Little Girl Lost 6: The Return of Johnnie Wise (16 page)

Chapter 29

“
That’s so sad.”

C
assandra cut her eyes to the left for a moment or two, and then she looked at Lucas again. Her eyes were glassy. One tear from each eye raced down her cheeks. Resurgent thoughts of her sister surfaced and reminded her of everything that her sister went through when she got pregnant. Her sister’s life was full of promise. They were planning to attend Tuskegee together, but when she missed a first and then a second menstrual cycle, they both knew in their hearts that could only mean one thing. She remembered the first time her sister came to her and mentioned getting rid of
it
. Aborting the unwanted child sounded like the best way to hide the pregnancy and move forward with her life. Who of consequence would know? She had even planned to visit a woman who performed the delicate procedures in the basement of her home. At that instant, she remembered walking over to the woman’s house after school and standing out front. They were about to open the gate when her sister decided she couldn’t kill her baby. She had said that she would keep her baby and deal with the consequences.

The atmosphere had suddenly become thick and dark, as if a cloud were hovering over them, threatening to rain on their dinner. Feeling the weight of what she was telling him, and the emotion of the moment, he said, “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Lucas.” She locked eyes with him. “Alexandra’s dead. She died giving birth to my nephew, Alexander. We were identical twins. She was older than me by one minute. That’s why she got the “A” and I got the “C”. She’s gone, Lucas, and she’s never coming back. And that good-for-nothing, so-called man she decided to open her legs to doesn’t even know the name of the child he sired. So, my mom and dad are saddled with
his
responsibility. It’s so unfair to them, ya know? They raised the seven children they brought into this world. Alexandra got pregnant when it was time for my parents to sit back and enjoy the rest of their lives, ya know? I know people make mistakes, Lucas, but when you decide to be reckless with your body in that way, it’s your responsibility to rear the children you bring into this world, ya know? It isn’t your parents’ job. It isn’t your neighbor’s job. That job belongs to the risktaker exclusively.” She wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry, Lucas. I told you the truth was ugly.”

As Lucas listened to Cassandra’s story, his heart went out to her. He knew that he could very well be in the same position with Johnnie or Marla, or a couple of other teenaged girls he manipulated into taking off all their clothes. He thought he understood where she was coming from and why she didn’t want to engage in the act.

Lucas finished off his food, and then washed it down with several swallows of his Coke. The waitress came back, took their plates, and left the bill. Lucas looked at the bill, turned it face down, then peeled off five dollars and placed it on the table. He looked at Cassandra again and said, “First of all, I fully understand how you feel about what happened to your twin sister, and I’m very sorry.”

“Do you really understand, Lucas?”

“I think I do, Cassandra. I think I do because my own father did the same thing to my mother. I’ve never even seen my father, and I don’t know his name.”

“That’s so sad.”

“It is sad. If it had started and ended with me, I guess that would be easier to deal with, but it didn’t end with me. What made matters worse was that several other men came into my mother’s life, promising her this and that and never delivered. She thought all three of them would be her risen savior, and not one of them kept their word to her. So, I understand what you mean about a man keeping his word, too.”

Chapter 30

“
Marla made me do it to her.”

L
ucas paused for a second and stared at Cassandra. In the brief moment that he paused, visions of the last two years of his life passed before his eyes. He remembered confronting Billy Logan on the way home from school when he teased Johnnie and called her all kinds of dirty names. He could actually hear Logan ask her if she sucked Earl Shamus’ dick, which brought tears to her eyes. Next, the first fight he’d had with Logan materialized. He had made Logan apologize to Johnnie on his knees. After that, he walked her home, and she invited him in so she could put ice on his swollen face. But Marguerite came in and started screaming, making accusations that were not true. Next, he saw Johnnie at the playground, waiting for him, and they went to her new house—a house that Earl Shamus had purchased for her. And now, Cassandra had just reminded him of Johnnie’s fling with Napoleon. Hearing her point of view on the relationship was like pouring salt on his open wound.

He said, “You know what, Cassandra . . . you have a way of putting things that people might find offensive.”

