Steel & Ice (24 page)

“
We’re right in the middle.”
Suddenly, it made sense why they would want him. He was the perfect
go-between for the big cities.

“
Yep. I didn’t know what
plans they had when they invited me to prospect. I didn’t know as
much about them as I thought. I was young and stupid and wanted to
be part of something that didn’t include spirit animals. But—“ J
sighed. He was struggling with the next part. He closed his eyes.
“They weren’t what I thought.” That was it. He was silent after
that, and I knew I wouldn’t get anymore from him.

“
How’d you end up back
here?”

“
Gramps got sick. I told
Prez I had to go to him. White folks are pretty mystified when I
bust out the Lakota shaman shit.” I punched him in the arm as he
smiled a cheeky grin. “I had about eighteen months with Gramps
before he passed. I went to St. Louis a couple times, as well as
KC, but the last six months or so I couldn’t leave him. We don’t
put our elders in nursing homes. He died at home, with
me.”

He must have seen the heart break in my eyes
because he waved it off, and kept going before I could say
anything. “Prez worked some stuff out, and wanted me to stay here.
I did club work here, and went to St. Louis or Kansas City every
couple months. I was glad. In those last months, Gramps explained
that the house and the pond had been in our family since before the
white men came. He told me I couldn’t let it go. There used to be
more, but by that time there was about ten acres left that hadn’t
been taken or Gramps was forced to sell to development companies.
Prez helped me keep the encroaching developers from taking anymore,
and I stay here now. He helped me out, but not without a price.
Everything has a price in his world.” I could hear him grinding his
teeth at that last sentence. “That’s the story. Is that
enough?”

I paused, thinking. “Yeah, that’s enough for
now. Are you in ‘feelings hour’ over load?”

He laughed. “Yeah. I want to know more about
what you have lived through, but not now.”

I grabbed his hand and pulled him up. “I
feel the same way. Maybe more later. Sleepy time now?” He nodded
and followed me into the bedroom.

He stripped off my tank and track pants,
then took his own clothes off. Slowly he lowered me to the bed, and
this time we made love. Slow, sweet, ice and steel melting
love.

Chapter 1
1

Programming at the center stopped for the
holidays. It would start back up after the New Year. Kids still
came through just to hang sometimes, and I popped in a few times to
help Penny with data entry and general cleaning. Teens could really
make a mess.

I went in one afternoon to tackle the
kitchen. Genesis and her friend Angelica were helping me scrub down
the walls. I told Penny I could make the kitchen sparkle. She
laughed as if I were joking. I wasn’t. This was my domain, my
comfort zone. Despite what you might hear, most chain restaurants
are pretty strict on sanitation. We clean a lot of shit and we hate
it, so I knew how to make the center’s kitchen look like new. And
it needed it. I was tired of cooking around the clutter, so I
offered up my cleaning services that afternoon.

I was on a ladder cleaning
the vents over the oven when Genesis startled me with an out of the
blue question. “Do you have a boyfriend Elle?” How much did I want
to tell her? Fuck.
Yeah I do. He’s the
best lay ever. He’s in an MC. And he probably does highly illegal
shit on the regular…

“
I’m talking to someone, but
I work a lot and I’m pretty focused on school. Why do you
ask?”

“
Well,“ I could tell Genesis
had ulterior motives for her question. She elbowed Angelica and
whispered—or thought she whispered, because I could totally hear
her—to ask me something. “Go on. You can ask her.” I rolled my eyes
at the vents, but patiently waited for them to figure out who would
ask this oh-so-secretive question.

I didn’t know Angelica as well as Genesis.
She had the perfectly bronzed skin my white ass dreamed of, and
dark brown hair that was as straight as mine was curly. She was
tall-ish, in comparison to the other girls at the center. Maybe
5’5”. Taller than Genesis, but still shorter than me. I knew they
were friends, but Genesis was a chatty gal so she warmed up to me
quickly. I was slowly building relationships with the teens, but it
was hard as they were uncertain of me just as much as I was
uncertain of them.

“
Call
ete, Genesis. No quiero que la feria sepa.”

