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Subject: {ASS} RP Part 04-05 of "The Adventures of Me and Martha Jane" by S.J.R.
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Date: 24 Mar 1997 13:11:16 GMT
--------
**** WARNING **** WARNING **** WARNING ****
THIS DOCUMENT IS A SEXUALLY GRAPHIC STORY ABOUT AN INTENSE SEXUAL,
EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A TEENAGE GIRL AND
A YOUNG BOY AND THE COURSE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP OVER A PERIOD OF
10 YEARS. IT IS A DRAMATIZATION ABOUT REAL PEOPLE AND THEIR CON-
FLICT WITH SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS. IF THIS SUBJECTS OFFENDS YOU OR IF
SEXUAL LANGUAGE UPSETS YOU, OR IF YOU DON'T WANT THIS MATERIAL SEEN
BY UNDER-18 OR OTHERWISE UNQUALIFIED PERSONS, DELETE THIS DOCUMENT.
THIS DOCUMENT IS COPYRIGHTED 1994, 1996 BY SJR. SO--HEY, YOU CAN
COPY IT BUT YOU CAN'T CHANGE IT OR SELL IT UNLESS I SAY SO.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ADVENTURES OF ME AND MARTHA JANE
by S.J.R.
PART 4A:
I had a bad cold. It was just before Thanksgiving. Wearing
a heavy brown flannel robe, I sat up against the headboard as
Martha Jane settled near me on the bed and sat Indian-stlye. In
her hand she had a bottle of green cough syrup, a bottle of cod
liver oil, and a bottle of ear drops.
"Okay, hon, time for dessert."
"That's not dessert," I complained.
"This is dessert for sick folks." She shimmied her hips into
the mattress to get comfy. "Now, let's see, what does this
say...?" She examined the label on the cough medicine. "One
tablespoon. Okay!" With a giddy smile she fished for the spoon
in the paraphernalia she had gathered in a large dish towel spread
on the bed. She held up the spoon. "One tablespoon!" she an-
nounced. Seeming to enjoy every minute of it, she unscrewed the
cough medicine, held the spoon up as she poured the dark green
gunk, and carefully brought the spoon toward my face. "Oookay...
a-a-all for you, hon. C'mon. Yumyum. Yumyum."
"Yumyum Yuch!" I pouted.
"Come on now, you don't want to stay up coughing all night
like you did last night, do you?"
I frowned at the spoon.
"C'mon. It tastes good."
"I already had some of it and I know it doesn't taste good.
It's terrible, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth for hours."
"Well, Speedy, it doesn't taste good because it's medicine.
Medicine isn't supposed to taste good."
"Why don't they make it in the first place so it *does* taste
good?"
"'Cause if it tasted good in the first place, you'd drink it all
the time. You'd live on it, and then it would make you sick."
"If it's medicine, why would it make me sick?"
"Listen, stop bein' so logical. Here. Yumyum. C'mon."
I opened my mouth and she tilted the spoon into it. I swallowed
and grimmaced.
"There, I knew you'd like it."
"Yech."
"Now where's the cod liver oil..."
"Yecch!" I growled, as disgustingly as I possibly could,
stretching my mouth into a horrific grimace that went from ear to
ear. I held the pose as if frozen into it.
"Oh, stop. It can't taste that bad. Here..." She care-
fully squeezed an eyedropper of amber oil into a spoon, and then
squeezed the juice from half an orange into it. As she did this
I sat rigidly against the headboard as if long petrified, my face
still frozen in the same gruesome pose.
"Speedy, stop making that ugly face. Now, here...here's
your cod liver oil. Come on, stop makin' that face and swallow
this."
I looked her straight in the eye, with the same face.
"Speedy, that is the ugliest thing I ever saw. Stop, so we can
get this over with."
I let my face relax, sighed heavily, and opened my mouth. The
orange juice didn't do much to hide the bitter, fishy taste that
clung to the inside of my mouth. "Yah!"
"That's a good boy, that's two outta three. Now let's get this
off the bed so you can lie down and I can fix those ears." She
placed the dish towel of goods on the side table and sat up on her
knees on the bed, holding the bottle of ear drops. "Lie down on
your side. C'mon, you've had earaches before, you know what to do.
At least your ears can't taste this."
"They can too," I insisted.
"Lie down the other way first, hon, facing away from me. That's
right. Now, here..." She bent over me and placed the tip of the
filled eyedropper into the opening of my ear. The sudden contact of
the cold glass tip made me jerk and quiver involuntarily.
"Oh!" She jumped and pulled her hand away. "Oh, Speedy, did I
hurt your ear?"
I shook my head no. "It itches!"
"Oh my god, don't do that! You almost gave me a heart attack.
I thought I hurt you!"
I coiled up into a ball and feigned a low, pitiful groan, then
another.
"Oh, behave. You're not funny. Be still."
I relaxed on my side and then cringed as the cold thin fluid
filled my ear with a small roaring noise. "It itches. Eeew, it's
so itchy."
"It'll settle in and be okay," she said, stuffing a piece of
wadded cotton in my ear. "Now turn over so I can do the other one
..Turn over."
I lay still.
"Speedy, turn over so I can do the other one."
I sat up and pretended I was in a breathless daze. "What?
Did you say somethin'? I can't hear. Where am I?"
Holding the ear medicine in one hand and the eyedropper in the
other, she started to laugh, resisted it, and closed her eyes
patiently. "Speedy, please...you'll make me laugh and spill this
stuff all over the bed. Now...please...stop."
I groaned, "Okay," and laboriously rose to turn over on my
other side. Already weak, I feigned an even greater weakness,
moving slowly and spasmodically, writhing at every turn as if in
pain. "Oh...Uh...Mr. Holmes...uh..call Dr. Watson right away...
it's the deadly, poisoned ear drops...cgh, cgh."
"Speedy, if you make me spill this..." She started to laugh
again, and held it back with clenched teeth. "Stop, or I'm gonna
spank your butt 'till it falls off on the floor."
On my side facing her, I lay still.
On her knees, she shuffled closer to me. "Honestly, I never
in my life saw anybody go through such agony...Now here, this is
the last one."
Once more, the cool fluid rushed into me and greasily leaked
over my eardrum. I shivered again with the same itch in my ear as
before, and Martha Jane sealed my ear with cotton. Then she sat back
and sighed, drooping.
"I am exhausted from this! You're worse than a room full of
sick puppies."
I smiled seraphically.
"Don't you smile at me like that, you little devil." She
leaned closer to me and half-whispered, scowling. "Hon, you have
to get well. We can't fuck while you're sick like this, you're
too weak. So there."
She rose from the bed and brought the bottles and table-cloth
into the kitchen. While I heard her running water and cleaning I
made myself comfortable in the bed, lay on my side, and pulled the
covers up to my neck. I shivered as the 'flu coarsed through me,
but soon the blanket warmed me and I relaxed.
Martha Jane turned off the lights, except for one small lamp in
the living room. Then she came into the bedroom and turned out the
ceiling lamp using the switch on the wall by the door, and reached
under the bedside lamp to turn off the last light in the room. We
were dimly lit by the glow from the small living room lamp.
Martha Jane hiked up the legs of her jeans to make herself more
comfortable in bed, and quietly lay down beside me. She put her
palm on my head briefly. "You still have a little fever," she
whispered. She fiddled with the blankets and straightened my
pillow. She felt me tremble. "You still have chills, hon?"
Lying on my side, I nodded slowly.
"Well, don't you worry, they'll go away soon." She stretched
and pulled blankets about, soothing out the twists and tangles
that were made while we struggled earlier with the medications.
"You just stay nice and warm and...take your medicine the way
you're supposed to, and...before you know it...you'll be well and
gettin' right back into trouble, good as new." She rested on her
elbow beside me. "You ready to go to sleep?"
I nodded. At that moment another chill went through me. I
clasped my arms closer to fight it off.
"Want me to keep you warm?" she asked.
I nodded.
She moved closer to me and put one arm around my head to
slightly lift and cradle me onto her bosom. "There we are," she
said, and as soon as I was settled against her she unbuttoned her
shirt and pulled it open loosely. Then she pulled her bra up,
baring her breasts, and wiggled down so that her left nipple
grazed my cheek. I reached up and kissed the brownish pink bud.
"There...," she whispered. "Sleep, hon."
The shivers made a brief pass through me as I fell asleep
against her softness.
...A week or so later I was standing in Martha Jane's kitchen
as her mother, a thin lady who looked much older than my own and
who resembled her darker brunette daughter more than her fair,
auburn-haired Martha Jane, carefully handed me a large tablespoon
filled with dark green syrup. Her mother always spoke slowly and
with a slight rasp, having never completely overcome the lung
problems that she developed from the long and severe illness fol-
lowing her husband's death in the war.
"There," she told me, "now go in the bedroom and give that to
Martha Jane. And be certain she takes every drop of it."
"Yes, ma'am," I said. Holding the filled tablespoon face-high
before me, I walked carefully through their living room and into
Martha Jane's bedroom. She sat up in bed, a pink wool blanket up
to her waist, the place littered with used kleenex and her school-
books. Her eyes and nose were swollen and red. In one hand she
held a thoroughly used tissue.
I grinned maniacally at the door and chanted, "Yumyum."
She winced. "Don't yumyum me, you--Is it already time for
that awful stuff again?"
"Yumyum."
She called into the kitchen, "Mother, I thought I already took
this stuff!"
"It's three times a day, Martha Jane," her mother called back.
"Oh my," she moaned. I had climbed onto the bed and, on my
knees, moved cloer to her with one hand holding the spoon and the
other cupped guardedly beneath it.
"You were right," she said, sniffing. "That stuff really does
taste awful. And you can taste it for a week!"
"Yumyum," I said, moving the spoon closer.
"Oh," she whimpered, wincing again. "Do I have to?"
I nodded. "It hurts me more than it hurts you."
"Right," she muttered, eyeing the spoon with mild terror.
"Oh...all right." She opened her mouth and I dipped the spoon
inside. Mugging and wincing, she took it all, swallowed, and
slithered her tongue around thickly. "Oh, that is so disgusting!
This is supposed to be the atomic age. Can't modern science do
better than this?"
Her mother came into the room and retrieved the spoon. She
stood beside the bed shaking her head.
"Look at this," her mother said, indicating Martha Jane's
books and papers all over the bed. "Look, she won't even stop
when she's sick as a dog. I don't know what to do with her,
Speedy. She was awake half the night studying, and if she wasn't
studying she was coughing *and* studying."
"I have to graduate," she muttered petulantly. "On time!"
"But, Martha Jane, you can't learn very well if you don't
sleep. You need rest, dear."
"Yes, mother, I know. I know, and you're right." She sighed
and played nervously with the kleenex, which she brought back to
her nose, and blew into it. "I hate people staring at me when I'm
sick. I'm so ugly."
"Alright, I'll go back in the kitchen. Speedy, you visit a
while and try to talk some sense into her."
Her mother left and I started to settle on the edge of the bed,
but Martha Jane said, "Don't get too close," holding up a hand. She
sneezed suddenly, and held out her palm, indicating the box of klee-
ex near my knees. I gave it to her and she plucked a new tissue.
"I hate this."
"I'm sorry," I said, and sat on the bed anyway. I leaned
forward to kiss her.
"No," she whispered. "You'll get this same cold again." She
held the kleenex to her nose and sniffled. "Well, alright, a little
one. Right here--" she indicated her forehead. As she held the
kleenex over her nose I leaned forward and gave her a noisy kiss.
"Thank you, Speedy. I'm sorry, hon, you're really sweet. Don't pay
any attention to me. I'm sick!"
"Is this gonna keep you from school?" I asked.
"No, no, it'll just slow me down. I'll have to work like the
devil to keep up. I already worked myself to death, getting in
school a year ahead of my age to begin with. I hope it doesn't hurt
my grades." She settled against the pillow behind her and gazed out
the window. "I have to make those grades. I have to get out of
here. I have to get out of the "Lauderdale Courts U.S. Government
Housing Project"."
Though I wanted her to get well, the thought that she might soon
leave the project was disturbing. Fortunately for her, the Christ-
mas break would soon be underway and she would not miss many of her
classes. And I knew she still had the winter and spring to go be-
fore graduating. But by this time it was something she mentioned
with more frequency than I found comfortable.
Falteringly I tried to think of the questions that would give me
more information about what might happen in the near future. "Would
you move out as soon as you graduate high school?" I asked.
"Oh no, hon, I still have college to go. You can't get a decent
job with just high school, at least a girl can't. Not in good ole
Memphis, Tennessee. My poor sister got her diploma and she hardly
earns peanuts. She was hoping she'd make more, and she wanted to
rent a place for all of us. But she can barely support herself, and
she gives mother money to keep us goin'." She sighed again longingly
and shook her head. "Why can't she marry some filthy rich man who
shows up here in that driveway with sacks of money...? Oh, well,
Evelyn wouldn't do that. She wouldn't marry just for money."
"Would you?" I asked, half smiling, half not.
"No," she said directly and firmly. She blew her nose.
"But I wouldn't complain if some was included."
I had no idea what to do about her completing high school, going
to college, and leaving. But I knew she was unhappy where she was.
Heedless of the fact that the forces of time and economic necessity
and all the rest of it were far beyond my control, I was determined
during the following weeks to please her so well that she might have
second thoughts about never seeing me again. Within a few days she
recovered from her cold and used the Christmas break to work
feverishly on catching up with her studies. Trying to make myself
indispensable, I checked with her daily during the holidays to see
if she needed anything. If she needed note paper I volunteered and
ran to the drug store to get it. I trailed along with her to the
library and looked up several of her books.
The weekend after Christmas, Mom had a date and Martha Jane sat
with me, but I spent the entire night waiting on her, fixing dinner
and washing the dishes, bathing and cleaning up while she studied.
I even prepared the bed myself so that by nine o'clock she came into
the bedroom to check on me and found everything in place.
"Well!" she said, sliding into bed and hovering over me with
a warm smile. "You didn't even need me here tonight, did you?
You did everything all by yourself."
"You were busy," I said.
"Yes, I was. And so were you. And I'm glad you let me study,
hon, I needed it. And don't think I didn't notice. Now, is there
anything I can do for you?"
I didn't answer. But I could see a sultry look in her eyes.
More than likely, in the pause that followed while we searched
each other's eyes, she saw something similar in my own.
She whispered softly, "I'm all sweaty. I have to clean up
a little. You wait right here and don't go anywhere."
She rose, went into the bathroom, and closed the door. I
heard the bath water running for about five minutes, and later
she opened the door, turned out the bathroom light, and came into
the room wearing her wrinkly old bathrobe that she had worn for
years. The apartment was, like all the others, not very warm in
winter. Her robe didn't fit that well any more, seeming a little
short, more like a short sarong than an ankle-length garment. And
it was too tight around the shoulders, so that even when she held
it closed in front the lapels ventured outward, revealing the soft
glimmering swell of her breasts.
She had just started to slide into bed when I got up and
scooted down, off the foot of the bed and onto the floor. "Wait
a moment, madam," I said, rather elegantly and formally. "The,
uh, services of this establishment go beyond cooking dinner and
making beds."
"Oh, really?" she asked innocently, batting her eyelashes.
"It includes turning out the lights," I said, walking around
the bed and shutting off the bedside lamp. In the dark I con-
tinued, "And many other services to insure that you rest peace-
fully during your stay with us." I removed my underwear.
She asked primly, "And do the services include the manager
of the establishment making himself nekkid?"
I answered, "Yes, madam. They also include the management
making the guest nekkid, too."
"Oh my," she whispered. "I'm shocked. And pleased."
I reached for her hand with mine, and pulled slightly so
that she rose from the bed and stood before me. I noted that we
were just about the same height now. She was only slightly
taller. In a single motion, but gently, I pulled off her robe
and dropped it to the floor. It was, I think, the first time I
had undressed her myself. I whispered, "All madam has to do now
is lie down."
"And then what happens?" she whispered back.
"Management...manages."
"I can't wait."
She moved into the bed, going near the other side to give me
room, and I followed. I stayed on my knees, watching for a
moment as she lay flat on her back, stretching to get comfortable.
Her hands were behind her head, her slim body stretched out in
the moonlight. She spread her thighs slightly, just enough to
show me in the dark that she had begun to moisten and open. I
hovered over her, surprised at how, more and more, I should be so
deeply affected by the sight of her. Then I settled on my elbows
close to her.
She started to put one arm around me, but I whispered, "No.
Don't move."
She lay silently and waited. I began to softly, slowly, and
wetly kiss her, starting with her nose, her face, her neck. "You
don't have to do anything," I whispered. It took me about fif-
teen minutes to move my lips from her neck to her toes, and up
her thighs again. By then she was trembling and sighing. When-
ever she tried to help, I would tell her to lie still. One time
she asked me, "Don't you want me to do anything for you?" I ans-
wered simply, "You are." From that point on she gave herself to
my mouth and hands.
Finally I lay betwen her thighs, my mouth nipping at the
sensitive skin along the tendons and muscles there. She gave a
series of small gasps as she felt my lips licking toward her cunt.
Watching her from below, I shortened each lick as I moved upward,
closer. I have no idea how these techniques ever got into my young
head. I simply learned from her responses. I could see the tension
in her tightened fists as I neared her center. I knew that when she
held her breath she would be completely ready for the touch of my
mouth directly on her. Soon this happened. She lay tense and
unbreathing, her thighs and tummy stiffened expectantly. I removed
my lips from her completely for only a second or two, then lowered
my tongue to nestle directly and lightly on her clit. She exhaled
and whimpered, and her hips swiveled once. I removed my lips again
for another brief pause, then curled my mouth into her slit, took
her clit in my lips, and gently sucked. Surprising even me, she
whimpered helplessly, and started cumming immediately. This was
sooner than I had planned, but I was not one to interrupt. Still
sucking, I arched my tongue rhythmically and slowly along her nub.
She stiffened, and her hips rose slightly off the bed. Her head
rolled languidly to one side. She uttered a strange sound that I
can describe only as the sound of a beautiful young woman cumming
deep and hard, and I could feel her tummy and taut thighs quiver
around me through most of it. Soon her hips fell back to the bed
and she let out a long, breathy "Oh! God!". I continued my gentle
suck, waiting for the subtle sensations that told me her hot clit
had stopped swelling, and soon her thighs jerked once and I knew
she was returning to earth.
I unmouthed her as she regained her breath and I licked her cunt
petals lightly, smelling the cum and the remains of the bathroom
soap on her, nipping at her thighs again, and rose to lie fully on
top of her. For a moment I kissed her neck and her nipples. Then,
rising on my elbows, I aimed my cock by sight and slowly and fully
entered her.
"Oh hon," she gushed, though she still could hardly breathe.
"God, that feels so good!" I didn't move. I could feel her clasp
me inside, once for several seconds, then two or three contractions
around my shaft that waned in strength.
