“Please don’t do—”
She cut me off by kissing me again, this time poking my tongue with hers. When she pulled away she whispered, “If you don’t like me and don’t want to get to know me, just tell me.”
I looked dead in her eyes and told her, “I . . . I . . . do like you, Betty Jean.” My voice was so hoarse, I could barely talk.
“I’ll make you feel so good, you’ll find time for me. And I promise you won’t regret it.”
I didn’t know if I was crazy, stupid, or both. The last thing I wanted to do was cheat on Joyce, so why was I even telling Betty Jean I didn’t have time to spare for her? Why had I left that restaurant with her in the first place? Why was I sitting here alone with her? My head was telling me to let this girl go on about her business and for me to get in my car and get my horny ass back to Branson.
Running into some members of the Ku Klux Klan was not the only death threat I had to be concerned about. Betty Jean could cause me to get killed too, because if Joyce ever found out, she’d skin me alive. And if she didn’t, her daddy or mama sure would.
Even with all the outrageous thoughts swimming around in my head and my common sense, my dick was telling me that if I didn’t get a piece of this beautiful girl now, I never would.
Chapter 19
Joyce
WHEN I WALKED INTO THE LIVING ROOM THIS EVENING, I DIDN’T even know Mama and Daddy had stopped by on their way home from church. They had kicked off their shoes and made themselves comfortable on the couch. Daddy had even unloosened his tie and unfastened the two top buttons on his shirt.
“It’s high time you dragged your tail in here,” Mama complained as she adjusted the hat she had on, which looked like a doughnut without a hole. “We been sitting out here for twenty minutes.”
“I was in the bedroom folding clothes and didn’t hear y’all come in,” I explained. “Y’all want some lemonade or a bottle of Dr. Pepper?”
“Naw. We ain’t going to stay but a few more minutes. We just wanted to drop in to say hello. We came by last night but y’all wasn’t home,” Daddy said in a gruff tone. “Where was y’all?”
“We went to Mosella’s for dinner,” I said, clearing my throat.
“Again?” Mama said. She and Daddy looked at each other at the same time, then back at me. “Where is Odell now?”
“He left this afternoon to go run the car. It’s taking longer for him to get used to it than we thought it would.”
“No wonder y’all didn’t make it to church today or last Sunday,” Daddy said harshly. “That’s a black mark against your name in the sin book.” Every time I missed church, he reminded me how important it was to go. But as far back as I could remember, he would always doze off within minutes after Reverend Jessup started his sermon. He would sleep until Mama woke him up when it was time to leave. “I just hope you don’t backslide too far.” When Daddy was in a grumpy mood, his eyes darkened and his jaw twitched. He was in a real grumpy mood today. “Now that you done finally got a husband, I hope you’ll start behaving more like a married woman.”
“I thought I already was,” I snapped.
Daddy reared back in his seat, gave me a critical look, and started talking in a loud voice. “Humph! I can’t tell. For one thing, you don’t need to let Odell go off by hisself too often. Last Sunday he went to ‘run the car’ and was gone for hours. The next time he go run the car, you need to go with him so you can start learning how to drive yourself.”
“I don’t know why you don’t do that already,” Mama slipped in with her eyes narrowed. “Besides that, it ain’t fitting to let a man have too much freedom. It’s a recipe for trouble. Especially after all that ruckus you put us through so we’d let you marry him.”
I didn’t think it was smart for me to remind my mother that I was a grown woman and didn’t need permission from her or Daddy to “let” me do anything. That would have led to another argument and we would have been going back and forth for hours. It was a good thing Odell was not in the house. He would have said something in my defense, and I knew it would have upset Mama and Daddy even more.
“Odell gives me just as much freedom as I give him,” I said hotly. “And he did ask me if I wanted to go with him today. If he was going to get in some kind of trouble, it would happen whether I was with him or not. Things couldn’t be better between us. But they won’t stay this way if I start badgering him, or tagging along with him every time he leaves the house.”
The “few more minutes” that Mama and Daddy said they’d stay was two hours. By the time they left, my head was aching on both sides. They had complained about everything from the weather to the wrinkled-up dress I had on.
* * *
It was almost time for me to put supper on the table and Odell still hadn’t come home. I figured he was still just driving around, or had changed his mind at the spur of the moment and gone fishing. Then again, the car could have broken down and he was stranded somewhere waiting for help to come along. That really worried me. One of the worst things that could happen to a colored man was for him to be stranded by himself on a country road without a weapon. I’d told