I translated that in my
head. It took me a minute.
I don’t want
the change to know.
Huh? That sentence didn’t make sense.

“
Si pero la gringita esta chida.
Bueno, le preguntaré.” I understood what Genesis said.
Yeah but the white girl is cool. Fine, I’ll ask
her.

“
Elle, me and Angelica want
to know, uh… like sometimes. Well, what happens if the guy like,
um... can’t keep it hard? You know what I mean?”

I laughed. Maybe I shouldn’t have. We’d all
been there. Back from the club, all ready to get it on, and the
guy’s had too much to drink and things don’t work so well. Oh, but
they try. They try until your coochie feels like a desert, and you
have to nicely convince the guy to just give up and go to sleep. In
my case, give up so I can find my clothes, and quietly sneak home
to my trusty BOB.

“
Ladies, first of all I have
to make sure you are being safe and using condoms.” They both
immediately glued their eyes to the floor. “Are either of you on
birth control?” I looked at them, both still staring at the floor,
and sighed. I took my glasses off and pinched the bridge of my
nose. This wasn’t funny anymore. “OK, ladies. I’m not your mom, so
I’m gonna give it to you straight. Guys are not going to bust out
the condom. Even guys my age.
You
need to take control of your body and when
you
choose
to have
kids. Not when you get knocked up. If you’re grown up enough to
have sex, then you’re grown up enough to go to Planned Parenthood
and get on some birth control. But you still need condoms to
protect you from STD’s.”

“
But the guy will think I’m
a slut if I pull a condom out of my purse,” Angelica
protested.

“
Why are you having sex with
a guy who thinks so little of you? And obviously he doesn’t care
enough to want to keep you safe and not pregnant. No offense, but
he don’t sound like the kind of guy you need to be fu… sleeping
with.” Both girls laughed at my slip. “You are both beautiful,
intelligent young ladies, but you also need to be strong and
assertive.”

I could see the uncertainty
in their eyes and it killed me. I’d gotten the sex speech from my
friend’s mom when I was thirteen. She was a stripper and it went
something like this:
Honey, men are dicks.
They have dicks and are dicks. But you got the pussy and that is
what they want to stick that dick in. Their dicks are dirty, so you
wrap that fucker up. Every. Single. Time. No matter if they tell
you their clean, they love you, or whatever dumb ass excuse their
dicks come up with. No glove, no love honey. And I love my
daughter, but I wish I’d have waited cuz I don’t know which one is
her daddy, and I ain’t goin’ on Maury. So you best get on the
pill.
Aaaaand she wrapped it up
with:
Oh, and love don’t exist my dear.
There’s just fucking. So enjoy it. You need me to take you to the
clinic?
We went to the clinic the next day.
Was she getting the mother of the year award? No. Was I STD free,
childless and going on twenty-three? Yes. So I couldn’t hate on her
too much. Her honest, albeit raunchy, speech made an impact on me.
I wasn’t about to take it that far with the girls, but I did feel
the need to pay it forward.

I took a breath and said something I could
potentially regret. “Look, I’ll take you both to Planned Parenthood
if you want.”

The girls started whispering in Spanish too
quickly for me to understand. It was Genesis who spoke for the both
of them. “We don’t want our parents or Penny to know. Can we trust
you?” Genesis said it with such conviction. Could she trust me? Was
it OK for me to do this behind their parents’ and Penny’s back? I
liked Penny, but I imagine she’d give them an abstinence speech
that’d be pretty useless.

I got out my phone and googled the nearest
Planned Parenthood. Once I found the number, I called and set up
appointments for the both of them the following Wednesday. Genesis
and Angelica looked at me, their jaws dangling by the floor, as I
hung up.

“
I won’t tell Penny or your
parents. But, you both also need to not tell anyone. I could get in
trouble for this too. So can I trust you both?” Their two heads
nodded. “OK, so now onto the next issue. I’m gonna keep it real
ladies. Dudes sometimes can’t keep their dicks hard. It happens. It
sucks.” They both laughed. “What were the circumstances that they
couldn’t keep it hard?”

