____________________________
| |
/)| KRISTEN'S BOOKSHELF |(\
/ )| DIRECTORIES |( \
__( (|____________________________|) )__
((( \ \ > /_) ( \ < / / )))
(\\\ \ \_/ / \ \_/ / ///)
\ / \ /
\ _/ \_ /
/ / \ \
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
o o
o The Bookshelf Directories offer a very wide variety of stories. o
o They have been submitted by people from all over the world. Also o
o from alt.sex.stories (Newsgroups). There is no particular order o
o other than offering them to you in alphabetical directories. o
o o
o All works are copyrighted to the author and may not be used for o
o profit without obtaining the author's permission in advance. o
o o
o Lest we forget!!! This story was produced as adult entertainment o
o and should not be read by minors. o
o o
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Strawberries (MF, hist)
by LeAnna (leanna1@hotmail.com)
Date: Jun 1998
***
Copyright 1998 By LeAnna. No part of this story may be reproduced in
any way without permission from the author. Please e-mail comments at
leanna1@hotmail.com The archive is up at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/2194/
[Strawberries by LeAnna]
The gentle clinking of my china bowl did little to comfort me.
I flung open the fridge door and took out a couple pounds' of
strawberries. I slammed the dish on the counter on the counter,
tumbling them into a strainer and holding them under a streaming
faucet. I washed the strawberries vigorously, wincing when I rubbed
the skin off of one.
"What a world," I muttered to myself, closing my eyes and
bowing my head. I tried to calm myself down. The crickets' incessant
chirping outside my window broke the silence. Singing, warbling,
twittering, peeping. I found it almost relaxing. It helped to ease
my mind.
My daughter and her little 'friend' had just left. I sighed,
and took out a steak knife. I took a strawberry from the strainer,
sliced the green off the tip and tossed the fruit into the china bowl.
I picked up another strawberry, frowned in disgust, and tossed it into
the trash. While I continued to sort strawberries, I reminisced. How
different everything seemed, yet how the same everything seemed. I
was a teenager in the sixties, during the sexual revolution, during
the 'free love' era, and I still couldn't accept what had just
happened. I leaned back against the counter and chuckled to myself.
I popped a red, juicy strawberry into my mouth and bit into it
with a satisfied crunch. A long time ago, a friend, Nancy, and I had
decided that picking strawberries out of a big bowl was like picking
lovers -- you had to be choosy. The strawberries that were too small
wouldn't satisfy you for long. There were the ones that looked a bit
green, but smelled nice, and when you bit into it, you found out that
it was indeed under-ripe. Then there are the over-ripe ones, which
are too soft and leave you with a foul, sugary taste in the back of
your throat. Trouble is, with men, you can't always spot the problems
right away.
I picked up a strawberry that wasn't quite ripe, and a bit
small, but not too bad. I tossed it into my mouth and gnawed at it.
I was suddenly reminded of my first time, when I'd been stripped of my
maidenhood and joined the club of women.
To hear my daughter tell it, I was never a young miss, and
certainly never hot with fevered passion and insane with lust. I'd
slept with a few men, really, looking for the perfect man -- or
strawberry, I chuckled to myself. I could still remember my first
time, as clear as yesterday.
1968. I was only nineteen, but even in that era, it was
pretty amazing I'd managed to stay virginal for so long. Especially
with the bunch that I hung out with. Wild bunch. We were always
getting toked up or liquored up or tripped up, and we wore big baggy
flare jeans and shirts that weren't really shirts, but more like
towels wrapped around our tits.
I was the most clear-headed of the bunch, with my future in my
mind and my heart on my sleeve. My best friend was named Nancy. Me,
I was Linda. Classic, old names that reflected the 1940s thinking of
our mothers. Nowadays, half the school-children are named Sky and
Angel and Sunshine. When you run across a child like that, you just
know their parents were hippies. Or tried to be.
Anyhow, I was definitely more clear-headed than Nancy was.
Nancy couldn't even make up her mind about whether she was gay or
straight. I tried to help her figure it out a few times, but it had
never really floated my boat, and she realized that, so she started
experimenting with other people. Men, women. There was a steady
stream of them. I haven't talked to Nancy in a while, but last I
heard, the sixties came back and bit her on the ass.
When I wasn't making sure that I had the world figured out, I
was studious, always concentrating on school. I wanted to be a nurse.
I wanted to have the power to heal, to nurture, to make people feel
better. I think I really wanted to be loved, and you have to admit
that when your nurse gives you some drugs for the pain, you love her
at that moment.
I wasn't from a particularly loving home. My biological
father had left my mother while she was on the birthing-table, her
feet in stirrups. Later, she'd married some brute just so that we
could keep food on the table. He was rich enough to keep more than
food on the table. Anyhow, the idea of nursing somebody back to
health just appealed to me, and so I went through two years of medical
school, studying and training. When I was nineteen, I was almost done
with college and, like I said before, it was 1968. The Vietnam War
was in full force. I planned to serve in Vietnam, to heal, or bury,
our GI's.