I rose on my elbows. Slowly, the new young animal in me rising
gradually and fully until I found myself unexpectedly breathing
through clenched teeth, I looked down at where we were so delicious-
ly joined, and wordlessly and with a deliberate and unchanging
rhythm, I fucked her until she came again. I said nothing until she
gave a final quake and went entirely rigid, and as she lay suspended
and frozen in pleasure I moved my lips near her face and breathed
"Cum...cum..." again and again, waivering only when I felt that odd
tickle in my cock sliding inside her, and the soft writhing of
fledgling tubes in my lower gut that I could not resist told me with
a startling jolt of pleasure that a drop of me was oozing into her.
By the time she relaxed we were both overcome. Neither of us
could move. Eyes closed, she lay stroking the back of my neck.
Finally she whispered. "You are such a wonderful fuck." To which I
could only mutter into her bosom, "I had help."
With her cheek resting on my head I felt her face form a wide
smile. Without seeing her, I could envision her teeth gleeming in
the dark.
"Flatterer," she purred, sounding sinfully pleased.
PART 4B:
Two technicalities that didn't particularly plague me at that
time were: whatever happened to Martha Jane's virginity? And what
did she use for birth control?
I assumed that my early sexual equipment had not yet developed to
the size required for breaking hymens. This seemed reasonable, though
I was not that small in those days and from what I had seen and heard
from other boys my age, I was above average in that department. At
the swimming pool in the project and at Malone Pool, a municipal public
swimming pool nearby, plenty of kids showed up who didn't hesitate to
drop drawers in public and hop into their swim trunks. From all I
saw, I was a definite contender. From Martha Jane's testimony, of
course, I was the best in the business.
Birth control was a different matter. I did my own research, at
considerable consternation to the librarian who fetched dozens of
medical references out of the library stacks. The best information
I could gather and decipher led me to conclude that it was medically
possible for me to do some damage--though I doubted I'd find a
urologist who would dare confirm it.
In addition to official references I garnered more information
from every young boy's ultimate source: the first-hand tales of that
worldliest of peers, the local 12-year-old womanizer. I don't
remember this kid's name, but he frequented the big grassy lawn that
stretched before my building. It was a ritual about once a month for
this nice-looking, hefty redheaded kid to pontificate on the handling
and seduction of young girls before a group of enthralled listeners
age 4 to 14 or so. At about that time I decided to hang around for
some of these sessions, during which I heard the usual rumors about
virginity often passing without pain or bloodletting, or via other
means (sports, et al). He had his own lurid stories to relate, and
often did so with amazing clinical detail which, through my experi-
ence with Martha Jane, convinced me that at least some of his reports
seemed authentic.
I decided Martha Jane's hymen had probably been taken by me--
exactly when, I couldn't say--and that its inconvenience had been
masked by ardour and passion.
My scouring about the world was not limited to what I could find
in a boring book. I did consort with peers now and then, especially
on the school playground at lunch and recess. I developed no close
or frequent friends that I recall. The one buddy I did take up with
was Stepper.
I spent about a year kicking around with him. He was a black
boy my own age. We didn't see each other regularly because he lived
on the other side of the downtown area, near my Aunt Frances' home.
I met Stepper on one of my expeditions into the downtown business
district. Having been packed off to my godmother's place for a week-
end, I had spent the morning sitting around their restaurant near
busy Union Station. The usual procedure when I spent weekends with
my godparents or my father's parents was to spent evenings in their
home; but since they had no sitter for me and everyone in the family
manned the business during the day, they would drag me downtown with
them when they opened the Tremont Cafe in the morning. I spent half
my time gobbling down ice cream and Cokes and whatever was on the
menu, and the other half exploring the nearby railroad yards, playing
Army games near the grounds of the mammoth post office building next
door, or poring over comic books and sipping milk shakes. I had
exhausted my supply of comics that day and sat around looking bored,
so my godmother (who was also my great-Aunt Frances) handed me two
bucks for more comics.
Searching the newsstands nearby in Union Station and Central
Station uncovered nothing new. So in my usual (i.e., unpredictable)
way I wandered into the thick of downtown Memphis until I discovered
a new and gigantic supply of comics in a hotel near Beale Street. In
1949 two dollars would buy a sackful of comics, and a sackful is what
I held under my arm as I started back toward Aunt Frances' place.
Just beyond the corner of Beale and Main I heard a jazz band.
Following the sound, I found a small crowd listening to the three-
piece band on a block on Beale Street. This was an event in Memphis,
there being ordinances against such things. All three players in the
band were blacks, with a drummer and a bass player, and a trumpeter in
a straw hat with a bright yellow feather. The fourth member was
Stepper, a gangly black kid in loose clothing who was shuffling and
tap dancing. The kid's style caught my eye. He seemed very smooth
and adept; I had seen enough Fred Astaire flicks at the Suzore's to
recognize fancy footwork.
After he performed a couple of numbers he took a big bow from
the crowd and leaned against the wall of the building for a break
while the band started a number without him. That's when I walked
over to him and, too shy to know how to start a conversation with a
person who seemed so accomplished, I shuffled around without a word
until he happened to notice the corner of a comic book cover that had
crept up over the edge of the paper bag I held.
"Say," he said, pointing to the bag, "you got Plastic Man in
there!"
"Yeah. You know about Plastic Man?"
"Do I? My favorite. Got them funny glasses, and goes stretchin'
his neck all the way around buildin's an' everything. Yeah, it's
funny, it's really weird artwork, the way they draw that guy."
We established an immediate rapport. I found it odd that a kid
who performed with such alacrity and precision could have such a
sleepy, lazy manner of speaking. There was much about Stepper that
I found intriguing: he had a flair for dance and a sense for music
that has never been matched by any kid I knew before or since. He
had practical and apparently hard-earned "street smarts" that I
envied. At the same time there was something about him that was
even more childlike than his 8 or 9 years. I kept seeing him as a
youngish Pied Piper.
Before I left that day I offered him my copy of Plastic Man. He
thanked me but said he wouldn't have time to read it on the spot.
But I held the book out to him and said, "No, keep it. It's
yours. I'll get another one."
The kid beamed a big, surprised smile at me and said thanks.
He asked if I hung around there much, and I said I'd try to get
back on a weekend. As I was leaving he said, "Hey, you ever
get back here, look for me. Ask for Stepper. That's me."
A few weeks later I again saw Stepper dancing with the street
band. When I talked with him during his break I was surprised when
he reached into a wrinkled paper sack, pulled out the Plastic Man
comic and handed it to me. He said he hoped it wasn't too damaged,
he had given it to his smaller brother Junior. And even his 5-year-
old sister Truluv had read it.
I asked, "Really? You have a sister named 'True Love'?"
"Yeah, Truluv," he said, and he spelled it for me. "That was my
Aunt Harriet's idea. She got a lot o' goofy ideas."
When Stepper was finished for the day he gave me a brief tour of
Beale Street, which had not changed very much since its heydey at
the turn of the century. This street was "downtown" for blacks who
lived in that area, although many of the businesses had since been
bought out by whites.
Stepper told me his real name was Franklin, which he didn't
like. He insisted on being called by his nickname, Stepper. He was
amused when I told him I had the opposite problem and that I hated
my nickname. Stepper lived in a small house near Beale Street with
his mother, an uncle, his sister Truluv and his baby brother Junior,
and their dog Agnes. It turned out that his home was in the same
neigh- borhood as my Aunt Frances and her next-door neighbor, my
Aunt Josephine Sansone. Stepper said he was familiar with those
names. He told me he had an older uncle, Robert, who was a handyman
and junk collector in the neighborhood. He cruised the area with
his mule and wagon and made part of his living making deliveries or
picking up used tires, refrigerators, sinks, or whatever refuse
could be sold or rebuilt. The local shopping area had a small
supermarket, a liquor store, a cleaners, and a restaurant and beer
hall on the corner of Linden Street. My relatives owned that
property and ran the businesses. The area was a decaying part of
Memphis built in the 1890's. The old two-story houses that were
still standing were populated by whites, many of them either closely
or distantly related to me. The other side of the area was literal-
ly a shantytown populated by poor negro families who lived in houses
little better than shacks.
Stepper became my indispensable guide to many of the dangers I
had somehow avoided downtown. Standing on a street corner one day
he pointed out a very large lady shopper who was crossing the
street, walking in our direction.
"Lookit that lady," he murmured, pointing to her. "See, she got
two shoppin' bags she's holdin' in one arm, and that other bag she
got down at her left side. Lookit dem two bags she's holdin' in her
right arm. See dat? It wouldn't take nothin' to bump up aside her
a little bit, and dem bags come tumblin' down all over the side-
walk. You could grab three or four, maybe five things outta that
bag and run like the devil, she'd wouldn't know it 'till too late to
catch you."
He showed me how several shoppers left themselves vulnerable
and how he could make a getaway unscathed.
I asked him how he knew these tricks.
"My brother, he's 19 years old and he has this friend, name
is Joel. Joel brung me down here one time and showed me all them
tricks. Said he wanted me to do it with him. But I wouldn't do
it."
"Have you ever done anything like that?"
"Nope. Not me. And I'm glad I didn't. 'Cause Joel, he's in
jail for it right now. And I'm not. But I hope I never get to the
point where I have to steal like that."
"Why would you have to steal?"
"'Cause you get hungry. You don't have no home. Then you
got to. Ain't no other way."
Stepper guided me to many of the secret places in unlikely parts
of the city. Like me, he was inveterately curious. We saw each
other every few weeks or so and explored areas that had not been
touched or seen by anyone in years. We crept through the dank,
silent warehouses of the old cotton shipping district, unused at
that time for dozens of years, and found remnants of an entire
railroad network that connected the shipping docks. We followed the
railroad itself through an old part of town, onto the bluffs along
the waterfront, across the Mississippi RIver on the old Harriman
bridge and into Arkansas on other shore. Traversing the old rail-
road bridge was scary: there was no walkway and only a thin metal
cable for a handrail, and therefore there was no escape from oncom-
ing trains, short of diving into the river. The heavily rusted
tracks told us that the bridge had been unused for years. Still, we
played it safe and walked back to town over the DeSoto Bridge, which
had a pedestrian walkway.
It took over an hour to return to Memphis. Along the way,
Stepper entertained me by forming his fingers tightly around his
lips and showing me how to "trumpet" a blues number with his hands.
When it came to adventuring with people, however, we didn't
fare so well.
One hot, sticky June day I brought Stepper into my back yard and
told him to wait while I went inside to get us some lemonade. Mom
was making a pitcher of it when she noticed Stepper waiting out
there near the edge of the access driveway.
"That little boy out there..is he with you, Speedy?"
"Yeah, that's Stepper. Can he have some, too?"
"Well," she began, looking at him irritably. She turned and
pulled two tall glasses down from the pantry on the wall, and
started clunking ice cubes into them. "All right, but listen to
me..." She bent down close to my face and in a stern whisper, so
Stepper wouldn't hear, she warned me, "...I'll give him some this
time, because I don't think I ever mentioned this to you before.
But don't you bring any black boys around again. Hear?"
Confused, I looked out through the rear screen door at
Stepper, who stood unknowing with his back to us and looked about
at the goings on around him. I turned back to Mom and asked,
"Why not?"
"Because we don't socialize with them."
"But why not?"
"Because he's--" she lowered her whisper to a barely audible
level--"black."
"But why don't we--?"
"Because we just don't. Now you mind yourself, Speedy, and
don't ask me why not, just don't do it anymore."
She gave me two glasses of lemonade and went about cleaning
up, doing little to hide her displeasure.
Perplexed at the harshness of such rules and her unflinching
insistence, I walked outside and handed Stepper the lemonade. He
took a quick drink and yelled toward my mother in the kitchen,
"Thank you, ma'am. This is real good. You make it really good!"
My mother brought her face to the screen door and smiled with
stiff politeness. "I'm glad you like it." Then she went back to
work.
Stepper drank the lemonade in one long, noisy series of gulps
and wiped his lips. Without changing his casual manner he said
quietly to me, "Hurry up and finish yours, and let's go."
"Where we goin'?" I asked.
"You in trouble about this, I can tell. Ain't you?"
I shrugged and sipped my lemonade.
"You in trouble, huh?" he asked again.
I drank deeply and paused. "What makes you think so?"
"I can tell," he said.
Conspiratorially, we both behaved offhandedly as I finished my
lemonade and returned the glasses to the kitchen. "Thanks, ma," I
said nonchalantly as I walked out.
"You be back here at six," she warned.
"Yes, ma'am."
Stepper and I decided that from then on we would meet in a part
of the project where my mother wouldn't see us--which would be any-
where except in my tiny back yard.
Shortly thereafter I was similarly approached by my Aunt Frances.
One Sunday morning as she was cleaning up the breakfast dishes be-
fore leaving to work at the restaurant, she called me inside. I had
been playing in the her back yard with Stepper and his little sister
Truluv, throwing a ball for their dog Agnes to fetch.
Aunt Frances stood in her kitchen with her hands on her very
wide hips, her big face frowning. "You don't let any of them kids
come in this house when we leave you alone here, do you?"
"No, ma'am," I said--lying, of course, since Stepper and I had
already explored the unlived-in, unfurnished second floor of their
big old Victorian house.
"Hm-hm," she muttered to herself, displaying her usual distrust.
"You watch out who you play with around here. Those kids belong in
niggertown, over there on Linden Street. They don't have no
business around here."
"Yes, ma'am, " I said dutifully.
Naturally, I disobeyed. On weekends when I stayed with Aunt
Frances and they were home, I met Stepper behind their house. Their
back yard had a wooden one-car garage, and a vine-covered wire fence
that ran along the gravel alleyway separating shantytown from the
homes on Aunt Frances' block. Right behind the garage was our
favorite spot.
I was waiting there one day eating a cookie out of a big batch
Aunt Frances was making for the restaurant. Stepper came around the
corner of the alley before I finished.
"That looks good, " he said. "What kinda cookie?"
"Oatmeal," I said. "Wait. I'll get you one."
"That's okay, I don't want one that bad. Don't get in no
trouble."
"I won't," I said. "Just wait." I went through the yard and
paused at the rear door, quickly swallowing the last cookie bite,
and walked into the kitchen. Aunt Frances stood in a white chef's
apron at the big center table, rolling out cookie dough. I asked for
another cookie.
"I just gave you one. You ate that already?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Well...all right, but this is the last one. Don't you spoil
your lunch."
"Thank you," I said obediently, and once outside I dashed behind
the garage. Stepper's little sister TruLuv stood shyly beside him.
I gave the cookie to Stepper and said, "Now she doesn't have one."
"She can have some o' mine," Stepper said.
"No," I said. "Wait here." I dashed again to the back door,
paused to settle down, and strolled casually into the kitchen.
"Can I have another one?"
My Aunt Frances looked down at me in disbelief. "What? I just
gave you another one!"
"I ate it."
"You ate that big cookie already? Don't you chew?"
My Uncle Johnny sat in the living room reading the paper. He
called out in his soft, wheezy voice. "What's the matter, Francis?"
Aunt Frances called back in her shrill voice, "Your nephew eats
cookies faster than I can make 'em."
"Well, give 'im another one."
"He's had two already."
"He's a kid, they eat all day. Won't hurt anything."
Aunt Frances gave me another cookie, with a strong warning: "Now
this is the last one. Don't eat so many cookies, they're not good
for you when you eat so many."
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you."
I ran outside. Behind the garage, Stepper and Truluv had been
joined by their baby brother Junior and Agnes the dog.
I handed Truluv the cookie. "Wait," I said.
Back to the kitchen door. I paused a longer time, hoping it
was enough to cover the consumption of another cookie. Then I
went into the kitchen.
Aunt Frances balked and scowled. "Don't tell me you want
another one!"
"Yeah."
"How do you eat so fast?"
My Uncle Johnny called, "What's the matter now, Frances?"
"Your nephew already ate that other cookie!"
Uncle Johnny gave his usual laugh, an ironic, tired little
wheeze. "Hell, I'm not surprised. What's he want now?"
"What do you think he wants? He wants another one."
"Give him one, Frances, what the hell..."
"Here!" Aunt Frances said, posing another big cookie in my face.
"Now, that's the last one!"
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you."
I ran back to the garage and behind it, and gave Junior his
cookie.
"What about you?" Stepper said, munching. "Now you ain't got
one."
"Aw," I said, "I get cookies outta her all the time."
Stepper grinned, his teeth covered with crumbs. "You some-
thin' else, boy."
This resulted in my being introduced to Stepper's Uncle Robert,
the junk man, a tall, portly, silver-haired elder who reminded me
of cheerful Uncle Remus, whose Walt Disney movie I'd recently seen.
Along with Stepper and Truluv, we went riding on Uncle Robert's
junk wagon up and down Linden and Lauderdale Streets all that week-
end. I spent one Sunday at Robert's own shanty, where he made a
batch of the warmest, crunchiest, greasiest, tastiest Southern
fried chicken I ever ate. He called me "Mister Speedy, suh" and
showed me how he collected the junk and cleaned it up.
It was a few weeks following the February cookie incident that
I was on Robert's mule-powered junkwagon with Stepper and Truluv
and Agnes. We sang and joked our way merrily down Lauderdale in
front of my Aunt Frances' home when we passed my beautiful cousin
Josephine Louise, who was walking toward her mother's home next door
to my Aunt Frances.
We kids waved and screamed hello. Josephine Louise at first
didn't hear, but when she did she turned to us and her face lit up.
Josephine Louise was a creature of magical beauty. Her wide red
sensuous mouth and huge doe-like eyes were almost as hypnotic to me
as Martha Jane's basic, tender charm. She smiled and waved.
"Hi, Speedy. Y'all havin' a good time?"
"Yep," I yelled back, proud of myself as a veteran rider of
wagons and expert on the back end of mules.
"Stay outta trouble now," she called, and winked her sexy wink.
As the wagon clattered by with its tin cans rattling and its
mule clopping along, I watched Josephine Louise's sultry slinkiness
turn and walk up the front path to her home. If ever I had been
crudely horny as a very young boy, Josephine Louise was the cause
of it.
It was on that day that the proverbial excrement first hit the
proverbial fan concerning Stepper...
The following day, a Sunday, I snuck around the garage behind
Aunt Frances' house and met Stepper in the alley. We began walking
through the shantytown toward his house when we were met by his
Uncle Robert. We both expected his usual, toothy grin and good
cheer. Instead, he had a long and serious face.
"Stepper, you come hyah," he called somberly from a few yards
away. He stopped to wait for Stepper to go to him. Both of us
could tell by his cheerless tone that something unpleasant was
brewing.
Stepper looked back at me as he went to his uncle. "Wait here,
Speedy, Uncle Robert's got somethin' to tell me. I'll be back."
But as soon as Stepper joined his uncle, Robert took the boy's
hand and held him still. He straightened up and looked down at
Stepper sternly. "Stepper, child, I got somethin' ta tell ya. This
is serious, now. You got to pay attention and you got to mind what
I say."
"What is it, Uncle Robert?"
PART 4C:
Robert paused, and began again with a strained voice and face.
"You chillun cain't be playin' around here together no mo'. I done
got the word on it from yo' brother Steve, and from Miz Sansone
across the street. She call me on my phone at home, and when Miz
Josephine Sansone calls me at home, I know it's ser'ous. She seen
us all on the wagon yestiddy, and she say...she don' wonna see no
more of it with you and Mister Speedy."
"But why?"
