One Safe Place (3 page)

Before the 1960s, in the rural South, many household still had wood stoves, well water, the life-threatening, overtly corrupt police, and bigoted justice systems. Former soldiers took their G.I. Bill money and bought nice houses in neighborhoods that had indoor plumbing for the first time in their lives. They could sit on a toilet inside their own home, and then take a hot bath in that same room: no more outhouses. Some houses in the Northwest had two inside toilets.

Coming home after World War II and later, the Korean War, to big cities like Seattle and Tacoma and their surrounding areas,
black men and women could cook on gas or electric stoves and had heat coming through vents or hot water radiators. Former soldiers could bring their families up from the South. The migration of brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, cousins, and girlfriends to Seattle and Tacoma is how many blacks came to live in the Northwest.

In the Northwest, Negro children went to schools with other kids who did not look like them. They sat next to them; they played sports and music with other races and religions, and learned more in the schools. Some went to local colleges or trade schools. The police are corrupt anywhere, but were at least in the Northwest, they were not hunting you down with white hoods.

Most thought, “Why should I go back down South and deal white-hooded white men, threats of lynching, and having to cross the street when a white woman walked on the same side of the street?” Black men found that they could stay on the same side of the street; they could even party, date, or marry any woman, whether Asian, Native American or even white…for the most part. Racism had, and has, its cancerous veins. Southern blacks still found them- selves not equal, but the whites in the Northwest had better hearts or less violent attitudes than what people of color had dealt with down South.

My grandfather's vintage stereo with a high-end tube amplifier and turntable, and all of its speakers encased in beautiful walnut is in the living room. I hear pops and clicks from the record playing along with bongos, and a mesmerizing organ driving thick bass, horns, and strings. Curtis Mayfield's voice enters and sings of a runaway child.

Evita, who had taken her dark nipple away from my lips, peeks in the room. “Is that too loud for you?”

“Turn it up,” I tell her, as my first word of the day. She knows that's one of my favorite LPs,
Superfly
by Curtis Mayfield.

She sways to the music as her always covered, very African American ass comes to the nightstand and removes an empty bottle of Bootlegger's Black Beer. I watch her upside-down question-mark ass walk out of the room. Her hips slam dust particles with each step she takes.

I've known Evita for thirty-plus years. We have slept in the same bed. I have smelled her scent. I have held her close. I have never seen between her thighs. I have not tried. She said no, and that's the way it's been.

As a teenager, she was my first sexual experience. Evita let me watch her fingers move under her panties, but she didn't remove them. It made me go crazy, and I stroked myself so hard I thought I might yank my skin off. At some point her voice wheezed as her body jerked. She turned over onto her stomach and pulled her panties down just far enough to expose her bubble butt. Seeing the long crease between her ass cheeks made me animalistic. I straddled her ass, and humped her and stroked my hardness. She knew how to seductively move her ass as if she was experienced. She was. She made it clear; I could not put my hardness in her pussy. She kept her hand cupped over her pussy.

She did offer her asshole. Evita took her other hand and spread her ass for me to see, and I thought about it, but my lack of experience had me confused about what to do. All I knew to do for sure was to masturbate, and so I did, and came for my first time. I groaned to the depths of one of the volcanic mountains nearby while my cum ran down the crease of her ass, and disappeared under her cupped hand covering her pussy.

That happened after a time I had rescued her. I guess she was rewarding me.

Every once in a while we crawl in the same bed, like now, and act like an old couple whose sex life is over. But we hold each other as if we had the best orgasms a man and woman have ever experienced.

I have never tasted her sweetness. She says it will ruin what we have. I have never understood that, but you don't pressure someone you love…right? After so many years, I never even think about sex with her.

We don't have a sad affair concerning us never having had sex; as a matter of fact, she has recited the rap part of Prince's “Lady Cab Driver” many times:

“This is for the women, so beautifully complex

This one's for love without sex.”

