Whos Loving You (5 page)

Whoever believed sex was overrated must’ve been asexual. I wished I could’ve stayed in D.C. another day with Grant, but after our fuck session, I had to fly back to Atlanta and go straight home so I could care for my son. This morning I fed him instant oatmeal with strawberries and walked him four blocks to his kindergarten class. Then I walked back down those same four blocks, bypassed my house, and walked three more blocks to work at the hotel. I stood on my feet from eleven to seven, with no break.

“See you tomorrow, girl,” one of my coworkers said as we walked in opposite directions.

“Not if the movie producer calls me, you won’t,” I said, checking my text messages.

We weren’t allow to text or make personal calls while working. I smiled. I’d missed one voice mail from Grant, or G, as I’d started calling him, and he’d sent four texts:
Velvet, thanks. I’d love to see you again. I’ll call you again later. I want to take you to dinner when I get to Atlanta.
Grant was so nice, but I wasn’t confused. Grant wanted to hit this good pussy again, and I wanted him to.

I texted him back:
G, can’t wait 2 c u…miss u already.

The sun was setting. I didn’t mind walking the three blocks to get home. I hated that there was no time for me to rest my tired feet. I wanted to take off my shoes. The balls of my feet stung; the heels of my feet ached. My mother thought it was a good idea for me to work at this hotel since it was close to home and my son’s school.

“Velvet, take that job, because you need to be close to home in case anything happens to Ronnie,” she’d said. “I’ll pick him up for you. I’m not going to sit at home worrying about how to get to him if something bad happens.”

The day I was born, I was naked, pure, and innocent; I wasn’t put on this earth for my mother to validate my existence. Control what was between my thighs. Constantly tell me how I should live my life. Give me advice, knowing at some point in her own life she’d been exactly like me: undereducated about her body, inexperienced with sex, and clueless about love. My mother was thirty years older than me.

While raising me, all she could say was, “Velvet, keep you legs shut. Stay a virgin as long as you can.” Why? Who was I saving myself for? She had made wrong choices for the wrong reasons, and she’d survived. Why couldn’t I do the same? If she’d wanted me to make smart choices, why hadn’t my mother taught me about sex? About my body? Probably because she still hadn’t figured it out for herself.

All the women I knew chose guys who didn’t love them. If they did love them, it didn’t last long. My mother had had her chance to screw up; now she wanted to preach what she hadn’t practiced. I wasn’t trying to impress my mother or be a role model for younger girls. I was going to continue taking risks and fucking up until I got tired, ’cause nobody I knew had gotten love or sex right.

I unlocked my mother’s door with my key.

“Hi, Mama,” I said, giving her a hug.

“Hey, baby. How was your day?” Mama asked, opening her mail while looking at me.

“I’m tired,” I answered, pouring a glass of cranberry juice.

“I have just the break you need,” Mama said, nodding.

Uh-oh. Here we go.
Reluctantly, I said, “Tell me what you’ve come up with this time.”

“Baby, it’s sweeter than honey. Honey Thomas is helping women empower themselves, and I figured if you could start getting child support, you could stop stripping at night.”

“Mama, I don’t know this Honey Thomas woman you’re talking about, and neither do you. I like stripping. I don’t like standing on my feet for eight hours.”

Sitting at my mother’s glass-top dinner table for four, I removed my shoes, then rubbed my tired feet. “Ronnie, you’ve got fifteen minutes to play video games. Then we have to go home.”

Mama said, “Stripping doesn’t have health benefits for my grandson.”

Working in customer service, I’d learned that people were fucking selfish and rude, just like my mother. They didn’t give a damn. I could be puking up my guts, and in the middle of heaving, they’d ask, “Can you give us directions to Atlantic Station?” They wouldn’t even apologize for interrupting me. One day soon I wouldn’t have to answer to those your-mama-should’ve-raised-you-better tricks or my mother.

“Okay, Mommy,” my son yelled from the living room. In an hour he’d be right back at my mom’s, ’cause I had to be at my second job by nine.

“Baby, she’s new to Atlanta, and her commercials are on Michael Baisden’s show all the time. Honey is going to help women get out of abusive situations,” said Mama.

I didn’t know that woman and had no desire to. “Anybody can advertise on the radio, Mama.” Honey was probably a rip-off chick, out to make a quick hustle by preying on desperate women. The fact that my baby’s daddy had never seen our son or paid a penny of child support wasn’t abuse; that was neglect, and I didn’t want to see his trifling, rusty, married behind ever again.