"Now, I told you, child, please mind me." He looked up and took
a step toward me. "Mister Speedy, I sho don't like this. But I
got to do what Miz Sansone say."
I looked into his sad eyes and said, "Uncle Robert, you don't
have to call me mister. I'm supposed to call *you* mister."
"I appreciate that and I know what you mean, but...Miss Josephine,
and yo' Aunt Lucille and Aunt Frances is all in a big uproar, and...
I ain't got no choice in this."
I asked, "But who told you we were out on the wagon? Was it
Josephine Louise?"
"No suh, now, yo' cousin Miss Josephine Louise, she didn't have
nothin' to do with this. So don't you go blamin' her. She's the
sweetest lady I know, and she wouldn't do nothin' like that. Now...
it don't make no difference who said what and who done what. The
end of it is, yo' Aunt Josephine and Aunt Lucille and Aunt Frances
don't want you and Stepper together 'round hyah. And they ask me to
tell you they don't think it's safe, you runnin' round in shantytown."
Stepper broke in excitedly, "Speedy, I'll meet you up by Saint
Patrick's church from now on, won't nobody--"
"Now, Stepper!" Uncle Robert said firmly. "Please, child. You
heard what I said." Uncle Robert turned to me. "I'm really sorry,
Mister Speedy."
I said, feeling very staunch and grownup, "I know how they are,
Uncle Robert. I understand."
"Well, I know you is a smart boy, and a good boy, and I know
you see what's going on. I wish it could be dif'ernt, and I ain't
sayin' it's right, but--"
"I *know* it ain't right!" I said defiantly. "It's not fair!"
"Mister Speedy, please. We all know what's going on hyah, so
let's don't dwell on that 'cause they ain't nothin' we can do about
it. Miz Sansone and them is yo' people, yo' family, and you got to
do what they say. So don't be makin' trouble for yuhself. I
confess I did see yo' cousin Miss Josephine Louise at the grocery
sto' this morning when she come to work, and she say she knew what
was happenin', too, and she was sorry. So I know how you and her
feel about dis, but..." Uncle Robert grabbed Stepper's hand again
and straightened up. "But I makes my livin' from Miz Sansone and
other folks round hyah, and...well...we got to do what we got to do.
Come on, Stepper. Let's go see 'bout some lunch."
Silently I watched them go, torn between pity and affection for
Stepper and Uncle Robert, and my growing dislike for what seemed to be
a mounting tide of opposing forces from adults, mean kids, the possi-
bility of Martha Jane leaving after high school, aunts who hated
giving cookies, and moms who gave no reason for banishing my friends.
As Stepper and Robert walked away, Stepper turned and gave me a lost
look that tugged at my heart. But out of view of Robert he winked,
pointing at himself and then at me, and the message I got was that he
would find a way to come to me. I nodded. When they disappeared into
Stepper's slanted wooden house down the driveway, I turned and trudged
back toward my aunt's house with dragging feet. I was in no mood to
give up an afternoon of Stepper and Uncle Robert for one with grownups
I increasingly resented and could not fathom.
This wasn't the end of it with Stepper. A few weeks later at the
end of March, he met me in the Lauderdale Courts project. He'd
brought with him his pride and joy--a leatherette bag of genuine
cat's-eyes marbles given him for his birthday by his Aunt Harriett. I
knew this to be a prize, as an entire bag of 24 cat's-eyes cost more
than many poor black families earned in a week.
We gathered with several other kids in a patch of orange dust
a few yards west of my building, near a thick grove of hedges.
This was safe from my mother's view and within sight of most of the
other kids who lived nearby. We called this grassless patch of worn
ground the Marble Court. It was the perfect surface for hand-
shooting marbles. The common belief was that only sissies played
marbles on smooth surfaces; shooting and rolling in fine dust re-
quired great skill.
About five boys my age, and Stepper and I, and a number of young
boys and some girls were gathered at the Marble Court as Stepper
amazed everyone with his expertise at marbles. I was almost tempted
to take bets on the little tyke, as I had seen Leo Gorcey do with
Huntz Hall in a Bowery Boys movie.
The sun was lowering toward the rooftops near dinner time,
and kids were wrapping up their final marble shots, when four older
boys strolled hurriedly across the lawn toward us. Looking over my
shoulder, I recognized two of them as a couple of tough kids that
had been in fistfights in the area.
One of the boys standing near me saw them as well, and he leaned
close to me. "Hey, Ricci," he said, calling me by my last name,
"here come some of them guys from the big buildings on the hill."
I murmured back, "Maybe we oughtta stop the game and spread
out. They're always lookin' for trouble."
"Naw, they look like they're goin' somewhere in a hurry. They
might not stop here. Make like we don't see 'em."
The other kids, not noticing the quartet, were on the ground,
anxiously hunched around a boy who was making a critical shot. As
I tried to appear unaffected, I heard with a chill the footfalls of
the boys walking swiftly through the grass near my back. With a
sigh of relief I heard them approach and then pass, appearing to be
on their way into the project without noticing us.
But then one of the four yelled, "Hey, Herschell, look at this!"
He suddenly appeared in front of me, headed deliberately toward the
kids hovering around the game.
One of the other four yelled, "Hey, JB, what the hell 're you
doin'?"
"Just a minute," the hefty boy named JB yelled back, "Lemme
see somethin'."
"Oh, what the hell!" swore one of the toughs. "You're wastin'
my time, JB. You're always wastin' my time!"
JB stepped roughly into the group playing marbles. The kids
stood and scattered immediately. Only another boy and Stepper were
left on the ground.
"Hey, nigger, what you got down there?"
Stepper remained still, staring up at him warily with wide,
white yes.
"You got cat's-eyes, nigger? Hey, Herschell, this nigger's got
some cat's-eyes. Got a nice set, too."
"Are you kiddin' me?" Herschell yelled back. "C'mon, man,
we ain't got time for that. We're gonna miss tickets for the game
tonight. Cut the crap and get movin'. C'mon!"
JB stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at Stepper
with a mean smile. "Them your cat's-eyes, boy? Huh? They belong
to you?"
"Yeah," Stepper said politely, starting to get up. "They's
mine."
"Well, they ain't yours no more," JB said, and he reached down
and scooped up a handful of cat's-eyes. Stepper had no choice; JB
was twice his size, and almost twice mine. All the other kids
began spreading out, away from the Marble Court.
The other three toughs were still walking on their way. "C'mon,
JB," one of them yelled. "We ain't waitin', man!"
JB eyed Stepper with a menacing false friendliness, as Stepper
carefully moved away from him. "Thanks, nigger," JB said, grinning,
spilling the marbles loudly from one hand to the other.
I was a few yards away from JB. I calculated that if I broke
into a quick run, I could pretend to have just arived on the scene
and could brush against his hands, knocking the marbles away. If
the goods were spilled everywhere and his friends were urging him
to leave, he might just forget the whole thing and move off. I was
desperate that Stepper should not lose those marbles and that the
rest of us would not be intimidated. Before I knew it I was rushing
across the front of JB's view, headfirst.
I struck his hands with my right shoulder and arm. Marbles
flew everywhere. Quickly I jerked to a stop and said, "Oh,
'scuse me, mister! I didn't see ya." I bent down, retrieving
marbles, most of which had fallen in the nearby grass.
"Hey, Herschell," I heard JB yell over my head as I bent.
"You see what that little shit did to me?" He gave a rough laugh.
I didn't know what he would do next. I could not see him from
my bent-over position. But I knew I was terrified. I could see
my hands quiver as I fished for one marble at a time. I had no
idea what would happen next.
I didn't have to wait long to find out.
I heard and felt a violent, dull thud on the left side of my
face. My head snapped to the right, straining my neck, and the rest
of me followed into the dirt. I don't remember falling, so I must
have gone down instantly. I hit the ground tummy-first with a
single bounce, my mouth and nostrils filled with sticky, choking
brown powder. One of the little girls behind me screamed. To my
left I heard feet pounding from the direction of the other three
toughs. I was numbed by a growing hum of sickening fear. Were all
four of them going at me? What a stupid thing I'd done!
One of the toughs had run to us and hissed angrily, "JB,
goddammit, get yer butt movin. You wanna see this game, stop
fuckin' around and let's go!"
"Okay, man, okay," JB said, swaggering over to me. "You see what
this nigger-lover did to me? Like I wouldn't know what he was up to.
Hey, boy! You think I'm stupid or somethin'?"
I didn't answer. I didn't think I could speak anyway. I lay flat
in the dirt. Maybe he'd think I was knocked out.
The second tough walked away. "SCrew it, man, I'm tired of your
foolishness. Hey, Herschell, keep movin', this stupid motherfucker's
gonna stay here and play. So long, JB!"
"I'm comin', man, I'm comin'," I heard JB say absently. From the
corner of my left eye I could see his shoes approach me slowly. Then
the shoes moved so quickly they were a blur, and I shifted two or
three feet to the right as a fierce blow crashed into my left side and
ribs. This time I got a good face-full of ground and felt my forearms
scraping roughly into it. I then realized the left side of my face
was swelling from the earlier blow, and the rapidly spreading mixture
of numbness and stinging pain in my left side meant that I had been
kicked hard. I lay frozen and nauseous, waiting for more.
But more didn't come. JB scoffed, "Nigger lover," and out of
my right eye I saw him walking off. "Okay, fellas, I'm comin"," JB
yelled.
My worst fears gone, the ability to move returned to my limbs. I
saw drops of blood in front of me on the ground, and my nose itched
maddeningly. Rapidly, fear was displaced by rage--so much so, I felt
I might go out of control. I trembled more from anger than from
pain. I rose to my elbows and knees, a throbbing ache spreading
through my head and face. I wondered if the bastard had broken my
nose, or a cheekbone, or a rib. More blood dripped off the tip of my
nose into small red blots in the dust.
Stepper and two other kids were onto me right away.
"Hey, Ricci! Ricci!" one of them pleaded. "You okay?"
I heard someone sniffling and crying just over my head. I
opened my eyes and saw Stepper's shoes.
"Speedy," Stepper sobbed. "Say somethin'. You alright?"
"I'm okay," I mumbled, surprised that my mouth could move, but not
surprised that it hurt my nose and jaw.
"He's okay!" one of the kids screeched. "C'mon, let's get 'im
up."
I let out a powerful, growling scream. "Don't touch me! Nobody
touch me! Leave me alone!"
I sensed the others were startled and that they began moving away
cautiously. All but Stepper. He was still crouched near me, his hand
on my back.
"Speedy, please tell me you okay," he sobbed.
I was up on my knees now, and settled back on my haunches. I
nodded. "It's okay, Stepper. I'm bleedin, I guess, but I'm all here."
"This my fault, man."
"To hell with that," I breathed. "I don't wanna hear that."
He sobbed, "He got you in the face, man, and kicked you good.
He didn't have to do that."
"Well," I said angrily, "he didn't have to, but he sure did,
didn't he?" I tried to laugh. My left side burned. I leaned forward
on my hands and let the blood drip from my face. I hissed, "I'll kill
the son of a bitch. I'll kill 'im."
"No, Speedy, you take it easy. We gotta find somebody to help
you. We gotta find somebody."
"No. Stop it," I gruffed in a dull monotone. I felt something
wildly irrational sweeping through me, starting in my gut and spread-
ing into my arms. It was a rage from my dreams about being beaten,
trapped, powerless.
Wobbling, I struggled to stand. Stepper helped me. At first
he tried grabbing me round the waist, but I winced and yelled.
"I'm sorry, Speedy, I forgot."
"It's okay," I mumbled, sounding drunk and unable to find an
equilibrium. I finally stood but swayed, my movements muddled.
Stepper was still trying to help me. I gently pushed him away.
"No," I groaned roughly. "Stepper, no. Move away. Please.
Gimme room."
"You okay?"
"I'm gonna be alright," I slurred, not really sure about it. I
tried to turn and walk to my right, but stumbled. In case anyone
might be thinking of rushing in to steady me I yelled, "Stay away!"
To my left I saw a very young girl in a light blue dress, so
small she seemed puppet-like, rushing as fast as her little feet
could carry her toward the corner of my building a few hundred
yards away. The front screen door of the apartment on that end of
the building opened--it was Martha Jane's door--and the girl and
two other kids were animatedly talking to her and pointing toward
me. Other kids were rushing in from across the lawn, toward the
Marble Court where I stood caked with tan dust, lightly dripping
blood down my green plaid flannel shirt.
My rage swelled, ignited, exploded. Not only had someone beat
the hell out of me, but now every kid and mother and everyone else
in sight was going to see me stumbling and bleeding. My eyes
clouded with dust, I saw Martha Jane go to the little girl, take
her hand, and start running toward me. Her mother's face appeared
at the screen door and peered out at us anxiously. I was enraged
at being doubly mortified, at being beaten and being seen beaten.
It was too late for anyone to squelch the primal force that
overtook me so quickly. I stumbled toward the grove of hedges and
began tearing away at one of the shrubs, ripping it apart, looking
for a club, a stick, anything with which to strike at anything
else. I heard myself scream incoherently, a long, throat-scalding
yell. I grasped at the shrubs, throwing ripped-off leaves and
twigs everywhere. I encircled one shrub in a superhuman effort to
pull it from the ground. Of course it was impossible, but I tried
anyway. The hard edges of the branches dug into my arms and torso.
I grunted and again screamed, trying to uproot the plant that was
taller and wider than I was.
I heard Martha Jane plead behind me, "Speedy, what are you
doing? Stop it! Please stop!"
And poor Stepper, pleading and begging, "No, miss! Leave 'im
alone. Pleeease! He'll be okay. I seen 'im do this before!
Please, miss, don't! He won't even know who you are!"
"God, what's he doing?"
"He'll be okay! Please!"
After that I was aware of precious little except my own blind
fury. I jerked at the shrub until I my arms could no longer grasp it,
then trampled randomly into the grove of hedges and found an old four
foot limb on the ground, a dead limb fallen months or years ago from
the giant black oak nearby. I picked it up and charged toward the
tree. I was dimly aware of faces watching in shock as I raised over
my shoulder a dead black limb whose height and size nearly equalled
mine. Crying, screaming, bleeding, I smacked the old wood against the
trunk of the oak. The faces of four toughs loomed before me, and the
faces of those who lied, cheated, stole, killed, maimed. I let into
the tree with savage vehemence and loud whacking sounds. Each effort
tore along my injured side. I didn't care. Again and again I struck.
With each blow, splinters and chunks of black dead bark flew every-
where. Soon one end of the limb was frayed, yellow shards spewing in
all directions. When too weak to hold the log I let it drop; then
after a huge gasp of new air I picked it up again, raised it overhead,
and hurled it lengthwise at the tree with a furious scream. The
broken log bounced back toward me. Stumbling, I grasped it with sore
hands and tried to raise the log over my head again.
I faltered, drained and feeling barely conscious. My legs gave
out first, the weight of the log pulling me to my knees. The
screaming gave way to sobs and heaves. I was out of breath with
the effort. I settled backward onto my ankles.
A soft voice, tremulous, wary, a young woman's voice, was just
behind my shoulder.
"Speedy? Can I touch you, hon? I won't try to hold you down.
I just want to take care of you, hon. Can you hear me?"
"Why won't they let me fight?" I sobbed, choking.
"Can you hear me, hon?"
The limb lay across my thighs. I let it go and it rolled away.
I slumped. I was too tired to move. I felt like falling asleep.
Martha Jane's hand was on my left shoulder. When I didn't resist,
her other hand touched my other shoulder.
A tall long-legged woman in a print house-dress stood near my
left. I could barely see her. She stared at me with a horrified
grimace.
"Is he alright? Lord, what's wrong with that poor child?"
"I don't know," Martha Jane said. "But he's alright now.
Speedy? Can I touch you, hon?"
"Oh, lord," the woman above me groaned, her voice thick with
disgust at the sight of my face.
"Please, Miss Ferguson." Martha Jane said firmly. "I'll take
care of him. Don't just stand there staring at him."
"Well!" the woman said, and turned and walked away.
Martha Jane sat behind me on the ground and tried gently to steady
me by my shoulders. I felt her put her face to my cheek from behind,
one hand holding my forehead. "Lie back, hon. Come on, lie back
against me. I'm holding you. Lie back."
I drooped, emptied, and fell back against her. She cradled me
into her bosom, which became dotted with blood. Holding me with one
arm around my shoulders as I slumped against her, she stroked my
forehead with her other hand. "Let your head fall back, baby. Let it
fall back on my shoulder. That's right. That's right. Shh. Rest
now."
Stepper had stopped crying. He was on the ground in front of me.
"He done this before," he told Martha Jane. "Some kids at High Street
Park, they stole this girl's bicycle and pushed her around some, and
we showed up a minute later, like, the guy's was just takin' off.
They got away. Speedy got so mad, he tore up a garbage can. He said
he mad, he wanted to fight back. So he took it out on this big drum
can. He threw it on the ground over and over till the bottom came off
and it jus' fell apart. Then he was okay."
"I see," Martha Jane said. "Shh. You doin' better now, hon?"
I was too bombed out to respond. Stepper said, "He's alright
now, lady. He just had to let it all out."
I fought to stay alert. I knew the right side of my face had
swollen and was closing my right eye. Looking down, I saw my
blood on Martha Jane's pale green bodice. I tried in vain to pick
at it, not knowing what to do.
"Don't worry about that. You just rest."
I looked into her eyes. They were bright, piercing green,
wide with concern and fear.
"I want to fight," I whimpered.
"I know, hon. Listen to me. I know. But you're hurt and you
have to rest." She called the little girl who had run to summon
her. "Margaret! Margaret, go tell my mother, at that front door
over there, tell her to get Speedy's mom. Go tell her, sweetheart.
That's a good girl."
I moaned, "I have to sit up."
"You sure?"
"Yes."
She helped me sit up on my knees.
Stepper knelt in front of me. "Yo' Mama's gonna be comin',
Speedy. You don't need no more trouble from me. This is the third
time I got you in trouble." He put the bag of marbles in my shirt
pocket. He clasped one of my hands in his two, tightly. Then
quickly he got up and started running across the lawn.
"Stepper," I tried to shout, but I could only croak. "Stepper!"
Martha Jane said, "Let him go, hon."
"But he'll never come back! I know he won't!"
"Speedy...let him go. You have to let him go."
My mother and little Margaret came rushing toward us. Mom was
hysterical, screaming, flailing her arms. "Oh my boy! What
happened to my son? What did they do to my boy?"
All I could say to myself was, "Oh, no. Shit." Now relatives
would be converging from everywhere. As if getting beat up hadn't
been enough!
PART 4D:
Martha Jane and my mother helped walk me into our apartment,
where they settled me on the sofa and placed a wet rag over my
face. Mom called our closest relatives, my Grandma Rose Ricci,
to hurry over in their car and get me to nearby St. Joseph's
Hospital. But Grandma Rose was too distraught to drive and she
called my Aunt Frances, who in turn was so distraught she called
my Aunt Josephine, who in turn was also so distraught she called
her neice, my cousin Josephine Louise, whom they all knew drove
like the wind at all times.
