Chapter 7

I hesitated before tapping the green “CALL” button on my phone. I was standing inside our shed. There was only one bar on the screen. Static and cutouts broke the ringing sound.

“Colleen!” Leland was genuinely surprised. “Didn’t I tell you never to call me at work.” He was kidding.

“Leland, I know it’s impossible for me to strike a bargain with you.” He could already take from me, most anything he wanted. I was calling about one of the few I would die protecting. “I hope, in spite of your sick determination to own me, that somewhere you have heart enough for day of mercy.”

“I’m listening.”

“Next Thursday is my son’s birthday. Could you please spare me on that one day?” It’s not like he was calling me everyday to service him. Three days had passed since he took me on my marriage bed. My butt had healed to where it only hurt when prodded sufficiently.

“You want a break? You got to pay. Get down here, Bitch. Pick me up and drive us to a park I know at the north edge of the city. It’s got a bunch of trees and plenty of dropped branches.”

A bunch of trees turned out to be small grove of birch. The branches Leland selected from the ground were green and supple. Afterwards, he had to drive me home. I lay in back, face down as best I could manage, sobbing. Thick cum kept oozing from my brutalized puss.

He parked on the curb, two houses away from mine. Getting out, he tossed my keys to me. “Sure. I won’t do anything to you on Thursday. Tell your boy that you gave your best to be with him.” He wandered away towards a bus stop.

I wept softly, wondering if he meant it as a compliment.

On Monday at noon, Leland had me rent a room at the Shade Palm Motel. The clerk didn’t recognize me. I had been told to wear a nice dress. He phoned me for the room number and arrived just minutes after I’d settled into the room, patiently dreading my fate for the rest of that day, fluffing the magenta dress’ pleats. Leland used only his hand on my ass but ripped my dress to shreds. Fortunately, I hadn’t been allowed underwear.

He drove me home again, cursing at me about the cum I let escape my tightly packed mouth. He marched angrily away. He’d spent a second load of his black DNA into my vagina. It was nearly time for the kids to return from school. I rushed inside, wrapping my ruined dress around my torso, praying none of the neighbors saw me.

“MOM!” Ridley was already home! “What happened to you?” He saw my ruined dress, but that’s all he saw.

I rushed past him. “Two dogs.” I lied. “They managed to rip my dress before I got out my pepper spray. I didn’t get bit.” If I had actually owned pepper spray, I might have had a chance to prevent my great misfortune from the start!

I slammed my bedroom door behind me and sank to my knees. The magenta dress fell to the floor. My ass was aching but not as badly as when Leland had whipped me with birch.

While I was soaking in water as hot as I could handle, Peg knocked on the bedroom door. She yelled, “The brat said you got attacked by dogs!”

“He exaggerated, Peg.” I shouted back. “They just ripped my dress a little. It was old, and I will tear it up for rags.” I had bought the dress a year prior. I wasn’t fond of it, but it had been a nice dress. I told her to make a meal for her and her brother. “I’ll make one for your father, after I relax a little more.”

“Yeah, Mom. You do that.” She sounded sympathetic. If I had drowned right then, my life would have found meaning just in time.

I was lying in bed face down when George arrived home. I was wearing pajamas and a thick night dress, sweating from double insulation in a warm evening. He caught me cutting up the dress for rags.

“Dogs!” He eyed me suspiciously.

“No.” I answered his unspoken question. He slowly fumed, sitting on the chair near his side of the bed.

I got up and went to warm up chicken enchiladas I had made. They only needed a minute, having escaped the oven half an hour earlier. I called the family to dinner.

“Dumb old Peg forced me to make baloney sandwiches.” Ridley nearly drooled from the smell of what I’d made. I surrendered more than half of mine to him, declaring myself tired from what happened. Actually, I couldn’t sit any longer without tears breaking from pain. I ate my half quickly and returned to our bedroom.

When George came in, after watching a couple hours of shows, he didn’t ask what happened.

Proactively, I ushered him to sit on the bed and I knelt down before him. I reached up to his zipper and looked into his beleaguered expression.

He sighed. “You want to tell me a story again.” I couldn’t decipher if he was asking or telling.

“If you like.”