“Ronnie,” I called out to my son, “let’s go!” Looking into my mother’s eyes, I said, “Ma, please. This one time listen to me. Don’t contact that woman.”

Picking up my shoes, I left my mom’s house and went next door to mine. If I didn’t need my mom to keep Ronnie so often, I’d encourage her to go back to work. She’d taken an early retirement buyout from her federal government job to help me out.

“Hey, Ronnie. Hey, Red. That sure is another nice suit you have on today. They have any more of them concierge openings at that new fancy hotel you been working at?” Mrs. Taylor asked as she sat on her porch. “I could use me some new clothes, too. Never mind, chile. I’m just dreaming out loud. They probably ain’t got no positions for a sixty-year-old woman. Besides, I can’t walk all them blocks back and forth like you do. You sho’ look good, Red. Them Hollywood producers call you yet?”

The heaviness weighing down my heart was invisible. No one, including Mrs. Taylor, could look beyond my sexy smile and big booty to see that my fucking feet were hella tired from standing all day, exotic dancing all night, and running to or from men that didn’t deserve me.

Some of those lazy Negroes wanted me to cook, talkin’ ’bout, “My mama cooked, cleaned, worked two jobs, and took care of us. That’s the problem with y’all black women. Y’all don’t know how to keep a man happy.”

Fuck that. I wasn’t doing that domestic bullshit. I told that nigga, “Yeah, your mama did all that for you, and look at where it’s gotten you and her. She still doing the same shit, and your ass ain’t shit. Get the fuck outta my face. And before you leave, if your mama is such a good woman, let her suck your dick! Trick!” I got mad just thinking about how stupid and lazy some black men really were. Bunch of underachieving sons of bitches! “I’m handling mine. Stay your black ass out of jail, and get a real job,” I added.

If it weren’t for my child, only God knew where I’d be. I smiled. Probably in Hollywood, starring opposite Denzel or Jamie or opening up for Steve Harvey or Mo’Nique. Everybody I talked to knew how badly I wanted to act. I was super-talented and eager to launch my career. My last audition, for the movie
Something on the Side
, was six weeks ago. I’d auditioned for the part of Coco Brown. But I hadn’t heard anything. Maybe they thought I didn’t weigh enough. I’d gladly gain weight if I had to.

I stopped smiling.

Single parenting was so hard. I hated it. If it weren’t for my unconditional love for my child, I would’ve killed myself immediately after giving birth to him. Alone, in a cold operating room with a doctor and strangers poking, probing, and pulling between my legs, I’d cried. Not for joy. I’d cried because I wondered where my baby’s father was. Probably out raping somebody else with his nasty fifty-plus-year-old dick.

When a woman was twenty (the age I was when I met him) and a man was forty-five, they didn’t seem so far apart in years. But now that I was twenty-five and he was fifty-one, his ass seemed hella ancient. He hadn’t showed up at the hospital, and I hadn’t seen Alphonso Allen since I told him I was pregnant.

Standing by my side, my son said, “Hello, Mrs. Taylor.”

Mr. and Mrs. Taylor’s porch was separated from mine by a waist-high white wooden fence. Mrs. Taylor still believed in knowing her neighbors and keeping watch over our block. The suits I wore were different styles, but they were the same navy-colored, mandatory hotel concierge uniforms. Still, Mrs. Taylor liked them.

“Baby, your cell phone rangin’,” Mrs. Taylor said, staring at my Sidekick like it was a foreign object.

“I know. I’ll call ’em back later,” I said, silencing the ringer.

I doubted Alphonso ever told his wife about our five-year-old son. The day we met in Los Angeles, I’d just finished auditioning for a lead role in a movie called
Married Men
. I was going to play Jay’s girlfriend. That opportunity was long gone, I guessed. I hadn’t heard anything yet, about any part, but each day I held on to hope.

“You okay, chile?” Mrs. Taylor asked. “You’ll get the part, Red. Don’t worry. Worrying ain’t never done nobody any good, anyways.”

I dug in my purse for my keys, answering, “Yes, ma’am. I’m good.”

That day Alphonso was driving the bus route along Wilshire Boulevard. I’d gotten on, and he’d given me his cell phone number when I got off at my stop, promising to take me to dinner that night. I showed up at Harold & Belle’s on West Jefferson Boulevard and waited for hours. I told myself that maybe he was in one of L.A.’s traffic jams I’d heard about or had to work late. I sat at the bar, by the door, drinking Patrón Silver margaritas with salt on the rim. I speed dialed his cell every half hour, in between drinks, but after six failed attempts, I gave up and left the restaurant.

