Chapter 44: Black Lace Panties or Flies

What happened once we were alone up in my bedroom?

When I carried her upstairs and put Mom to bed, she hung on my neck and intently studied my face all during the slow ascent.

“Don’t think badly of me, Ricky.”

‘Never Mom.”

‘‘Liar! You’re thinking evil of me this instant. Same mistake Johnny made before he ran away. I must be a terrible mother for both my sons to think so little of me.”

“Not true, Mom. You’ve been great. A really wonderful mother.”

“Then why do you expect me to have sex with you when we get to your bedroom? Johnny got confused and thought it would be okay to stick his hand in my pants. When he did, I walloped him a good one on the ear, and he was so embarrassed he ran away for years, and can hardly look me in the eye even today. Don’t run away from me Ricky. If you’re feeling confused, just talk to me. I’m your mother.”

When I put her to bed, to rest, we had a long talk.

Mom doesn’t need a lover. The scooter provides all the sexual thrills she needs. She’s very grateful for the gift of the scooter and the more powerful motor than drove her wild earlier. She does need and crave affection, tenderness and attention, but not in a sexual way. Most of her needs for emotional comfort is centered on me, because Dad and Johnny, each in different ways, deserted her. She appreciates the caring things I do, like holding her when she became overcome on the scooter, and collapsed. That was emotionally satisfying and the scooter had provide a physical thrill, but the two aren’t related or interdependent or connected except by the concurrent timing.

Now she wishes to nap a bit, and is grateful to borrow my bed. I am not now nor ever will be, invited to bed her. If I would be comforted by suckling her breasts sometime, she’ll permit that and only that. Mothers do that much for their children. Whew!

Good news, and I’m ashamed I had evil thoughts about her motives. If only Dad’s history of messing with young girls could be as easily wiped away. Who am I to throw rocks. I messed with Marshall before she was even ten years old. I ashamed of it. Is Dad contrite over his misdeeds? Truthfully? That’s his business, I’m not his judge, and not fit to be. My Dad has always been a man I admired. Feet of clay don’t make him less of a man. My parents are who they are, and I love them. Because they first loved me.

Moses, Milly, Mei, and Jin are here in my office to discuss what to do about living conditions for Sergey’s, and some include Johnny as a culprit. Their prostitutes.

The semi-truck trailers aren’t fit for human habitation. In one trailer, there are seven double bunkbeds end to end, and the same in the second trailer with another two level bunkbed set crosswise at the extreme front, making eight sets of bunks in that trailer. Fifteen sets, with an upper and lower each, so thirty beds. Is that the number of prostitutes? Jin manages the truck parks. She knows all the girls. Counts off as she recites their names to herself in her head.

Reports she thinks thirty is the correct number.

Where do we find alternative housing for thirty women, and quickly? So we can quickly get rid of the odious semi-trailers? Tents? Not much of an improvement.

It isn’t rapid, not accomplished in a day solution, but it’s a fairly elegant idea compared to what they currently live in.

Mei suggests building a motel court with fifteen bungalows or fifteen adjacent rooms, for housing two girls to a room. Yay Mei!

We decide to start on the project immediately, assigning a lot next to the Salamander truck park for the motel’s location. How fast can it be constructed? We’ll try to hire ten construction crews. The first five rooms completed, those crews get to build the last five rooms. The competition should make quick work of the project, at least the first ten.