It seemed that I did more burying than healing when I did my
tours over there.
One evening, I finished the night's studying early and skipped
down to a bar with Nancy to listen to a local band play some tunes.
There was a boy there -- or should I say man? It was hard to tell.
He had a soft, baby-smooth face that was roughened by several days'
stubble.
I still recall the stare that Nancy gave him. "Ooh."
I'd nudged her, embarrassed. "Don't stare at him."
"He's coming over here, Linda!"
"See? I told you not to... mmph..." Nancy had rudely clapped
a hand over my mouth and smiled invitingly at him. His voice was deep
and low over the music, and though Nancy flirted and tried to seduce
all she could, his attention was drawn to shy little me. I can't say
I regret it. You could do worse for your first time. He certainly
was eye candy, with his plain white T-shirt stretched across his
muscles and bulging over his arms. He caught me staring at him.
I tried to cover up.
"You into sports? Going into the service, maybe?" I asked,
glancing at him, and without realizing it, the glance turned into a
gaze. His eyes caught me and reeled me into the light blue pools of
his irises.
"Nah. I just work out for the fun of it."
I chuckled. "Fun?"
Nancy cut in. "Yeah, Linda. Exercise can be pretty fun
and..." her eyes traveled up and down his form, none too subtly,
"rewarding."
He chuckled uneasily. "Yeah. So, Miss...?"
"Just Linda, please."
"Yes, Linda. Would you like to dance?"
I blushed, my cheeks heating up furiously. "Nobody else is
dancing."
He smiled gently, his rose petals of lips slightly parted.
"Good. They can all watch me and the beautiful woman that I'm dancing
with."
Well, that did it, and Nancy looked on in astonished jealousy
as he managed to pull me on the dance floor. I could almost hear her
thinking,
'He's my strawberry!'.
Later that evening, he pulled me into bed. His smooth
caresses and hot licks melted away any doubts that I had. Soon, our
clothes were tossed carelessly into a heap on the side of the bed, and
we rubbed against each other, bare skin against bare skin.
"Let me kiss you there, Linda," he breathed into my ear, his
fingers playing with my pussy. I shivered.
"No," I whispered.
"Why? I promise it'll feel good. I promise, Linda."
I shivered again as his fingers rubbed me harder. I was
nearly dizzy with sensation. "I -- ah --" But he was already there,
his lips working magic. On my clit, in my outer lips, between my
inner lips, toying with my sex, playing with my arousal. I felt
incredible, sexy and vulnerable and needed. He pushed me higher and
higher, and for the first time in my life, I broke into Heaven and
talked with the angels and stole some stars as a memento. And they
still shine, in my memory, oh yes.
And then he entered me, and I grunted with the sudden
stretching feeling. A long, trailing moan left my mouth. It didn't
hurt. It didn't sting. I loved it! I gasped and moaned, pinned
underneath him, writhing and trembling. He held me tight against his
hard body, his piston rocking in and out of me, harder and faster with
every stroke. Oooh, he felt big and veiny. So raw and loose. It
wasn't to last, of course. Soon, he groaned and braced his body
against my spread legs, thrusting it as hard as he could. I could
feel him spurting, and the intensity of his orgasm almost frightened
me. His expression looked more like pain than bliss. Finally, he let
out a lazy sigh and collapsed on me. We held each other, our sweaty
bodies entangled.
I never wanted to leave his bed, but I had to. I sneaked back
into my house at one A.M., and muttered something about the library
when my parents demanded to know where I had been. I slipped between
the covers of my four-poster fantasy princess bed, and rubbed myself
for hours afterward, rerunning it over and over in my head.
He never called back.
My eyebrows fell into a deep frown as I became more absorbed
in my memories. I cheated again, taking another strawberry from the
batch and devouring it quickly, and then puckered my mouth. The
strawberry was sour -- no, bitter. I gazed off into the distance,
remembering a certain young soldier.
I had departed for Vietnam in 1970 -- the very moment that I
finished nursing school. I ached to get out into the real world and
explore. I hadn't realized just how hard the real world -- especially
Vietnam -- would hit. It didn't hit me when I got off the chopper and
into the thickest, steamiest heat I'd ever been in. Jungle heat. It
didn't hit me when we arrived at the hospital on the outskirts of Hue
and I was shown my way around the crying ill and the silent dead. It
didn't hit me when I caught an eyeful of a guy whose guts were hanging
out of his belly, and it didn't even hit me when I noticed that he
wasn't even being paid the most attention.
It hit me when I heard the vicious whistle of bombs and the
loud cracking of rifles. It hit me when bodies were rushed in by the
dozen and no matter how fervently I worked, they still kept coming.
And no matter how hard I worked, they still kept dying. The gunfire
never stopped. Soon I became used to it, and barely even flinched
when I heard a shot especially close to the hospital. I had a job to
do, and yet I became indifferent to that job. It sounds cruel, but it
was Vietnam. I remember it most strongly as a lost cause.
