Odell liked me enough to invite me to have supper with him, but I still didn’t think our date was going to lead to anything serious. If sex was all he wanted, that was fine with me.
I prayed that Daddy hadn’t put him up to asking me out. In a way, he had, by telling Odell I hadn’t been on a date since last year! I couldn’t imagine what Odell must have thought when he heard that. There was just no telling what else Daddy had told him about me. I could just hear him blabbing about how I sat around the house every night with my head in a magazine or a book. But it was true. When I didn’t feel like reading and went out somewhere by myself, I got jealous when I saw other women with their boyfriends or husbands.
Odell seemed like the kind of man who liked to see people happy, so he probably thought it would please Daddy if he took me out. I didn’t want to think that was the case, but I couldn’t help myself. After giving it a little more thought, I decided I didn’t really care what his real reason was. I was just happy that I was going out with him.
After I had checked my make-up and hair for the third or fourth time, I sat on my bed and stared at the wall. I didn’t like to spend too much time feeling sorry for myself, so I was relieved when Mama interrupted my thoughts when she knocked on my door ten minutes after I’d locked myself in.
“You all right in there?” she yelled.
“Yes, ma’am.” I sounded so tired I probably should have been getting some rest instead of getting ready to go on a date.
“Odell just got here.”
“Oh. He’s right on time,” I mumbled, and glanced at the clock on my nightstand. I didn’t know what else he was, but at least he was punctual—which was more than I could say about any other colored person, including myself. I’d arrived at my own high school graduation so late, they had already passed out the diplomas by the time I got there.
I didn’t want to keep Odell waiting because I was scared Daddy or Mama might say something that would scare him off. I laughed at the thought of that happening. I didn’t know what I was thinking! First of all, he worked eight hours a day five days a week with them. There was just no telling how many stupid things they’d probably already said to him about me. But he still wanted to take me out, so maybe he didn’t care what they’d told him. Or maybe he was after my money. Just thinking about him being a fortune hunter made my chest tighten. If that was what he was after, he would be disappointed. Other than my paycheck, I didn’t have any of my own yet. I would inherit the store and everything else Mama and Daddy left behind when they died, but they could live another five or ten years for all I knew. I figured that a man after money wouldn’t want to wait around that long to get it. Besides, the other men I’d been involved with had known that I’d inherit a small fortune someday but they hadn’t asked me to marry them. Anyway, a man like Odell could get any woman he wanted. Other than trying to please my parents, I couldn’t think of any other reason why he’d want to spend time with a clumsy ox like me unless he really did like me; or, unless he was crazy.
Mama pounded on the door again. “If you don’t get your tail out here and go out with this man, I’ll go.” She laughed. “I told Odell you’d probably be late for your own funeral. You sure took your time coming out of my womb.”
I laughed too. “Mama, you behave yourself now. Tell Odell, I’ll be ready in a minute. I just need to put on a little more make-up.” I wanted to look extra nice, more for myself than Odell. I felt better when I looked good.
“Let me in!” Mama hollered, and pounded some more at the same time. I opened the door, and she clomped in with her hands on her hips. “I don’t know why you lock this door in the first place when ain’t nobody up in here but us. We don’t even lock the doors to the house.”
“I like my privacy, Mama.”
“Privacy? What do you need privacy for? All you do in this room is read and sleep.”
The last time I’d left my door unlocked, Mama had barged in while I was stretched out in my bed trying to pleasure myself with my finger, with no success. I had pulled the covers up over me in the nick of time. I didn’t even want to think about what she would have said or done if she had caught me touching myself. As far as she was concerned, sex was only acceptable when it was between two married people. She made that clear every time the subject came up in my presence. “Unmarried folks and sex don’t mix, and it’s a deadly sin.” That was what she’d said when Sadie told us about an unmarried woman who had come to the store to buy some salve to treat scabs on her private parts—which Mama called the appropriate punishment for fooling around. Regardless of what she or anybody else thought about sex outside of marriage, I wanted to get as much as I could. But pleasuring a woman was a man’s job. My feeble attempt at self-gratification had not turned out the way I thought it would, so I never tried it again. I prayed that Odell would at least end my long dry spell. I’d glanced at his crotch right after Daddy had introduced us. It looked like he had
