for my boobs.
Crossing my arms, I tried to look past him. “Where’s Eddie?”
He stepped forward, and I stepped back. “Why do you want Eddie? Mike’s here. You’re old enough—”
Suddenly, Eddie appeared behind him. “Get out of here, Mike. Dumb shit.” Eddie pushed Mike onto the porch. I had to move quickly to get out of the way of Mike who stumbled forward and dropped his beer. Half of it spilled on my left leg. Eddie held the door open and motioned me to get inside. I breezed by him quickly and went to the kitchen for a paper towel.
“Eddie, come on, man. You can’t kick me out,” Mike said before Eddie shut the door in his face.
Something sizzled in a frying pan. Eddie returned to the stove, barefoot, in jeans and a black shirt. I wiped the beer off my leg with a napkin and plopped onto the couch. The Carol Burnett Show played on the TV. The sizzle increased when Eddie moved something around the skillet.
“What happened with you and Dodge this time?” he asked.
Dodge and I had been getting into it a lot lately. I was tired of the drugs and his mood swings and at seventeen years old—we made for a volatile situation.
I covered my face with my hands. “I don’t want to say.”
Eddie looked up at me. “Suit yourself.”
A few minutes later, Eddie had two steaming plates filled with rice, butter beans, collards, and fried pork chops. Eddie was from Georgia, and it showed in his cooking. Then again, anything was better than the fried bologna or peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches Dodge made.
“Chef Eddie-r-dee,” I sung. It was a common joke anytime Eddie fed me.
He smiled and returned to the kitchen to grab a beer for himself and a water for me, before settling down on the couch.
“Dude, you should be a chef,” I said through forkfuls.
He laughed, getting a bit of greens in his brown beard. “I like making food for me, not for bitchy customers who won’t appreciate it.”
I rolled my eyes. Who wouldn’t appreciate this?
“Besides, I’m a Lawless. Ain’t no other life for me.”
I didn’t believe that. Eddie wasn’t like the rest of them. He wasn’t always drunk or high. He didn’t have a wife he beat or kids he yelled at. His house was nicer than most. Sure, it was a trailer, but it was clean and homey in a way that even Billy’s house was not, and he had a wife who compulsively cleaned.
We ate and watched TV in silence. When we were done, I washed the dishes and Eddie dried them. A few plates in, I noticed he was trying to say something every few seconds but stopped himself. Finally on the fifth try, he spoke.
“Raqi, you’re at that age where you got to watch for guys like Mike.”
My face turned hot. I was well past that age. In junior high, boys started looking at me differently, as did their fathers. I felt their eyes on my butt when I walked away, my breasts when I walked up. Now I crossed my arms often and deferred to pants and a baggy shirt when I knew I might be around the club.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Most guys are like Mike.”
Eddie stiffened, and I realized my mistake. He thought I meant him, too.
“Ah, shit. Not you, Eddie,” I said quickly.
I scrubbed the dish in my hand a bit harder, ashamed and embarrassed. It was true though. I never saw Eddie making out with random women, never knew him to date anyone. I’d heard a rumor that he had been molested as a kid and that shit messed with his head.
Eddie ignored my screw-up, probably embarrassed, too. “I’m serious,” he said. “About Mike and others. You’re older and it’s on you to make sure these guys don’t do something foolish.”
I stopped washing for a second.
He continued, “Watch how you dress and act around them. Men can’t help themselves. Don’t need to give them any more reason to not do right by you.” My eyes unfocused and refocused as I tried not to release an anger that had quickly flared.
The plate I held in my hand was a mass of soapy bubbles. One bubble showed a Lawless running his hand lower and lower down my back, another floating bubble showed a boy in school grabbing my butt. A bubble on the right side of the plate recounted a man in a grocery store pushing his crotch against my hip in the checkout line. A large bubble that threatened to pop replayed two men leaning out of a white truck to yell lewd things they would do between my legs. Why couldn’t boys, and men, leave me alone? There was nothing I could wear or not wear, nothing I could do or not do. I’d never given them any reason to not do right by me because society had already given them a reason to—there were no consequences for their behavior because “boys will be boys.”
I pushed my anger down into a stone box inside my chest, then put the plate under the running faucet and wiped away the bubbles of harassment.
My only reply to Eddie was, “Mm-hmm.”
That night, Eddie made up the couch with a few quilts that used to belong to his granny and even gave me cookies and milk before I crashed. I knew Eddie was looking out for me. His words came from a fear that I could be hurt, and because of that, I wasn’t super mad at him. I was disappointed. He was different from most guys, but like he’d said, he was still a Lawless.