Within 30 minutes Josephine Louise arrived in Aunt Frances'
black 1947 Dodge, the car packed to the hilt with relatives like
clowns in a circus act. They rushed into our little apartment
and shook the walls with their hysteria. Martha Jane, stroking
my forehead and cheek with the cool wet cloth, watched calmly
with me as yet another car drove up and Grandma Rose and the
Ricci's and Gagliano's got out. Soon the place was so full, no
one could walk.
"My God," Martha Jane whispered incredulously. "How many
more of them are there?"
"No one knows," I said dryly.
Amid the moaning and wailing and my Aunt Frances swooning
into a chair, her husband, my Uncle Johnny, cooly and sanely
brought the crowd to attention. "You all remember why we're
here," he said, gesturing toward me with his hat. "We gonna
take him to the hospital, or we gonna stand around and faint?"
They all gaped at each other momentarily, then everyone
started issuing different instructions at once. My mother and
Josephine Louise edged their way through the panic and calmly
lifted me into Josephine Louise's arms.
"Come on, Speedy," she said, carrying me with one arm around
the back of my neck and the other under my knees. "While they
work this out, we'll go to St. Joseph's. Follow me, Betty," she
said to my still distraught mother, and she wiggled her way
through the crowd, through the kitchen, and out to her car. My
mom and Martha Jane followed, with Uncle Johnny almost casually
in the rear, hat in hand. The last I heard from the others, they
were still screaming at each other in my living room.
At St. Joseph's I was cleaned, poked, wrapped, injected,
xray'd, gowned and wheeled up to a bed with a window overlooking
the project a few blocks away. A doctor who looked and sounded
like Joel McCrea with a Southern accent told everyone I was a
sturdy kid and no great damage was done--although I would have
to keep my arm in a sling for a day or two to keep from stretching
torn muscles around my left rib cage, and I'd have a fat cheek
for a while, and I'd have to wear a thick pad on my side for a
few weeks to restrain movement there, and I was warned to not
strain myself by attacking any more trees.
I was in St. Joseph's for two days, strapped tightly in a
corset to keep my torso immobile, and continually monitored by
a nonstop parade of Italian aunts, uncles, godparents, great-
aunts and uncles, great-grandmother Nifa and her two morbid
sisters, cousins, near cousins, and a number of people I never
saw before who claimed they were related. Nurses groaned and
complained, shuffling people in and out of the waiting room
and forced to keep count of how many people were in my room at
one time. I was kissed on the cheek by innumerable elderly aunts,
most of whom appeared grieved as if I were dead and laid out
in my coffin instead of propped up in bed.
I was obliged to "be nice" and appreciative and, as Josephine
Louise whispered to me with her luscious, red, magnificently
sexy mouth close to my ear at one point, "Look as if you're in
mortal pain, Speedy. These old Victorians just thrive on
melodrama."
Martha Jane visited me each day, but we were hardly able to
have a few words between ourselves. On the second day she had
enough time alone with me. While the others were out getting
coffee, we had a brief chat.
"I'll bet you just love all this attention," she said.
"Martha Jane, you know I feel so creepy around them. I get
the same questions: Hi, Speedy, how are you? How old are you
now, Speedy? How are you doing in school? What do you want to
be when you grow up? Did it hurt bad? Was your--?"
She interrupted, touching my hand. "Now, hon. You should be
grateful all these people care so much for you. Your Grandma Rose
has been so nice, they could have just sent you straight home two
days ago, but your Grandma Rose is footing the whole bill so you
could be more comfortable here."
"But--"
"But nothing, Speedy. You have to admit, that was very
generous."
Guiltily, I conceded, "Well, I do like my Grandma Rose,
she's the only one I like."
"And your poor Aunt Frances and Uncle Johnny--"
I groaned and slapped my forehead. "No, not Aunt Frances."
"Stop that, hon, I know she's hysterical and a lifetime of
criticism every five minutes, but she means well."
"No, no, not Aunt Frances..." I groaned in mock dismay.
"Stop, it squirt," she reprimanded gently. "They all love
you, and you know it. You devil, you're just eating all this
up. It's more attention than you or anybody else gets in a
lifetime."
"Okay," I pouted.
"Don't say okay unless you mean it."
"Okay."
"I gotta go study, hon." She rose and gathered her sweater
over her shoulders. Leaning down to me, she looked back at the
door to see if anyone might be listening. She whispered, "You
get well. Hear me?"
"Okay."
"Because..." She licked my ear. "...I miss us."
I smiled, blushing. "Me too."
With a peck on the cheek she was gone. And just in time for
the return of Aunt Frances, Uncle Johnny, Grandma Rose, Aunt
Josephine, Aunt Lucille, Aunt Mary, Uncle Louie, Mom, my sister,
Aunt Catherine, my *other* Aunt Catherine, Aunt Yiya, Aunt
Theresa, Grandpa Joe, another Aunt Josephine, Uncle Vito, Uncle
Lawrence, Aunt Cecilia...
By the end of the second day I felt well enough to start
getting unbearably bored again. Whenever I shifted restlessly
my injured side ached and cramped. Except for visits to the
restroom and the coffee shop, Aunt Frances and Uncle Johnny were
a permanent fixture in the room, Uncle Johnny sighing restlessly
and winking at me now and then, recognizing our mutual discomfort.
The worst part of the day was when Aunt Frances began cajoling my
mother into moving out of the project.
"But I want my children and I to have our privacy," my mother
objected, trying to be as nice as she could about it. "And where
would we stay? I wouldn't want to take rent money from all my
relatives. I just can't live that way."
"But, Betty," my Aunt Frances pleaded. "You and Speedy
could live with *us*."
On hearing that, I raised my eyes to Heaven. Please, Jesus.
Not that.
My mother said no, it just wouldn't work. She thanked Aunt
Frances. She told her she had a good relationship with my stepdad-
to-be, it looked as if they were steady now, and perhaps they would
marry in a year or two. I was grateful for her persistence. Not
only would I not be able to bear seven days a week of Aunt Frances,
but leaving the project meant leaving Martha Jane. Aunt Frances
didn't let up all day, but Mom didn't give in and didn't even appear
to be tempted--for which I was deeply grateful. Maybe there really
was a God.
In a spare moment, when no one was looking, I found myself
unable to resist the urge to stick out my tongue at Aunt Frances. I
did so, mildly, about half an inch of it. And just as I did, Aunt
Frances looked at me.
I withdrew my tongue immediately, but already her big round eyes
had widened and her eyebrows rode halfway up her forehead.
She turned to Uncle Johnny, beside her. "Johnny, did you see
what he did?"
"What'd he do, Frances?" asked Uncle Johnny, trying to keep
awake.
"He stuck his tongue out at me."
Uncle Johnny's repressed laugh started out as a smirk, then he
deftly transformed it into a wheeze, and then a mild cough. "Forget
it, Frances. The boy don't feel well."
Three or four weeks later, when Martha Jane was with me again,
my cheek had cleared but I was still wearing the heavy restraining
pad at my left side, held in place by thick layers of gauze around
my middle. Martha Jane turned the lights out early. I had already
got into bed and was lying on my back when she turned out the last
light and walked over to the bed. In her jeans and white shirt she
lay down beside me and began taking off my clothes in the dark.
When my shirt came off she traced the bandage with her finger.
"That's horrible what that little rat did to you."
"I can take it," I said stoically.
"Sur-r-re, you can, cowboy." she said. "You sure threw a fit.
I knew you had a temper, but...I had no idea it was that much of a
temper."
I sat up while she removed my shirt. She unbuckled my belt and
unzipped me, shoving my pants to my knees. She stood up, pulling my
pants off past my feet by its legs.
"I hope you never get so mad at me that you direct that awful
rage at me, Speedy."
"I can't hurt people," I said.
"What do you mean, you can't hurt people?"
"I can't hurt people. Only things. I can't hurt them, even if
I hate them."
"Why not, hon? You had every right to take that tough kid and
beat the--" She stopped herself, and continued removing my socks.
"I'm sorry. I don't mean that. You had every right to, but you
wouldn't have done it. Because you're sweet, hon. Even though you
don't like your Aunt Frances and all those other people, you
wouldn't hurt them. You're a very brave boy. It takes courage to be
sweet."
"He had me so angry," I said. "Why do people have to take from
others like that? Poor Stepper, he's so poor and he doesn't have
anything. And he can't help it if he's black. Why does the world
do that?"
"I don't know, hon. I wish I had the answer." She had removed
my socks, and now she grabbed the sides of my underwear. "Lift,"
she said. I did, she pulled, and I was naked.
She stood looking down at me in the dark. Silently she unbut-
toned her shirt, looking at me with a gently intent gaze. All the
buttons undone, she shifted her shoulders back and the shirt seemed
to simply breathe off her. Then her bra. The moon glowed along one
side of the swell of each gently sloped breast. She unbuckled the
belt at her jeans, twisted the top button open, pulled the zipper
down.
"That horrible, violent day is all over now," she whispered.
She pulled down her jeans, dropped them on the floor, and slipped
her thin panties down her long, perfect legs. Her auburn tuft
glowed like a softly lighted powder puff in the moonlight. I was
getting hard watching her. My cock weakly stirred and straight-
ened. A slab of moonlight fell directly on it. It rose, slightly.
Martha Jane looked at it and bent down and slowly, one finger at a
time, she put her hand around it and held it so that only the tip
stood out above her gentle fist.
"I don't know why people have such meanness," she went on,
almost absently, watching my cock. "I don't know why they have to
hurt each other. When they could give themselves pleasure and
affection."
"I would never hurt you, Martha Jane," I whispered.
"I know you wouldn't, hon. And I hope I never hurt you."
She leaned down and licked the part of my cock that protruded
above her fingers, then lightly sucked it. "He's so sweet."
I gulped, and my cock stirred. She felt it and grinned. "He
can almost talk," she said.
She lay down beside me near the window and our arms went around
each other. Propped on one elbow, she caressed my chest. I lightly
squeezed a nipple.
"No more meanness," she whispered. "No more hurt. No more
hate. Wouldn't it be wonderful if that could happen?"
"It happens here," I offered, "when I'm with you."
"What a beautiful thing for you to say, Speedy," she breathed,
surprised, her eyes glowing. "What a lovely thing to say." She
held my face in her hands and pressed her cheek to mine. Her lips
at my ear, she whispered, "How can I make you feel good? We have to
be careful with that thing on you. You can't move very much."
"I don't know," I pondered. "I wanna make you feel good, too."
"I know what," she said, and got onto her knees beside me and
bent over my chest and held her face over mine. "I know what we can
do."
"What?"
She kissed my nose. She kissed my right eyelid. She kissed my
lips. "You just wait..."
"What?" I asked again.
Her voice was a langorous, barely audible whisper, mildly
taunting, motherly, lecherous, all at once.
She bagan softly, "The management of this establishment is
establishing new management."
She kissed my ear.
She raised her face above mine again and touched a finger to my
lips.
"Don't talk," she whispered.
She was so quiet, I heard the "k" in the last word linger in the
air for several seconds.
She nipped at my throat, around the side of my neck to my other
ear. One of her nipples grazed one of mine. She put her lips onto
my ear.
"Don't move."
She kissed my neck, licked my neck, trailed kisses slowly across
my chest with tiny, almost unheard little puffs and lickings. She
kissed not with her lips, but with the inside of her lips. She put
her lips on my left nipple and softly opened them, made a tiny pool
of the inner lining of her lips around my nipple, and gently sucked.
My cock got very hard. She used the tip of her tongue, only the tip,
to move down my chest until she got to the bandage. Then she looked
down.
"You're hard," she observed aloud, under her breath. "How nice."
It was so quiet and still in the room I could feel the moonlight
on my stiffened, upright cock. My eyes were closed. Now I knew why
she swallowed so much when I did this sort of thing to her. It was
something to replace speech, for there were no words for the
pleasure she was giving me.
Watching my cock intently, she moved as if in slow motion, and
still on her knees she stretched her neck elegantly forward in the
dim light and poised her head straight over my erection. She opened
her mouth. She lowered her head, straight down, slowly and cau-
tiously, hardly touching my cock with her mouth. When her head was
all the way down, and her lips grazed my pubic fuzz, she closed her
mouth around me fully, sucked, and drew up. She did this four
times, wetly. Soon I throbbed and felt a drop of my nascent cum
being siphoned up my shaft into her mouth. Apparently she tasted
it. She came off me, licked the inside her mouth.
Then she turned to face me, hovered over me. She lifted one leg
over me, her knee settling into the bed on my other side.
"Careful," she whispered. "Don't let me hurt you."
"It's okay," I whispered back. It always seemed so sacrilegious
to talk aloud at such moments with her. Like shouting in church.
Her face over mine, her knees on each side of me, her back
raised so we didn't touch below the waist, she looked down and
positioned each of her nipples over each of mine, then pressed
into me.
"Does it hurt your side if I press my titties on you like that?"
"No." I mouthed the word, rather than speak it. I was
speechless, enchanted, amazed.
"I'm not really sure how to do this," she whispered with a
nervous little laugh. "I never did it before. Let's see..."
Closing her eyes and rising on her arms, she bit her lower lip in
deep concentration, and down below she slowly and tentatively hunted
in small movements with her wet cunt, searching for my standing
cock. Her outer lips found my tip, circled two or three times,
wetting me, then lowered. With a long sigh she took me all the way
into her. She looked down.
"That okay?" she asked.
"That feels so good!"
"Yes, it does...verrry good."
For a while she experimented, sometimes moving up and down on
me; sometimes circling just my tip with her warm slithery outer
petals; sometimes taking me all the way and grinding her clit
against my shaft, which she seemed to enjoy the most; sometimes
taking me in only halfway and pumping rhythmically for a while.
Several times she asked me if my side was okay, and I told her it
was. She searched and discovered patiently and ardently, often
breathing her pleasure in my ear with the most obscenely graphic
phrases she could think of. In time she became less careful,
gradually more swept up in her heightening pleasure. Soon her wet
channel became more snug around me and then began contracting irreg-
ularly, at which point she would stop and pant over me for a
moment. Then she would start again, growing tighter around me, her
grinding more urgent and more intuitive. As her breathing grew more
ragged, she began sighing and whimpering. Gradually she assumed
more often the position of settling tightly all the way down,
squeezing me, rotating subtly on my shaft. And eventually she
stiffened, her straightened arms quivering. Her grinding became so
intense she rocked the bed, and I knew she would be unable to stop
this time around.
She began to chant, "oh hon...oh hon...", and then she began
to sing, "oh hon...!" and finally she groaned loudly, "Oh, yes!"
and her head snapped forward and she writhed her clit furiously
against my shaft, holding her breath, and I circled my hips in the
opposite direction against her, and she answered with a low groan,
"Yes...", and her cunt clamped on me madly for a long moment. Then
she passed her peak, her head fell back and then forward, and she
slackened, holding still, gasping deeply and loudly and quickly,
her hips and back softened and I saw her breasts had swollen against
me and were hot, a vein on one side of her neck throbbed and I
reached up and sucked it and her hips jerked once, making the bed
squeak, and her neck was hot and salty with sweat and I stroked her
hair as if strewing balm on her agonizing pleasure, and she rested,
still sucking me inside now and then, and I felt her hot cuntlips
drain wet around the root of my shaft. Twice my cock had felt the
long moment of sweet tickling inside her as she moved on me, twice
I had felt some of me seep into her, and I was content with both
her pleasure and mine.
Continued...
From: sjr <73233.1411@CompuServe.COM>
--------
**** WARNING **** WARNING **** WARNING ****
THIS DOCUMENT IS A SEXUALLY GRAPHIC STORY ABOUT AN INTENSE SEXUAL,
EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A TEENAGE GIRL AND
A YOUNG BOY AND THE COURSE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP OVER A PERIOD OF
10 YEARS. IT IS A DRAMATIZATION ABOUT REAL PEOPLE AND THEIR CON-
FLICT WITH SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS. IF THIS SUBJECTS OFFENDS YOU OR IF
SEXUAL LANGUAGE UPSETS YOU, OR IF YOU DON'T WANT THIS MATERIAL SEEN
BY UNDER-18 OR OTHERWISE UNQUALIFIED PERSONS, DELETE THIS DOCUMENT.
THIS DOCUMENT IS COPYRIGHTED 1994, 1996 BY SJR. SO--HEY, YOU CAN
COPY IT BUT YOU CAN'T CHANGE IT OR SELL IT UNLESS I SAY SO.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ADVENTURES OF ME AND MARTHA JANE
by S.J.R.
PART 5A:
1951.
Summer.
"Well," Lash LaRue said with his cocky grin, each hand perched
on one of two pearl-handled .45's at his side, "that takes care of
the McGraw Gang."
"Sure does," said Fuzzy St. John, nodding and spitting a wad
of tobacco juice.
Lash LaRue tipped his hat to the pretty gal in the calico
dress, who beamed at him admiringly from the wooden sidewalk. Lash
LaRue cocked his cocky, self-assured head toward Fuzzy St. John.
"Let's get goin', Fuzzy," Lash LaRue said, and he and Fuzzy
mounted their horses.
Their steeds reared up. Lash LaRue and Fuzzy spurred their
horses and galloped outta town.
It was my ninth summer, pushing for my tenth year.
Things had changed. I knew it as I watched this absurdly out-
dated B-grade western for the third time, the first time being with
Uncle Johnny when I was five years old. At ten I bid a fond but not
reluctant farewell to Lash LaRue and Tex Ritter and Roy Rogers.
Martha Jane had graduated high school, on time and with high
grades. She started college immediately that summer at the largest
of the local campuses, Memphis State. She was determined to get her
teacher training in less than four years. My mother dated almost
always on weekends, and since I spent every weekend with relatives,
no one was needed to overwatch me. These were gray, uneventful days.
I got bored every fifteen seconds.
Life had tragedy now. It had dire consequences, uncertainty,
loneliness, nuclear warheads. Left more often to my own devices by
my relatives on weekends, I searched the downtown movie houses for
an intensity of experience not found with the Bowery Boys or in Gene
Kelly musicals. I would hit the Main Street cinemas as soon as they
opened at eleven A.M., my pockets jingling with the movie money with
which my relatives bribed me into conformity. They assumed I was
watching Abbott and Costello or cowboys. Instead, I sat tearfully
absorbed in more than a dozen showings of the archly romantic "Cyrano
de Bergerac". I was fascinated with the impressionistic Technicolor
of "Moulin Rouge"; again and again I watched this moody film, empa-
thizing strongly with Lautrec's pitiful infirmity.
My relatives, staunch stay-at-homes, had no idea these films
existed until I told them what I'd seen--and at that they seemed
bewildered as to why a boy would be so magnetically drawn to Bogart's
sarcasm, William Holden's cynicism, or Brando's hostility. They were
amazed when I told them I had spent an entire day in the same movie
house watching over and over as a somber Robert Mitchum portrayed a
death-obsessed army officer in "G.I. Joe."
I saw Martha Jane on our front porch once or twice in the early
summer. By August she had disappeared. Once I knocked on her
front door, expecting her mother to answer. But no one did. My
Mom didn't mention her. It seemed Martha Jane had been swallowed
up into nowhere. Knowing she was in summer classes, I assumed a
break would occur soon, probably in September. But by September
I'd heard nothing.
