Baby Brother's Blues (10 page)

“What I need is to get my black ass in out of the cold before I freeze my dick off.”

The man laughed, leaned over, and popped the lock on the door. “Well, we can’t have that, now can we? Get in…”

16

T
his is exactly what Juanita said would happen,
General thought, sitting in the car outside Blue and Regina’s house, waiting for sunrise. She had promised him a sign, one she said he probably wouldn’t believe at first, and she had sure done that. He just wished he could be certain before he made a move. Was this little stripper with the heart-shaped birthmark and the supernatural behind really the medium Juanita was going to use to send him a message from
out there
? And if she was, just how close was he supposed to get to the messenger?

He smiled to himself, imagining Juanita looking down at him trying to figure this shit out. They used to laugh at how what they were doing would look from the outside. Juanita would tease him that he was barely legal and he’d call her his old lady. Mostly they would go to New Orleans or Atlantic City, rent a suite, and spend three days at a time making love, eating room service, and gambling.

Blue didn’t like to gamble, but Juanita did, so General traveled with her as escort and bodyguard. They’d check into their separate rooms and then later she’d knock on his door, giggling like a schoolgirl at their elaborate subterfuge, but enjoying every minute. He did, too. They hadn’t planned any of this adventure, but how could they? How do you plan for your best buddy’s mother being the true love of your life?

At eighteen, what he knew about Juanita was mostly that Old Man Hamilton had been a cruel and domineering man, notorious for the frequency and brutality of his beatings. He’d attack his wife when Blue was at school or somewhere working, and then disappear for a week or two until she could talk Blue out of killing him. That’s how it started for Juanita and General. Blue was at choir rehearsal. Mr. Hamilton was drunk. When his wife tried to leave the house to go to work, he accused her of having an affair, beat her, tore her clothes off, pushed her out into the street half-naked, and told her to run for her life.

General was coming home from football practice and had on his varsity jacket. It was just starting to get dark as Juanita stumbled off the porch and ran down the street in his direction. He remembered being too surprised to look away from her bare breasts and shredded panties, but he ripped off his jacket as she approached him, not sure if she would stop or keep running. Mr. Hamilton had gone back inside the house, but Juanita hadn’t looked over her shoulder to see where he was. She was still running. General held out the jacket as she ran by so that if she wanted to, she could just grab it and keep moving.

When Juanita saw her son’s friend dangling the jacket in front of her like a caution flag, she slowed to a trot then stopped in front of him, panting and trembling. That was when she looked over her shoulder to be sure her husband wasn’t following her, then turned her terrified eyes back to General. He couldn’t tell if she recognized him or not. Her teeth were chattering and her nipples were puckered up from the cold.

He hated himself for looking,
but Mrs. Hamilton was fine.
He had never realized it before. “It’s me, Miz Hamilton, General Richardson from down the street. Take my jacket, okay?”

General draped it around her shoulders, careful not to touch her body. She clutched the jacket around her, opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. She took a few steps forward like she had to be on her way, but then her knees wobbled, and if he hadn’t reached out and grabbed her arm, she would have fallen to the pavement. She slumped against him like a sack of flour, and even if he was eighteen, already six foot two, and in the best shape of his young life, he stumbled trying to hold up the sudden deadweight of her body.

A frantic glance around for assistance showed him only his own empty block. His parents were both working late shifts and Blue was nowhere in sight. He couldn’t just leave her outside, the shape she was in, so he half carried, half dragged her to his house, dropped her on his mother’s living-room couch, and stood there wondering what to do next. Juanita huddled on the sofa, weeping softly. His jacket only partially covered her bare breasts in the badly ripped bra and he was horrified to realize he was getting an erection looking at Blue Hamilton’s mother’s breasts!

He took the stairs two at a time and grabbed the top sheet off his bed and took it down to where she was still trying to cover herself with his jacket. She had clasped it around her chest, but her panties were barely covering her behind, much less her long, slender thighs.
Damn, she was fine,
General thought.
Mr. H. must be a damn fool!
He wondered how old she was as he handed her the sheet, which she wrapped around her body gratefully. A lump on her forehead was getting redder and angrier-looking by the minute. He always kept an ice bag in the refrigerator for after football practice and he went to get it now.

“Put this on your head,” General said, handing her the cold pack.

She looked startled. “What?”