Genesis had done the talking, but now
Angelica was ready to spill. “Es que, me and Marcos were at this
party and he was, uh… not sober. You know?” I nodded. “Yeah, so we
went into one of the bedrooms and started, you know. But he
couldn’t keep it hard and he got all pissed off. I tried to tell
him it was OK, but he got angry with me.”

Red alarms went off in my
head. “Back up. He was mad at
you
because
he
couldn’t keep
his
dick hard?” Angelica nodded. “Ok, so this
conversation never happened.” I gave a pointed look at both girls.
I was really pushing the limits of appropriateness here, but I felt
like they deserved to hear all the stuff I learned the hard way.
Maybe so they wouldn’t have to learn in some of the
self-destructive ways I did “Right? This never leaves this
kitchen?” They again nodded, like two teenage bobbleheads. “If you
tell anyone I told you this, I will deny it and say you’re lying.”
Again the girls nodded and I took a deep breath. “OK, so when guys
get really drunk, they can get what I call ‘whiskey dick’.” Both
girls giggled at my clinical terminology. “Whiskey dick is
basically what you are explaining. When guys drink too much, they
can’t keep it hard. Don’t ask me why, but it’s just the way it is.
I’ve totally had it happen to me when I’ve been with a guy. It is
not your fault. It’s theirs for drinking too much. So you can
either stop them before they drink too much, or not have sex when
they’re super drunk. But don’t
ever
let them try and make it your fault. It’s not your
fault. You don’t have to be mean about it with them, but don’t let
them get angry with
you
. Feel me?”

“
Yeah. Marcos was pretty
drunk.”

“
Angelica, did you want to
have sex with Marcos? Were you drunk?”

“
Well, yeah, but not as
drunk as him. But we’ve been having sex for a while.”

“
I just wanted to make sure
you weren’t being forced into anything. You’re sixteen and I know
you’re having sex, but make sure you’re being safe, and doing it
because you want to. Not because you think you have to.” Angelica
just nodded. I think she got the information she needed and the
topic was closed. Plus, I could feel myself edging into mom-style
lecture territory, and I certainly didn’t want to do
that.

Genesis, who had been silent through this,
suddenly spoke up. She wasn’t done with her questions yet. “What if
he can keep it hard but can’t, uh, finish?”

“
Like, he can’t ejaculate?”
I asked over the girls’ giggles.

“
Yeah. He couldn’t do that,”
Genesis replied when the giggles stopped.

“
Was he drunk,
Genesis?”

“
Uh, not really…” she
trailed off.

The cogs in my head went into overdrive. I’d
only been in one situation like that. Coke. Cocaine dick was a
whole different beast. Fuck.

“
Fernie?” I asked and
Genesis nodded. Fuck.

All three of us jumped when we heard the
sing song voice of Penny, “Hey chicas! How’s it going down here?
Are you helping Elle?”

Both girls were like deer in the headlights.
I saved them. “Yep, they’ve been a big help. I really appreciate
it.”

“
Fantastic,” Penny chimed,
clapping her hands together. “Well, Angelica’s dad is here to pick
them up.”

Both girls got their purses. I wanted to
talk more about what Genesis said, but the conversation was over
the minute Penny walked in. As we said our good byes, Angelica
whispered, “You’re not going to tell, right?” I put my hand on her
shoulder and nodded. I tried to give her the best smile I could,
but it was half ass I’m sure, as my head was a mess thinking of
little Fernie doing coke. I was never a fan of coke, but I’d be a
hypocrite to be all judgey considering the shit I’d done, and sat
around while others did when I was sixteen. Shit, and the stuff I
still did.

“
I’ll pick you both up at
ten o’clock Wednesday morning. Can you go to Genesis’s house?” I
whispered to Angelica. She nodded and waved good bye.

“
I’ll be in my office Elle,”
Penny called over her shoulder as she walked the girls to the front
lobby.

“
OK.” I lost myself in
cleaning for the next three hours. When I was done the kitchen was
spotless, but my mind was in total disarray.