One day, a tall infantryman, face streaked with tears and
blood, had carried his teammate in. I'd rushed right over to him and
took the man, putting him on a stretcher. I leaned over him and
pulled open his eyelids, shouting for a doctor. The patient was
missing a leg and from the looks of it, the other one was about to go.
The man who'd carried him in took out a knife and started to cut away
his teammate's fatigues around the wounds. I looked up at him,
thanking him with a darting appreciative look; then tended to the man,
who'd stepped on a mine. The other soldier went over to a remote
corner, slumped down in a chair, and waited.
It was no use. Several hours later, despite the valiant
efforts of the doctors and myself, the soldier was dead. I looked
over in the corner, where the tall soldier was slumped over in a
snooze. I gently shook him awake. I didn't have to say anything --
the moment he looked into my eyes, he knew. He lowered his head into
his hands. I heard gasping, sniffling sounds, and put my arm around
his hunched back. I remember being compelled to reach down and stroke
his head.
"Were you two close?" I asked, keeping my voice soft and
gentle.
He swallowed, and looked up into my eyes, his eyes rimmed with
red and drooped with misery. "He was my best friend. Before and
during the war."
I hugged him. "I'm sorry."
He seemed to break and crack further in my arms. "Fuck. This
war. I told myself that it would be all right if he was with me.
Look at this. Not even half through with my tour, and he's gone." He
started to cry again, and turned away from me in shame.
I hugged him again. "It's the end of my shift. If it'll make
you feel better, we can go get coffee."
He hiccuped. "Yes. It would."
And we went to the hospital cafeteria, where there was no
coffee, but there was water. We talked late into the night, amid the
shells and crackling gunfire. We developed a deep friendship after
that, snatching every spare moment here and there to get together.
His name was Lloyd. He had volunteered into the Army to avoid
getting drafted -- "So I can leave anytime I want." His best friend
had gone with him, and their infantry was based in Hue, which meant
that we could spend more time together. And we did. We talked many
nights, and pondered the war. Rights. Wrongs. We talked about what
it did to us, even though we didn't need to voice our obvious
opinions. We talked about our lives before we'd entered the war, our
small hometowns and our friends. I told him all about Nancy, and he
laughed when I told of our sexual experimentation with each other.
He told me about a girl that he used to have back home named
Amy. Amy had given him her virginity the night before he left, and it
was his first time too. He'd asked her to wait and marry him when he
got back. A month after he'd left for Vietnam, she had sent him a
letter telling him that she couldn't wait. His eyes were dry and his
chuckle was warm as he remembered it. He didn't hold anything against
her -- she was young, and she had a right to explore. We stayed up
late, finding measured comfort in each other. We were best friends.
One of those late nights, we took a 48-hour leave and hitched
a helicopter ride to Saigon. That night, the sticks that had been
rubbing together and smoldering sparked into a fire. He interrupted
me in the middle of a sentence with an abrupt kiss, soft and sweet,
across the table. His lips were full and moist, and I relaxed my
mouth against his lips. They felt so good.
I don't believe there's anything more intimate than a kiss,
other than sharing a birth. That's the most intimate thing a couple
can go through. So, in that seedy Vietnamese bar, over our drinks,
Lloyd and I kissed and kissed, our arms stretching out to greet each
other. The war-torn world disappeared from around us. The loud noise
turned into sweet, angelic music. The hash-permeated air turned into
the light spring breeze of our native country. Finally, we parted,
gasping, fingers locked together.
I looked into his eyes. How could I have been so blind to
miss what'd been there all along? In his warm, chocolate eyes was a
crinkle of affection that'd been building all this time. His lips
parted, and we just sat there, mouths barely apart, breathing hard.
His breath washed on my lips, and mine on his. It was one of the most
intimate feelings I'd ever had.
We kissed again. We couldn't resist. We hurriedly slammed a
few dollars onto the table and rushed to the cheap motel next door,
breathlessly taking a room. We unlocked the door and tumbled onto the
bed, all over each other, clothes flying everywhere.
He broke away from me, gasping. "I'm so sorry we didn't do
this before."
I pulled him closer to me. "Hush. Hush. We're together
now."
We continued our hot kisses and fevered caresses. His fiery
touch was electricity on my bare body. He kissed me again, that
wonderful kiss of his, and I nearly cried with the sweetness of it. I
gasped as his lips burned a hot trail down my chin and down my neck to
my breasts, and he cupped them in his large hands. He tasted my
nipple, took it into his mouth and swirled his tongue around it, and I
gasped, thrusting my body up in response. I reached my hand down and
gripped his cock. It was incredibly hard through his fatigues, harder
than the strongest, most ancient oak that I'd ever felt. He groaned
at the contact and whispered into my ear, his breath tickling,
"God, I've wanted you for so long." He squeezed my breast and
ran his other hand down to my thighs, slipping his hand under my
skirt. "Your love. Your body." His finger touched me on my pussy,
so lightly that I jumped. I bit my lip in passion, pressing myself
against him, moaning when he pressed his thumb into me. I undulated
my hips, craving more, and he thrust his thumb up into me in response.