I always laugh, and think of how I've had sex with many other women, and have sex right now with only one, but Evita and I make love in a way that will always be reserved for her, a safe place. She is the one for love with no sex, and I have another for love and sex.

Damaged goods. In her early twenties, she had a boyfriend, a man much older than her. She wanted out of the relationship; he beat her and cut her from her skin on down to her soul. He broke a wine bottle, sliced her all the way through, and inserted lifelong wickedness into her womanly parts. With the boyfriend passed out in a drunken stupor, and her life slipping away with each pulse of blood pumping out her body, she found the strength to call me. I just happened to be home on a summer college break.

I arrived to find a dying Evita, brave in spirit, but with an almost lifeless body. Before I arrived, all she could do was wrap her lower body in sheets. The sheets were so bloody, I wanted to remove them and put other clean towels and sheets around her, but she begged me not to. Her boyfriend had mutilated her to the point that she'd rather die than for me to see what he had done.

I got her to the hospital, and now many years later she is here, living in one of my houses. He sliced one of her breasts, but she made the best of the disfigurement. She had vines tattooed over the long scar, with hearts hanging as the fruit, and blossoming flowers and multicolored flower buds waiting to bloom attached to the vines. One wilting, unopened black rose, with teardrops falling, is tattooed over a scar near her navel. As far as I can tell, the teardrops keep flowing past her waistline; no telling how far the teardrops fall. She lives, but a lot of her heart died years ago.

Wilted. The ex-boyfriend, God rest his soul. I'm sure I sent him to go live with Satan. His ass is burning now and forever more for killing a part of Evita's soul. One may ask, “Doesn't that make you judge and jury?” I believe in justice, but not a justice system set forth in laws put in place by so-called impartial men. Judges, lawyers, and the police have motives different from mine. The money they make from the jobs they create from crime is not my motivation. Real justice—my justice—is pure from any form of monetary gain. Call me an executioner, and I know what that is.

I'm a former bullet catcher who's fortunate that I never had to catch one. Nowadays, I catch pain for others and fix troubles for the intended targets. Sometimes trouble remains, but the bull's-eye is eliminated. Sometimes my justice is purely avenging, and sometimes it's to prevent me from avenging on a level that only God and the devil understand.

I stare at the light coming through the curtain. I can't see anything clearly, but I know what's out there. I smell the ocean, and hear waves and seagoing vessels on Puget Sound. From the front of the house here on Alki Beach, the islands are to the west and downtown Seattle is to the east. I know what is out there. People making the world go around; some wanting to spin in the wrong direction.

I know a beautiful woman who is partly dead inside. I know she is spinning like a warped record, and sometimes the needle has to be moved manually. Then she sings:

“This is for the women, so beautifully complex

This one's for love without sex”

And for me, I love her no matter what.

Evita calls me by my nickname, PB, for Purple Black. I'm a light- brown-skinned man, the shade of honey spread thin over white bread. Under my right eye, I have a small birth mark. It resembles a grape stain, and it's a dark purple, wine color. As a teenager, a few started calling me Purple Black, aka PB. My birth name is Psalms Black.

I'm watching Evita as she comes back and forth into the room while she makes my breakfast.

“PB, I may go to Atlanta next week, to hang out with Esperanza,” she says to me. Her expression is asking me to not ask or say anything. I didn't plan on saying anything—she is free to do what she wants to do. That look was really more about her wanting me to say something.

Evita's slippers
swish-swish
away, and my eyes stay glued to her ass as Curtis Mayfield sings, “Give Me Your Love.” Being close to her is confusing at times to my sense of responsibility, but at least with her somewhere near me, I know she's in one safe place.

A
long Lake Washington, bits of sunrise crept around the edges of the curtains into the Dandridge house. Meeah and Tylowe lived on Lake Washington, a body of water that was twenty-two miles long in the middle of urban Seattle and surrounded several other smaller, suburban cities.