Associating with others had eroded my confidence. My impression
was that other kids regarded me as a little weird; I had a fatalistic
attitude toward people and events. Repression and criticism from Mom
and relatives didn't help. By age ten, I was on a psychological downer.
I began to expect that life would either take people away from me,
or me from them. Stepper and Uncle Robert was a case in point; Mom
and all the dead of the war were others. When the Korean War started,
Josephine Louise's dad, my Uncle Lawrence, was called back to active
service. He paid us a farewell visit in the early Fall. He smiled
and saluted me when he left our house, bound for Fort Hood, Texas.
By October he was killed in action.
My future step-dad had little interest in my activities. His
name was Anthony. Mom called him Tony. He was a dark-haired,
virile, handsome man. I disliked him somewhat; he had a deep and
relatively loud voice, very different from the softer voices of all
the aunts around me, different from the breathy Italian quality of
Uncle Johnny and Josephine Louise. By the end of that summer
Tony started hanging around our apartment more often. He came over
many mornings before opening the supermarket in our neighborhood
and had breakfast with Mom and me while I prepared for school. Our
interests never interlocked. He assumed I was interested in sports,
in being a fireman or doctor when I grew up, in playing with other
boys. When he found out I wanted to be an artist, he was taken
aback. His idea of art was limited to portraits of the saints.
One morning at breakfast as I ate my milk and oatmeal, he sat
at the other side of our tiny kitchen table, reading a newspaper
article to my mother who was working at the sink. He was mildly
agitated about a report on small business regulation. He read until
he came to a word in the article that made him stop.
"What is that word?" he asked irritably, squinting at the page.
"Why do they have to use words this long in newspapers?"
"Ask Speedy," Mom said, so he handed me the paper and pointed
at the word. "What's that word say?" he asked me.
Chewing oatmeal, I glanced at the word quickly and announced,
"Antiestablishmentarianism."
He sat back in amazement. "Well, damn," he breathed. "How'd
he know a big word like that?"
"I don't know," Mom answered absently. "He just does. I
think his Uncle Johnny taught him to read from the comics."
"The comics?" he echoed, dumbfounded. He reached for his
coffee cup. "Damn," he breathed again.
In my isolation, movies became my life. I devoured them like
popcorn and soda. I saw three or four films each weekend. If new
ones hadn't opened I'd frequent the rerun joints and the art film
outlets. My relatives didn't mind, as it kept me out of their hair
all weekend, didn't cost much for a child's admission (twelve cents
in those days), and Uncle Johnny was getting a little too old and
arthritic to escort me all over town the way he did when I was
younger.
Truly, I enjoyed the freedom of doing mostly as I pleased.
They knew I was smart enough to find my way around town; most of
the movies were a short walk from the restaurant. But the art film
outlet was far out in the eastern part of town. With my usual
brazenness I allowed folks to assume that I never traveled that far
out of the way. But one Saturday I took the No.10 bus all the way
to the Ritz theater to see "Cyrano de Bergerac." I was so affected
by the film that I stayed inside and watched it again, then again,
then a fourth time. The movie was longer than most, so that when
I left the theater I discovered I was just in time to catch the last
inbound No.10, which stopped running by ten PM.
It was nearly eleven when I arrived at Aunt Frances' house and
let myself in. Entering by the long unlit front hallway, I assumed
everyone was asleep. But Aunt Frances was waiting up for me
in her long white nightgown on the living room sofa.
"Where the hell have *you* been?" she demanded as I walked
into the room.
I knew from long experience that the best tactic for handling
Aunt Frances under these circumstances was to appear unfazed and
keep on grinning.
"The movies," I answered.
"You trying to give your Aunt Frances a heart attack? Huh?
You want your poor old Aunt Frances to have a heart attack? What
kind of movie they let you into that lasts till this time of night?"
"Cyrano de Bergerac," I said.
"Syrup what?" She squinted hard.
"Cyrano de Bergerac," I repeated. I sat sideways on one of
the ornate dining chairs in the room and slipped my arm around
the back of the chair. I smiled and batted my eyelids.
"Don't give me that look. What kinda movie is this, uh,
Cereal di Hajiback?"
"It's French."
"It's what? It's fresh?"
"French, Aunt Frances. French."
We both looked up as Uncle Johnny appeared in the doorway
leading to the bedrooms. His hair mussed, his eyes squinting
in the light, he scratched his tummy over his pajamas.
Aunt Frances huffed, "Look, Johnny. He walks in like nothing
happened. You see him, Johnny? Look at him."
"You home?" Uncle Johnny mumbled drowsily.
"I'm here, " I said. "I'm okay."
"It's late, Speedy," Uncle Johnny said.
"I know."
"You okay? We were all worried about ya."
"I'm fine."
"Have any trouble?"
"Nope."
He yawned. "How'd you get here this time of night? Walk?"
"The Number 10 Bus."
"Oh." He yawned again. "Well, you be careful out there. You
oughtta call us next time." Another yawn. "Good night, Frances."
He walked back into the dark.
"That's all you have to say?" Aunt Frances called after him.
"Good night, Frances," Uncle Johnny said, disappearing.
"I'll be damn," she muttered, settling back into the sofa.
"Two of a kind, you two. Listen, you're too young to be watchin'
French movies at eleven o'clock at night."
"How old do I have to be?"
"Seven years old is too young!"
"I'm not seven years old, Aunt Frances, I'm ten."
"Ten? You ain't no ten years old. What kinda movie is this?
Is Clark Gable in this movie?"
"No. Jose Ferrer."
"Who?"
"Jose Ferrer."
"Never heard of him."
I leaned forward and peered at her. "Aunt Frances, are you
sure you're not asleep?"
"Of course I'm not asleep. I look asleep?"
"Well, the things you're asking and saying to me don't make
much sense."
"How'm I supposed to make sense with you talking French, or
whatever it is?"
I rose from the chair and bent down to her and kissed her on
the cheek--a surefire technique for calming her down. Poor Aunt
Frances, who had not been anywhere except to work and church and
bed since the 1920's, had no idea how the world had changed.
"You think you're gonna kiss your Aunt Frances and that's all
you hafta do?"
"I just don't want you to be worried."
"You look just like your poor daddy when you do that. You
love your Aunt Frances?"
"Yes, ma'am, I sure do. You're my favorite." I kissed her
again. "Now you ought to go back to bed. I'm all right."
"You think you're smart, don't ya? That's what your daddy
used to do. You love your Aunt Frances like your daddy did?"
"I sure do," I cooed, knowing I had her in the palm of my hand.
"Okay, then" she said, blushing childishly. She looked up at
me with her big round confused eyes, as if trying to comprehend how
the universe had become what it was without her knowing. It had
taken me years to fathom this hysterical woman. I had learned, with
coaching from Josephine Louise, that Aunt Frances had not been all
there since my father's death. A couple of years before, I would
not have been able to understand it. Now, after many weekends, I
realized that her thoughts and feelings were stuck at a single
moment in time and would go neither backward nor ahead.
"You look just like your daddy," she said wistfully, looking
at me and seeing someone else. Then she scowled mildly and said,
"You don't do that to me and your Uncle Johnny any more. You
hear me?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said, sweetly.
"Your Uncle Johnny loves you too. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"We don't want anything to happen to you, like what happened to
your daddy."
"I know," I said gently. "Now," I began, standing up and holding
her hand. "I'm gonna go to sleep, and you go back to sleep too."
"You love your Aunt Frances?"
I bent down and kissed her again. "I sure do."
With that, she was satisfied and sloughed off in her fluffy
houseshoes to her bedroom. For a while I sat in the living room,
breathing a long sigh of relief. I asked myself, seriously, if I
would ever again find someone with whom I could communicate without
the need for these convoluted tactics. Trying to follow Aunt Frances'
line of thought was like working one's way through a trick maze or a
hall of mirrors.
When I stayed with them I slept in the front bedroom with my Aunt
Frances' mother, my great-grandmother Nifa. She was, everyone esti-
mated at that time, in her nineties. She wore black. She wore a
simple black dress and black shoes and black hose all day long, and
she wore a black nightgown and long black stockings when she slept.
She had worn nothing but black since her husband's death in 1936. She
spoke no English, only a Northern Italian dialect that other Italians
found difficult. Speaking with Nifa was similar to speaking with Aunt
Frances; their minds were elsewhere, their words and memories and
thoughts had not changed over many years. Being among them was to be
among memories of loved ones never seen and long since gone, of time
long since past and silenced. It was a lonely experience, like
talking to the blind and deaf, who could neither hear nor see me.
Somehow I had learned to understand, pity and love these lost
souls. I may not have known what they thought (no one did), but
I somehow knew what they felt.
But as for me, by the summer of 1952 I didn't see a soul-mate
in sight. Not anywhere.
Late that Fall I did have one baby-sitter when my Mom had a
rare weeknight date. The sitter was none other than Evelyn,
Martha Jane's sister.
Evelyn spent almost the entire night on the phone. She was
working days at a clerical job and attending the University of
Tennessee Medical Extension at night, studying for work in medical
research. She was an attractive woman in her middle twenties now,
tall, rather chic and long-legged. Only in her eyes and general
posture did she resemble her sister. Objectively, most people would
have thought Evelyn to be more beautiful: she was brunette and had a
svelte, sophisticated air, with a lazy voice and large dark eyes and
high cheekbones. But being among young women other than Martha Jane,
which didn't happen often, taught me something about my own needs--
Evelyn, though sexy, did not appeal to me at all. I found her nice
to look at, friendly, and boring. I was beginning to learn the vast
difference between just any "good-looking woman" and one who has a
compelling, irresistible, unsettling appeal. At that point I could
be brought under the spell of only two females on the planet: the
physically devastating Josephine Louise, and the warm, captivating,
and equally devastating Martha Jane.
Evelyn told me that night that she was herself so busy with
career and friends (she admitted she had no steady man and was tied
to her work), she seldom spoke with her mother or Martha Jane. But
she offered me the last phone number she had for her, an apartment
somewhere near Memphis State that Martha Jane shared with two other
students. I was certain Martha Jane must have found a boyfriend by
then and had little time for anything except school. Evelyn also
told me she last saw her sister for lunch in downtown Memphis at
Woolworth's, where Martha Jane worked part-time. She was 19 now,
"busy as a busy little bee." Evelyn promised that when she contacted
Martha Jane again she'd ask her to give me a call.
I missed Martha Jane. I missed her sexually, of course, but
at that age sex was still secondary. Mainly, I missed just her,
her warmth and the ease of simply being with her. At age ten I saw
her as a sexual object much more clearly than I had a few years
earlier, though I still had a while to go before the full impact of
sexual attraction hit home. At that point I wanted the
sisterly, motherly, girl-woman of her more emotionally and intel-
lectually than physically.
As soon as I could I dialed the number Evelyn had given me. No
go. A young girl answered and said that Martha Jane shared a place
with them but that she had moved again and they didn't know where.
Besides that call, I had no idea what happened to Evelyn's promise
that she would have Martha Jane call me.
That left me with the part-time job at Woolworth's. On impulse
I went to find her on a Saturday afternoon one weekend when I was
staying at the downtown restaurant. It was warm weather, right
around my 11th birthday.
Telling my folks I was going to a movie, I took a bus down to
the end of Main Street and went straight to the big three-story
Woolworth's. Once inside, I had no idea where to look. It was a
huge store, especially to an 11-year-old. I searched the whole
place, checked at every sales counter, roamed through every
aisle.
After a while I gave up and stood outside on the busy sidewalk.
I thought that perhaps it was her lunch hour, or perhaps she came to
work later in the day. Since I had movie money, I went to a movie
nearby and feasted on a lunch of popcorn and Coke. By then it was
after two, so I went back to Woolworth's.
The second search proved futile as well. She was nowhere to be
found. Despite my aggressive, snoopy attitude in so many other
areas, I seem to have lost all my "fight" in this situation. I wan-
dered aisle to aisle, feeling dejected and lost. I walked around the
waterfront area for a while, then up and down Main Street several
times. By then it was 4:00. I returned to the store. It was crowded
nose-to-nose with Saturday shoppers. After yet another hour
of searching, I had not found her and it was near closing time.
I asked some salespeople if they knew Martha Jane Graham. They
didn't. Puzzled, I thought about hanging around and asking every
employee I could find, but everyone was preparing to close for the
day. I asked one more worker if they had a personnel department.
They did, but it was closed Saturdays. She referred me to a sales
counter where she thought Martha Jane worked.
But when I arrived there, I found only a redheaded middle-aged
lady who didn't look anything like her and wasn't particularly
interested in helping me find my way. She eyed me suspiciously.
"You have parents?" she asked, frowning. "Where are your parents?
You shouldn't be here all by yourself, we're getting ready to close."
I felt odd and disoriented. The whole situation was becoming
eerie, dreamlike. The redhead now confronted me with the fact that
I was still only 11. Aggressive and independent though I might have
been at that age, and though I was an 11-year-old kid who in many
ways didn't act or think like an 11-year-old--yet I was, nevertheless,
still a kid. Perhaps it was a feeling of frustration: if I were not
such a kid, I thought, these people would take me seriously and give
me the information I was looking for. And if I did find Martha Jane
wouldn't she, like Evelyn and the redhead and everyone else, notice
that I was not an adult? Had something changed, such that now she
would recognize me for who I really was? And besides, she probably
had a boyfriend now; she was among college students her own age at a
big coed state college.
The day had such a strange effect on me that I was in its grip
for months. I soon became fearful that Martha Jane would not want
to see me again, as least not as she had seen me before. She was
in a different world now. Effectively, she had left the project and
in leaving the project she had somehow changed everything. I began
to feel she was "too old" for me now.
When I went home after that weekend I mentioned Saturday's search
to my Mom, but she was unconcerned. Paranoically, I didn't trust
her as someone I wanted to talk to about Martha Jane, not in any way.
She might want to know why I was so desperate to find her, she might
suspect something was going on--especially since Martha Jane had not
been around for more than a year. I didn't mention it to her again,
and sulked around our apartment for most of that week.
One day several weeks later when I came home from school, Mom said
Martha Jane had called and asked how I was getting along.
The first thing I asked was, "Did you get a number to call back?"
Mom shrugged. "Well, no, I didn't think it was important anymore.
You haven't mentioned her in so long..."
I didn't hear the rest of what she said. I felt as if I had
fallen from a high place and landed on my face. I didn't want to
betray my feelings, so I said nothing more. I didn't even know what
my feelings were.
As I approached and then reached twelve years, I became involved
in that strange activity in grammar schools known as "dramatics,"
which consumed my energy and my thoughts. Because I had gleaned from
movies so much about effective acting, I became very successful at
it. The more successful I was, the harder I worked. Though I had no
close relationships among my peers and teachers at the newly built St.
Michael's School, I did find a source of attention and recognition on
the stage. Being in a new school in a different part of town made me
feel that I, too, had started the process of moving out of the
project. By the time the thirty-minute bus ride to St. Michael's
ended each morning, I had readjusted to an entirely different place; I
felt almost as if I were spending those five hours a day in a
different town.
Then came the day my Mom announced she would be getting married
and that we'd soon be moving out of the project. That day, Martha
Jane seemed to disappear for good. I made it so. I went into our
bedroom the night of Mom's announcement and saw the moonlight on the
window sill. And I forced Martha Jane out of my mind.
PART 5B:
In December 1953 my Mom married and my stepfather moved into
the apartment temporarily while they searched for a new house. The
ceremony was little more than a small tea party in a room in the
reception house at St. Mary's Church. This being my mother's second
marriage, she didn't think a large wedding would be appropriate, and
my conservative step-dad agreed. They took over the old bedroom,
and I slept on the pullout sofa in the living room (which, I did not
realize until that time, had a bed inside it!).
Problems with finding a new home caused them to postpone their
honeymoon. But near Easter, 1954, they announced that a house had
been found and purchased, and before moving in they were going to
take their honeymoon week in St. Louis. The concept of a honeymoon
was rather a vague one for me. Mom said it was just a "vacation"
people take when they marry (even with my limited knowledge of the
marriage state, I knew better than that! My relationship with Mom
certainly had not improved).
I came home from school one day shortly afterward, on the last
day before the start of the Easter school holidays. There in the
kitchen with my mother sat Martha Jane, sipping coffee and chatting
merrily away.
"Well, Hi!" she said as my eyes bulged out of my head.
I could tell--immediately--that her Southern accent had only
thickened. It was still the same musical voice, a bit rambunctious
now, a little louder and more confident. But the same eyes; a more
slender neck and arms, and definitely an older and more adult figure.
She was 20. Her hair was the same, maybe a little more blonde.
"Well, hotshot, are you going to speak?"
I did, but don't remember what I said. I was numbstruck. It
was Martha Jane but it wasn't Martha Jane. It was the same person
but it wasn't. She was not a teenager anymore. And she smoked
cigarettes. One dangled lazily from her finger as she sat cross-
legged at the kitchen table with Mom.
"Say hello to Martha Jane," Mom said, and laughed. "You
forget about her already?"
"I did say hello, didn't I?" I asked, dazed. They both shook
their heads and waited for me, amused. I said falteringly, "Well,
then, uh--" I shrugged helplessly-- "Hi."
Martha Jane rose from the chair. "Oh, what kind of welcome
is that?" She walked across the room--on noisy high-heeled
shoes! --and came straight to me, moving the cigarette from one
hand to another so she would be able to give a great big hug
without burning me with the thing. I was grateful for the hug.
Deeply grateful. But my feelings were so firmly entrenched, espe-
cially when I was around my mother, that I denied myself the luxury
of any response at all.
"Let me look at YOU!" Martha Jane exclaimed. "You're only an
inch taller than me now! Can't you grow any faster than that?"
I shrugged and blushed. "I'm only 12 years old," I said.
"Well, that won't last forever, hon, don't worry." She took
my hand and leaned closer to me. "How are you, Speedy? Did you
forget all about me, after all I had to put up with from you?"
"I didn't forget," I smiled. I was overcome by a blush attack
that I strongly resisted. She saw my problem, and immediately she
gave a sympathetic "Aawwww, c'mere," and putting her arms around
me she gave a stronger, more affectionate hug.
"How are you, hon? I haven't seen you in so long."
I saw my mother watching us, pleased. But not trusting myself,
I pulled back and simply gave Martha Jane an appreciative nod.
My mother announced: "Martha Jane lost her job."
Martha Jane shrugged. "Laid off, hon." She shrugged. "What
the heck! At least I'm still getting the GI Bill money because
of my father. All I have to say is, 'Thank you, Uncle Sam!'"
My Mom went on, greatly amused. "Martha Jane showed up just in
time. While your daddy and I are in St. Louis on our honeymoon next
week, your Aunt Yvonne was supposed to drop by here and check up
once a while so you wouldn't be here all by yourself. Well, guess
who showed up just in time to take her place?"
I didn't answer. I was afraid to.
My mother nudged her head toward Martha Jane. "Your old
neighbor over there."
I looked at Martha Jane.
She pointed her thumb at herself. "The old supervisor herself,
honey. Yvonne got fired, I got hired. Gonna be next store again
anyway, so why should she have to traipse all the way over here?"
She moved closer to me again and pointed a finger into my chest.