“You’ve got a knot there,” he said, pointing. “The cold will keep down the swelling.”

She reached for the ice bag and the sheet gapped enough for him to see the curve of her left breast against his jacket. He wondered if it would smell like her when he got it back.

“Thanks,” she said, wincing slightly as she held it against her head obediently.

He didn’t know what else to do, so he just stood there, looking at her, wondering if he should try to find Blue and tell him Juanita was hiding out in his living room. Before he could decide, Mrs. H. put the ice bag down and looked at him.

“What time is it?” she said.

He looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes to four.”

“Shit!”
she said, jumping up immediately. “I gotta get to work! If I’m late again that bitch will fire me for sure.” She was still holding the sheet around her as she headed for the door.

“Wait, Miz H.,” General said quickly. “You can’t go…
like that.
”

She stopped and looked down at his jacket and the sheet as if she had forgotten they were her only attire, and then back at him helplessly.

“What am I gonna do?” she wailed. “He won’t let me back in the house to get my clothes. He wants me to get fired. He’s crazy! He’s crazy and he’s mean. One day he’s gonna kill me and then what am I gonna do?”

He resisted pointing out that her options would be pretty much over at that point since she was right. Mr. H. was a mean drunk and nobody knew it better than she did. That’s when she dropped the tangled sheet to the floor and started to cry like the world was coming to an end and she had to cry for all the losses and all the tears and all the pain there ever was anywhere. He had never seen anyone cry like that. It was a misery so deep the sound of it threatened to destroy them both.

He reached out and grabbed her before he knew he was going to, pulled her close, and just stood there with his big, young arms around her while she clung to him like he was the only thing standing between her and the end of the world. General’s erection, oblivious to the details of the moment, rose to the challenge and urgently pressed itself against Juanita’s body. If she felt it, she gave no sign. Even better, she made no move to step away. Gradually her sobbing stopped, but she continued to hold him tightly around the waist as if they were slow dancing to an old-school tune and she wasn’t going anywhere until the song ended.

That was fine with General. When she began to rub her pelvis gently against his now-unavoidable erection, he responded in kind, but let her set the pace. He was not a virgin, but his sexual experiences had been limited to hurried moments with girls his own age, worried about getting pregnant or tarnishing their reputations. This kind of sex, if that’s what it was they were getting ready to do, was something new. Something mysterious and desperate and wild. He reached down and ran his hand over Juanita’s half-naked behind and the smoothness of her skin almost made him come right there in his favorite blue jeans. She moaned softly.

He knew Blue would kill him if he ever found out, but he’d never tell and he was pretty sure Miz H. wouldn’t either. Especially when she reached down, unzipped his pants and reached in with her small, cool hand. General hoped he wouldn’t do or say the wrong thing, because whatever they were doing was driving him crazy.

He leaned his head down until his lips were touching her ear. Her hand was still in his jeans. “Tell me what you want,” he whispered urgently. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“Make love to me, General,” she whispered. “Will you make love to me?”

The fact that she called him by his name only heightened his desire. “Oh, Miz Hamilton,” he moaned. “I will.”

He carried her upstairs to the bedroom where he had masturbated more times than he could count since crashing into puberty, laid her down gently on his twin bed under the poster of Pam Grier, and grabbed a condom from under the mattress, where he always kept one,
just in case.
There in the midst of his football trophies and shoulder pads and back issues of
Sports Illustrated,
he let her guide him into her body and made love to her with all the inexperienced, hopeful, fumbling sexual energy of his eighteen years. He tried unsuccessfully to keep up with the thrusting of her hips until she finally pulled him in so deep that all he could do was close his eyes and let her take whatever she wanted from him, even though he wasn’t sure what it was.

When he rolled away from her, speechless and spent, a few minutes later, she sat up and smiled at him slowly.

“Now, General Richardson, do you think your mother has a dress I could borrow so I can get my ass to work?”

They used to laugh about that first time. Each confessed that they felt a strong connection even in the midst of all the drama, but figured this was a onetime moment.
What else could it be?
Juanita was married to a madman and her only son was General’s best friend. They made no mention to Blue of what had happened, and when they passed each other in the street or at the neighborhood drugstore, they mumbled a greeting and hurried on, unable to meet each other’s eyes. That went on for a month and a half.

