She opened the door to the small, old-fashioned mirrored cabinet mounted on the wall and removed a few of her favorite natural hair oils.
She poured a quarter-sized dollop into her palm, rubbed her hands together and began to massage the fragrant oils into her hair and scalp.
Candy had learned how to make her own soaps and oils during the course of one summer, as a young girl, from an older women who’d babysat her as her father worked.
The woman hadn’t had much money and the small change her father had been able to give the old woman to watch Candy had been needed and appreciated.
The skills the older woman had willingly passed on to Candy, she’d not forgotten.
It was a skill that came in handy when she began to create her own concoctions as a young teenager and sell them, often helping to make ends meet.
She was more than happy to share that talent with the girls at the youth center where she was the director, knowing many of them came from poor backgrounds.
Since wearing hair natural and using natural hair and skin products was the latest cool “nouveau culture” thing to do, she could teach them a useful skill. Also, they wouldn’t be made fun of by others because they couldn’t afford store-bought products.
Instead it was seen as cool to make something uniquely designed. Candy chuckled out loud about the change in times.
She continued to stare at her reflection, the smile sliding from her lips as she kept on massaging her scalp. She noticed how the movements of her hands on her hair caused her small breasts to rise and gently slap against each other.
Her gaze hesitantly dropped to her plum-colored nipples. They were beaded and stood stiff and proud, right in the middle of her dark areolas.
Slowly she dropped her hands and allowed them to brush over the small mounds, before she cupped their light weight in her hands. She imagined that was just how he would do it.
He’d never actually touched her breasts in real life. But in her dreams, he’d come close.
Deliciously so.
In fact, he’d come close to doing more than caressing her breasts this last time.
But not in real life. In real life her dream lover was a man who saw her as little more than an irritant. Someone he was forced to have dealings with. At least it was the impression Candy always got from him.
Whatever. His loss.
She forced negative thoughts away. She didn’t feel like treading down that path of no fulfillment from her dream lover, or his real life counterpart.
It was time to get ready for work anyway. No time for thoughts along those lines or she’d have to turn to Big Billy.
However, of late, Billy had provided her with little or no relief as she craved something more than what the plastic toy, no matter how many vibrating levels it boasted, could provide.
After she’d taken her shower, Candy grabbed the thick cotton towel and dried herself. She pulled out a small, lidded crock that sat in one of her baskets near her bathtub.
After she opened the lid to the crock, she scooped out a generous portion of the cocoa butter/shea butter blended smoothie she’d made herself.
The dry weather would ash her skin to death if she didn’t keep it moisturized, and her own homemade products kept it nice and supple, better than anything she could find over the counter.
She loved how the blended creams felt sliding over her skin as she anointed her arms, torso and legs, before recapping the crock and returning it to the basket.
She rewrapped the thick towel around her oiled body and walked back to her bedroom and toward her closet.
Candy stared at the contents of her closet for long moments, just trying to figure out what she’d wear for the day.
It wasn’t like she had that many choices. Her closet was filled with all very similar clothes. The main differences were the pattern and color.
The closet was filled with an assortment of long, loose-fitting dresses, a few pairs of jeans she’d had forever, what looked like a hundred T-shirts and tons of various colored and textured fabric.
Just fabric.
She wore her various fabrics most often. She’d stand with her legs spread apart so when she finished wrapping it, the fabric would swing natural and loose on her body. Holding both ends of the fabric in each fist, she’d then start wrapping the cloth around her body and end when the tips met, and knot it.
She’d first started wearing fabric in college, after sharing a room with an exchange student from Ghana, but had soon loved the style so much she adopted it as her own.
Candy had grown so used to wrapping herself, as her father once put it, that she never gave it much thought. Throw on a T-shirt, some chunky jewelry and she was good to go.
As the director of a girls’ recreation center, thankfully, formality in dress wasn’t a job requirement, or she’d be in trouble.
Growing up with a free-spirited parent, one who drifted from job to job, toting his small family with him, Candy had never given fancy clothes or designer labels much in the way of consideration.
Often as a child, she’d had little more than the clothes on her back and a few other garments stowed in her knapsack when they moved on to the next job, the next town…the next opportunity.
Today she opted to wear her luxury for the month: a new pair of jeans. She removed the jeans from the shelf in the closet and with near reverence ran a caressing hand over the material.
She rarely bought anything new and when she did, it generated a feeling of guilty pleasure. But this time she ignored the guilt and focused on the thrill of the purchase.
She grew tired of her self-inflicted guilt whenever she would buy some new thing or other, but old habits died hard.
She carefully removed the price tag from the waistband of the jeans, not wanting to rip a hole in the soft material. She set the jeans aside and reached back in the closet to withdraw one of her favorite T-shirts and donned it.
Before she eased the jeans up her legs and fastened the buttons on the low-riding waist, she tried to place the ends of the shirt inside but the ends didn’t quite make it and the gemstone in her belly ring showed.
She caught enough grief about her lack of conventionality without showing off one of her piercings, so she reluctantly removed the shirt and reached for another.
After putting on the second shirt, she nodded her head in self-approval. This one, although only fractionally longer, would do. It should stay in place, at least enough to cover her ring.
A loud purr and strong push against her legs made her look down. Russell was twining his large body around her legs.
“Are you hungry, big boy? Okay, okay, let Mama get her shoes and we can get us both something to eat, all right?” she both promised and asked.
She rooted around the closet for her Birkenstocks. Once she located them, at the back of her closet, she slid the comfortable shoes on her feet.
She turned and hefted the loudly purring cat into her arms and left the bedroom.
“And maybe you can convince Mama all she needs is a good man, a real man, and all her nocturnal longings will be a thing of the past. Hmm? What do you think, boy?”
The only answer the cat gave was to leap agilely from her arms, despite his massive size, and land gracefully at her feet. He quickly walked ahead of her toward the kitchen and breakfast, mewing so loudly he sounded more like a lion than a domesticated cat.
“Men are all the same. One thing on their mind, and unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be me. Dang it,” she muttered to the empty room at large, before, with a self-pitying sigh, she