"Gonna be checkin' on you, buster. Better clean up your act."
My act, considering how little I revealed of myself at that
instant, couldn't have been more antiseptic. My feelings were
jumbled. She didn't seem the same. She moved and spoke with an
aggressiveness I found difficult to accept. Nor was it so easy for
me to switch emotional gears after two years of not seeing her,
having spent that time surrounded by people in whom I had so little
trust emotionally.
The next day, a Saturday, Mom and my new dad left Union Station
for their honeymoon. At the grandiose Victorian building a number
of people were present to see them off. Most of them were my step-
dad's folks. They were friendly, earthy people, But the thought of
the sheer size of his family was intimidating: he alone had fourteen
brothers and sisters. The day he married my mother, I gained over
three hundred new cousins and an undetermined number of uncles and
aunts. I had yet to meet most of them, a task I estimated would
take years.
I spent Saturday with my grandparents, the Ricci's. Grandpa
Joe Ricci, my father's father, packed me into his Oldsmobile on
Sunday morning to give me a ride back to the project.
As he drove he griped, "Don't see why you can't spend the rest
of the week with me and your Grandma Rose."
"I have too many things to do at home, Grandpa Joe. I got a
dozen library books over there to go through while my Mama and
Daddy are gone."
"Your 'Daddy'!" Grandpa Joe swore mildly in his slightly
gravelly voice. "He ain't your daddy. Your daddy was Steven
Joseph, Senior. And he's dead."
"My step-daddy, then."
"That's better."
I didn't know if I really wanted to see Martha Jane or not. She
called from a friend's place and told me she was packing the last of
her things to move back to the project, then she had to change and
go to a funeral. She said she would be job hunting all day Monday.
But she'd come over tonight, Sunday, and the next night as well, and
fix dinner for me. I was on Easter vacation, a dubious advantage of
being in a Catholic grammar school. I had no friends and nothing I
particularly wanted to do. I spent most of Sunday rummaging around
the apartment, which seemed relatively large with no one home but
me. Over the years I had spent so much time alone that I began to
realize and appreciate that it did have certain advantages: I had
absolute freedom of movement, and freedom from being hassled by the
foibles and demands of others.
But as Sunday evening neared, I was considering whether or not
to be home at the time Martha Jane was due to fix dinner. I did
not trust my feelings at all. I could always hop a bus and go back
to my godparents or grandparents for the whole week...
In my mind she had changed. She was not the primal, simple child
I knew. She wore high heels. She smoked. She talked loud.
She showed up shortly before six. She greeted me with a hug, and
when she saw I appeared numb she insisted that I give her cheek a
hello kiss, after which she set her purse down on a table in the liv-
ing room and went into the kitchen to make dinner.
I stared at her purse. It was one of the slick black patent
leather purses that adult women carried around. It seemed she moved
faster, too, or maybe it was an illusion created by her seemingly
longer legs and the heels. From the kitchen she asked what I wanted
to eat. I told her I didn't care. As she prepared to cook in that
tiny kitchen with the obsolete refrigerator and the two-burner gas
stove, she kept joking and seemed in fine humor.
"Won't you be tickled pink to get out of this tiny place and
into that big house out on Macon Road? Got a nice big kitchen in
there, I saw it. Your mom drove me out there last week."
"Last week?" I asked, confused. I didn't know she had been
around for almost a whole week before seeing me.
"Yes, hon, last weekend, you know? I *missed* you, I asked
them where you were, and you were at your grandmother's all
weekend."
"My mom didn't call me," I muttered. Betrayed by mom again!
"Well, she couldn't, I couldn't stay long anyway. Rent Overdue,
Speedy, I had to move out of that apartment. Heck, I sure collected
a ton of junk in there." She was setting the table but she stopped
to grin at me. "You're gonna love that house. It's new, all *new*,
not a scratch on it! Even the grass is new. And three bedrooms,
hon. See this?" She held up three fingers. "Three bedrooms!
You'll have your own room, and to heck with that sofabed in there."
I was not overly pleased. "I guess it'll be okay," I muttered,
moving to take my seat at the small table. "I could learn to like
it."
She came over to me. She bent down. I became very aware of her
breasts--not her pert teengirl titties, but her adult female breasts
under the white blouse and under the white bra. She hugged me from
one side and her voice softened. She said earnestly, "You need your
own room, hon. You need your...own..room." She emphasized the last
three words. She pulled back and looked at me. "My lord! How old
are you now, about forty-five?"
"Umpteen," I answered blandly.
She laughed. "Does it really feel that way?"
"And you?" I asked as she sat in the chair before me.
"Umpteen," she answered, giving a muffled laugh. "Closer to
twenty, really. Speedy, you look wonderful. You're getting so cute.
I thought you'd be a little taller, though. Don't you eat your
spinach?"
I didn't answer.
"You look like your daddy's picture."
"I know," I said.
"Bet every aunt and uncle you know tells you that at least once
every fifteen minutes, don't they?"
"Yep," I said, aware of the dull tone in my voice.
"Not everybody that flew a B-17 won a Silver Star, hon." She
chewed her food and swallowed, and her face and voice became more
serious, more leveled. "Doesn't mean you have to win a Silver
Star too, Speedy."
I didn't know what to say to her. I didn't know exactly what
she meant, but I did feel that she knew so very much more about
me than I did.
She said, with a mouth half full of spinach, "You didn't say
you missed me."
"Well," I said, "I did. I'm not as talkative as I used to be."
"Tell me something I hadn't noticed," she chuckled. "You don't
smile as much, either. Of course, you also don't clown or blush or
shuffle around. Those are improvements, anyway. You're getting to
be too nice-looking a young man to be that painfully shy. You're
growin' up. Guess we all have to grow up sooner or later."
"I guess."
"So how do you like it?"
"Like what?" I asked.
"This growing-up business."
"It's okay."
"Holy smokes, what an answer." She shook her head. "You're
right, it's not all it's cracked up to be." Then she changed the
subject. "I'm going out right after we eat dinner, I might buy a
used typewriter from somebody across the driveway. I really need
one."
"I have a typewriter," I offered.
"The old Underwood? No, Speedy, you need that. I need a small
one. Portable." She chewed her food quickly and checked her wrist
watch. "But I'll be back later, about eight or eight-thirty."
I swallowed. "Okay."
She would eat, chew, look at me, eat, and chew. Then look at me.
She went rapidly from one subject to another. She sounded like one of
my curious aunts. But her constant effort at searching me out left me
feeling that she was almost as uncomfortable as I was.
She left after dinner. I sat and played with the Philco, going
from one radio show to the next. Bored, I took a bath. I got all
dressed again in jeans and a plaid shirt and sat listening to the
records and going through the record albums. Just before 8:30,
Martha Jane showed up. She looked tired now, and didn't move around
as quickly. She plopped down on the sofa and gave a loud moan.
"Whew! How are you, hon?"
I ignored her question. "How's your typewriter?"
"I just left it at home, next door. It'll do." She slumped
into the cushions and caught her breath. She used each foot to
push the high heels off. "I hate these! Hate, hate, hate."
"They make a lot of noise when you walk."
"Yeah, don't they?"
She looked at me for a long time. "What's the matter, hon?
Do you just go off into nowhere when you get to be 12 years old?
It is 12 now, isn't it?"
"It's 12," I said, not looking up from the records. I sighed.
"Just tired, I guess."
"Your mom and your brand-new daddy won't be back until next
Friday night. So you can make as big a mess as you want, you're
getting too old for a baby-sitter. But I'll check in. Just be
sure to clean the place up before mommy and daddy day on Friday."
"He's not my daddy," I said flatly, not looking up from the
album.
"Of course he's your daddy. What do you mean?"
"My daddy's dead," I said without emotion, recalling Grandpa
Joe.
"Speedy...what a morbid thing to say."
"That's what Grandpa Joe told me to say."
"I met your Grandpa Joe and he's a very nice man who's done a
lot for you and your mom. But he's an unhappy man who lives in
the past and likes to make others think the same way he does. You
have to mind him and do as he says, but he doesn't have to tell
you how to think."
"Okay," I said, paging the record album.
For a long minute she didn't say anything. I could feel her,
above and behind me, looking at me from the sofa. In a moment she
said, "Would you like to go to a movie with me this week? I mean,
what are you gonna do all week?"
I looked up at her, rather blankly. "Okay," I said. "I
like movies, I know every inch of every theater in Memphis."
"Oh, yes? You must spend a lot of time there."
"Every weekend."
She moved from the sofa and sat down on the floor next to me.
She began removing bobby pins from her hair. "You still spend a
lot of time alone, don't you? That hasn't changed, has it?"
"No," I said.
She leaned toward me. "Give me your face," she said.
I leaned toward her. She kissed my two eyes, lightly, and
then my nose. "I've been running around like a chicken with my
head cut off since six o'clock this morning. Do you promise not
to run away from home while I take a bath?"
"I promise," I said.
She studied me, her face close to mine. She put an arm around
my shoulder. She smiled. "What's been happening to you?"
I looked at her and asked, coldly casual, "You have a boyfriend
yet?"
Her grin disappeared. "Yes," she said. After a pause, she
added. "He's a schmuck. You know what a schmuck is?"
I shook my head.
She leaned back on her ankles and took out one more bobby pin.
"It's some kind of Jewish word, I think. From my New York. A gal
from New York who's in one of my classes keeps using that word."
"What's a schmuck?" I asked.
"A schmuck," she said slowly and distinctly, "is...a...schmuck!
A creep. A jerk." She shook her head. "You'll figure it out."
Then she said firmly, "Being a schmuck is what your Grandpa Joe was
being when he said that horrible thing about your daddy."
She got up and kissed me on the forehead. "I'll be back.
Stay here."
Into the bathroom she went. She was in there for quite a
long time, bathing away. I was getting sleepy and started putting
the records away. It was not so bad, I thought. She does slow
down after a while, and obviously she was warming up to me like
a long-lost friend. She wasn't *that* old, certainly. Not *that*
different. Obviously we were still buddies. But she had a
boyfriend!
A little voice in me said: of course she has a boyfriend,
stupid. She's twenty years old. When you're twenty years old,
you can have a girlfriend. She deserves to have a boyfriend.
I put away the record album, sat on the floor, and watched
the closed bathroom door. Water running furiously in there.
No change in the way she kept herself, she always hated being
clammy or sweaty.
During the rest of her stay behind the door I worked up the
courage to apologize. I stood waiting in the middle of the living
room with my hands in my pockets. I still had my pride, of course.
I didn't want to seem as dejected and desolate as I really was,
that would be giving too much away.
I heard the bathroom door open, saw the light go out. She came
into the doorway of the living room. She was in light pink, floppy
silk pajamas. She was drying her hair with a towel and saw me
standing with my hands still in my pockets.
She asked, "What are doing, just standing there?"
I asked, "Is a schmuck just being rude, or a party pooper, and
stuff like that?"
"Yes, I'd say...that qualifies as fairly schmuck-like." She
fluffed her head with the towel.
"Is it, like...being snotty?"
"Yep."
I searched for words a second. "Acting like you're always
right and everybody else is wrong?"
"Yep."
"...like...the way I was acting today?"
"Yep. That's a schmuck, all right."
"So I was bein' a schmuck."
"That's one of a great many things that schmucks do." She put
away the towel and came to me and grabbed me by the hand, leading
me toward the bedroom. "C'mon. Beddy-bye. It's ten o'clock."
I resisted. "I thought this was supposed to be a vacation!"
"A vacation doesn't mean you stay up all night. Anyway, young
man--my young schmuck--you've been pretty cranky all day, and if you
want to have a good time with me this week and keep up with me, you
better rest while you can."
I stood near the bed as she rapidly pulled back the bedclothes.
"Okay, okay, but I *am* twelve years old. I can get myself in and
out of the bed."
"Right," she said. "Well, you're not all that old. Besides,
I want to ask you about something before you turn in." She came
to me and began removing my shirt. "Your mother told me, schmuck,
that you went to Woolworth's looking for me one day and you
couldn't find me."
"She told you that? Here, I can unbutton my shirt myself.
Is a schmuck somebody who can't unbutton their own shirt, too?"
She stood eyeing me sternly with her hands on her hips.
"Anyway," I said, "that was months ago."
She nodded. "She told me. She said you were very disappointed.
She said you were down in the dumps. All...day...long."
"Sure, I was disappointed. What's wrong with being disap-
pointed?"
"No no no, schmuck. Not just disappointed. She said you were
down in the dumps for a week."
I raised my eyes to the ceiling. Didn't mothers know when to
shut up? I removed my shirt and started on my jeans, not saying
anything, avoiding her gaze.
"It so happens," she continued, "I wasn't there that day. So
was she correct about that? What's your version of the story?"
I blushed. I made a what-the-hell shrug. She started to help
me with the belt. "Look," I said, "I can do this."
She stepped back. "Okay. Take charge. But get into bed.
It's late."
"I thought I could just stay up all week. It's Easter vaca-
tion."
She eyed me with a comic, bugeyed sternness, firmed her lips,
and pointed dramatically at the bed.
I did an aw-shucks and got down to my underwear. I was taller
and more developed than I was when I had last seen her. I had a
little hair on my legs, not much, but visible. I also had under
my jockeys a healthily burgeoning patch of pubic hair that had
replaced the light blond fuzz and which, I suddenly realized, might
be dimly visible through the thin cloth. Hurrying into bed, I also
realized with even greater embarrassment that I had developed in
another area as well, which must surely have been noticeable, not
as the thimble-shaped white bulb near the slit of my jockeys that
she had seen in the past, but as a definitely larger and more
shapeless bulge.
Quickly, I lay on my side and pulled the sheet to my waist.
Looking officially satisfied, she reached to turn out the bed-
side lamp. But instead, she changed her mind. Leaving the light
on, she got into bed with me and shoved me farther to the other side.
She lay next to me, facing me, on her side with her head propped on
one arm.
"Wanna talk?" she asked.
PART 5C:
I shrugged.
"I mean, seriously. Talk."
I shrugged again. "Not really."
"I do," she persisted.
So I got into the same pose as she, propped on one elbow and facing
her. "All right, but I don't need a baby-sitter to put me to bed."
"I don't know what to do with you. About you. You are spoiled
and too independent. I know you don't like all your fussy old aunts
and uncles so much, but you have to admit they spoiled the heck out of
you. And, brother, did I help! You are so strange. In so many ways
you're older than me, in the ways you connect with certain things
inside people, but...such a strange boy."
"Boy," I echoed dryly.
"Well, Speedy, you *are* a boy...No, no, no, you are what looks like
a boy, you do boy things, you have boy habits. But you're not really a
boy. Wars took your boy away from you. I did, too. I'm going to die
and go to hell for it."
I gruffed, "Oh, That's what the nuns say all the time..."
"Do you know what I mean when I say I'm going to hell for it?"
"...and you say that all the time, too."
"I know, but do you know what I mean?"
"I guess. No."
"I'm in hell for it now, Speedy. I'm in hell every day thinking
about this and about us."
"You mean...'this' and 'us' being...?"
She mouthed the word s-e-x, and nodded.
I felt a crashing, cutting disappointment. All I could say
was: "Oh."
"I think what we did together was very unusual. Very out of
control. I don't think I will ever be able to be like that with anyone
else again, as long as I live."
"I didn't know you felt so bad about it."
"No no no no no, not 'bad'," she moaned, beating her fists lightly
on the bedsheet. "Not 'bad'!" She beat her fist again, once for each
word: "You...don't...understand."
"Explain it to me."
"I am explaining it to you!"
"Okay."
"You don't understand that...I...that I *did* like it. I liked it
more than anything. I'm trying to tell you that I...that I know, looking
at you right here and now, that I know I'll never be able to do that with
anyone else."
"Not--?"
She stopped me. "Not even with my boyfriend."
"Hm."
"Believe me?"
I shrugged: a sort of, a maybe.
"I'm trying to tell you, Speedy, my dear sweet little man, my somehow
grownup somehow not grownup little man--Oh, my my you are so grownup in
bed. You are so strange. I'm trying to tell you that...I liked it...
But...I'm afraid of you. I'm afraid of myself. You do something to me,
we have something, we do something to each other that--" She stopped.
"Yes, I have this boyfriend but it's not the same, it's not--" She
stopped again and sighed almost tearfully. "Oh, heck!"
"You think it was wrong?" I guessed.
She shook her head no, impatiently dismissing my question. Then she
sighed. "I have this problem."
"Problem?"
"Yes." She pulled a wet strand from her hair and then picked a
little crumb of something off her tongue and couldn't find it again and
just gave up. "The problem is...I still remember it."
"Oh."
"Yes, 'Oh'. I remember, and I--ah, this is so complicated."
I sat up. In some ways this was beyond me. In some other strange
way, I sensed what she was saying. "Maybe we should not have done it."
She looked suddenly and deeply into my eyes. There was conster-
nation, frustration, impatience in eyes and face.
"I mean, what we were doing makes you feel bad and you think you're
going to hell, so we shouldn't do it."
"Oh...!?" She squinted at me. "Tell me something: did you think we
would do it again the next time you saw me?"
"Not especially."
"Be honest."
"Mmm, no."
"But you sort of hoped we would," she prompted.
"Mmm, yeah."
"But if you think it hurts my feelings, you wouldn't ask me?"
"Right."
She stared at me for a very long time. "I should have known you'd
say that. I should have known." She played with her wet hair again,
and lay back on a pillow. "Let me ask you something. Did you really
find yourself thinking about it? I mean, thinking about it a lot?"
"I guess...I didn't think about it a lot, but it made me sad when
it looked like it wouldn't happen again."
"I see..." she mused. "But you thought about it."
"Sure I did. For a while."
She smirked. "I hope you don't grow up to be like one of those
good-looking hotshots that I don't want you to grow up to be. Darn,
that's what's so strange about you, and me *with* you...If only we
weren't so good at it together, then neither of us would always be
expecting that it's supposed to happen that way all the time." She
shook her head ruefully. "Do you have any idea at all what you would
have to do to seduce me, to make me do it?"
"You mean...like really *make* you do it with me?"
"Yes."
"It wouldn't be the same."
"Why?"
"Because you wouldn't want to do it."
"I see," she said, pondering again. She squinted at me. "I wish you
were twenty. I wish you were thirty. I wish..." She stopped, searching
my eyes.
I was looking down, away from her, absently toying with a wrinkle in
the bedsheets. She leaned forward and forced herself into my view. "Have
you made yourself cum yet?"
I blushed and shrugged.
"You haven't, have you? I took your boy but I didn't give you enough
man to work with did I? And you made it so good for me."
This chat was annoying me. Talking with adults was something I
never, simply never enjoyed. They had such a baffling way of complicat-
ing matters. As I did with other adults when they wanted a "serious"
discussion, I tried to appear unaffected. Now, as Martha Jane talked
with me that night, the room seemed crowded and too small to hold the
thoughts I was trying to keep from her. I felt alienated from her,
especially now that she had so obviously begun her move from a teenager
to a woman, a woman who worked for a paycheck, studied in a college, went
out with other people her own age who lived in a world that I was totally
unfamiliar with. It was an odd and unsettling sensation for me to feel
that way about Martha Jane.
