Chapter 27

Nathan stopped off at Flossie’s on the way home. His sisters were still there, and he sent them home. Flossie, after spending a day with the girls, was in much better spirits. She still moved stiffly, but she was getting around.

“I couldn’t paint, seeing as how my paint was all gone,” she joked.

“Sorry about that, said Nathan.”

“It was for a good cause, as far as I’m concerned,” said Flossie, seriously. “Thank you.”

“I couldn’t let him...” Nathan turned away. The vision of his father looming over her almost naked form tormented him.

“It will cause trouble,” she said. “For your mother too. I’m sorry about that,” she said.

“You don’t know my mother,” said Nathan, picking at a patch of paint on his arm. “She’s much tougher than he is.”

“She was very kind,” said Flossie. “She’s got a very good heart for a white...” Flossie stopped, embarrassed that her own racism was showing.

Seeing him pick at the paint on his arm reminded her of the paint remover he had obtained. The girls had told her about it, but she hadn’t used it yet. She wondered why now. She had noticed the paint all day long, but hadn’t removed it. Now that Nathan was here, she realized it reminded her of him ... of him saving her. It was like she was wearing the protection he represented.

She got a rag and the paint remover, and made him sit down. She began swabbing at the paint on his arms. The fumes made her light-headed, and when one arm was clean she suggested that they take a break outside. She got into a box and pulled out some scissors. Once outside she sat on a keg and handed them to him, telling him to clip the paint-clogged tangles out of her kinky hair.

“It’s going to leave bald spots,” he said, after examining her head.

“Can’t be helped,” she said. “It will grow back.” She looked up at him. “Yours too. I’ll do yours when you’re done with mine.”

He asked for a comb, and she went back in to get it and sat back down.

“Just get it over with,” she said.

He clipped and tugged. The pain in her hair roots, she decided, distracted her from the pain elsewhere, and embraced it, thinking that this pain was removing the feeling of dread that had hung over her since the attack. As clots of paint-hardened hair fell to the ground, she released the fear along with them, beginning to slump on the keg as she relaxed.

“What’s taking so long?” she asked, at one point.

“I’m trying to save what I can,” he said. “If I don’t, you’ll be bald.”

She sat, feeling drowsy as his fingers pulled and stroked and massaged her scalp, while the comb pulled the fear out of her. Finally he stood back.

“You look like a boy,” he commented. “Well, from the neck up, anyway.” He looked startled and blushed.

“It will grow back.”

She took him back inside and tackled his other arm. Working on his fingers, swabbing with the rag, she examined his strong hands. Then she moved to his neck. There was even paint on the back of his neck, small spatters that had landed there somehow. She saw a thick splinter of wood stuck in his hair. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it when she was cutting his hair, and plucked it out.

“Where did that come from?” she asked him, showing him the inch long piece of wood.

Her fingers on his body had relaxed him, too, and he answered automatically.

“We’ve been salvaging wood from that old mansion to build a treehouse with.”

“The one they say is haunted?” she asked, astonished. She couldn’t imagine this city boy messing around out there in the woods. She’d seen the house as a child - all children snuck out to peek at it as a rite of passage - but she hadn’t even dreamed that Nathan might do the same thing.

“We haven’t seen any ghosts,” he said. He was wary now, though. He hadn’t meant to say anything to any adult about the house. He didn’t say anything about what they’d found.

“I hope you’re being careful,” she said. “That place is falling down.”

She combed at his hair, pulling the dots of paint-fused strands, while he winced. She got the scissors and began clipping them out until she could run the comb through his long locks.

“Your hair is getting pretty long for a...”

“White boy?” he asked. Most white men kept their hair very short around these parts. “I guess being white doesn’t mean as much to me as it used to.”

“Nathan, I’m sorry I dragged you into all this,” she said, going around to stand in front of him. “I should have left well enough alone. I should have stuck to math, and reading and English. Now you and your father are at odds and those other children are playing at sex and ... I’ve just made a real mess of things.”