Meeah reached for a remote control. Holding a button down, the grand master bedroom's motorized curtains lifted by rolling up. Floor-to-ceiling windows with a 170-degree view of the lake entered with the eastern sunrise. The brightness reflected off the serene lake and the hardwood floors.

Tylowe opened his eyes to the view of him and Meeah. A mirror above the bed reflected him covered up, but his wife's beautifully naked body lay on top of the covers. For the beauty he viewed, he put another man in prison and gained the legal and moral rights to love her. She was as beautiful as the day he first crossed paths with her ten years ago, on the end of an open-air pier in Vancouver, B.C. Now her brown, leaf-colored skin had gained some freckles—angel kisses on the bridge of her nose and under her eyes. The freckles highlighted Meeah's natural beauty, and Tylowe loved kissing her face.

A few added pounds had spread throughout her body, but that also increased her sexiness in his eyes. Ten years ago, she had long,
straight hair, but now she had gone natural. If one looked, a few strands of white hair could be found in her mane, but not many. On most nights, Tylowe buried his face into her hair as the two spooned and slept. The softness and scent of the Jamaican oils acted as a sleeping agent to sweet dreams.

The mirror reflected her naked body stirring. Her fingers roamed her husband's chest, moved up to his face, and traced his handsome features. His eyes stayed pinned to the mirrored reflection above, enamored with her curves and how her body movements easily persuaded his heart to push blood faster throughout his body. Her ass teasingly swayed and rose, then slowly humped the air. One hand reached back and squeezed her ass for him to see in the mirror above. Her fingernails dug in, then she provocatively released and moved her hand underneath herself. She arched her back even more, and slapped her pussy lips. She angled herself knowing he could see. Her finger slid inside her wetness, and played for him to see that it felt good. She gasped and lowered her ass. Meeah moved closer to her husband and placed her head on his chest, and placed that wet finger under his nose. He kept staring at her body in the mirror, and he took in her scent. Blood moved throughout his body faster.

She moved her body up so she could place her lips near his ear. “It seems your ride to Vancouver tired you, honey, but Mama wants Daddy this morning.” She whispered in Tylowe's ear, then flicked her tongue on the side of his face. He had avoided talking much and interacting with his wife since last night after she'd picked up him and Psalms from the train station.

In the morning, they usually woke up each other's bodies with kissing, touching, and more. Tylowe and Meeah could be the world's model of dedicated lovers, bringing joy to each other with no limits.

Tylowe made no effort two days before, and he didn't touch her yesterday. Something didn't register. This was happening more often. Meeah excused this time to the fact that he'd left so early to go riding with Psalms to Vancouver, and had come back so late. But, this morning, Meeah wanted some loving to get her day off to a good start. She wanted to feel his warm, soft skin creating friction between her thighs. Years of being together had not diminished their desires for hardcore sex.

She worked to remove the covers from his lower body and placed her leg over his. He felt her wet heat on his thigh as she mock humped his leg. Lifting her breasts, her fingers squeezed her nipple for him to see the firm darkness; she signaled for him to suck on her.

Her voice teased. “Baby, I want you. It's been a couple days.” She pursed her lips, and leaned in close to his ear and repeated her desires again with more explicit verbiage. She wanted it hard and forceful. She wanted to submit to the weight of his body, and the push and pull of his strength.

As she wanted, she got it. He tossed her onto her back, and straddled her near her breasts with his ass barely touching her stomach. His legs bridged his weight from becoming too much. Leaning over, he slipped his tongue deep into her mouth. The kiss she wanted rushed blood to her lips, and her eyes squeezed tightly. She felt his hardness increase in weight as it grew longer and wider between her breasts.

He lifted up and smiled. “So you want me, huh?”

She nodded her head while craning her eyes to stare at his hardness between her breasts. Meeah opened her mouth and teased his eyes with her tongue licking the air. Tylowe slid his hard and wide dick head between Meeah's lips, and he felt the wet warmth of her mouth. She felt him grow even thicker. She cupped his
balls gently, and the warmth of her mouth and palm of her hand made him go faster and more forcefully.