“The truth is always offensive, Lucas. People kill and get killed over the truth. Mothers abort their babies because of the truth. In their case, she has to risk her life by getting the abortion because she was playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette, hoping there wasn’t a bullet in the chamber with her name on it. I watched my sister agonize over the decision for weeks before she decided to do it, and then later, at the last minute, change her mind. Husbands kill their mistresses because of the truth he refuses to tell her; that being he’s never leaving his wife, and while he loves gambling with both their lives, all she would ever be to him is a warm wet receptacle. When the mistress realizes this, when she comes to terms with what she’s allowed herself to become, she threatens to tell the wife, and in so doing, hastens her own death. Wives lie to their husbands, telling them that junior is his son because the truth revealed would in all likelihood get her kicked out of the house with nothing to show for ten, perhaps twenty years of marriage. Depending on pride and how fragile her husband’s ego is, truths’ reality might get her brutally killed because for years she had passed off junior as his legitimate heir. All of these scenarios are a very real reality as I have seen them all come to pass.”

“Wait a minute. You know of people who have been killed over this?”

“I do. I’m baffled by why you’re so surprised. Murders are committed every day. I would bet a year’s salary that there hasn’t been a murder committed that truth was not a central reason for the execution. It seems that death and reproduction are not only syncopated, but the relationship between the two is wholly ironic, don’t you think?”

Having no idea what she had said, Lucas rolled his eyes and said, “You tend to ramble on, you know that? Anyway, before you go on another rant,” he rolled his eyes again to hide his lack of knowledge and his inability to keep up with her soaring intellect, “let me say this. My mother will probably end up pregnant by the man she’s currently living with, and I’ve already got three half brothers.” He looked away for a moment or two, and then continued, “Now what happened with Johnnie and Napoleon is partially my fault.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Just hear me out. You want the ugly truth? That’s exactly what you’re gonna get. You can blame Johnnie if you like, but the truth of it is, I was doin’ some things with Napoleon’s wife that I shouldn’t have been doin’.”

Cassandra laughed before saying, “C’mon, Lucas. Do you really expect me to believe that a white woman made you lay down with her? I mean . . . she is white, right?”

“Yes, she’s white, but no, I don’t expect you to believe me, but that’s exactly what happened. I’ll never forget it. It was the craziest thing.”

“No. Elizabeth Taylor had Marla beat by a country mile. She wasn’t a close second either, but Marla was a good-looking woman. And it’s a good thing she didn’t look better than Elizabeth Taylor. I might be still in that situation or dead if she looked better than even her.”

Chapter 31

“
I guess you’re ready to take me home now, huh?”

L
ucas leaned back and folded his arms. His first thought was to defend his actions, but then he thought he had just said that part of what happened between Johnnie and Napoleon was his fault, and he knew a smart woman like Cassandra would take issue with that contradiction. He then remembered that earlier that day, in the Mess Hall, she had repeatedly called him a newbie, meaning that he was inexperienced. She had actually told him he was wet behind the ears, but he knew that if he said the same thing to her, there was a good chance her feelings would be hurt, even though she had used those very words when describing his lack of knowledge concerning military protocol and culinary delights.

He said, “I see that there’s no way you can understand sex and the hold it can have on the man and the woman involved. The thing just gets crazy. It really does.”

Frowning, he tightened his folded arms a bit more prior to saying, “What do you mean? I’m no slave. I’m free. I do whatever I want.”

“Didn’t you hear me? I just said you’re the worst kind of slave because you don’t know you’re a slave. Did you hear me say that, Lucas?”

“I heard you, but that’s not true. I’m not a slave, and I never will be either. So, I really don’t understand what you mean.”

Shaking her head, she leaned forward a little and whispered, “You talk just like a fool. You know that them crackers down there in Louisiana will castrate you, hang you, or turn you into a human torch, and you still went up in a white woman whose husband is in the mafia? Listen . . . if you can’t stop doing a thing . . . anything . . . a thing that you fully know and understand that can lead to castration and death . . . and you can’t stop yourself, you’re a slave, Mr. Matthews. And get this . . . it’s the worst kind of slavery because it feels so good. I’m told that once you engage in that kind of activity . . . after awhile . . . not only can’t you get out of it . . . you don’t even wanna get out of it. My sister and I thought that my father was going to be so angry when he found out she was with child that he might kill her, but he was just the opposite. He understood what happened to my sister.”

“Yeah, but Alexandra could have died even if she had waited until she got married.”

“True, but she wasn’t married, was she? And my nephew doesn’t know who his father is, does he? So, we dare not justify what they did and how it all ended. Later, after my sister died, I realized that anything that feels that good and might lead to your death is not good for you no matter how good it feels. You might as well be smoking opium or shooting the heroin that you were selling to others into your own arm.”

Lucas looked at her for a long minute, contemplating her conclusions, examining her accusations, wondering what she saw that he didn’t, knowing there was a truth that she knew and understood, but he couldn’t fully grasp. “You said that I couldn’t stop, right?”