He took the scissors from one hand, and the comb from another. He sat her down and took up the can and rag, and began cleaning one of her arms, like she had cleaned his.

“If you’d have left well enough alone, I wouldn’t be passing. I wouldn’t have a job offer that will make it so that what my father thinks doesn’t matter any more. I’d still hate you and call you a nigger and make a fool of myself. All things considered, I rather prefer liking you.”

He switched arms. The paint on her was mostly smears, transferred from him to her. When the paint left the can, the bottom was pointed towards her, and the paint had hit him squarely. Some of it had splashed back on her, making dots and spots all over her front. He was more or less unconsciously going after those dots when he ended up swabbing the skin under her chin, on her upper chest. On one swipe, the rag, in his fingers, hit where the top button of the shirt was. Her fingers reached for it unconsciously and undid it, opening up the shirt to the top of her cleavage. He stared at that spot, and Flossie’s eyes saw him staring. He pulled back, flustered.

She took the rag from him, and started doing his face, where paint had soaked almost everything. He had rubbed a lot of it off before it dried, but there was still a haze of paint all over. She swabbed carefully, and then went to his neck and to his own top button. She unbuttoned that and pulled his shirt apart to see that paint had soaked through his clothes, onto his skin. Again, it was just a haze of color, but she unbuttoned the rest of the buttons, looking at each one, and pushed the shirt open. She stared at the muscles under the skin on his chest as she rubbed at the paint. Then she got to his nipples, she swiped at them gently and he hissed.

“Does it sting?” she asked.

“A little,” he said tightly. “I should do that myself.”

“Why?” she said, her voice light.

“It makes me feel funny,” he said.

She looked from his chest to his eyes, and they bore into hers.

She leaned back. This boy ... man, really ... who sat in front of her caused complex emotions to bubble up into her chest. He had gone against his own flesh and blood to save her. He had saved her from further injury and clearly from rape. She was quite sure that, had she resisted Harvey, he would have beaten her, maybe to death. The upwelling of gratitude in her got all mixed up with other feelings. She remembered the way he had looked at her when that door creaked open, as she stood there naked. His eyes had held something that was different than the raw lust other men had shown when they looked at her ... the way Harvey had looked at her. But there had been desire in his eyes, even as he tried to apologize and move away from her. She saw a little of the same thing in his eyes now, as they darted from her face to where her shirt was open. It appealed to Wanton Flossie, who quietly urged her to do something crazy, but which was irriseistable.

“That’s got most of it, I think.” she said. Her hand went to her shirt. “You got it all over me too.” She unbuttoned another button, not believing that she was doing this right in front of this boy.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped, as the insides of her breasts became visible.

“I shouldn’t ask you to wipe it off of me,” she said softly. “But then ... you saw me naked before ... didn’t you.”

“It was an accident!” he panted.

“I know.” She unbuttoned another button. “You saved me,” she said. “He would have taken all that I have left in life. He might even have killed me.”

“No!” said Nathan, his eyes glued to where he could see smears of white paint crossing her chest.

“I wouldn’t have just let him do that,” she said, her fingers pulling gently at the shirt, spreading it so slowly apart that it hardly moved. “I would have screamed. He’d have beaten me more to shut me up. I would have fought, and he’d have beaten me some more. He wanted to hurt me badly.”

“I know that!” cried Nathan. “I couldn’t let him do that either!”

“Then take the paint off of me, Nathan,” she said softly. “I can’t explain to you how I feel when you take away the paint, but I need you to do this for me ... please?”

She pulled the shirt completely apart, baring her paint-smeared breasts and belly. The bite marks were vividly dark blue against the smooth brown of her flesh, and Nathan cringed, remembering his father’s teeth ... clamping ... biting ... pulling like some animal, eating its prey.

“It’s all right, Nathan,” she said soothingly. “You’ve already seen me like this. Please, just take the paint off of me, Nathan. Make me clean. Remove what he did to me.”

