2.
Being a night owl and also someone who finds himself always looking out the window whenever a pair of headlights ease into the apartment complex after midnight, I couldn't help but see a lot of the comings and goings with my neighbors. Not that I really cared either way what any of them were doing but with the occasional burglary in the neighborhood, a person tends to pay more attention to strangers coming around. I immediately started to notice a pattern with Rebecca Nye's late night routines as the weeks went on. Her rickety station wagon would come and go at all times of the night and many times with a wide array of men accompanying her in and out of her apartment. Knowing Belinda was home to experience her Mother's looseness first hand, all I could do was pray that somehow she'd stay immune to her lecherous upbringing. Many of the men I saw come and go from the Nye apartment frankly I wouldn't let walk my dog, and knowing those men were doing God knows what with Rebecca while her Daughter slept under the same roof made my skin crawl. Knowing first hand just how small the apartments were, I knew Belinda was forced to be party to everything socially her Mother did those nights when Rebecca chose to bring men home with her. Another example of Belinda rebelling against her Mother's influence was in the way she dealt with her boyfriends. While Rebecca went through men like pudding through a cat, Belinda appeared to have only two steady boyfriends from the time she was 11, and both those boys seemed to have their acts together much more than the skuzzy things Rebecca Nye brought home.
3.
One Saturday afternoon last April, I was on my back underneath my car changing the oil when I got to witness Belinda Nye's then relationship with her 15 year old boyfriend hit the rocks. If my memory serves, Belinda was about two months away from her 14th birthday at the time. Hidden underneath my Ford Farlaine, I could hear Belinda and her boyfriend George arguing intensely as they parked in front of the Cantrell apartment. Before they had even opened the doors to get out, the whole neighborhood was filling with the sounds of cursing, yelling and threats. When Belinda and George finally did emerge from the car, everything else around the apartment complex slowed to a halt. I momentarily quit what I was doing with the oil pan and watched the two fights from the privacy of my secluded hiding place. I couldn't make out the entire gist of the heated discussion but the snippets I could understand seemed to revolve around Belinda's Mom, Rebecca. “You're gonna grow up and be just like her,” I heard George say accusingly. “That ought to make you happy you son of a bitch…after all George…you are fucking her…she must be good enough for something!” Belinda said this not caring in the least that a dozen or so of her neighbors were voyeuristically hanging on every word. “I got to get it from somewhere…you sure as hell don't want to ever do anything…I got news for you, bitch…that pussy of yours isn't made out of gold!”
George shot back. “Fuck you!” the 17 year old girl yelled bitterly. After about three minutes of back and forth, George simply gave up and got back into his car, slamming the door loudly before speeding away. Belinda was left all alone on the front stoop of her apartment with the gaze of every curious eye in the neighborhood on her as her world caved in. I continued laying there on my back for a few seconds waiting to see if Belinda would turn and walk inside her apartment but she simply stood there with her head in her hands as if her feet were secured in concrete. An overwhelming sense of discomfort washed over me as I laid there fidgeting under my car. I couldn't help feeling sorry for the 13 year old girl that was bawling her eyes out less than 100 feet from me. I could look between my driver's side rear and front tires to see several of the other neighbors milling about, getting back to their lazy weekend routines after the brief interlude of watching two teenagers fight like cats and dogs. Looking up at the slow drip of dirty oil as it drained from my engine, I grabbed a rag to wipe my hands with as I pushed myself out from underneath my car. Why I felt the need or obligation to take myself away from what I was doing and butt my nose into someone else's business, I still don't know, but at the time I genuinely thought I was doing the right thing. The moment Belinda sensed me rising out from underneath my car, she instantly recoiled as if she had seen a ghost. The sound of her quick gasp of surprise was peppered with the ricocheting sounds of gravel skidding across the driveway as I stopped cold in my tracks. Understanding her shock in seeing my rise out of nowhere, like a satanic and oil-covered jack in the box, I froze there for a moment and waited for her to gain her bearings. Once I was comfortable