As she began clearing the dishes Greta said, "Eddie, please let me go back to wearing
panties and a bra when I`m in the house. Remember how you used to like seeing my panties
glued to my labia?"
"Where did you learn such a big word, bitch? I like watching your naked ass waddle
around here," he replied as he wiped grease from his lips with a paper napkin,
"and your tits jiggle real nice when they aren`t tucked inside bra cups."
She lifted her breasts and looked at them. "You said yourself I was beginning to
droop. They look better in a bra. I could cut the tips out of a bra so my nipples would
poke through. You`d like that. And besides, grease splattered out of the pan when I was
frying the pork chops and burned my left boob."
He laughed. "Bring it over here. I`ll kiss it and make it well."
She obeyed, but as he roughly ran his thick tongue over her flesh she mumbled, "It
ain`t funny. It hurts."
He pushed back from the table. "Put `em on if you like," he said. "But if
I don`t like it I`ll stick that damn boob in a pan of sizzling grease."
She picked up the remaining dishes and took them to the sink. It`s not worth the risk,
she thought.
"Before you wash the dishes," he said, "wrap up the rest of the pork chops
in aluminum foil. I`m gonna make a trip to the poor widow Elliott and express our
condolences."
"Want me to go with you?"
"Naw. I`m just gonna stay for a few minutes. I`ll pat her on the back, tell her it
was God`s will, and be on my way. I`ll make some excuse for your absence."
"You murdered him, Eddie--not God."
"Yeah, but how do you know God didn`t tell me to do it? The bastard had it coming
for what he did to me, and so does the Dollar bitch."
"If you say so, but the boy didn`t do nothing to you."
"The sins of the mother are visited upon the sons?"
"What?"
He waved her away. "You wouldn`t understand."
She handed him the wrapped chops. "I cut the bones out. They`ll make good sandwiches
if you`ll stop by the Dot Grocery and pick up a package of rolls. Tell her I`m
sorry."
"Yeah, sure. Look, I`ll probably be gone most of the day. I`m going to that meeting
of the volunteers at the church this afternoon."
"Is it okay with you if I take a nap?"
"No, it isn`t. Get the dishes cleaned up and then clean out the spare room. You`ve
put that off long enough. That room stinks to high heaven. I can`t stand to go in
there."
"Okay, Eddie." She suppressed a smile. "I haven`t noticed a smell, but
I`ll scrub it down real good for you."
Hot water was still filling the sink when she heard Eddie slam the front door. Good
riddance, she thought.
While washing, drying and putting away the dishes she felt like she was in prison. Her
thoughts turned to escape, but where could she go? What would she do? For a while she made
a good living as a prostitute, but her thoughts kept returning to three soldiers and a
dark ally in Fayetteville. She needed money of her own--money Eddie didn`t know about.
She went to the kitchen closet and extracted a bucket, rags, furniture polish, a dust mop
and the vacuum cleaner. She set everything down outside the door to the spare room and
braced herself for the cold chill she expected. It didn`t happen. She wasn`t sure if she
was pleased or disappointed.
Greta stepped inside the room and inhaled deeply. She smelled no offensive odor, but the
room was more of a mess than she remembered. Eddie has been in here, she thought, but he
must not have found anything of value. She picked up litter, stacking papers neatly on the
dusty desk and returning books to the bookcase. She pulled open one of the file cabinet
drawers. It was half full of manila folders. She found the other three drawers the same.
She opened one of the folders. The contents seemed to be a child`s book report. She
shuddered as she remembered her own school days.
Greta plugged in the vacuum cleaner, but before turning it on she said, "Ain`t you
in here, Lady?" There was no response--no cold chill. She laughed. "Guess I
should have said `Aren`t you in here, Lady?` since you was a schoolteacher." She
pushed the button and the vacuum cleaner motor sprang to life with its harsh whir.
When she finished, she put away the cleaning materials and returned to the room. She knew
Eddie wanted everything thrown out, but she just couldn`t. She decided to cram all the
books together on the bookcases, making room for whatever he wanted to put there, and jam
all the papers in the file cabinet. She could tell him that the books might be worth
something to a collector and the papers too. Before Eddie threw them out, an expert should
examine them.
As she rearranged the bookshelves, she wondered what stories the volumes contained. She
wished she could read better. Books contained so many big words she did not know. She gave
up trying to read them when she was in the fifth grade. She moved her neat stacks to the
filing cabinet and, when she was finished, the gray metal drawers were tightly packed.
"Lady," she said as she sat down at the desk, "I told you this morning I
would go through your things this afternoon. Where are you?" She tensed for the cold
chill, but she found herself perspiring instead. She wiped a puddle of liquid from under
her sagging breasts. One by one she opened the desk drawers and, to her dismay, all but
the last drawer was crammed with more papers and spiral bound notebooks. The last drawer
contained a single notebook.
She went to the basement to find a box and was pleased to see the cobwebs were gone. She
looked behind the furnace at the spot where Eddie threatened to keep the kidnapped boy and
perhaps his mother. She tried to visualize the torture chamber Eddie threatened to build.
The chill ran down her spine.
"What the hell do you expect me to do about it?" she asked. There was no reply.
She started back to the basement steps and saw a perfect sized box. Now why didn`t I see
that when I first came down the steps? she asked herself.
Back in the spare room that once was the schoolteacher`s study, Greta emptied the desk
drawers. When she picked up the notebook from the last drawer, she idly opened it before
tossing it into the box. On the first page, in a neat and flowing script, was written,
"To Someone." She turned the page and slowly read:
I am an old lady and death cannot be far away. I have no relatives to whom to leave my
estate, and certainly my life has been so unexceptional no one would ever want to know
about it. Yet, I feel compelled to write. Perhaps someday, someone unknown to me now will
read my words, and perhaps something I have yet to write will be significant to that
person. If it turns out that these words are not just the musings of a senile old lady,
then Someone, this message is for you.