For once, as Proper Flossie began to rant in the background, Flossie shut her out. She didn’t think about what she was doing. His touch comforted her, in ways so opposite to those of his father that it was like every time he touched her, some of the pain of his father’s touch was taken away. She knew it was wrong to let him see her like this ... to ask him to touch her this way, but the urge to be clean was so strong in her that she had to. She had seen the way he looked at her ... appreciated her as a woman, and she wanted to feel like a woman, and not just a female, who could be taken like some prize won in a game. His touch was filled with something positive, even though she knew he had lust in him. But his lust was fresh and innocent, not a poison, like the lust that had been in the man who created him. She wanted to be respected, and somehow she knew that Nathan at least respected her.

She had to help him by taking his hand, putting the rag in it, and helping him begin to swab at the smears. She started on her stomach, above the crusty skin that was scabbing where Harvey had abraded it around her waist. Eventually she could drop her arms, relaxing as he continued, on his own. He bent over and she suddenly stood, taking his hand and pulling him to her bedroom. She didn’t want to be in the same room where this had happened ... where this paint had been splattered. She shrugged the shirt off her shoulders and lay down on the bed, dressed only in trousers.

He left her breasts for last, though she saw him staring at them. She watched his eyes, and it thrilled her to see him glance, every so often at her eyes, a question in his.

“Should I keep on?” his eyes asked.

Somehow her eyes said “Yes, please,” and he continued.

Finally the rag began to swab the outer edges of her globes. He stayed clear of the bite marks, going around them and, very carefully inside them. The rag scraped across her left nipple and it swelled and became erect. His eyes widened. He had seen Johnnie Sue’s, and his sisters nipples do that, when they were horny. The other breast he was firmer with, moving the flesh from side to side as the rag, and his fingers pressed into it. That nipple he was more forceful with as it became erect too.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered. His mouth snapped shut and he frowned.

“It’s all right,” she said softly. “Thank you.”

He stopped. “I have to tell you something. Ask you something.”

“What is it?” She wished he hadn’t started talking. He had stopped touching her when he started talking.

“It’s that thing I couldn’t talk to you about.” He frowned. “I still don’t think I should ask you, but what’s happening to me now... “ His hand strayed to the front of his pants.

“You’re erect?” she asked, a thrill shooting through her.

“Yes,” he said, ashamed.

“I’m hardly surprised,” she said softly. “I think I wanted you to get that way.”

His eyes opened wide. “You did?”

“I’m not supposed to want that,” she said. “But I do.”

“But isn’t it wrong?” he asked. “For both of us, I mean. You’re my teacher and...”

“I’m a Negro,” she finished for him.

“I guess ... yes ... but that’s not what I meant. You’re older. We’re not married and I want to...”

Flossie felt a ball of warmth burst in her loins. The proper Flossie inside her had been nattering on about how wrong all this was, and now it yelled at her. The wanton Flossie said “So what’s the big deal? You want to too. Admit it girl.”

“You’re a man,” she said. “Men are built to want to do that with women.”

“But my father!” he groaned.

“He wanted to hurt me. Sex can be used for that too. It can be used for terrible things, or loving, beautiful things. It’s what’s in your heart that makes the difference.”

“I feel that way about ... my sisters, sometimes,” he whispered. He looked away. “That’s what I couldn’t talk about.”

Now the looks between him and his sisters suddenly made all the sense in the world. She had been confused about them, because the looks Bernadette gave him were very similar to the looks she gave Curtis Lee. Flossie knew what those looks meant - the ones graced on Curtis Lee, but she had been confused by why the girl might flirt with her own brother. Now she knew.

“You’ve ... done things ... with them?” she asked, her heart beating harder in her chest.

“Yes,” he hung his head. “I can’t help it.”

“How much have you done with them, Nathan?” Her voice was firm now.

“What we saw at the fishing hole?” he mumbled. “Like that. A little more, actually.”

“You haven’t had intercourse with them.” she said firmly.

“No!” He shook his head, but still wouldn’t look at her. “But I want to. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, but couldn’t, but now I have to and ... and ... I don’t know what to do!”

“What do they say?” she asked on impulse.