that Belinda recognized me, I proceeded a few steps forward, wiping what grease I could off of my hands and arms. It seemed extremely awkward in one sense as I eased up to Belinda, a man of no relation to her that was exactly twice her age going to help her in a time of need. On the other hand, I felt the part of my brain that regulated charity telling me that if I had an ounce of concern for a fellow human being in a tough spot, I had to offer whatever support I could. I could feel an intangible aura immersing us both as I closed the distance between our bodies to about 10 feet. Stopping there so I wouldn't invade her comfort zone, I waited patiently for her to make the next move. Standing that close, I could see Belinda's clear white tears seep down the side of her face almost as if an internal faucet was minting a freshly made tear every few seconds. I could feel Belinda's body posture open towards me slightly as the soft foreboding taste of anticipation resonated on my tongue. A moment later, before I could even prepare myself, I was paralyzed for an instant as my life took a sharp and unexpected turn. In a blinding furious flash, something base and instinctual inside of Belinda Nye's mind must have snapped and her need to be held and comforted switched on. She ran like a charging bull straight towards me. The air inside of my lungs rushed out with a brutal, blunt whoosh as Belinda's 140 pound frame crushed into me. I had to take one step backwards to balance myself from the impact and raised both arms into the air as the 13 year old wrapped her arms around me in a tear jerking bear hug. Part of me said all I had to do for a few moments was to just stand there like a lamp post, giving Belinda something to hold on to until she was stable enough to move on. Another part of me however was extremely uncomfortable.
It was the classic no win situation for me. Push her away and I knew Belinda would feel even more rejection at a very vulnerable time.
On the other hand, I didn't feel right either bringing my arms down and trying to give the young girl even a semblance of a hug with the whole neighborhood watching our embrace in broad daylight. So all I did for a minute or so was simply stand there with my arms extended as Belinda's eyes soaked my oil stained tee-shirt. Standing there helplessly in the girl's emotional grip, I disparately tried ignoring the sensations of her large breasts tightly wedged against my chest as she pulled me closer with her clenched fists. It was just like the proverbial pink elephant however, the more I tried not thinking about the young girl's mature endowment, the more I felt the weight of her womanhood mashing through my shirt. I could feel my willpower to be gentlemanly gradually start to dissipate as my arms started to tingle from a lack of blood as I held them out to the side. Slowly lowering them, I couldn't fight the urge to return her embrace for a second longer. Before I even could close my arms around Belinda's shoulders, the devastated young girl let go of me and hurriedly ran towards her front door with the same reckless abandon that she had ran towards me in the first place with. I could hear Belinda yell 'thank you” to me without turning around, through her muffled hands covering her face as she disappeared into her apartment. My whole body felt the stinging vibration of the Nye's door slamming shut as Belinda went inside to deal with her personal tragedy alone. I finally mustered the wherewithal to turn and make my way back to my car to finish the oil change that I had started. Reaching down to unscrew the top of a new quart of oil, I started to pour it into the engine before my memory was jarred. “You forgot to put the bolt back in the bottom of the oil pan you idiot!” Slamming my rag down to the gravel below in disgust, I knelt down and went back underneath the car to try and clean up my own personal mess. 4. I spent the better part of the rest of that night trying to figure out what had happened between Belinda and I. The rational part of my mind told me that absolutely nothing had, she was just stuck in a moment of weakness and I just happened to be there. I was in bed, unable to fall asleep, the muscle memory of Belinda's arms wrapped around my body and her endowment pressing against my chest brazenly embroiled themselves into my psyche. I closed my eyes and desperately tried forcing myself to sleep, the realization that the embrace with Belinda was the first real female contact that I had shared since my wife and I had separated, six months earlier. Just the simple fact that an attractive young girl had not been so grossed out by me that she was willing to hug me gave me a broad, if not misguided, smile in the “behind closed door” privacy of my bedroom. Those thoughts were even more cemented on a hot August night a few months later when Belinda
