“Raping her?” Anthony asked, his face a scowl.
“No. He wasn’t forcing himself on her at all. She was on top of him, completely nude with her eyes closed. Of course, I was young enough to think that the look I saw on her face was pain, but I guessed it wasn’t. She was enjoying it, and when she opened her eyes and met mine, she said something nasty to me.”
Anthony nodded in understanding.
“I was shattered and I remember having an instant longing for my mother. I suddenly understood Vivian’s pain, and I wanted to reach out and tell her I got it and that I could forgive her for neglecting me. I fantasized she would cry and hold me tightly and tell me how sorry she was for burying her heartache beneath the drugs and alcohol. As I looked for her on the ship, I had visions of them divorcing, and Vivian, Litzy and me living together in our own house without Van. Richard had already moved out and was blowing through the last trust allotment he would ever get. It would be just the three of us living happily ever after.”
“Did you tell her?” he asked, quietly.
“Yes,” Christy replied, her voice even. “I found her in the nail salon. I patiently waited for her to finish and when we were in the hallway, I hemmed and hawed at first but finally blurted out what I’d seen. I waited for the tears, the embrace, the coming together of our souls.” Her voice was bitter. “But what I got was a reprimand for not knocking before I went in to the cabin and that I better keep what I saw to myself. The business deal was important to Van and Bobbi Bowen.”
“She knew and she didn’t care,” Anthony said. It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes, she knew and I figured out later that she was relieved that Van had a…” She paused looking for the right word. “A hobby,” she sneered.
"So, Van is into young girls?" Anthony asked.
"Not necessarily." She shook her head. "There have been a few whose parents he had to buy off, but it's because they were convenient. It's not like he purposely sought them out. But if they were within arm’s reach, he'd definitely go for it. I know Litzy had to keep him at bay for years. He was still chasing after her when she was in her late twenties, early thirties."
“I’m sorry,” he said as he pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. And he realized he meant it.
“Your turn,” she said without looking at him. “Why did you instantly hate me? And don’t tell me you didn’t,” she scolded as she sat back to look at him.
He gave her a sheepish grin. She reached out and took a long strand of his hair in her hands. She absentmindedly started braiding it as he spoke. He told her about his childhood. The nomadic life he’d lived with his parents and how they wandered from state to state. About his father never holding a job for long, and when he did, he usually messed it up by getting drunk and ruining things with his employer. He shared how his father taught him everything there was to know about cars and how even before his mother had died, he’d become an expert thief.
She listened as he gave sad details about his life before his mother and eventually his father died. How he ultimately went to live with his aunt and uncle, meeting his sister, and his final decision to leave his only family and head for South Florida.
“But your sister,” she interrupted. “You’d just found out Nisha was your sister and you still left. Weren’t you worried about her?” she asked, her blue eyes wide.
“I wasn’t worried about her. My sister is a fighter, and I saw that in the two years I spent on the reservation. Besides, I knew I would eventually find my way back to her.” He paused and lifted her chin with one finger. “She’s a survivor. Like you.”
“Sometimes we don’t have a choice,” she told him as she fiddled with his braid, not meeting his eyes. “Life has sharp hooks and it will rip you to pieces if you let it.” She looked quickly back at him and added, “You haven’t answered my question yet.”
“Ah…yeah. Why did I hate you? Let’s just say that you epitomized almost every upper-class, snobby, wealthy woman of privilege I’d ever met.”
“White women?” she asked.
“Yeah, I hadn’t met many, if any, wealthy women with dark skin.”
“They were that awful?” she asked, her tone mildly curious.
He explained how he’d found work on a landscape crew when he arrived in Miami and they only catered to the wealthy. He observed as they neglected their children, cheated on their husbands, popped their pills, and flaunted their wealth and their privilege.
She tilted her head sideways. “There has got to be more to this than you observing some spoiled wives from afar.”
“Yeah, I guess there is.”
She waited expectantly.
“I was seduced by more than one woman. I don’t know if my young age or skin color was a novelty, but it didn’t matter. I was a horny kid. I would be asked inside to kill a bug or some other stupid excuse.” He laughed, but it held no humor. “It eventually became more than killing a bug.”
“And?”
“And it happened more often than you’d think,” he replied blandly.
“Seems like every young guy’s dream,” she said, her voice not accusatory, but questioning.
“It was, Christy, but I realized that it also made me feel important. You’d have to understand how some of the people my father worked for treated us before you could even begin to understand how I felt validated by the way some of these women acted toward me. I had something they wanted, and a few of them made me think they cared about me. That I was special to them.”
“Until?” she asked, fearing the answer.
“Until I found out that it was all a game and the woman with the most points won.”
She shook her head, not understanding.
“They were playing me. There were three of them, all friends in the same neighborhood, all inviting me to their beds. And they were keeping track of every little thing. Racking up points for how many times they made me come or how many times I made them come. They’d lose points if I didn’t go down on them. Got extra points if they got me to shower with them.”
“And you did all this while you were supposed to be mowing their lawn?” she asked. “Didn’t the other guys know you were, um…missing?”
“No. Because it went beyond when I was working at their homes. They would tell me when they would have the house to themselves or what hotel to meet them at and what time. They made sure I had extra money in my pocket for cab fare for our secret meetings.”
“So what, Anthony? They used you. I get it, but so what? You hated me because some stupid rich women used you?” She couldn’t help the incredulous tone of her voice.