"I've wanted to do this." He moved his finger in and out,
with maddening deliberate slowness.
"I've wanted to do this." He took a nipple into his mouth
again, and suckled on it, his tongue flickering across.
"I've wanted to do this, too." He kissed me on my belly,
nipping the edge of my bellybutton. He was driving me crazy, and I
told him so. I couldn't take it anymore, and my hands flew at the
front of his fatigues as his hands worked at my clothes, desperately
trying to get each other's clothes off.
Finally, his cock sprung free and bobbed in the gentle light
from the dying lamp. I gripped it firmly. I could almost feel the
blood rushing through it. I squeezed him, and he gasped. I ran my
fingers along his mushroom head, and got up on top of him, tasting
him. Running my tongue along him. He tasted delicious. The pre-cum
that ran out of the tip of his cock was a little salty. I loved his
taste, and wrapped my lips around his cock. He surged, and I was
suddenly reminded of my mounting arousal. I straddled him, my palms
square on his broad chest, leaning over on him.
His hands moved from my breasts to my ass, squeezing my cheeks
as I put my hand between my legs and positioned myself for entry. I
worked him in, inch by luscious inch, gasping and squirming on top of
him. He felt so big, trying to work his way inside me. Finally, we
hit bottom, his cock brushing against my cervix. I squeezed my eyes
shut as I clenched against him, my body moving like lightning. I
barely heard my own cry of ecstasy when the thunder hit and rolled all
through my body in a deep rumble. He bucked against me, holding still
against me, letting me squirm and thrash on top of him, on and on,
until I finally fell away, my body damp with hot perspiration and
trembling with after-orgasm.
"Wow." He whispered into my ear, and he wrapped his strong
arms around my waist, holding me close against him. I choked with
emotion, and he held me even tighter.
"Lloyd." I whispered. "I think I love you."
"I love you, Linda." His eyes were soft. "It hasn't been
long, I know. Only been a few months. Still."
I nodded. "I love you." I buried my head into his sweaty
neck, and we slept like that, holding each other until we woke again
in passion, making sweet love. We finally stopped when the vermilion
sun started to peek around the edges of the sky, when we had to
scramble about, getting dressed and getting back to where we were
supposed to be. He reported back to his base, and I went back to duty
at the hospital.
I flew about in a daze all day, barely noticing where I was.
All I could think about was Lloyd and me. Last night, all night. I
shivered, remembering how I'd moaned loudly into the night,
complemented by his soft whispers and gasps. The pressure of his
fingers on my arms, or legs, or butt, letting me know he was close.
The way his muscles tensed and his body tightened. The way he tilted
his head back and the way that I had dived down and kissed him, hard.
The way that he'd sucked my tongue into his mouth when he came inside
me. I drifted on my cloud, dancing and bobbing in the sunshine of
joy, until noon.
The shells whistled and exploded especially loud that day, it
seems. It was pouring rain over the jungle, and when I think about
it, it seemed like the world was crying for them, for the fallen
soldiers. They brought them in by the half-dozen, then by the dozen,
until finally the rooms were crammed with bleeding men. They died
quicker than we could get to them, and there were so many people dying
that we had to stack the bodies outside, sometimes even four deep. It
was the worst day of the war -- and for that matter, the worst day of
nursing that I've ever had. Shrapnel. Broken bones. Napalm burns.
It went on and on. Missing eyes. Missing guts. I saw it all. I
managed to become numb, and try to silence my screaming mind and
nerves, and after a while, I almost succeeded. I managed to calm down
and continued rushing around, trying to help as many of our GI's, as
many of the South Vietnamese soldiers, as many of the women and
children that I possibly could. I managed to become numb to the
screaming of babies that would never see another sunrise and tried to
silence the hysterical sobbing of the mothers of these babies.
Until he came in. I lost my numbness then. Lloyd. Laid out
on a stretcher, his face pale and his eyes lifeless. I screamed when
I saw him and ran over, pushing my way through the crowd. I leaned
over him, kissing his face over and over, crying. He tried to put his
arms around me to hold me close to him, but the effort of it caused
him so much pain that he gasped and fell back.
"Linda... Linda, please help me..." The whisper was unbearably
faint. I stepped back to look at him. He was covered in blood, and
one of his legs was missing, blown off at mid-thigh. The other one
was nearly ready to go, and there was a deep, gaping gash down his
chest and stomach. It was so deep that you could see his innards. I
sobbed hysterically, and hugged him close so that I couldn't see what
the war had done to his body, the same body that had loved me just
hours before. It was a perverse recreation of our first meeting,
right down to the leg blown off at the kneecap. I felt hands at my
back, pulling me away, pushing my shoulders.