“They dragged me into this in the first place!” he moaned. “They got curious ... said I was the only boy they could ask to see, and then to touch and then the next thing I knew they were...” He stopped, flushing.

“Was that why Bernadette asked me about blow jobs?” asked Flossie, her heart thundering in her chest.

“Yes,” he said miserably.

“She’s done that to you?”

“Yes,” he moaned.

“And you liked it.” she stated.

He finally looked at her. He looked at her like he was about to cry. “Yeeeeessss” he moaned.

“And now I’m making you feel the same way?” she asked.

He nodded. She watched her hand lift from the bed, and drift over to hover above his lap, where a bulge was apparent. She watched the wanton Flossie, who was in charge of that hand, at the moment, lower it until it rested lightly on the cloth, and the firm flesh under it.

“You don’t want to have intercourse with your sisters, do you?” she asked.

“No!” he gasped. “I mean yes, I want to, but it would be too dangerous! But if I don’t, they’ll do it with Moses and Curtis Lee. I know they will. They’re horny all the time!”

Flossie closed her eyes, but didn’t move her hand. Moses and Curtis Lee? Both of them?! Hilda Mae couldn’t have at least chosen Luthor?

“But they haven’t done that with them yet?” she asked.

“No. They’d have told me.” He slumped. “They’ve done the other though, and I know them. They won’t stop. It’s like some disease or something!”

Flossie suddenly remembered that the health class was supposed to have something in it about self control. She couldn’t remember talking about that. Apparently her class had unleashed passions, instead of controlling them. She wondered why she hadn’t gotten to the “How to keep from doing this” part of the course.

“That’s easy,” said the wanton Flossie inside her. “You don’t have any control. You’re about to take your pants off in front of this boy. Why would you want him or any of the others to have any control?”

Her hands went to her belt, and undid it.

“I have some paint on my left leg,” she said, unbuttoning the pants. She was wearing panties today. She couldn’t wear a bra because it hurt the bite marks, but she had put on panties. She kicked out of her pants as he sat, frozen. The front of her left thigh was white where he had hugged her against him, carrying her to the bed. “Would you take my panties off, Nathan? There’s paint under them too.”

“What are you doing?” he gasped.

“As I said, you’ve already seen me.”

“But I just told you how I feel about you,” he croaked, staring at the panties.

“Nathan, take them off,” she said firmly.

His hands were twitching as they reached for the panties. She lifted her hips and held her breath as he slid them to her knees. She dropped her buttocks onto the bed and lifted her feet so he could pull them off. The wanton Flossie made her legs spread, drawing one up to lie on the bed, exposing her sex to him. He stared and swallowed audibly.

“The paint, Nathan,” she said, her voice husky.

Automatically his hand, holding the rag, went to the smears of paint inches away from her pussy. Automatically he pulled it away again, plugging the neck of the can and tipping it to re-wet the rag. Then he removed the paint. His eyes darted from where he was working to the two black and almost leathery looking lips that closed her off to his view. There was a thin stark stripe of bright pink between those lips, just like the lips of her mouth went from dark, outside, to pink inside. He didn’t know what would happen next, but he licked his own lips, staring at those black and pink lines below her curly pubes. He wasn’t prepared when she sat up and swung her legs away from him, standing on the opposite side of the bed. She stood, outwardly looking completely unashamed. Inside she quailed, and there was a fierce battle going on.

“We both stink of that stuff,” she said, pointing at the can in his hand. “I’m going to heat water for a bath.”

She turned and walked out, wanting to run, to leave the house completely. Proper Flossie demanded it, then quailed as she actually took a step toward the front door. She couldn’t go outside. She was naked!

She filled the big bucket from the hand pump and put it on the stove. Nathan hadn’t come out of the bedroom yet. Being apart from him helped ... just a little. Still the urges that raced through her bloodstream made her ache with need. She’d never felt like this in her whole life. She’d been horny, true, but the newness of letting a man see her, and touching that man’s body brought her to a level that was also new. She’d never let herself get into a situation like this before.