She went on with difficulty. "I don't know what it is we...we do to
each other..." Absently she started to reach toward my thigh, but
stopped. "You want *me* to ask *you* to do it?"
Still propped on my elbow, I shrugged again. "Sort of...I mean, the
only time I used to know you wanted to was when you said you did."
"I...see..." she said ominously, looking at her own hands and appear-
ing troubled by my reply. She rolled onto her tummy and crossed
her ankles in the air behind her.
She asked, "Why did you feel so bad when you didn't find me at
Woolworth's? Hm? I really want to know, Speedy. Was your mama right,
were you down in the dumps all day?"
I gave shrug number one thousand or so. "I don't know," I pouted.
"That was a long time ago."
"Oh, baby, that's not an answer. C'mon, talk to me."
"I don't know. I just...didn't know what else to do."
She prompted in a singsong voice, "You could have come ba-aa-ck...on
a different day-y-y."
I didn't say anything. She was right, I could have gone back and
looked for her again. I didn't know what she was getting at.
In the same singsong she continued: "You could have...mmm... called
my mother...called my sister."
I blushed again, but I was also a little hostile. All I could do was
lower my head and say, "Well...."
"Speedy, why didn't you ever call me after I left home and moved into
an apartment?"
That remark left me slightly bristling. "I did call. Evelyn gave me
a number. But they told me you had moved to another place."
"Why didn't you look for me again? I was very busy at first, I was
so busy I didn't sleep. Half the time I'd eat breakfast or lunch walking
between classes. And after a few months, I heard nothing. I said to
myself, okay, so what, the kid's only ten years old, how does he know
what to do? What should I expect? And I met boys, nice boys, interest-
ing people, friends--for the first time in my life. And after a while I
figured, well, he's growing, he has his own things, his own life. Maybe
he doesn't want to see me, maybe he doesn't even remember who I am. We
really didn't have to see each other, period. We could have just
talked. We could have just said hello. We were still friends, weren't
we?" She looked at me with pleading eyes. "We were so close, we had
been through so much together. What happened? Why didn't I hear any-
thing from you? Even my mother said she never saw you, not once."
I remember the day I had gone to her front door, and no one
answered. Apologetically, I told her about it.
"But, Speedy, how many times did you knock on the door? How many
times did you walk next door to see where I was?"
I shrugged. I didn't answer.
"Come on, how many times?"
"Once."
"Once?"
I nodded. I held up one finger. I avoided her eyes. I was getting
the point.
She repeated, angry, incredulous, "You went to my house *once*?
That was it? Once?"
I nodded. I saw her anger mounting. I wanted to run away. I had
never seen her angry with me. I began to shuffle around in the bed,
looking for an excuse to get away and relieve the tension for a while.
"I think I have to go to the--"
"No you don't, buster." She held me down by one hand, which she
pressed tightly into the mattress. "Now just let me calm down a minute,"
she said, and she sighed two long sighs and then she let go of my hand.
She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, and squinted. "Oh my, I
have so much work to do with you! You're like a wild boy that's grown up
without parents, without friends, without--" She shook her head.
Patiently, she lightly touched one of my hands. "Why didn't you
fight a little for me, hon? Why didn't you try to find me? I want to
know, I really do. I can get frustrated with your stubbornness and
your turning away sometimes, but I can't dislike you. I like you too
much. You mean too much to me. But what on earth...what was going
through your strange head about me? I want to know. Can you tell me?
Do you want to tell me?"
My head was bursting. My heart, too. In time I had forgotten her
and had grown used to not seeing her. And now she was trying to make me
depend on her all over again. I made a face at her, a silly boy's face,
a creepy grin, and then a pout. I felt and acted exactly like the child
that I was.
She ignored it and continued earnestly, "You would just keep looking
for me in places where I'm not, wouldn't you? You would go into a room
by yourself, and if I wasn't there you'd wait. And you wouldn't find me."
"I guess," I said, embarrassed that she had me pegged.
"You 'guess'...You wouldn't find me because I wouldn't be there."
She rested her chin on her hands, her elbows propped under her. Her
voice became sweetly, gently prompting. "Maybe you didn't want to find
me? Maybe...you wanted me to find you? Is that it? You didn't go
looking for me because you wanted me to come looking for you. Because
that's the way it always was, wasn't it? I had always come to you. You
never had to go looking for me."
Something was welling up in me. I wasn't sure what to do about it.
I tried to think up a cute, innocuous answer. But I couldn't. I was
struck dumb by a sudden awareness of how well she knew me, how little I
knew about myself.
"Hon?" she asked. "Isn't that what happened? Is that what I did to
you?"
Silently, I cried. A big fat tear rolled out of my eye and down my
cheek. I turned away from her.
She moved over to me and put her arms around my back and her cheek
against my neck.
"Tell me, hon. Please tell me. What was wrong?"
"I'm sorry," I sniffed, my cheeks shiny with tears.
"No. I don't want you to be sorry. I just want you to tell me."
"But I am sorry. I got you mad at me, I did everything wrong!"
"No no no no no no, hon. Now sit up. Sit up and look at me and
let's dry off this cute face and stop this, okay? See, if you hand'nt
refused to talk to me, me your old tried and trusted girlfriend, we
wouldn't be going through all this, would we?"
"I guess not." I wiped my nose with my t-shirt.
"Don't use your t-shirt, hon. You're so intelligent, but you can be
such a mess sometimes." She wiped my eyes and face with a kleenex.
"I thought you didn't want to see me anymore."
"Sweetheart, I couldn't see you all the time, not the way I used to
when I lived next door. You'll be in college one day, and just watch--
you won't speak to your folks for months at a time. Even in high school
things will be different; in high school they don't have nuns who walk
you to class from eight o'clock mass every day."
"But you never came around," I continued.
She grabbed my face and ogled me with mock sternness. "You see what
happens when we don't have any faith, when we don't talk to each other?
It got all mixed up, didn't it? Stop it, now. Stop. I want to tell you
something."
"Okay."
"Pay attention and stop sniffing."
"Okay, okay." I said, wiping my face and eyes.
She squeezed my nose with a kleenex and kissed my ear and looked at
me again. "Hon, I don't want you to grow up all by yourself like this.
Are you listening to me? Do you know what I'm talking about?"
"I guess."
"You--?" She huffed and scratched her forehead. "Oh, you don't, do
you? Oh, how can I get this through to you?"
"I'll try," I volunteered. "Go ahead. Try me."
She thought for a long time. "Do you know how much I like you,
Speedy? Hm? I like you so much, it doesn't even make sense. Not to
*anybody*! I don't even have anyone I can talk to about you. I don't
care about them, really, or what they think. It's you I care about."
She paused, raising her hands with a shrug. "If we're supposed to be
'friends', then I want you to come lookin' for *me* sometime, okay? I
don't want you to grow up always thinkin' that people are always depen-
dable or that they'll always be comin' to you. Sometimes you have to go
out and get them. You know what I mean?"
"I guess."
"If you say I guess to me one more time..."
I gave her a silly, friendly smile. I had stopped crying.
"Well, I have news for you, I was really lookin' forward to seeing
you today, and last week too. Now, last week we can't do anything about,
that's past. But we do have today. And I'm glad to see you, and I'm
worried about you because I show up and you walk away from me, into
yourself. You can't keep doin' that."
"Okay."
She was growing a little petulant herself, nervously playing with her
fingernails. "Now don't say okay, hon, if you don't really mean okay."
"Okay." I grinned.
She resisted laughing, but finally gave in to it and held her head in
her hands in mock frustration, and beat the sheets with her fist again.
"Stop...makin'...me...laugh!"
"So you're saying..." I pondered aloud, squinting, "you're saying I
should have looked more."
"I am saying," she explained patiently, "that you have to have some
faith. Not in others, in yourself. I'm saying that you're getting older
now and you have to learn to start looking for--" She stopped herself,
shut her eyes briefly, then lowered her voice and continued slowly,
"Sometimes, I want you to come to me. I want you to learn to come to me."
"Oh."
"I want you to ask *me*. For a change. I want you to start it, I
want you to talk to me. I don't want you to sulk away from me, or from
anybody, just because they don't follow you around all day trying to
figure you out. Hon, you're too sensitive. You're gonna lose sometimes,
you're gonna be disappointed. But you still have to try."
"Okay."
"Do you really mean that?"
"Yes."
"Look at me. Really?"
"Yes, ma'am."
She put her hand on my shoulder. She squinted one eye. "Listen,
cowboy. I want you to mean it. I'm concerned about you, you know that?
Everybody who knows you likes you, but they don't always give you
everything you want. Ask for it sometime."
"Okay."
She threw up her hands. "Oh lord, another okay!" She rose from the
bed. "Well, you're all ready to go to sleep. Maybe you can now, and
you'll feel better. *I'm* going' to the bathroom." She rose and left
the bedroom and disappeared again into the bathroom.
I settled down into my pillow and pondered all that she had said. It
seemed sensible to me. A little too-much-grownup, I thought. But then I
also knew, from all the sad grownups around me, from all that my scien-
tifically-inclined mind had observed among the many tragedies in that
housing project and in my family, I knew that I would not always be 12
years old. I would be older one day. Those who provided for me would no
longer be around; certainly, I had seen this happen often enough to
others. I was not ready at the time, not ready to forge that far ahead.
But, I was aware, that day would come. And I did know for certain,
again, that Martha Jane was my friend, not a bed partner or a playmate.
If she had done some growing up, then so should I.
She shut the bathroom light and came into the hallway, but stopped
there. She yawned and scratched her head.
"You ready to go sleep?"
"Yeah," I called from the bed.
She came into the bedroom and turned out the table lamp. In the dark
I felt her lean toward me and kiss me on my cheek.
"G'nite, hon. I'll be in the other room if you need anything."
I didn't respond. This was not exactly what I expected.
"Okay?" she asked again.
I nodded.
"G'nite." The hem of her pajama legs rasped along the floor as she
left the room. I heard the squeaks and rattles of the sofabed being made
in the living room. Shortly after, all the lights went out.
I lay there for about fifteen minutes. I looked out the window. I
kept hearing her say she wanted me to ask her first. She wanted me to
come to her. I turned over and propped up on one elbow and listened.
Not a sound from the other room.
Lying back down, I tried to fall asleep.
But a torrent of thoughts overpowered me, struggling mightily within
my head and chest. The flood was so chaotic, I lay with my eyes tightly
shut and concentrated on sorting them out. Among them was a new thought,
a new impulse that rose over the others with an almost deafening voice:
I wanted her. And I wanted her to want me. I wanted to make myself
desirable in the ways she had talked about that night. Her words had me
asking what had happened to that rebellious, independent, indefatigable
'me' of only a few years before? I realized I had changed. Had Grandpa
Joe and my fussy aunts and the tough kids and the stern teachers changed
me so much?
With each question came a plenitude of conflicting answers. I real-
ized that I had not interacted enough with others to know how to handle
myself on my own terms. I could not voice this realization so articu-
lately at age twelve, but I could feel it. I knew that I had absorbed a
great deal of information, had amassed countless observations. But I
felt powerless when it came to doing something with what I knew.
I sat up in bed.
I lay down.
Rolled over.
Sat up again.
Was she asleep? Or was she waiting?
Soon I grew impatient with wondering. I put the sheet around me
(still somewhat embarrassed about all that my underwear now contained),
and walked through the dark into the living room...
PART 5D:
I walked toward the living room and stood in the doorway, allowing
the sheet wrapped around me to make as much noise as it wanted, and
hoping she would respond if she were awake.
Dimly across the room I saw her rise and look toward me. "Speedy?"
"Yes," I answered. "It's me."
"I thought you were going to sleep?"
"Are you awake?"
"What do you think? Of course I'm awake. I was worried about you."
I told myself: Do something, show her some fight.
In the faint light I saw a pencil on the lamp table near the door.
I reached for it and held it like a cigarette, twiddling it gingerly in
my fingers and puffing on it. The bedsheet wrapped around my waist and
below, I walked into the middle of the room. Martha Jane had turned
toward me on the sofabed and was lying on her side, staring at me
quizzically.
I took a deep breath and started my act in full force. I opened with
my Deep South truck driver's gruff and heavy drawl.
"Hey, bay-beh! Wonna beer?"
She smirked. On her side, she leaned on an elbow and propped her
head in her hand. "Oh my, what is this strange child up to?"
Then I made the pencil a cigar, touted and flipped it one hand. and
with my other hand on my hip I faked the higher-pitched, tightly clipped
voice and speech of the Bowery Boys' Leo Gorcey.
"Dey call me Doubtless Dan. 'Cuz "When Dan's About, There Ain't No
Doubt!'" I smugly pretended to straighten my tie. "Pahdon me, ladies,
while I make myself presentable."
Then I jammed my hands deep into my pajamas' pockets, stuck out my
tummy to simulate a beer-belly, put the pencil in one corner of my
mouth, and rocked back and forth as I did my W.C. Fields.
"I recall when were stranded in the Andeeees. It was TERRibble,
couldn't find a bottle o' booze anywherrre. Had to live on nothing but
food and waterrr for tennnn daaayzz!"
Each character brought me a step or two closer to the sofabed where
she still lay propped on an elbow and keeping a straight face.
Then I put one hand behind my back, pursed my lips, and at the same
time raised my eyebrows and squinted my eyes--not easy to do, but it was
essential for an effective Clark Gable.
"Now listen, Scarlett. I know we haven't been gettin' along, sweet-
heart, so...I'll make a deal with ya. You keep the child, and the money,
and the lumber company, and...I'll stay here at Tara with Ashley Wilkes."
With understated sarcasm she broke in. "Does this have an end?"
"Why, Scarlett, whenever you say."
"End, please."
Myself again, I dropped to my knees and my face was level with hers.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Speedy...What in the world are you doing?"
"I'm trying."
"You're trying? Trying what?"
"Trying. You wanted me to try harder."
"Well...that's not *exactly* what I had in mind, angel."
"Well," I said, simply, "that's...right now, that's all I know."
"Oh," she said forgivingly. "Well then...what's next?"
"I want to kiss you."
"Kiss me?"
"Yeah. Kiss me, you fool."
She looked at me blankly. Perhaps she realized, as I did, that we
had never truly, romantically kissed.
I prompted, "Alright?"
"Well...sure. I guess so."
"You sure?"
"Why wouldn't I be sure?" She frowned. "What are you going to do?"
"Kiss you."
"So kiss me."
I took a deep breath for courage. "Okay."
This was something I had not only never done, but had never imagined
doing and had no idea how to go about it. I walked the short distance to
her on my knees, stretched up over the edge of the sofabed, and brought
my face close to hers. She appeared a little apprehensive and unsure,
but she didn't flinch. A step at a time, I gently took the arm she was
propped upon and laid it flat on the bed, which forced her to recline on
her side. I touched her hips and nudged her to lie flat on her back,
which she did, smiling indulgently and watching me closely. I leaned
forward a little more and put my right hand on her cheek, then I slipped
my left arm under her neck. Cradling her in the best romantic style of
the movies, I held her thus and brought her a little closer to me. She
adjusted herself uncomfortably and I waited until she was settled.
I looked into her eyes. At first I attempted to do this with a
certain panache, or a soppy, longing Charles Boyer gaze. But her eyes
and her face undid me. Immediately, I fell victim to her effect on me,
and the phoney gaze disappeared. Her half-lowered eyelids, her milk-
smooth, softly sculpted face, her slightly parted, expectant lips with
their moist, dewy glaze, and her lucid, penetrating, expectant blue-green
eyes...
All pretense disappeared. I wanted, more than anything else in the
world, to give Martha Jane the kiss of her life. A real kiss. A kiss
that would be uniquely me. The kiss of the century. I returned her
waiting gaze with one which I'm certain must have reflected the piquant
tenderness that swept over me. Gently I lowered my lips toward hers,
miraculously managing on my first effort to get the interlocking tilt of
our faces just right. I waited ever so momentarily before touching my
mouth to hers. Then I joined our faces. Never before had my lips felt
hers -- and never before had they felt anything like it! Meeting no
resistance, I mouthed her gently at first, massaging my way into a com-
plete awareness of the shape and texture of her yielding petals. Amazed,
I felt her return my kiss with a slight, tentative, moist pressure
against me. I settled my lips into hers until her almost imperceptible
return of movements matching my own told my lips that her lips had found
the most agreeable, the most telling contact. Suprised, my lips began
melting into hers, into the wondrous, creamy silk of her that met my
seeking mouth with a seeking of her own, which I learned to read and
respond to like a mirror image of her every oral gesture. Enthralled, I
allowed my lips to caress hers with slightly more pressure and a series
of small, slow, ovular movements, which seemed as natural to me as
breathing. She, too, returned the pressure and the movement. Enraptured,
my insides sizzled as she slid one arm along and then around my should-
ers. A wild hunger rose in me; but I controlled and tempered it, ex-
pressing it with my hand on the side of her face as a small caress and a
tender hug, a subtle drawing of her head closer to me. Captivated, I
lifted my lips only slightly and, still touching hers, I allowed mine to
caress hers like a tantalizing, slippery, mothering feather. Enchant-
ed, I felt her return the favor. Intoxicated, I moved my mouth closer
again, this time with a sure but carefully restrained ardor, and simply
allowed my lips to disintegrate into hers. Gently we writhed our mouths
against each other for another long and nourishing moment, increasing the
pressure gradually, then releasing, withdrawing with languid, reluctant
slowness, until I opened my eyes and saw hers still closed, blissful,
tranquil. Never had I been so close to her mouth or her face, which
filled my view and shut out any and all interference from the rest of the
universe. My lips were still wet with hers; my own felt hers, felt like
hers; mine seemed to have disappeared, her own lips taking their place.
Gazing raptly, I stroked her cheek.
She opened her eyes sleepily. At first they were questioning,
uncertain. Then she seemed to come awake and she gently pushed me away.
"Where," she asked skeptically, "did you learn to kiss like that?"
"That's the way I kiss."
"No, Speedy, nobody kisses like that. I bet you picked that up from
the movies. You kissed me the way somebody like William Holden kisses."
"That," I insisted, "is the way I kiss."
"No. That's the way William Holden kisses."
"He got it from me."
"Oh...I see. Well, that's some kiss."
"Thank you." Daringly, without pause, I declared, "I wanna sleep in
here."
"There's not room enough for two."
"Then, uh..." My eyes rolled as I tried to overcome this latest
obstacle. "Okay, I'll have to sleep on top of you."
"That would be very uncomfortable, Mister Holden."
"Well, then...I guess we'll have to sleep in the bedroom."
She smirked. "Well, then...I guess so."
"Well, then..." I echoed, waiting.
But she didn't move. After a pause she queried me with her big,
smiling, waiting eyes. "Well?" she said in a small voice.
I leaned toward her and took her free hand which rested near the edge
of the sofabed. "I want you to sleep in the other room with me, because
I haven't seen you in two years. And because I want the first thing I
see in the morning to be you. And because I might never get the chance
to do this again."
Her eyes softened. "That's better," she whispered. She tilted her
head and looked at me warmly, tenderly. "That's more like what I wanted
to hear you say."
Then she rose from the bed and headed straight for the bedroom in her
floppy silk pajamas.