Greta placed the open notebook on the desk. She searched the bookshelf until she found a
dictionary. She pulled the desk chair out and jumped as her naked posterior made contact
with the cold vinyl. As quickly as her limited familiarity with dictionary use allowed,
she looked up "unexceptional," "compelled," "musings," and
"senile."
She placed the open dictionary on the desk and continued to read from the notebook,
laboriously looking up at least one word in every other sentence.
My name is Ida Jenkins. I have lived in Dot all my life except for four wonderful years
spent at Woman`s College in Greensboro, North Carolina. As a child I primed tobacco like
everyone in Dot, tended the fires while the tobacco was cured and listened in awe to the
auctioneer`s chant as the golden leaves were sold. For over forty years I was a teacher at
the Dot Elementary School. Many of my former students are still living in Dot and when I
hear them speak, it pains me to realize how badly I failed to teach them proper English.
It may be an apocryphal story, but I have heard that a salesman named our community. In
trying to explain to his boss where he was going, he called the community "just a dot
on the map." I have seen many changes in Dot over the years. I watched our community
grow. I played in the rafters when they built the two tobacco auction warehouses. I
watched a rabbit trail turn into Highway 13. I saw buildings built, businesses created,
babies born and whole families moving to Dot.
Then things turned around. The community began to shrink. The warehouses went out of
business, as did other enterprises. Young people moved away in search of jobs. Sometimes
whole families left us. I watched Pete Harlow gobble up farms at a penny on the dollar and
get rich on the backs of his neighbors. Up until a year ago, not many babies were being
born in Dot anymore. Those of us still living in Dot were old. We started out as a dot on
the map, and it looked as if we would return to being just a dot on the map. If things
continued the way they were going, in twenty years we would not have been even a speck on
the map. Most likely Dot would have become merely a bedroom neighborhood of Charlotte.
Now there`s hope. The despicable Pete Harlow died and left his fortune to his nephew, Tim
Dollar. Tim and his darling wife, Sandra, decided to stay in Dot and they seem to be
instilling into the community a resurgence of vitality. I wish I could live long enough to
see the result of their efforts, but I know I will not.
I am known as a respectable spinster who devoted her life to the nurture of children. As
it turned out, I didn`t have much choice. I wasn`t exactly ugly as a teenager, but I
wasn`t pretty either. No man ever asked for my hand in marriage. My mother and father died
just after my graduation from college. My, how proud they were of me, but they left the
farm to my brother. Like everyone else, he eventually sold it to Pete Harlow. He moved to
Savannah and died a short time later. I used what little money I saved to buy a four-room
frame house located right behind the school.
Of course, the old schoolhouse has been closed for many years, but there`s talk of
remodeling and reopening it now that Dot has begun to grow again. I have willed my little
estate to the Mecklenburg County School System. Perhaps they can sell it and use the
proceeds towards the remodeling effort.
If I could live my life over again, knowing what I now know, I would do many things
differently. First, I`d find a husband. In my day, girls waited for the men to notice
them. Today they go and get what they want. I can think of at least five young men in Dot
that I could have made my slave if I had taken them out behind the barn and showed them
what a woman I was. I might have still been a schoolteacher, but I doubt it. Certainly I
would never have been the traditional housewife. When I was young, I was strong and
adventurous. Maybe I would have started a business or perhaps I would have explored the
streams and the old Dot gold mines, looking for an undiscovered vein. (I have written
about that fantasy in another notebook.) Certainly, I would have children.
I`m smiling as I write this drivel, but if I believed in reincarnation, I would not want
to come back as some other species. I would want to be a homo sapien female, living in the
same time frame as the woman I now wish I had been. I would live a life of constant joy
and adventure. I would make some lucky man very happy, and I would have many children.
Instead of spending old age waiting to die, I would be out spending the gold I dug from
God`s rock pile.
Greta was so engrossed in her unaccustomed attempt to read that she did not hear Eddie
slip up behind her. "Boo," he yelled as he grabbed her under her arms and
propelled her face forward across the desk. "What the hell are you doing?" he
demanded as he slapped her fanny.
"I--I`ve been cleaning up like you told me too," she gasped. She heard the
sound of the desk chair being pulled away and the zipper on his pants traveling south.
"Looks good," he said, referring to her cleaning efforts.
She felt his erection against her buttocks, heard him spit into his hand, felt his penis
push against her dry anus. She stifled a scream and moved her buttocks, as she knew he
wanted.
"I got `em all eating out of my hand," he bragged. "That black bitch
collapsed into my arms like I was a long lost lover. `Oh, Mr. Crow,` she said. `It was so
kind of you to come.` Bitch has good tits. Nice ass, too. She didn`t complain at all when
I felt her up. No wonder Bobby married her. And the guys at the fire department welcomed
me as if I was royalty or something. That gal that`s working at the restaurant with
me--Maggie Skinner--she joined up too. You know, she`s one hell of a good-looking piece of
ass. I eyeballed her good in church this morning. She must wear some kind of sports bra
when she`s at work, but this morning she had big knockers. I may wind up dumping you and
fucking her before this is all over. She wants me bad. I can tell."
Greta felt him losing his erection. He became furious when that happened.
"Move your flabby ass," he demanded.
Perspiration poured from her body, her breath came in gasps, but she made an effort to
obey. She stretched her hand beneath her stomach, her searching fingers found his scrotum
and she sighed in relief as she felt him stiffen inside her.
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