A yell. "Linda, you've got to get out of here, we've got to
work on him!" But no, I barely heard it. I was in Lloyd's own dying
world, and I felt a prick of a needle in my arm and sudden drowsiness.
When I awoke, he was dead.
I left Vietnam soon after that.
I swallowed the bitter fruit, feeling it go down, a hard lump
in my throat.
I went several moments thoughtlessly, chopping off the
strawberry heads as quickly as I could and throwing the green flower
into the trash. Finally, I sighed, and took out a bin of sugar,
getting ready to slice and sweeten them. I took a strawberry and held
it on the counter, slicing it with quick, accurate cuts. Like a dog
returning to its vomit, I picked it up and considered it for a moment.
This one looked good -- it was a dark, robustly red and large. I
closed my eyes and opened my mouth expectantly, putting it into my
mouth and chewing.
I recoiled, and grabbed a napkin, spitting the rotten fruit
out on the paper napkin. I grabbed a half-empty can of Coke and
gulped eagerly, trying to get the foul aftertaste out of my mouth.
Once again, my thoughts returned to my past.
Oh, I didn't know what to do once I returned to the States. I
mourned and grieved in my room for nearly a month. My parents banged
on my door but I refused to come out. My mother sobbed, my father
screamed, but I refused to leave. I didn't even let Nancy in to see
me. Late at night, I would open the door a crack and get the food
that my mother had left for me. And then I'd pen myself up into my
room again.
Why did I do this? I still don't really know. Even after I
left my room physically, I was still in there emotionally. Perhaps it
was because Lloyd was my first love, and I had fallen hard for him. I
clung to him, and he clung to me. It was hard not to, with the war
all around us. I hadn't understood when I went to Vietnam what
exactly I was getting myself into. I understand now. Back then,
seemingly decades later, when our troops were withdrawn in 1973, I
cried tears of sweet, unbelieving joy and rushed out with all my
friends to get drunk and celebrate. I had grown up with Vietnam. Now
I was free of it.
It seems a strange coincidence. Only when the war ended, my
grieving truly ended.
I hadn't dated since Lloyd's death, except for a tryst now and
then that never progressed past a goodnight kiss. This didn't mean
that I had healed from the war -- I'll never be healed -- but it means
that I was starting to get better. And part of getting better, I
thought, was protecting myself from being hurt again. But that same
night that we'd gone out to celebrate, I thought that I'd fallen in
love again. And I tried to hold myself back. But this time I thought
that I'd finally found a big, juicy, screaming red strawberry.
His name? Stephen. I could have called him Steve, but chose
not to. He wasn't the type of man that made you feel like shortening
names for him. He had an air of pride. There isn't too much to say
about him, except that I thought I had fallen in love and I thought
that he was everything I could ever want and need. Handsomely
featured and handsomely rich. He had sharp, biting blue eyes and a
slicked-back hairstyle. In a country that was calming down, he was
the image of what the new America wanted to be stereotyped as. He had
an allure about him that drew women like snakes to a snake charmer,
but I was the one he noticed. I was the one that he picked out of the
crowd. I was the one to dance with him, all night. All night I spun
and dipped and grooved with him, and didn't get back home until 4
A.M., where he dropped off a very drunk Linda to pass out on her
couch.
Stephen called me the very next day, asking me out to the
movies. I was giddy with excitement. My eyes shone with new life.
He showed up at the door five minutes before he said he would, with
flowers. Just like out of a movie. Only better.
"For my beautiful lady," he chuckled, sweeping low in a bow.
I blushed and took them, my head whirling. I'd never gotten flowers
before. I ooh'd and ahh'd over the small bouquet of pink and yellow
and violet blossoms, and smiled at him, murmuring my gratitude.
"What kind of flowers do you like?" he asked, his face
serious.
My head snapped up. "Oh, Stephen, these are just beautiful.
I love them." I buried my face in the blossoms and inhaled deeply.
He put his arm around my shoulders, and we walked down my
sidewalk. He headed for the car, but I held him back, whispering,
"It's such a beautiful night. Why don't we just walk to the
restaurant? It isn't too far."
He obliged, and we strolled downtown, smelling the crisp night
air and listening to the chirping of crickets and even the faint
resonance of frogs from the nearby pond. The sky was starting to
cloud over, but the moon still shone through the shadowy overcast. It
was a twenty-minute walk, and he entertained me with his lively
conversation. He had been everywhere, it seemed. Greece and Paris
and New York and Milan. He had many wonderful tales -- that he
recounted to me over the next few months -- and these tales enchanted
me.
It was a lovely dinner, the best Chinese food that ten bucks
could stretch over, and by the end of the evening, I felt so full that
I was afraid I would pop. We had a couple of drinks at a local bar,
which didn't get very far in my system because I had so much food in
me. He walked me to my doorstep and said goodnight with a wink and a
tip of his hat.
