The son closed his eyes and twisted away from the father. No, Dad. It wasn’t what you—The son gulped down a sigh and stroked the car-door handle like he probably do his dick in private, then punched it in a half-assed kinda way. His Adam’s apple shot down his neck and then right back up.
The father chucked them bills in the kid lap, but the kid ain’t budged, so in the pause, my girl picked up the Jackson twins, all gentle, like they was babies. She folded em together, thinking, My ticket to the morning light. Now we both got excited. Forty clams not much, but it did mean we was gonna be spending a whole bunch of time together in the very near future. We was like, Love, soft as an easy chair, love, fresh as the morning air. Darlene wondered if we could just book right then so she wouldna had to do nothing else; she had too much pride in her heart for this line of work, and I kept telling her, Yeah, fine, do what you want. I don’t judge nobody.
The father broke the silence and went, Get out the car, go in them bushes, get laid. He stuck out his lower lip. Bitch got my money now!
The kid put his hand on the door and went, You mean your fried chicken.
Darlene smiled more than her usual amount, ’cause she still thinking ’bout the forty dollars and had forgot that they could see her.
The son kept staring and his face gone all tight. Dad, this isn’t Christian, Dad. I want my first time to be special. You said you wanted me to wait for marriage!
The father ashed in the tray, said, Don’t give me that first-time bullshit. You done some damn unholy shit already. You think I don’t know? You think I’m stupid something?
The kid turnt his shoulders and leant into the father space, tryna keep his words private. Ugh, he growled. She’s really out of it. What was that crazy stuff she said about the Holocaust?
Darlene shoved the Jackson twins deep in her bag to hide them shits from robbers, under a change purse she found on a barroom floor, a scratched pair of sunglasses, and a bunch of open lipsticks—she ain’t know, but one of em had got extended and be smearing her possessions with all kind of red smudges. I knew ’cause my ass was in the damn purse, a couple tiny rocks in a glass vial that she thought she had lost.
Two months ago, on Easter Sunday, some guy who called hisself a coon-ass car salesman paid her to watch him fuck a watermelon. No lie. Set that melon on his card table, knifed hisself a round hole in it, and made her egg him on while he sliding his dick in and out that little globe.
He says to her, It turn me on to got somebody watching. I like the shame.
She couldn’t think what to say. Screw that round thing! Mmh! Juice it, boy!
The fruit start weeping pink water out the hole. His hairy butt went umph and he came inside that melon.
When he pulled out, he grinned and said, Hope it don’t get knocked up, ’cause I don’t want no green chirren!
Even remembering that shit, we couldn’t stop laughing. Don’t want no green chirren! Like they gon be little watermelons with legs. I tell you, though, Mr. Melonfucker had him some green money. Darlene spent most of it on me in a day.
Somebody as inside herself as Darlene right then, without no natural talent for hooking, could watch some melonfuckers on the regular, though. Not bad, not like some of them other johns. Melons had it all over cigarette burns, getting stabbed, leather belts across the back, and a curtain rod up the ass, all of which she had either had or come close to having. For a while, Darlene had this gentle, fresh attitude that made motherfuckers want to kick her in the tits, like a girl in one them Z movies.
Out in the street, she always thinking ’bout Somebody Might Kill Me. She got so obsessed with dying that she ain’t take no kinda precautions ’gainst it. To Darlene, copping ain’t never meant risking her life—’cause not copping felt like dying anyhow, and she ain’t lost that game yet. And if she did lose—well, hell, she wouldn’t know. Her idea of heaven was that the two of us could kick it together 27-9, like we would say—that’s twenty-seven hours a day, nine days a week—without nobody judging our relationship. Without none of the issues you get from having a body. Y’all think a body be who you is, but it ain’t nothing but a motherfucking sack of meat.
Darlene start inching away, thinking ’bout making a run for it—to where, she ain’t had no idea—and the father shout at her to stay put, but she ain’t heard him right.
Another thought that we had sewed together in her mind right then like a thrift-store quilt spilled out her mouth without her realizing. Who does a watermelon…laugh at…when you kill it?
Dad, I can’t do this. I can’t do this!
Then get my motherfucking money back.
What? You’re kidding. Dad?
A ambulance screamed by, honking a high note, then a low note, and that took they attention. They waited like criminals for the sound to die down, for normal cars to whiz over the asphalt again, so they could get calm enough to ignore the background noise, and Darlene took a couple tiny steps away from them two before some regular noises crept back in. The kid moved his eyes to his father head, then to Darlene face, and swiveled again.
First he asked politely. He go, Ma’am?, and opened the car door.
The word ma’am itself made her back up faster, like a curse reminding her who she shoulda been, so she turnt and start to book behind the dusty front entrance to the BBQ, thinking the Jackson twins was hers now and she ain’t had to do nothing to the kid. A plastic cowboy on a red bucking bronco be dangling off the roof. Broken furniture sitting behind that greasy windowpane, and a For Lease sign be hanging by one corner inside the damn window.
The father shoved the son ’gainst the door and went, Sammatawitchu, nigger! Git that money back!