I knew I was too fine for him to pass on this ass. I was looking forward to making a friend that could help me out if I ever got in a bind. The next day he called me back, and we met up. No lunch or dinner. I had a one-night stand with him on Venice Beach on a wild, hot summer night, and my whole life changed. But not his. To this day, I regretted opening my legs in hopes of getting a sugar daddy to give me some money. I hated that I opened my legs and encouraged a man I didn’t know to penetrate me. Maybe I should’ve listened to my mother when she tried to warn me about men. Why did I wrap my legs and arms around him? Kiss him? Go down on him? When I didn’t even know him.
Whateva.

Glancing at Mrs. Taylor, I said, “You don’t need a fancy suit to make you look beautiful. You’re gorgeous.” I wondered if Mr. Taylor still loved Mrs. Taylor, or if he stayed with her to honor his commitment to God or to protect his assets.

“Baby, yo’ phone,” she said, pointing this time.

I silenced it again. I had to quit giving up my number so easily, but these older men weren’t into texting, and the younger ones wanted their dicks sucked for free. Not by Velvet.

Depending on which direction you traveled, our row of town houses sat on State Street, two blocks away from Interstate 85 and walking distance from the hotel where I worked. My mother lived next door to me, on the opposite side of Mrs. Taylor’s. My mother was the main reason I couldn’t commit suicide. Burying me would kill her, and then who’d take care of my son?

“I’ma go on inside and get ready for work,” I said, unlocking my front door and throwing my shoes on the floor. Ronnie raced inside to his room, then turned on his Nintendo Wii, as I threw my purse on the sofa, headed to the refrigerator-freezer, removed the bottle of Patrón Silver, poured two shots into a glass, then went to the bathroom and turned on the shower.

Mistakes happened, but why was I the only one who had to pay for our mistake for the rest of my life? I hated to think that way, but honestly, Ronnie was a mistake and a constant reminder for me not to make the same mistake twice. So when I got pregnant the second time, by a different man, one who had no intentions of marrying me or being with me, I had an abortion.

My dreams were deferred, not abandoned.

“One day,” I whispered. I sat on the toilet, massaging my toes. “Damn, my feet hurt.”

I’d believed Alphonso would pull out after we realized the condom was stuck inside of me, and when he didn’t, I’d suddenly realized I was having sex with a rapist. He’d penetrated me as deep as he could, and then he’d grunted, “Velvet, your young pussy is tight like my little princess, Tiffany Davis.” He’d thrusted deeper, then said, “Velvet, your pussy is better than Tiffany’s baby. If my stepdaughter hadn’t run away from home, I wouldn’t be here with you. Thanks, bitch.”

That motherfuckin’ trick was driving teenagers around on his bus every damn day, and his employers didn’t know he was raping women and girls?

I tossed back one shot as I started peeing. “Why me?” I cried.

I’d yelled, “Get the hell up off of me, nigga!” as I felt his pulsation pumping semen inside the walls of my vagina. He called me a bitch? Was he telling me he’d molested his stepdaughter? Shaking my head, I got sand in my eyes and my mouth. I tried to move from underneath him. I couldn’t see. My legs were over his shoulders; he had intentionally locked his arms around my thighs.

Covering my mouth, he shivered and said, “I’m almost done.”

I managed to grab a fistful of sand and throw it in his face. That was when he punched me in mine. That was the worst encounter of my life. I couldn’t move. All I could do was cry and pray. But I endured nine long months of denial and daily wishing. Each night I said, “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. I pray to die before I wake, and I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Each day my prayers were unanswered. I went into labor, and one bad decision to open my legs for the wrong man changed my life forever…forever.

Finishing off the Patrón, I removed all of my clothes. A hot shower always felt good, and I took three a day to make sure my pussy stayed fresh.

The demanding chores of single parenting left little time for me to sleep. A facial, a massage, a hair appointment, a manicure, a pedicure, shopping on the weekends, flying to the All-Star weekend, the Essence Music Festival, and the BET Awards with my girls were all the things I’d done to get a man, until I got fucked over by a man. Now I struggled to keep my appearance up. All of my girlfriends had had babies before me by black men who’d moved on with their lives. I’d sworn to them, “Whatever nonsense you guys are listening to, Velvet ain’t hearing it.”