Things progressed very slowly after that. We took things step
by excruciating step. One night, a touch of the hand. A soft caress
of the arm the next. A hug that lingered too long. Holding each
other. On and on it continued, past the soft kisses to the fevered
smooches that I had to tear myself from. On and on it continued,
never going beyond his cool touch on my breasts, his gentle lips
surrounding my nipple. Until one night, almost a year later, on my
front porch, he dropped to his knees and begged me to marry him. I
was sure that I loved him by that time, and I immediately started to
cry tears of joy, hugging him and planting kisses all over his face.
It was a beautiful wedding.
It was a horrible trial.
It started not long after we were married. Our passionate
lovemaking would turn into furious rages almost at the drop of a hat.
It started with a random slap here and there if I pissed him off. It
was easy to piss him off. I once sneezed on him during sex. He threw
me off and onto the ground and screamed at me, kicking me and punching
me. I curled up into a protective ball on the carpeted floor and
started to cry. I felt as if my heart were breaking. I felt as if
he'd taken my heart and slammed it onto the floor, where it shattered
into millions of pieces. His face turned from anger to remorse, and
he immediately dropped down, showering me with kisses, his eyes
turning teary with apology. But after that, through the tears, I
could always see my crushed heart on the floor. I found it difficult
to step around the broken pieces.
It didn't happen again for a while, several months. We were
happy again. I was pregnant! It was the best moment of my life when
I found out, and I rushed the entire way home and waited in tense
anticipation for him. I jumped into his arms when he came home,
leaping up and down excitedly. I had a baby now, a small baby,
growing inside of me! Our baby.
His reaction was, in one way, surprising but, in another way,
expected. He didn't get angry. He didn't jump up and down in joy,
either. He just kind of looked deep into my eyes, and I saw the
oddest emotion there. Fear. Then he tore his gaze away from me and
looked down at my belly, tentatively reaching out his fingers to touch
me, to feel the new life growing inside me. He then pulled his
fingers away and asked me what was for dinner.
He didn't hit me when it first started to show, I'll give him
that. But tension was mounting at his work. He was chairman of his
father's company now, quite an accomplishment for a young man barely
out of college. He started drinking to handle the stress of the job
and of a baby on the way. I could hardly believe it while he was
doing it and I could hardly believe it afterwards, but when I was four
months pregnant I lay in bed, crying softly at my own disbelief. I
gazed down at my bruises as I listened to him finish throwing his fit
downstairs. When he sobered up, he went out and bought me a huge
two-dozen bouquet of red and white roses and handed them to me in bed.
He curled next to me and murmured,
"I'm so sorry, Linda."
I didn't say anything. I lay there for a while, absorbing it
all. Finally, I pulled apart my lips and creaked out, "How can you do
this? To your pregnant wife. How can you _do_ this, Stephen? How?"
He didn't reply for a long time. "I don't know."
I started to cry again, and shoved the roses away, turning on
my side away from him and pretending to sleep. The sound of Stephen's
heavy breathing haunted me all night.
It stopped. It started. It stopped. It started. Soon there
was no line between the two. Soon, his flowers and his tears stopped
coming. He barely tolerated my pregnancy, treating it as if it were a
disease. I couldn't believe that I, a strong, working woman, had
gotten sucked into this. I, a nurse, who saw women come in with
broken arms and black eyes from their husbands. I, an educated woman.
The emotions conflicted with each other. I felt insulted. I felt
terrified for my baby. I didn't feel safe. And I told this to my
friend, Jonnie, who, despite having never outgrown the sixties, was
just as clearheaded as I was, if not more. He urged me to get help.
He urged me to run away. He told me to do anything and everything,
but I ignored his words. I found more and more solace in him, and
rather than taking his advice, I took him as a confidante, someone to
help me bear the pain. And that wasn't how he wanted me to take him.
"Why won't you respect yourself? Why won't you leave him?"
Jonnie asked once, his face drawn into seriousness.
I said nothing, and gazed down at my belly.
A couple of months later, I was especially heavy with child.
I ate constantly to quell a thick, metallic taste in the very back of
my throat. It was an interesting paradox -- it felt like I'd eaten
too much cheesecake, so I kept eating more. I loved eating. I had
always viewed eating as a fine art, and now that I could, I plunged
into it with everything that I could. That particular night, I had
taken out a meal from a nearby Chinese restaurant. Seven months
pregnant, I set the plate on top of my burgeoning belly, and sat in
front of the TV in my bra. It was a hot, sticky summer, and even more
hot and sticky with the child. I listened to the evening movie and
stroked my belly, content and satisfied at the baby's gentle, tiny
kicks. I glanced at the clock once, and I remember that it said a
quarter after midnight. I wondered where Stephen was.