Then Blue did a sold-out showcase that established him as a star on the rise at just shy of seventeen. He netted a minitour to ten clubs in Georgia and two just across the Alabama line. The producer asked him if he could start the next night in Macon, and Blue told him he could. Flush with success and their plans to go on the road for the first time, General and Blue burst into Juanita’s kitchen to share the good news. They found her sitting next to the body of her husband, who was slumped over at the kitchen table with a butcher knife through his heart.

They didn’t have to ask what had happened. That was the first time Blue and General disposed of a body together. The next day, with General at the wheel of Mr. Hamilton’s prized Buick, the three of them hit the road. Blue sat beside General in the front seat, Juanita sat alone in the back, watching the highway whizzing by, breathing easy for the first time in a long time.

No one who knew Blue’s father reported him missing and no one was sorry when he stopped showing up at his usual haunts. There seemed to be a sigh of relief that he had gone somewhere—
anywhere—
else. No inquiries were made and no detectives came to call. Caught up in the whirlwind of their first tour, the three travelers let the memory of his evil ways fade from their minds like yesterday’s news. Somewhere in the middle of that tour, General stepped into Juanita’s life like Muhammad Ali stepping into the ring with George Foreman and she welcomed him with open arms.

Of course, General had been with other women since she died, but nothing serious. He was still in love with Juanita. His heart didn’t really have room for anybody else. As far as General was concerned, the jury was still out on all that past-lives stuff, but he hoped it was true. He needed three or four lifetimes to love that woman the way she deserved to be loved. He needed at least
one
more just so they could come out of the shadows and proclaim their happiness to the world.

Just thinking about Juanita made his heart hurt. He took a deep breath.

“Is this the sign, baby?” he whispered. “Is she the sign?”

The night around him was so quiet he could hear the wind rustling through the leaves of the huge magnolia tree in Blue’s front yard. As he watched, the breeze loosened one of the tree’s big blossoms. In the darkness, the petals were an almost ghostly white as they fluttered to the ground. General felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck as that same wind blew the smell of honeysuckle into the car, replacing the smell of men and black leather with a sensual sweetness that was all female.

“All right, baby,” he said softly, ignoring the tears that were prickling at the corners of his eyes. “I hear you.”

At sunrise, he pulled the Lincoln slowly away from the curb and headed for Montre’s.

17

G
eneral recognized Brandi immediately when the back door of Montre’s opened and two women walked out, laughing and talking like city government workers on their way to the cafeteria for a sausage biscuit and coffee at the start of another busy day. He was relieved to see that she was actually fine. He hadn’t been sure last night. It had been too dark in Montre’s to tell. A lot of women look their best in low light, General thought, but this girl was made for sunshine. She had pulled her extensions back into a lazy ponytail, and when she turned in his direction, she looked like a kid. Without all the makeup, her skin glowed golden. He pushed the button and let the window down on his side of the car.

Both women noticed the car as they headed to a battered blue Chevrolet that had seen better days. Brandi recognized General at the wheel and touched her girlfriend’s arm.

“This is the dude I was telling you about,” she hissed. “Can you wait on me for a minute?”

“Sure, girl,” her friend whispered back, casting an appraising eye at the car. “Handle your business.”

Brandi wished she hadn’t taken off her makeup. She wanted to make a good impression. At least she had on her favorite skintight jeans and some heels. She took a deep breath and pushed her breasts forward like a shield.

“You up awful early,” she said, leaning down to grin at him through the open window.

“You working awful late.”

The closer she got, the finer she looked. This girl was way too high-class for Montre’s.

“Private party,” she said. “We don’t open until noon.”

“I’m General Richardson.”

She leaned a little farther into the window, resting her breasts on her crossed arms.

“Everybody knows who you are,” she cooed. “I’m Brandi.”

“Well,
Brandi,
would you like to have breakfast with me?”

“Breakfast?”
Her voice was as incredulous as if he’d invited her to the rodeo.

“Paschal’s all right?”

Brandi looked at General. “This ain’t no freaky shit about my birthmark, is it?”

He shook his head and hoped his smile was reassuring. “You remind me of someone I used to know. A friend.”

“How close a friend?”

“Close as you can get.”

“Well, I’m a working woman,” she said, running her tongue over her lips. “Is this a social call or a business arrangement?”

“I’ll be happy to pay for your time. As you already know, I am a very generous man.”