He replied quietly. “Okay.” I think he blushed a little, but I had been waiting in dim light, which I find relaxing.

I made up a story about being caught fooling around behind sparse bushes in a park. Three older teens coming back from a soccer match found us. One of them wanted to split the scene. The second one bet they could watch. But the third waded into the bushes and started wanking while I was sucking George. Before my husband climaxed, the late teen offered his dick to me. I looked up at George in a way that asked what I should do. The young man sneered at George. My husband’s delicious prick exploded in my mouth, ending my story with great joy for him.

We crawled in bed and kissed each other goodnight. My dreams shifted around randomly as usual, but a solid one woke me up. George had given a mug full of his cum to me. I began drinking for its palatable flavor. A dead fly emerged from the thick fluid, and I jolted awake.

My ass was merely sore, waking on Thursday morning. The night before, I had told George a story about an auto mechanic who found us in the restroom. He slapped my face with his big, hard prick while offering a ‘friendly discount’ for my permission. He ignored my husband. George ejaculated while I was still jerking his prick. I was too slow to catch his brief spend, with my mouth.

Ridley must have waited to hear sounds from his parents’ room. He knocked, “Good morning!” He prompted.

I smiled. “Happy Birthday, Ridley.” It felt so freeing to smile like that.

George woke up and slowly figured out what was going on. He uttered birthday salutations barely loud enough to reach his son’s ear, which was no doubt plastered against our door.

“He’s going to be the worst pest today!” Peg groaned during breakfast. “Can I hang out with my friends after school?”

“You want to be here for your brother’s celebration.” I told her. She wouldn’t admit it but she would return from school in time for his party.

“Can I invite a friend?”

“A guy?” Her father raised an eyebrow.

“No!” She yipped.

“Will she bring me a present?” Ridley asked eagerly.

“Of course not!” She dampened his expectations.

During clean-up, washing dishes, Peg drying them, I told her softly. “I’ll have a gift that your friend can give.”

My daughter sighed.

George took the afternoon off of work. His company actually offered Family Time hours. We enjoyed adorning the room with party regalia. At one point we made love on the coffee table. Me hunched over it, him thrusting from behind. I didn’t need a story to cum most satisfactorily, my sore bum contributing to his earnest efforts. I did manage to hide my bruised ass from his notice. I had taken to wearing large panties. I told him he was a tiger for fucking me through one of the leg bands.

Right around three o-clock, the time when school let out, our doorbell rang. George went to get it, expecting a delivery.

“Hello, George.” Leland wore the most polite smile. “I’m glad see you at home. It’s going to be a crazy party, right?”

“Go away, Mr-.” George corrected himself. “Leland. You’re not welcome here.”

“You promised you wouldn’t do anything today!” I actually sounded righteous for once. Mother lioness defending her home.

“Not to you. That’s what I said, and I meant it. In fact I’m not here to do anything to anyone. I just felt it was a good time to meet the family.” There it was, the patentable, confident grin on his face.

“Get out.” George insisted.

“I would’ve called, but you don’t have phone yet, right?” Leland took a step inside, his grin now a dare.

“I can defend my home.” My husband threatened. “The police-”

“Yeah, the po-po will probably shoot my black ass, but in the meantime you’ll force me to break my promise to your loving wife.” His face became a menace. “I don’t like to break a promise.”

I wanted to tell my husband to stand down, but it was important that he learned what kind of man he really was: A good man. A good husband. A good lover. A good father. A poor warrior.

“I’m walking here.” Leland announced with a fake New York accent. He started into the living room.

George was on the verge of tears. “Colleen?” He implored.

“I love you more than anything.” I said it from the heart.

My husband stepped aside and brushed his eyes with a sleeved arm. He couldn’t look at me after that.

“Colleen, yer looking so domestic. Even a birthday party should kick modesty to the curb.” Leland was surprisingly clean. He work black slacks with pressed folds, newer sneakers than I’d seen before, and a unstained shirt with thin, purple stripes running down pastel yellow polyester. His balding pate sported a white straw fedora. He’d even stuck a fabric rose in the eye of his shirt’s front pocket. It’s red contrasted the shirt decently. I wondered if he had just visited a thrift store. If so, he had cut off the tags before changing.

I spoke curtly. “We’re still putting up decorations.”