The instant that I wondered, he came barreling through the
door with murder in his eyes. Drunker than a skunk, and barely able
to stand up, he declared in his slur that 'the vucking bartender'
refused to serve him anymore. He tumbled to the floor and rummaged
through the liquor cabinet. I stood so quickly that my forgotten food
fell off my belly onto the floor. He stood up in a rage, and spun to
face me, his lips peeled back in a snarl.
"You been hiding my fucking likker vrom me, bitch?"
I stood meekly, cowering, trying not to back up into a corner
as I stepped away from him. "You -- you know I don't drink, Stephen,"
I whispered to him, so quietly that I'm surprised his ears caught it.
"I -- said, I _said_, have ... you ... been ... hiding ... my
... vucking ... likker? And why the fuck are you standing there in
that goddamn bra? You look like a vucking slut!"
Tears welled up to my eyes. "I know you don't mean that,
Stephen," I said weakly, my knees trembling. He seemed so big,
towering over me, and all I could do was stand and tremble like a
terrified mouse.
"You know I vucking mean it. Goddamn vucking pregnant thlut."
He charged at me, fists aimed at my stomach, and I don't know how I
managed to dart away with such speed. I still wonder if God didn't
just pick me up and set me across the room. He crashed on the floor,
and brought himself to his feet again, madder than a wet hornet. I
darted around, trying to avoid him, terrified for my baby, running
around, wondering what I should do. My pulse pounded through my body
and my screams echoed in my ears.
He caught me. He pulled me down by my ankles, and I landed on
my side, hard. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and cried,
screaming as loudly as I could, hoping that someone would hear my
shrieks for help. He held me down, and threw his fists, with blows
aiming for my stomach that thankfully missed and landed on my leg. He
punched me hard on my cheekbone, but I barely felt the pain, scarcely
noticed a warm trickle down the side of my face. I wriggled and
fought and kicked and squirmed and finally got away from him,
thundering up the stairs, heading to the bedroom. Time was my only
ally.
Crying, I went through the drawers of the bedroom chest,
pulling them out one by one, and dumping out the contents and throwing
the wooden drawer behind me. Finally, I found what I wanted. What
he'd always kept there as protection. It was a rich house in a
wealthy neighborhood, and he always had a fear of being robbed of
everything he owned. I gripped it with sweaty, trembling hands and
spun around, holding it up in his direction.
He froze in the doorway. "Linda," he said, drawing out the n
sound. "Linnnnda."
I clenched my teeth. "Don't fucking move! I'm sick of this
fucking bullshit, and I swear to god, I'll fucking shoot you!"
He chuckled and, for a flashing moment, I saw the Stephen I
thought I'd fallen in love with, the Stephen with bright eyes that
blazed right to your soul, the Stephen with slicked-back hair and
gentle lips that had kissed my hands and asked me to marry. And then
the fleeting moment was gone. He stood before me, a broken man,
drunk, contemptuous, downright mad.
His chuckle turned into a laugh, and finally, he tilted his
head back and bellowed gales of intimidating laughter, his body
shaking with the humor that he apparently found in the situation. I
tightened my sweaty grip.
He turned his gaze to me again. "You won't shoot me."
I faltered for just a moment.
Then I remembered how he'd tried to kill our baby.
He lunged at me.
There was a sudden clapping sound, and a bright spray of blood
as the pistol leaped from my hand. I had looked at the scene for two
seconds before slumping over in a dead faint.
Oh, the next few hours were a daze. A neighbor in this small
town had heard the gunshot, looked out their window, and noticed that
a certain second-story window was smeared with viscous bloody
graffiti. When the police arrived, they came in full force, with
bullhorns and snipers. They carried me away, still dressed in my bra.
I kept looking down at my belly anxiously, wondering if he'd managed
to hurt my baby.
So there I was, in a courtroom and in a jail cell for two
uncomfortable months. I couldn't have made it without Jonnie, who was
at court for me every day and came to visit me in the prison every
chance he could. We grew closer and closer emotionally. He was my
best friend -- he held my hair back when I threw up and held me close
to him whenever I became depressed. He collected the broken pieces of
my heart, and slowly started to glue them back together.
And, you know, it was such a small town that I lived in --
everybody knew me, knew who I was, knew who Stephen was, that they
moved the trial to the big city. It was quite a drive for Jonnie, but
he was such a good friend that he came every day and thought nothing
of it.
My lawyer had a difficult case to present. You have to
remember that it was the late 1970s. Domestic violence wasn't as
protested against back then as it is now. Nowadays, not only would a
pregnant woman shooting her husband receive a not guilty, there would
be hundreds of applauding hands, newspapers, TV, a book deal.
My lawyer had to make this jury realize just how trapped I had
felt, how scared I had felt. And he played on that, he played on my
instincts to protect my baby. A big reason that the case was won was
because he played off of the pregnancy. It's hard to ignore a woman
with tearstains and scars and a baby inside her staring at you from
across the courtroom. The ladies and gentlemen of the jury would
reflect on the pregnancies of their lives. A guilt trip, maybe.
