Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever (19 page)

“I see.”
He cups my face with his hand and runs his thumb over the apple of my cheek. “You know punishment is necessary when you are willfully disobedient, right?”

“Yes, and I should have begged your forgiveness before the scene, but that wooden horse was all I could think about.”

“And I should have explained to you that when a punishment session is over and all is forgiven, it must be forgotten, too. It’s toxic to dwell on the negative things after it’s been handled.”

“I’ll remember that.” And I would, because I don’t want to hate him. I knew
this was all part of the deal
going into this.

We lay quiet another few seconds. “Why do you think you prefer this lifestyle over a more conventional relationship?”

“I watched my father lose my mother to ovarian cancer. He’s a strong man, but Nathan and I saw him brought to his knees. I don’t want to care that much only to lose the person you care for most in the world.”

“Tristan, life is full of pain, heartache, and loss. All those emotions are inevitable
—
like death and taxes. We don’t get to choose what we experience in life. If they happen to us, we just have to endure as best we can, and learn lessons from them.”

“I paid a psychiatrist a small fortune to tell me exactly what you just said, but even he couldn’t convince me to change my mind about the lifestyle.”

A tear slips from my eye and drops onto the pillow. What the fuck is wrong with my emotions tonight? I wipe my eye and clear my throat.
Buck up, Keisha.
You want Tristan to think you’re some kind of wuss?
My Triple-G scolds me.
Go on and get you some of that,
my Fairy Hoochie Mama says. I ignore them both.

“You could have a balance
—
a compromise, can’t you?”

“Some people do,” he says. “Nathan wants to, but I never have. I don’t think I ever will. I know you want a committed relationship someday, and I won’t stand in your way when you decide you do.”

“I’m not in any hurry, but I do want it to happen sometime before I’m thirty. I have about five years and a few months to find Mr. Happily Ever After.”

“Until then, you’re mine,” he says and takes me into his arms. Tristan kisses me until I’m clamoring to get his pajama bottoms off.

“Are you sure you’re not too sore?” he asks.

“No, I just feel like I came down too hard on a bicycle seat. I’m good to go.”

“Well then.” He pushes his pajamas off, then slides my nightie over my head, and we bury ourselves in the softness of his Egyptian cotton sheets. Tristan even lets me have an orgasm, or two.

~*~

133

Tristan and I settle
again
into a routine. Through the week, I stay at my pla
ce with Jada, but on weekends, i
t’s all Tristan, all the time. Before we know it, another six months have passed. KSR on the south side is profitable, and the north side location is scheduled to open in a couple of weeks. We’ve signed fourteen acts that we’re marketing. First, regionally in the midwest, then nationwide, with an eye to go world-wide in a year.

Somehow, through a stroke of luck, or whatever, I’ve managed to avoid any harsh punishments
since the Jorge debacle
. The most I’ve had to endure is withheld orgasms, spankings with paddles, from the size of a wooden spoon to several inches wide
, and a plastic ice scraper
. I’ve also had my nipples clamped by tiny plastic, or metal clothespin looking items. The funny thing is, when Tristan uses the clamps on me, my nipples become hypersensitive to his mouth, and I have multiple orgasms.

Tristan also loves trussing me up in bondage gear. I have a black patent leather dickey—his favorite—that only covers me from my neck to the top of my thighs, and only in the front. Tristan fastens the straps and buckles them around me to keep it in place. Usually I wear that with a set of patent leather
thigh-high
boots, and we do role plays that involve him
pretending to be a John, a submissive, or just himself. More often than not, he
tak
es
me from behind as he caresses me in front through the leather. Even though I’m an average height girl, I feel like an Amazon when I wear that get-up.

One Sunday morning, Tristan and I begin the day with vanilla sex in his bedroom. We lay panting next to each other, spent, and I’m bummed that I have to leave him. I’m meeting my mother today at church, and then joining her for Sunday dinner. Tristan has commandeered all my weekends lately, even Sunday afternoons, and I need to do better about getting over to see her again.

The last few times my mother and I were together, she has come over to the studio during working hours, passive-aggressively letting me know she didn’t like how I’d fallen into the habit of neglecting my familial duties.

Mama wouldn’t sit down; she just looked around my office with her nose halfway turned up, as if it smelled. “Keisha, this really don’t seem like your style. Did those white partners of yours get someone to decorate this place?”

Tristan loaned us the most sought-after decorator in Chicago to get KSR all gussied up. Mama didn’t have to, but I like what he’d done to the place.

“In fact, Mr. White did recommend a renowned designer for us.”

She touched an African wood sculpture in the corner. “See this here? It looks kind of sad. And scary. If I woke up and saw this thing in the middle of the night it would give me the heebie-jeebies.”

“Then I guess it’s good you don’t have to wake up and see it,” I deadpanned.

She couldn’t rile me about the decorating, so she tried another tactic. “Pastor Johnson been asking about you. You know how he’s always preaching about idols, and how we shouldn’t let any other Gods come before our maker.”

I looked up from editing a music score. “You miss me coming to church, don’t you? Not Pastor Johnson so much, right.”

She pouted. “Well, ever since you and Jada got these new white partners, you been working so hard like this job’s gon’ save you, and forget coming to church.”

“Mama, what is this really about?”

“Come to church next Sunday, for dinner after, and I’ll tell you.”

“Okay, Mama.”

Trying to convince her to tell me before then was ineffectual. There was no point, so I agreed.