Brandi felt her stomach growl softly. She didn’t give a damn if she reminded him of his dead grandmother if he was going to feed her. She waved to her friend across the parking lot, who waved back with a grin.

“
Ah-iight, girl!
Don’t hurt nobody!”

Paschal’s was a five-minute ride from Montre’s. The restaurant offered only coffee and pastries in the morning, saving their culinary genius for the lunch and dinner crowd, but they made an exception for General and opened up the dining room. They had the whole place to themselves. He could tell Brandi was impressed as she slid into the booth and took off her denim jacket. Her breasts were bubbling out of her tight green halter top, but the waiter didn’t break as he took their order. He knew who General was, too.

She ordered home fries, two eggs over easy, sausage, bacon, and a large orange juice. General looked on in amazement then asked for black coffee.

“I thought you wanted to have breakfast,” she said.

“I wanted you to have breakfast,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I have to eat, too, does it?”

“Hell no, baby.” She grinned. “I can eat enough for both of us. It’s the dancing. It takes all the weight off of me if I’m not careful.”

The waiter came back with a large, frosted glass filled to the brim with Florida’s finest. Brandi gulped it greedily.

“How long you been dancing?”

She wiped the foam from her top lip, trying to decide whether or not to tell him the truth. For Brandi, that was always the question.
To lie or not to lie.
She looked at him and thought,
What the hell? Let’s try the truth and see if the big man can handle it.

“Since I was fourteen.”

“How come you never got married?”

“Married?”
Brandi snorted at the absurdity of the question. “Ain’t no niggas around here lookin’ for no wife. Besides, all the good ones are taken,
present company excepted.
”

“You think I’m a good one?”

“I know you are.”

“How’s that?”

“You feedin’ me, ain’t you?”

“Is that all it takes?”

“That’s as good a place to start as any.”

“Okay, then, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.” Her eyes were searching for the waiter. The juice had just whetted her appetite.

“What’s your real name?”

She stiffened a little. “I told you my name.”

“I’ll bet you fifty bucks your mama didn’t name you Brandi.”

That made her smile. “That’s a sucker bet. Okay, my mama named me Sarah after her grandmother. But when I started dancin’ professionally, people kept tellin’ me that didn’t sound like no stripper. So the manager of the place where I was workin’ named me Brandi. I told him I wanted it with an
i
not a
y
because I think that’s classier.” She frowned slightly. “You not gonna start callin’ me Sarah, are you?”

General shook his head. “No.”

“Good. I don’t feel like no Sarah after all this time bein’ Brandi.”

“Brandi’s fine,” he said as the waiter emerged from the kitchen, holding aloft a tray crowded with her breakfast and a pot of fresh coffee.

For the next ten minutes, conversation was impossible. Brandi ate every last morsel of food on the plate nonstop in tiny little bites. He had never seen anyone eat so much so fast. He felt like a soldier who had rescued a starving child wandering in a war zone, seeking sustenance. Watching her didn’t make him feel sexy. It just made him sad.
This girl was nothing like Juanita.

She finished the last bit of bacon with a satisfied smile and a ladylike belch that she stifled with her napkin.

“Would you like anything else?” he said, wondering where she would put it.

“No thanks.” She shook her head, then smiled seductively.
“Would you?”

There was no mistaking the point of the question, but he couldn’t have felt less like having sex with her. Trying so hard to see Juanita in Brandi had just made him miss the real one more.

“I’ve got some business to take care of,” he said. “Can I drop you somewhere?”

She looked disappointed. “We didn’t talk about your friend. The one I reminded you of.”

“Next time.” General stood up and dropped the money for the check, plus a generous tip on the table. He picked up his hat.

That’s one thing about those Hamilton niggas,
she thought.
They always clean.
In a sea of kids in baggy jeans and oversize white T-shirts, he looked like a grown man with prospects. She wasn’t prepared to let him go that easy. Who knew when he might slide back into Montre’s? Maybe tonight. Maybe never. She followed him out to the car.

“Where can I drop you?” he said again.

Brandi turned toward him. “What’s the matter, baby? Did I eat too much?”

The question made him feel bad. It wasn’t her fault that she wasn’t who he had wanted her to be.

“You didn’t do anything,” he said. “I’ve just got business.”

“Can you drop me at home?”