“Let me help.” He looked around the room. “Man, if I had birthdays like this, I might have made something of myself.” He chuckled.

“We’re almost done.” George managed to say.

I offered Leland a red balloon. “Nah.” He waved it away. “Don’t have the lungs for it. Too much crack in my past. Get your husband to do the blowing.” He spied a game of pin the tail on the donkey. “I’ll set up that.”

I pointed to a bare wall in the kitchen. Then I put the balloon end in my mouth and blew. George joined me and inflated another.

My home had never felt so confining. My husband was feeling twice as oppressed as I. I suggested something manly. “Get the coals started.” We both knew it was too early to start a barbecue, but he stepped lightly past Leland who mentioned, “She’ll be safe in my hands.”

I didn’t see him shudder, but that’s what I imagined George doing before escaping out back.

“What do you think?” Leland had taped the fuzzy board to the wall. The tail had a velcro end for securing it to the donkey’s image.

“It’s fine.” I judged it from the living room.

“Come over and take a good look. You’re a woman who don’t like shoddy work.”

I walked to the line of separation between the living room and the kitchen. “You could have looped the tape and hid it behind the board instead of crossing the corners like that.”

“It’s not as strong that way.” He argued. “A little ugliness is worth the strength.”

I wasn’t sure if he was talking about the donkey board. He walked up to me and fastened his large hands on the butt of my loose, cotton pants. I flinched from their contact, my bum still sore after the beating it took from those hands, too few days earlier. I turned my head away, wincing as his hands began to fondle the bruised flesh. “I thought you weren’t going to do anything.”

“What, this is nothing.” His hands were making my body twitch and utter light grunts. “Now give me a kiss, and I’ll help you with something else.” I could only hope that he meant to help with the decorations. That he didn’t smell much limited my reservations. It was like he had showered the day before.

I looked out the kitchen window, but George wasn’t in view. I lifted my head and kissed Leland’s thick lips. With his hands inciting discomfort through my body, my lips acted like they were twerking his until I pulled away, grimacing from little stabs of pain.

“That felt pretty good, didn’t it?”

“I’m still sore.”

He kept groping my ass. “I know how long it takes before you’re ready for another go.”

“My children will be home soon.” Ridley was probably racing home. Peg would dawdle.

“Then there’s no time to waste.” He moved away but kept one hand on my butt. It pushed me into the hallway. I assumed his promise meant nothing when he prodded me down the hall and into my bedroom. He even locked the door behind him.

I stood still, dreading likely abuse.

Leland went to my closet and opened it.

My heart started beating again when he riffled through the hanging garments. He was solely intent on finding something more celebratory for me to wear.

“This.” He pulled out a light purple, low cut top with frills around the collar. he took out the hanger and tossed it to me. Turning back to the closet, he asked. ‘Are all your pants in here?”

“I have shorts in the bottom dresser drawer.” I unbuttoned the manish shirt I was wearing. He went to the dresser and pawed through the shorts in there. “You need shorter shorts.” It was not a request.

He stopped me when I was pushing an arm into the top he’d chosen. “Un-uh.” He shook his head. “Take off the bra.”

“What? It’s my son’s birthday!” I felt some power to resist.

“Yeah, well he’s turning fourteen today. Boys that age are thinking of girls, and a good mom should act like it’s okay to live less puritanically.” That was a large word for Leland’s vocabulary. I considered he, like many African-Americans, had a Protestant upbringing, some more severe than others. I also remembered that he didn’t swear monotheistically.

“This top is too revealing without a bra.”

He snorted. “It’s almost a granny shirt.” Our perspectives couldn’t have been more different. “At least it’s not a man’s shirt. And it’s a fine color for a party.” He returned to the closet, leaving the bottom drawer open.

I looked down at my protruding cups and told myself, Ridley was too young to notice or care if his old mother wore a lumpy shirt. I took off my bra and donned the shirt, raveling up the back a little and tucking it into my panties to reduce its neckline.

Leland brought a knee length skirt. I had shorter ones for going out dancing, but I suspected he had picked this one for its colorful, flower print. “This will be fun.” He judged my body language. “But you don’t seem to have a party mood.” He frowned. “How’s a kid to enjoy his birthday when his mom is acting like a sourpuss?”