The prosecution played off the "spoiled rich kid" bit. They
said that I had married him for the money, and that I had killed him
in hopes to get it all plus the insurance. They said I couldn't get
enough - that I was born to rich parents and couldn't stand the
thought of not being well off. They said that he did everything for
me, and I was simply a selfish wife. Needless to say, it was an
unpleasant trial, and if I had only one blessing in life, it's that
the "not guilty" verdict was given a few days before the birth. I
couldn't have had my beautiful daughter in a jail cell. Even a
hospital with police officers monitoring me seemed unbearable.
The trial took its worst toll emotionally. I couldn't sleep,
and I could barely eat. I only ate enough to keep the baby and myself
alive. I would sit on the edge of my bed, my eyes open wide in worry
and fear, until the late morning hours, and then go to the courthouse
for the trial. I never thought I'd ever kill anybody, but, then
again, I never thought I'd ever be beaten and chased after by a drunk
man.
Jonnie was my emotional support. Jonnie was the foundation
that my mental house was built on.
I sighed and smiled to myself. I took another strawberry this
time, almost tentatively, a big, red one, and slipped it into my
mouth. The sweetest, fruitiest taste flooded my senses, and I sighed
in ecstasy.
Naturally, Jonnie was at the birth, holding my hand, coaxing
me on. For two days he fed me, walked me up and down the hospital
corridors, played card games with me, talked to me, did everything he
could to keep the pain of the contractions off my mind. When it was
time, he was right there at my side, encouraging me, gripping my hand
tightly in his. I was so happy to have him there for me that a few
hours before the birth I started to cry, telling him that I loved him.
His eyes were serious when he told me that he loved me, too.
And somehow, right there in the delivery room, it dawned on me that
I'd picked the right strawberry this time. I knew in a way that I'd
never known before. And when my adorable daughter came out of my
womb, he immediately leaned down to kiss me and told me that I was
beautiful. And then I saw my wee Jessica for the first time, and I
fell in love for the second time that day. Such a beautiful little
face. Such tiny fingers!
I sugared the first bunch of sliced strawberries, and started
slicing again, deep in thought.
Now that one daughter is still my baby, although what I've
just seen proves that she might be growing up faster than I can
handle. I'll tell you, and not just from parental pride, that she was
a bright, spunky kid. Smart as a whip, and frankly, a bit of a tomboy
all along. She was stronger than all the boys in the neighborhood,
and when it came to the girls, they hated her for it. Hated her
because she didn't put on makeup or carry big, grown-up purses -- and
still had all the attention of the boys. Oh, she had a couple of
friends that were girls, but most of them were guys. She always
seemed to have a hard time understanding women. Even after she hit
puberty and grew taller than me, with her long, white hair and a body
that made me blush, she didn't even seem to understand why all the
guys thought she was a "hot chick".
I sighed and absentmindedly took another fruit out of the
bowl, reaching for the knife to start slicing, but guiltily snatched
it up to eat it. Before I put it into my mouth, I looked at it. It
was oddly shaped -- not unattractive, but different.
Now that I think about Jessie's childhood, maybe she didn't
care about these boys at all. I closed my eyes and tried not to think
about what I'd just seen. I had opened Jessie's bedroom door to ask
if she and her friend would like something to eat, but I guess they'd
beaten me to it. For their female bodies were intertwined and sweaty,
and they were busy with their hands, and, well, eating. When I first
opened the door, they didn't even seem to notice that I was there.
Suddenly, they pulled apart, their shiny panic-stricken faces gazing
up at me.
"Mom!"
I had turned on my heels and shut the door behind me, and
they'd quickly dressed and left. I feel confused, and I don't know
what to do, but I just hope that she has an easier time finding the
right strawberry than I did.
I heard a car come into the driveway and a door slam. The
front door flew open, and Jonnie came in and stood behind my chair to
kiss me, nuzzling my ear. I didn't turn, but reached my arms around
his neck, murmuring,
"Jonnie, I feel so old. I can't make sense of this. I used
to be just like them, but, Jonnie, not so fast!"
He didn't understand what I was saying, but in the sweet way
that he had of giving me what he thought I wanted, he took me into his
arms and rocked me.
"Hey, babe. Man, these strawberries look good!" Jonnie's
face broadened in a grin, and he reached over my arm to snatch one. I
slapped his hand, laughing. He looked into the trashcan next to me,
and winced.
"You threw all these out?"
I found that funny, and started to snicker, and then giggle,
and then laugh. He stood for a moment, watching me, and took me into
his arms for a big embrace.
A thought occurred to me. There's a difference between
Californian and Mexican strawberries, and I frowned, thinking. My
daughter was old enough to make these kinds of decisions, I admitted
to myself. The only difference between us is that she preferred a
different strawberry. I found a strange solace in the thought.
"Ah, Jonnie, sometimes when things look like they've changed,
nothing's different at all."
Please e-mail comments at leanna1@hotmail.com The archive is up at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/2194/