Perplexed, I rose and followed her. "Well...why didn't you
tell me that's what you wanted in the first place?"
"Oh, how unromantic."
"But why didn't you just tell me?"
"Because all this time, I made it too easy for you. Because I wanted
you to learn something. Because I was playing hard to get." She settled
into the bed near the lamp table, lying back with her hands behind her
head in the dark. "That's the way girls behave in real life, hon. They
want you to figure them out."
I stood near the bed. "But why do girls have to play hard to get?"
"Because they're girls."
"But boys don't play hard to get."
"I know. They're boys."
"I see," I pondered. "So the girls play hard to get...and the boys
do the getting."
She winked.
In the two years that I had been away from her, I had forgotten what
it was like to look down on her alluring body in the dark. As I stood
watching her from the edge of the bed, it all came back. And it came
back with a vengeance. I did not pause, but followed my impulse and
climbed onto the bed from the foot of it, and in one smooth motion I
stretched over her and lay on her, both of us fully clothed.
She smiled, opened her arms, and I snuggled into her neck.
She asked, "The lesson wasn't too hard on you, was it?"
"Did you like my Clark Gable?"
"No."
"Oh."
"I liked your 'you', though. And what a kisser." She hugged me.
I hugged her back. I lifted my face and looked at her. I felt it
was my move. I shifted my weight to her side, letting my right arm
cradle her neck. I looked down at her breasts. Her nipples stood out
tautly under the cloth of the pajamas. They were different now, less
girlish, more womanly. Or perhaps I was two years older, had new juices
flowing from my glands, and saw her differently. I lifted my hand to her
right nipple and with two fingers cradled and squeezed it gently over the
cloth. She shifted slightly, leaning into me. She watched my fingers,
then she watched me. I allowed my hands to sweep across her chest, down
her tummy, around to her hip. She felt different; more firm, more sleek,
more smoothly sculptured. At the crotch of her pajamas the shape of her
tuft and mound were revealed in sharp relief. She had lost some baby
fat; her mound was more distinct, more feminine, its contours more
erotically enticing.
With my hand I covered the gentle swell between her legs. Right away
I realized she wore nothing underneath. I felt her heat. Her tuft was
thicker now, crisper. I made a small circle on her cunt with my palm,
which could feel where her thick outer lips gently folded in and parted.
As I continued circling, I felt her hand go to the slit in my underwear.
With three fingers she formed a cone with which she lightly enclosed the
outline of my tip. Cupping it, she squeezed almost imperceptively, with
a slow rhythm. I felt an incredible itch that ran the length of my cock.
As I caressed her over her pajamas her thighs parted. I looked at
her. "Feels different with clothes on," I whispered.
She nodded lazily, slipping her lower lip naughtily under her teeth.
"Feel good?" I whispered, smiling.
Her eyes narrowed. She nodded slowly again.
I rubbed her another moment until I sensed moisture in the cloth
under my hand. Her slit had widened. And my erection was underway.
I searched her darkening eyes. "Do you think it would still feel good
to fingerfuck you like I used to?"
She shrugged. "I guess," she said, grinning impudently.
I sighed a little laugh at her joke. I lay down flat, lifted my
hips, and pulled off my underwear, flipping it onto the floor at the foot
of the bed. I had expected she would take a while to unbutton her pajama
top, but she sat up and grabbed the hem of the shirt and pulled it over
her head and off, like a sweater. She lay down and arched and pulled off
her bottoms.
She was nubile and naked. She was beautiful. Her pubic patch had
indeed thickened and darkened and extended below the top of her slit.
Her nipples were larger and a darker pink. As soon as I saw her I
realized I would have to learn about her all over again.
Settling on one elbow I carefully fondled her outer fold, which was
already slick and blossoming open to invite my finger's search for her
clit. When I found it she swallowed and her staring eyes softened. I
began to stroke her nub in slow tiny circles. Immediately it began to
lubricate and stiffen, and her long thighs drifted apart...
She whispered, "Yes..."
With her fingers she formed a small cone around my tip again, then
she found I was hard. Her fingers searched, finding that I had smooth
curls now instead of fuzz, and she investigated my balls and my hardening
shaft, then enclosed me, gripped, squeezed up. Her fingers found
pre-cum at my tip.
"Speedy," she whispered.
I looked at her. "Hmm?"
"Your not a baby anymore, hon," she whispered, circling my corona
with a wet finger. She shook her head and smiled, repeating to herself,
"Not a baby anymore..."
PART 5E:
"Let's do this for a while," I whispered. "Just this. Okay?"
"Yes." She swallowed again. For a while we silently enjoyed touch-
ing and stroking each other with no particular goal in mind other than
pleasing ourselves and discovering all the things about us that had
changed.
As we touched and played we talked. I told her about the plays I'd
done, how movies and photography had captured so much of my life. She
told of her classes, her work, what she had learned.
I didn't entirely take the lead; I didn't yet know how. But I was
not as passive as in the past. I marveled at how she had grown so lithe
and graceful. She marveled at my new shoulders, my well-formed thighs,
my growing cock, and the hair appearing on my legs, chest, and groin. As
the night wore on we became alternately playful and serious, lewd and
virginal. I can't remember all of it. Very often I try to, but it all
gets jumbled. Our old devils had entered the dark room and overpowered
everything and everyone in it. For a while during that night, each of us
appeared to be trying to see who could bring out the deepest sensuality
in the other, who could come up with the naughtiest turn-on, who could
make the most endearing gesture. We shut out the narrow world and the
narrow people around us, and the world inside the room expanded. At one
point she sat up and watched and held her pussy open while I licked her.
Then again, I stood up and watched her suck me as she lay across the bed,
having to make her stop sucking early because my larger cock could now
feel more of her knowing mouth and tongue. She would stop now and then
to play with my balls and ask if it felt good. Then I lay on the bed and
she held onto the headboard while she hovered over my face and gave me
detailed licking instructions until she almost came. She stopped, not
wanting to end it yet. We lay down and hugged for a while and then began
masturbating each other again. Our devils seethed out of us in a slow
but steadily mounting stream. We remained gentle, held back by some
subtle self-imposed constraint that would not let us take anything too
far too quickly. We would hold ourselves at an intense edge, as if what
we needed and what we felt could be dealt with and satisfied only by its
own intensity and its own fire, one step at a time.
Because it had been so long since I had been touched or excited, the
nature of my arousal was new to me. For the first time I felt a tight-
ness and a pain in my balls that was not there before. I became more
aware of our physicality together, and understood more fully the
mysteries and the implications of what we were doing.
I knelt on my knees over her, while she lay flat and sucked me.
"You're dripping," she said. She touched my tip to one nipple and
rolled a finger round the sticky fluid I left there. "You know that?
You're dripping a lot."
"Dripping?"
"You're making more cum, hon. Do your balls feel tight?"
"Yeah, they're...very tight."
She grinned with delight and expectation. "Maybe you'll cum. You've
never cum, have you?"
"I don't...I don't really know."
"You're so much bigger and hotter than you ever were." She gently
touched and squeezed beneath my balls. "Does that hurt?"
"A little. Yeah, It's...feels kinda sore."
"Even when I touch just a little, like that?"
"Yes."
"Oh, Speedy," she said, laughing to herself. "I think we have an
opportunity here that we shouldn't pass up. Be honest. You never came
before? Not even by yourself?"
I shook my head. "I never tried it. Other boys told me they did,
but...I didn't see how doing it by yourself could be much fun." I looked
down at her hand and the amount of fluid she had drawn from me.
"Maybe...I could cum."
"Think so?"
"What happens? I mean, how will I know?"
"You'll know, hon."
"I...I dunno."
"Do you want to fuck and see if you'll cum?"
I nodded. "We haven't fucked in a long time...Yes."
"Then I hope..." She stopped. "Never mind," she said, shifting her
torso higher in the bed and then leaning back into the pillows. She was
long and the color of the dim moonlight. She raised her knees a little
so her trim thighs could fall apart and spread wide, and then reached
down and held her cunt open for me. "Fuck me, hon."
I lay on her, feeling physically larger than I remembered. This made
her seem smaller to me, more delicate. Certainly, my erection was larger
than it had ever been. I propped myself on my arms and my toes, looking
down as I aimed my new hardness at her dark core. My tip could feel her
wet outer lips, a feeling that had not occurred with such clarity in the
past, and I paused there, unable to prevent a sharp intake of breath at
the surprising intensity of this sensation.
"Yeah?" she whispered. "Feel me?"
I smiled and breathed hard and nodded. "Wet me."
She knew what I meant. It meant that I held my erection at the mouth
of her cunt, the tip barely inside her, while she made small circles with
her hips, bathing my glans with the tight ring around her opening. From
the first moment, I felt a twinge that told me this was different from
the way it had been before. I was pain- fully and frighteningly aware of
the thin slippery skin of her inner lips moving on me.
My arms trembled a little, and despite my effort to remain calm I
felt a rush of adrenalin that demanded more air in my lungs. I heard my
breathing quicken and wobble nervously.
"Feel me on your tip? Feel me moving?"
"Yes, it feels...different...very strange...very nice."
"good...good"
"Keep doin' it," I said, and she did. Her movements were slight,
just enough to keep the sensation going. I could feel myself getting
bigger and stiffer. Very slowly I began to move forward as she main-
tained her movement. I gradually moved deeper into her, hearing her
whispers: "Let it go in me, let it go in... slow, slow. I want us both
to feel all of you..."
I bent down to watch. "It feels so good going in..."
"Feels good for me too, hon. Ah."
Very gradually I slid all the way in and could feel her muscles
rolling around my length. "Oh," I gasped, and my head fell back
involuntarily. My dick arched blissfully at the sensation of being
warmly gloved in the new world of her syrupy, finely textured inner
self. Feeling this was quite a surprise, and quite alarming; I felt
something beyond me was threatening to take control.
Trying to slow the whirl a bit, I pulled out just as slowly. She kept
up the gentle grind. Again I moved forward, still gradually, but this
time without pause, going all the way into her. With a soft hiss she
took in a long slow breath that she let out as a hotly whispered "Ahhhh"
just as I my entire length settled in her.
"Speedy," she whispered, "you're bigger now. I've never felt so much
of you inside me."
I forced myself to pause, to adjust my outspread arms and give myself
time to absorb what was happening. There was more of me down there now,
more flesh, more nerves, more to feel her with. Shakily I began to
ascertain the texture and narrow shape of her inner cunt. I was fully,
warmly, snugly encased. It was almost entirely new, as if I'd never
ventured there before. Despite my best mental efforts at wanting to stop
until I figured out what was going on, I began to slide in her, still
remaining deep, adjusting my angle so that I sensed the familiar nudge of
her clit against my shaft.
"Ah, hon...you still know how."
I looked at her, her eyes gleaming with what seemed an almost painful
pleasure. She looked as if she might cry at any moment. She fucked with
her cunt and her eyes and her breath.
"Is that okay?", I asked, grinning and pumping.
She hissed, "Yes! It's just right. Just right."
I began stroking her more deeply and purposefully. An animalistic
urge welled up. The purely physical began to assert itself, eroding my
resistance move by move. I wondered, if I really wanted to stop, whether
or not I could. For the moment, I couldn't.
After a few strokes she whispered breathlessly, "Go all the way in
me, all the way...Yes, hold it there...like that, yes. Be still a
minute. Let me milk you inside me." She ground her belly against me,
her inner flesh softly wringing my entire length.
My head snapped back again, then fell forward. I moaned, I moaned
again. I looked down at her.
She was smiling at me, her eyes half-closed with lust. "Like
it?"
"It's wonderful...your cunt feels so good..."
"Getting closer, hon? Does it make you want to cum?"
"I don't...I don't want to yet. It feels too good."
"I like making you feel good...I missed this, I missed you...I want
to make it so good for you, the way you always did for me."
Alarmed by a sudden and overpowering surge of pleasure, I pulled
out slightly. "Wait," I panted. "Wait a second."
She slowed and stopped. She, too, was a little out of breath.
"Are you okay?"
"Just rest a minute." It wasn't merely the physical sensations I was
resisting. It was something else--new, unfamiliar, otherworldly. I
felt I might be in better control of myself if I did the moving while she
lay back and enjoy it.
I finally regained some of my air and composure. "Let me move in you,
now, for a while."
"Okay."
We both looked down and watched as I stroked steadily and deeply. I
felt that if I went too fast it would end too soon. My existence
centered more and more tightly on Martha Jane's wet and sweetly enclosing
nether-mouth and her spread thighs and her whispers and irregular gasps.
The itch in my loins spread to my thighs; my strokes into her became less
controlled, more self-driven. I could feel my glans warming inside her.
The something new and wonderful that I held back kept licking at me from
somewhere behind my brain.
After many, many strokes I looked down. I could not wrest my eyes
from what I saw. She was looking straight into me as I looked deeply
into her. I could tell by her taut neck and the force of her inner
spasms that she was starting to cum.
"Don't stop...," she uttered, hardly able to move her mouth. Her
eyes and face were alive with pleasure. She swallowed, she even seemed
to try to stop her cumming and she did not want to look away as she
usually did; cumming or not, she seemed determined to stay in touch with
what was happening to me. Her neck was very taut. She gradually
stiffened under me. She smiled, wild-eyed and holding her breath. She
was no longer undulating under me. I kept fucking with the same rhythm
while the dimming light in her eyes signaled that she was sinking
deeper and deeper, and then she was entirely still for several seconds,
during which her channel tightened on me several times. I was growing
incredibly excited. Her face and eyes were locked in a joyful stare, and
I fucked her eyes with mine. I wanted to intensify her pleasure and her
lust with words, the same way she always intensified mine, and so in the
middle of her cumming I bent down and uttered "fuck" against her lips.
Immediately she whimpered and then uttered that wordless cumming sound
that she made in her mouth somewhere and her cunt clutched, the tendons
in her neck bulged and pulsed. I whispered, "I feel you cumming," and
her eyes widened for a second and seemed completely unfocused; and then
with a long sigh she gradually relaxed, and then jerked and made a little
whimper deep in her neck, then shut her eyes tight and let go of my arms
which she had gripped so tightly with her nails, and she let her head
fall back and gasped, "Oh!" and quickly caught her breath, wiping an arm
across her brow; and then holding onto my arms again and returning her
eyes and her face and her attention to me, she began again her smooth
undulations beneath me. Her half-closed eyes glued themselves to mine as
if she wanted to miss nothing that might happen while I was in the grip
of my new and (to me) almost terrifying pleasure.
"Keep fuckin', hon."
"It's gettin' better," I whispered, growing breathless again.
Her eyes widened eagerly. "Yeah?"
"It's getting..." I could not describe it.
Seeing me without words, she began a mothering croon. "It's okay,
hon...Just feel it. Enjoy it..."
"Oh...Martha Jane...I'm..."
"It's okay. Don't stop, it's okay." As I moved on her she reached
up a gentle hand and stroked the back of my neck. "Let it happen."
My strokes became more deliberate, deeper, stronger. It was a
strength I'd never felt before. I didn't direct it, it directed me. I
didn't move faster, but I moved with more urgency. My swelling cock
sought more of her. It raced out ahead of my mind, which seemed to keep
falling farther and farther back, outraced by everything else.
"Ready...?" she asked. She could hardly talk. And I couldn't speak
at all. Uncertain of losing myself so completely, I clung desperately to
her eyes for safety. An incredible fullness welled up in my balls, along
with a wave of electrifying, undiluted lust.
She whispered, waiting, "You're so hard in me..."
She reached down between us and lightly wrapped two small fingers
around the base of my cock. Her touch was all I could stand. Something
told me, then, that I was lost and there wasn't a damn thing I could do
about.
Apparently she knew, as her fingers at my root must have sent the
signals of my first penile throbs. I didn't think her lewd grin could
get wider, but somehow it did, and her eyebrows raised in wonder,
delight, victory, as she watched my face.
"Yeah. Yeah, you're gonna cum. Cum in me."
All I could say was, "Oh, I'm..."
She raised her eyebrows again. "Ah, it's starting--"
"Oh!"
Her cunt sucked at my tip. It tickled intensely, insanely. Her
circling hips slid her inner walls against the swollen underside of my
exulting cock, which took over completely. My body lurched and, utterly
surprised, I felt the eerie, uncontrollable twist of unknown tubes in my
lower gut that writhed and spewed the first of my life's cum inside her.
My dick pumped into the splash.
A low, gutsy moan oozed out of me.
She wept happily, "Yes, baby...Yes!"
An onslaught of pleasure gripped me. The universe shrank into a dot
inside of which there was only my wildly twitching cock and her begging
cunt. All I could do was groan and spurt again, spurt twice, three
times, rapidly, wetly, violently. Her face flooded with joy as she
watched me through slitted eyes. I heard only her loving chant, "Cum...
ahhh, so warm...cum..."
I was no longer fucking--I rutted, blind. More streams of me leapt
from the slit in my tip that wetly scraped her hugging walls. Soon I
began to slump under a final wave of bliss and the rest of me slurped
into her, into her eyes and her voice, her nipples and her squirming
belly, her spread thighs and her auburn tuft, as the last remnants of my
virginity disappeared forever into the hot, wet, sweet depths of Martha
Jane.
Once finished, I quivered above her, exhausted. I was com- pletely
out of breath, out of strength, out of cum, out of my mind. But she
wouldn't let me have air; she grabbed me by the neck and pulled me down
to her. She held me so tightly I couldn't breathe. I didn't care. I
couldn't hold her tightly enough. If I had died, it was fine with me.
My young dick still throbbed, and she answered the throbs with a low
chuckle and a tightening of her inner muscles. The fingers she had used
to make the small but catalytic ring around my base were now pulling on
my dick as I softened. With half my length still inside her she
whispered hotly, "Get it all in me" and firmly wrung me dry. "All of
it..."
I could only murmur into her breasts. "Oh...so good! Whew!"
"I know, honey. I know."
I could only think to myself: I am out of control. I'm completely
out of control. I am going to hell. It's so good and we both like it so
much that it has to be a sin. I'm Adam in the Garden of Eden and I've
taken deeply, enjoyably of the apple. Everything is different now,
forever.
I raised up to look at her face. She smiled at me, and then pouted,
and then blushed, and then one of her eyes squeezed out a large tear.
"Oh, baby, you came inside me. Oh...oh, I didn't think I'd..." She
wiped the tear away, quickly, and sniffed. I kissed her wet cheek, and
she pulled me to her with a strong hug.
She sniffed again, holding me to her. "I'm so happy for you. You
feel so warm in me."
I whispered against her flesh, "It was soo good."
She tightened her hug, still panting. "I know, hon. Oh, I know."
She gave a little laugh. "Will you still respect me in the morning?"
I nodded against her.
She hugged me, held me. Soon we were calm. She stroked my hair.
She asked, "How do you feel, hon?"
"I am..." I gulped. "Am I going to go to hell?"
"We are both going to hell, hon." Slowly she shook her head back
and forth against mine, murmuring sleepily, "But I can't help it."
Continued...
Author: sjr <73233.1411@CompuServe.COM>
-- CJ
I don't write any stories. I'm just a reader, and sometimes a reposter.
--
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