“You know why I’m like this.” I contested.

“Ooo, if it wasn’t a special day for your family.” His expression darkened. “You’ll have to fake it, like every other mom in the world.” I suspected a psychologist could earn multiple Ph’Ds writing papers about Leland’s psyche, especially Freudian shrinks.

I took the skirt.

His brief anger brightened. “Hey, I know a trick.” His patent grin surfaced, and I knew I was doomed. “Go commando today. That’ll put hot sauce in your spirit.”

The front door shut loudly. “HEY! I’m home!” Ridley wanted everyone to know. What surprised me more was George answering him. “Happy Birthday, Son.” How long had my husband been in the house while I was locked in our bedroom with the old, black man who abused me for his pleasure.

Leland stared full of amusement at my expense.

I found my self stepping out of panties before I could muster resistance. He waggled his eyebrows at my groomed pudemdum. I quickly pulled on the skirt and cinched it tight around my waist. Then I re-tucked the back of my blouse.

“Where’s Mom?”

“She in our room, changing.” George must have realized that I would crack under Leland’s comment about my domestic garb. My husband tried not to sound too bitter to his son.

“I’ll be out in a minute!” I shouted at the locked door.

“Do you have a ribbon for your hair, or a flower?” The old black ginned.

I found Ridley and George in the kitchen, staring into the refrigerator. My husband allowed my son. “Go ahead and have a snack, but your mother will be disappointed if you don’t eat enough of the food she worked hours on, for you today.”

“Happy Birthday, Ridley.” I mustered a mostly sincere smile. Part of my happiness stemmed from Leland saying he’d pop out in a bit. I wasn’t sure of his motive, but I took it as a good thing.

“Moom!” He drew out the word, and his eyes bulged. “You look, uh, rad!” I didn’t know kids still used that word. It was already out of fashion when I said it during high school. My surprised son ran over for a hug.

George stared at the fake, red rose in my hair. To him it must have looked like a damsel’s favor ribbon for her chosen knight. Guilt gripped me while I hugged my son. When he pulled out of my embrace, I could tell that he was avoiding looking at my chest. I didn’t dare look down. I could only go forward. “I know it’s your birthday, but if you start eating junk food now, you’ll get sick before the party is over.” I went to the fridge. George was still holding it open.

“Let’s see.” I bent over slightly, worried about my skirt pulling up, but knee length was plenty long to prevent embarrassing mishaps. I found a bag of mochi treats with sweet red bean paste. I took two out and closed the door. “Here.” I handed them to Ridley. “Eat these for now, and in an hour you can have a chocolate brownie. After supper, you can eat whatever you like.”

He looked at the unfamiliar, sweet, rice dumplings like they might be white balls of kale. He bit into one, chewed. Pursed his lips and told me. “They’re okay.” But he downed the rest of the first one like it was angel food cake.

“Hello, young man!” Leland entered from the hallway but stopped between the living room and kitchen. His deep pitched voice reverberated around the kitchen. “I hear it’s your birthday.”

Ridley gulped down what was left of his first mochi ball. “Who are you?”

“This is Mr. Jones, Ridley.” I intercepted. He’s a neighbor from a few blocks away.

“Why is he here?”

Leland handled the question before I could chose a lie. “Well, I been a bit lonely lately, since my wife died. Your mom’s been very kind to me for a little while now, and today she let me visit. I won’t get in the way of your fun. I just ‘preciate having some company, specially at a party. I brought you a present.”

Oh shit. “You don’t have to do that, Leland.” I spoke more assertively than usual to him.

“It’s nothing special, but it’d be rude not to have a gift for the birthday boy.”

“That’s right, Mom!” Ridley was never far from asserting his independence.

The old black reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a not too poorly wrapped gift. It was a small box about the size of a paperback book. “Here, but don’t open it until later.” Leland’s tone deepened. “It’d be rude to open it before your other presents.”

“I guess.” My son accepted the gift and the stranger’s advice with greater willingness than when I lectured.

“Leland, can I fix you a drink? We can talk in the living room.” George sounded almost self-possessed. He too felt a parent’s instinct to protect his children. It was my bad luck that his instinct to protect his wife wasn’t as strong.