“Sure.”

She gave him the address, hoping the ride over would give her a chance to figure out a way to make him come in when they got there. She was living in one of those residence motels where you pay by the week for one room because you can’t save up enough for the deposit and the first month’s rent on an apartment. She had moved in after Madonna started acting funny about her having company at the house, like she hadn’t done her share of
emergency hookin’.
She hated the idea of taking a high-class
john
like General into that sad little room she was calling home, but she knew if she could just get him into bed, she wouldn’t have to worry about him coming back. Brandi was a highly skilled exotic dancer, but her pole dancing was nothing compared to her dizzying array of sexual tricks.

General was familiar with the place where Brandi was living. It was right off the interstate and the downtown bus to Five Points stopped outside the front entrance. No longer a stopover for families on their way to Disney World or salesmen trying to crack Atlanta’s market in one thing or another, it now housed people who were going nowhere fast. He felt sorry for her, living in a place like this. They pulled into a spot around the back and she pointed to the second floor.

“That’s me,” she said. “Number 227.”

The door to 229 was open and he could see a television flickering in the gloom.

“Will you come up for a minute?” she said. “I know you got business, but I want to show you something.”

He hesitated.

“No additional charge,” she said, smiling.

“Okay.” General knew it was probably a con, but he figured he owed her that much for trying to make her over into somebody else without her permission. He followed her up the stairs to her room, clocking the smell of curry and the sound of cooped up children.

“Excuse my mess,” she said apologetically, pushing open the door. In truth, the place was anything but messy. The bed was neatly made with a leopard-print spread that was clearly her own decorator touch. There were no clothes lying around, no half-eaten cartons of takeout, no empty soft-drink cans. On the desk was a half-pint of cheap scotch and two clean glasses. There was, over the whole room, the lingering smell of strawberry incense, probably to cover the curry, he thought. The combination made him a little queasy.

Brandi dropped her purse and coat on a rickety-looking desk chair. “Want a drink?”

“What did you want to show me?”

She looked at him for a minute, then opened the drawer in the nearest bedside table and pulled out a framed photograph. She looked at it for a minute without turning to face him.

“When you asked me about my birthmark, I thought… well, I thought you might like to see this.”

Brandi handed him the photograph and watched for his reaction. Putting two and two together, she figured his friend must have had a birthmark, too, and seeing hers brought back memories. Brandi wondered if the woman was dead or had just moved on. Wherever she was, if that mark had made him come back to Montre’s at six in the morning, this picture ought to put a smile back on his face.

General didn’t know what to expect, but even if he had, there was nothing he could have done to prepare himself. The photograph was a surprisingly artistic black-and-white nude shot of Brandi shaking her perfect ass at the camera and laughing over her shoulder like she knew exactly how good she looked. He could clearly see the heart-shaped mark that had first caught his eye,
and his heart.

The whole ride over here, he had tried to focus on why Brandi wasn’t his Juanita so he wouldn’t have to keep remembering the one way that she was exactly like her. The one mark they had in common, same size, same shape, same place on their bodies, as if an angel had kissed them both and sent them on their way. There was no way he could continue to deny that this was the sign he’d been looking for all these years.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, overwhelmed by his own emotions. Brandi sat down next to him and reached for his hand.

“You okay, baby?”

All he could do was nod. General didn’t know whether he was okay or going crazy. After all these years,
this was it
! The certainty of Juanita’s presence in the same universe he was moving around in comforted and excited him in equal measure. As if she could read his thoughts, Brandi squeezed his hand gently.

“Was she your woman?”

General nodded again. His mind was whirling.
Would being inside Brandi feel like being inside Juanita?
The sounds of the kids downstairs and the television next door faded away and he heard a roaring in his ears.

“Yes.” His voice cracked like a boy just entering manhood.

“Well, don’t you worry,” she whispered, giving his hand another squeeze and standing up to slip her jeans over her hips. “I’m gonna be your woman now.”

In the semidarkness, he let her push him back against that faux leopard’s spots and closed his eyes. Lying there, listening to the roaring in his ears, he could imagine it was Juanita’s mouth giving him so much pleasure; Juanita’s hands touching him, stroking him; Juanita’s body that welcomed him back inside where he had thought he would never be again.

Minutes later, when he called her by another woman’s name, Brandi wasn’t even surprised.