“You let us decide that. Now what’s going on here? Joyce, you look sick!” Mama howled as she felt my forehead. “We ain’t leaving this spot until one of y’all tell us.”
“Joyce is fixing to have my baby and I want to marry her,” Odell blurted out. For about five seconds, it seemed like the world had come to a standstill. Mama and Daddy stood rooted in place looking as grim-faced as undertakers. Odell still didn’t look nervous or scared, but I was both.
After letting out a loud breath, Daddy looked at me and whimpered, “Gal, you . . . you done fooled around and got yourself pregnant? How did this happen?”
“We had sex,” I confessed in a flat tone.
“Do you mean to tell me that you up and spread your legs—AFTER ALL YOU BEEN TAUGHT?” he roared with his nostrils flaring and his eyes bugged out.
“Great balls of fire, girl! Didn’t we tell you to wait until you got married?” Mama threw in.
“I couldn’t wait,” I sniffled.
“I guess not! What about them other men?” Daddy’s voice had dropped almost to a whisper. But from the scowl on his face, I knew he was still stunned and mad.
I gave him a curious look. “What other men?” I asked as I hunched my shoulders.
“Them ones you used to go out with!” he boomed. “You couldn’t wait with them neither?”
Mama didn’t give me time to respond. “Lord save us!” she yelped, and covered her mouth with her hand. There was a wild-eyed look on her face as she glared at Odell. I was glad Daddy’s shotgun was not close by. “I . . . I wanted your first time to be special,” she said, choking on a sob.
It was hard to imagine that my mother was naïve enough to believe that Odell was the first man I’d slept with. “My ‘first time’ was special, Mama, sixteen years ago.” The look on her face was a combination of horror, disbelief, and disappointment. But I thought it was important for her and Daddy to know the real me and that when it came to sex, I was no different from other women my age.
The look on Daddy’s face was the same as the one on Mama’s. “If you couldn’t keep your bloomers on with them other men, how do you know Odell is the one that got you in this mess?” he asked.
I was absolutely horrified to hear him ask such a question! He knew that I hadn’t been out with another man since last year—something he couldn’t stop broadcasting.
“Shame on you, Daddy. You ought to know better! Yes, I’m sure Odell is the one!” I hollered. My heart was beating so fast and my blood pressure had shot up so high, I was surprised I was still conscious. “And for your information, I am not in the ‘mess’ you say I’m in. I already love this baby and I can’t wait to have it.”
Odell put his arm around my shoulder. “I want to marry Joyce as soon as possible. But if she don’t want to be my wife, I’ll understand,” he mumbled.
I swallowed hard and looked around the room. Sadie and Buddy were busy waiting on customers, but I knew they had heard at least part of the conversation. I expected them to start running off at the mouth about me the first chance they got to everybody who would listen. But I didn’t care. For the first time in my life, I felt like a real woman.
“Do you want to marry this man, baby?” Daddy asked. This was another question I couldn’t believe he was asking. I knew that Odell was probably my last chance, so I was going to take him and run before he changed his mind.
I nodded.
“Y’all ain’t even been together that long,” Mama pointed out. “Do you really love this man? You know how we feel about marriage. It’s a one-way street and once you get on it, it’s for life on account of divorce ain’t part of God’s plan. When a couple get married, they is duty-bound to stay together until death claims one of them.”
My heart skipped a beat. “We’re not even married yet, so there is no reason for you to even be thinking about something like divorce!”
“Marriage ain’t no fun and games, girl. It’s a real big step,” Daddy piped in, sounding tired now. He was running out of steam, so I knew that this hot discussion wouldn’t go on too much longer.
“I don’t care,” I choked.
“Joyce is not going to deal with this on her own,” Odell said. I was glad to hear him say more about this situation. “I’m just as responsible for this as she is, and I’m going to stand by her all the way.” His words were like music to my ears. He’d just said exactly what I wanted him to say.
“What’s the big deal about us getting married?” I wailed. “I don’t want to raise a baby on my own.”
“You ain’t going to raise no baby by yourself as long as me and your daddy is alive,” Mama said. “But if you don’t really want to marry this man, you ain’t got to.”
I was disappointed to hear that Odell had suddenly become “this man” in her eyes. She and Daddy knew how I felt about him, and he’d just made it clear to them how he felt about me. A couple of weeks ago, when they realized how serious our relationship had become, they had mentioned the fact that Odell had dropped out of school in the eighth grade and hadn’t done much with his life since then. And they never let me forget that he’d worked in a whorehouse. I had argued with them that all that was in his past and he
