As anxious as I was to give birth to my first child, being pregnant was no picnic for me. I couldn’t eat some of the things I’d been eating all my life. The sight and smell of collard greens—one of my favorite dishes—turned my stomach and sent me running to the toilet to throw up. Mornings were the worst. Bacon and grits made me cringe, and I would rather eat a spider than a scrambled egg. I couldn’t even drink and keep down the ginger tea Mama claimed would stop the morning sickness.
By the middle of my fourth month, my ankles and legs looked like tree stumps. I tried not to stir around too much because I got tired real quick. Other than work and church, I didn’t go too many places. If I got home before Odell, Mama came over and waited on me hand and foot. She cooked for us two or three times a week, and washed our clothes and cleaned the house. Odell did those chores when she couldn’t. He never complained, but I had a feeling he didn’t like rearranging his schedule and doing extra work around the house on my account. I didn’t want him to feel smothered, and I didn’t want to feel that way myself. As much as I loved him, I still enjoyed having a little free time to myself once in a while. It allowed me to relax and catch up on my reading. He loved to fish and visit his daddy after work and on weekends, so I encouraged him to keep doing that. Besides, I didn’t want him to see how miserable and clumsy my pregnancy was making me.
My condition was causing other discomforts too. Sex was painful, even when Odell was gentle. When I noticed some bleeding tonight after we’d made love, I decided to put sex on hold. “Honey, we can’t risk hurting the baby, so we need to take a break until I deliver.”
“No problem,” he said, sounding too nonchalant. His reaction surprised me.
“You . . . you mean you don’t care?” I asked, holding my breath.
“Hell yeah I care. But I care more about our baby. We got a long time ahead of us to make love, so a few dry months won’t kill me.” He laughed. Then he said something that made me blush. “In the meantime, I can think of a couple of other things we can do to have fun.”
I gave him a disgusted look and jabbed his side with my elbow. “Hush up, you nasty dog you!”
“What?”
“I know what you got on your mind. I told you from the get-go that I don’t do nothing with my mouth but eat, talk, and kiss. I ain’t never put my head nowhere near a man’s privates and I don’t want to start doing it now.”
“Aw, shuck it! Giving up a little head now and then ain’t never hurt nobody,” he griped. And then he started grinning like a fool and tracing my lips with his finger.
“Not this ‘head.’ That’s why they have women like the ones that work for Aunt Mattie. They do all kinds of unnatural things.”
“Baby, don’t be like that. You ain’t got to go that far. But I understand. I don’t want you to do nothing for me that you think is ‘unnatural. ’”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Odell. I hope you never bring up this nasty subject again.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t.”
It pleased me to know that it didn’t bother Odell too much that we couldn’t make love for a while. He didn’t pester me, even when it looked like his pecker was hard enough to bust out of his pants. But I gave him as much attention as I could. One night in bed when I felt how aroused he was against my backside, I did something I thought I’d never do. I stroked and massaged his crotch until he was satisfied, and since that did the trick and calmed him down, I planned to volunteer to do it every time he got frisky.
If I had known that a simple hand job could keep him from feeling neglected, I would have started doing it a lot sooner.
Chapter 22
Odell
I WAS DISAPPOINTED THAT JOYCE HAD DECIDED WE NEEDED TO STOP having intercourse for a while. I was just as concerned about her health as well as our baby’s. But I was still a man. I couldn’t help myself. Instead of me controlling sex, it was controlling me. Some men fucked to live and others lived to fuck. I did both. To me, sex was like food and water, so I needed some to keep going.
There was only one thing I could do to keep from going crazy until Joyce gave birth: keep seeing Betty Jean.
Every time I paid her a visit, I told myself that it would be the last time. That was easy to say, but hard to do. I felt like I was sinking deeper and deeper into a bowl of quicksand and I cussed the day I’d gotten myself into this mess. That pretty young girl in Hartville really had a hold on me, but I had to break loose eventually. And I would as soon as Joyce was back in commission.
I knew what I was doing was wrong. But I didn’t feel too guilty about it. I justified my actions by putting some of the blame on Joyce. For one thing, when a woman puts a hold on sex—no matter what the reason—a man has to do something to ease the pain. I didn’t have no problem jacking off, but that only took me so far. Without having a woman’s body to hold on to, it didn’t please me no more than if
