Campbell hears those words and takes a step down. Back where? she wonders.
Luscious hears her sister’s words, and her eyes seem to clear—and after a while she lets go of Fred, and he falls, coughing, to the floor.
“You’re an animal, Rita! They needed to have kept you—”
Luscious takes a threatening step toward Fred, and his mouth clamps right up. “You ain’t nothing but a sorry piece of shit,” she says, and then she spits right in his face.
Campbell looks to the open door to find that the woman and child are gone; all that’s left are the swirling autumn leaves.
For days there is only the sound of the television, footsteps, and the drip-drip of the kitchen faucet Fred never seems to have time to fix.
Millie takes to bed, and Fred takes up residence on the couch.
Campbell survives on cold-cut sandwiches until one day Luscious calls and tells her to come over after school.
“They still ain’t talking,” Campbell says as she looks through the bag of precooked food Luscious has packed up for her.
“Yeah, well, that’s better than them yelling, screaming, and beating each other up,” Luscious says as she reaches into the freezer, allowing her hand to move over three packs of chicken and two boxes of chocolate ice cream before finally coming to rest on a box of cherry popsicles.
“That woman been back?” Luscious asks as she pulls out two pops and hands one to Campbell.
“Nah.”
“That’s your father, but what he done is a bad thing. Very bad.”
“You think that really Daddy’s child?” Campbell asks, even though she knows it is. They have the same mouth and eyes.
“Yep,” Luscious answers a little too quickly.
Campbell looks down to the floor and shuffles her feet in embarrassment for her father.
“Men ain’t shit,” Luscious says, and shakes her head in disgust.
“What Mama mean about you going back?” she asks because she wants Luscious to feel the same shame she feels. “Going back where? Detroit?”
Luscious blinks like something smarts or like she’s got a gas bubble in her chest. “What you wanna know?” she says, and pulls the chair out from the table.
Campbell’s tongue clucks, and the words get caught behind her teeth. She expected resistance. “W-What Mama was talking about,” she says, trying to keep the surprise out of her voice.
Luscious looks down at her ice pop and then back to Campbell, and when she does the green of her eyes is black and Campbell’s not sure anymore if what Luscious has to say is anything that she wants to know.
Luscious smiles a bit, a crooked sneer, really. It would be wise, she thinks, to tell Campbell everything. Tell her about the evil men do to young girls and women. She bites off the head of her ice pop and leans back into her chair. It would be good, she thinks again, and her head bounces in agreement.
* * *
Before she was Luscious, she was Rita.
Little wide-eyed Rita, daughter of Erasmus and Bertha Smith, hardworking people who knew God, but not every Sunday.
They drank some and sometimes too much. Played their Billie Holiday records for the neighborhood, whether their neighbors wanted to hear them or not. Loved more than they fought, but fought just the same, had the scars and broken knickknacks to prove the latter, Rita to prove the first.
Before she was Luscious with a number and a cell mate, she was Rita of Detroit. Rita of Cadillac Avenue. Tall, redboned Rita, who swayed down the street on long lovely legs so well oiled, they gleamed. Rita with the green eyes and good hair that touched the middle of her back. Rita so fine, the white people forgot her thick lips and broad nose.
Before she was Luscious of Brooklyn, Luscious of Stanley Avenue, she was just Rita, minding her own business, who one day looked up into the eyes of her father’s best friend and saw something there that she’d seen only in the eyes of schoolboys and lately strange men who beckoned her and sometimes brushed their fingers against her arm when she ignored their calls.
Manny Evans, raven-colored, bald-headed, broad- smiling, pockets-heavy-with-nickels Manny.
Manny Evans, who had bounced Rita on his knee, had patted the top of her head, dropped nickels into her savings jar, the old mayonnaise jar Bertha had cleaned and put aside for just that purpose.
Manny Evans, who had women on corners and a .22 in his sock. He wore taps on the heels of his shoes, and the nickel-jingle-clickety-click sounds he made when he walked down the streets told everybody he was coming, but no one messed with him because they were sure about the .22 in his sock but suspicious about the breast pocket of his jacket or the nickel-free pocket of his pants.
Rita had always liked the way his head shone, but as she got older she began to appreciate his color, so black and smooth. She found herself thinking about his shoulders and the gold pinky ring he wore, the one with the black onyx stone. “Black like me,” he said, “strong like me.”
Rita filling out in places, eyes greener now, hair loose instead of pulled back, stockings replacing kneesocks, ears pierced, and Rita all the time licking her lips, keeping them moist, keeping them shiny.
Manny Evans dropping paper money in her savings jar instead of nickels, wanting to pat her ass instead of the top of her head, wanting to bounce her on his knee again and maybe on something else.
He visits on Saturday nights. Comes by with a bottle of whiskey after checking on his women, collecting money, and laying his hands on people who’ve allowed their eyes to slide over and past him when he called out to them, “You got my money, niggah?” Erasmus and Manny drink, smoke Pall Malls, and play dominoes while Bertha talks to Adele from next door. Adele, tall like a man, with hands that wrinkled early and callused two years ago on the palms.
Before she was Luscious on parole and scrubbing floors for white folk in Indian Village, she was Rita, and that’s what was written on her bedroom door in big black letters so Manny couldn’t have mistaken it for the bathroom. But he did.
His fly is down, and his dick is already in his hands when he stumbles in, stinking of liquor and bleary eyed. He apologizes when he walks in on her in the middle of drying her just-bathed body, but he don’t jump back and close the door or drop his eyes in shame. He just stares at her, and his hand, the one not holding on to his dick, reaches behind him and pushes the door shut.
His eyes enjoy her face and then her naked breasts and finally the thin line of black hair that begins two inches below her navel.
Before she was Luscious, she was Rita, confused and held down in her own bed by strong hands. Those same hands covering her mouth, roughly touching and rubbing. Those hands are rough, like the steel wool Bertha scrubs the pots with, and Rita believes that her skin will shred beneath them. She can’t imagine a more painful feeling, and then she doesn’t have to because he’s inside her, pushing into the place where only her index finger had ever been.
Rita, before she was Luscious, her mind bending and her body coming apart on the inside and Manny not allowing her to scream or breathe, and when he’s done he don’t even look at her—he just looks down at the bloodstains on his pants and tucks back in the paper money sticking out of his pockets, but he leaves the nickels that have fallen onto the bed.
Manny Evans finds the bathroom just fine now and returns to Erasmus, his Pall Malls, and liquor, and proceeds to win three more domino games.
* * *
Rita buds in the spring along with the knurly