I feel a soft caress trace the curve from my torso to my hip. “Penny for your thoughts.”

I laugh. “Tristan, what does that mean anyway? I’ve heard lovers say that in movies and shit, but I didn’t know real people said things like that.”

He pulls me close, spooning me, his morning stubble tickling the side of my neck. “In modern usage, it’s often stated as an indirect way of asking what someone is thinking, or what’s bothering them. Literally translated, it means I’m offering to pay to hear your thoughts. Although generally, the person asking just wants to know what the listener is thinking about and is showing interest through a symbolic offer of payment.” 

“Thank you for that explanation, Mr. Wordy.”

“I would pay for your thoughts with no negotiation today. You’ve been preoccupied this weekend, and I want to know why.”

“I’m going to have to cut our time together short today. My Mama’s been missing me on Sundays. Either that, or she’s just weird.”

“How so?”

“She’s been by several times in the last couple of weeks, dropping hints the best cryptologist in the world couldn’t decipher. Finally, last week she said she had something to tell me, and she wouldn’t do so unless I came to church and Sunday dinner with her today.”

“Then let’s go see her.”

I turn in his arms. He looks all matter-of-fact and gung-ho at the same time.
How does he do that?
“That’s not a good idea.”

“Why?”

“Because my Mama doesn’t know about our arrangement. And trust me, she would
not
understand.”

“You can introduce me as your friend. It’s no big deal.”

“Think about it. If I introduced my business partner as my ‘friend,’ she would know, in a heartbeat, we were fucking.”

“Is that so bad? You’ll be twenty-five next month. She’s got to know you’re sexually active.”

“That may be true, but I’m not about to flaunt it around her.”

“Then we’ll tell her I’m your boyfriend.”

“What? That would leave nothing to her already vivid imagination.” I sit up and roll off the bed. “I’m going to take a shower. Will you call your car service for me?”

I leave him on the bed, leaning on one elbow, looking at me like a wounded little puppy, and Tristan is no one’s wounded little puppy.

#

I put on a modest black and white Sunday dress with pumps, grab my overnight bag and purse, and dash to meet the driver downstairs. I should’ve known, when I had the bedroom to myself to get dressed after my shower, Tristan was up to something. When I enter the foyer, there he is dressed in a black retro Members Only-looking jacket, a nice shirt, and slacks.

“Tristan!”

“What?” He swings his keys in a circle on his finger.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m driving you to church, then to your mother’s.” His jaw is set in that Domly way, so I don’t even try to argue with him.

“C’mon, before you make me late.”

It is my Triple-G’s turn to do cartwheels all over her tiny gymnastics floor, and my
Fairy Hoochie M
ama frowns with two unenthusiastic thumbs down.

The church is packed, but Tristan and I spot my Mama up in the choir loft where she usually sits, and she waves at us although her eyebrows go into her hairline when she sees Tristan.

Tristan is so out of his element. The lively singing and shouting is certainly not his usual Sunday experience. His church services as a youth were in Chapel at his elite Academy, and high church with rumbling, million-dollar pipe organs at the vast Episcopal Church downtown. He’s been a lapsed church-goer since college. However, he seems to find church in the
African American
experience fascinating. He even gets into the handclapping and singing as the service progresses. I am floored.

We wait outside at the top of the church steps for Mama. Divested of her choir robe, she comes strolling out the door to meet us.

“Hey, Mama.” I hug her neck, kiss her cheek, then gesture to Tristan. “You remember my
b
—”

“Boyfriend,” Tristan interjects with a smile
that could mount a successful
toothpaste ad.

I scowl at him, but finish, “Business partner, Tristan White.”

“Mmm Hmm,” she says, looking up at him through narrowed eyes. Even so, she offers him a hand to shake, but Tristan does her one better. He bends and kisses her hand like a courtly gentleman.

“It’s wonderful to see you again, Mrs. Beale,” he says. “The singing was divine, and more so because you lend the choir your lovely voice.”

Mama is hard-pressed to be impolite to him after such flattery. She giggles like a schoolgirl.

“These pipes aren’t as clear as they used to be, but
baby
they can still blow,” she says.

Tristan laughs with her as though they’ve been friends forever. When Mama’s laughter peters out she looks at me. “I’m glad the reason I never see you is that you have a boyfriend, and ain’t on that stuff.”

Tristan’s forehead crinkles, and he mouths, “What stuff?”

I roll my eyes. “Anytime her children’s behavior
changes, Mama thinks we’re on drugs.”

“Ah,” Tristan says. “I can vouch for her, then. She’s not on any stuff. If she was, I would stage an intervention.”

“Stop fueling her paranoia,” I say. “You’re not helping here.”

“And you stop using your fifty-dollar college words to describe my state of mind,” Mama snaps at me
, t
hen turns her attention to Tristan. “So, who are your people,
Tristan
?” Mama asks this as if she’s actually going to know if he tells her.

“My father is Charles Xavier White. He owns distilleries throughout the midwest. My mother was Alyssa Elizabeth White, nee Carrollton. She died from ovarian cancer when my brother and I were thirteen.”

“I’m so sorry you lost your mother at such an early age. Children need their mothers.”

“Thank you. I miss her every day.”

Mama looks at me, then takes a step down. “You might learn something from this young man.”

Tristan, smiling like he’s just been blessed by the Pope, offers Mama his arm and they descend the steps leaving me with my mouth hanging opening on the top step.