Betty's House Read online

  Betty’s House

  by

  Charles W. Harvey

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Wes Writers and Publishers

  Betty’s House

  Copyright © 2012 by Charles W. Harvey

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, organizations, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Available as this Short Single or as part of the collection Odd Voices in Love

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  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Betty's House

  Betty’s House

  About the Author

  Excerpt of Buck Wile Butt Naked in da City

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  Also By Charles Harvey

  What’s Upcoming Soon****

  The raw naked sex disgusted Maura, but she could not stop looking.

  https://www.charlesharveyauthor.com/mauraandhertwohusbands.html

  Betty’s House

  “Y‘ALL WOULDN’T DO WHITE folks like that. I'm goin’ to speak up for my damn money.” Betty looked around for agreement and support from the tall, big-boned woman standing next to her. The Asian girl behind the counter tried to apologize, but Betty continued, “Y'all thank Black folks can’t count, but here’s one who can.” The girl looked exasperated, took a dollar bill from the register, and gave it to Betty. Betty looked up at me and grinned as she stuffed the bill in her purse. She wore a grill over her teeth that made her mouth look like the fender of an old Buick. Her bosom heaved with pride. I turned my head.

  Betty was a short brown woman built like a toad. Her big round head sat squat on her shoulders. White stockings clung to her knotty legs. She was “ghetto fabulous” in her blond wig, green striped mini dress, and a shiny red purse hanging from her shoulders on a long gold chain. Betty’s quarrel was with the “Chicken ‘n BisKit” girl over her change from a fifty-dollar bill. I imagined Betty had a lot more fifties stuffed in that shiny red purse.

  “Come on Li’l Bet, let’s go eat our chicken by the window,” said the tall woman. “Li’l Bet” picked up her tray of five pieces of bird, a double order of fries, three biscuits the size of saucers, and a triple cherry soda and followed the woman. I got my Two Piece “Po Nigga” Special. The Chicken n Biskit didn’t give a shit about political correctness. The Asians that ran the joint sported grills over their teeth. Their grin was as menacing as a piranha’s. The restaurant was crammed with hungry souls smacking their lips around crispy brown thighs and breasts. I found myself squeezed between Betty and the big picture window crisscrossed with iron bars.

  I looked up at the sky and it looked like Old Man God had hung his gray drawers out to drip dry. It rains very hard in Houston in the evenings. The good weather the Houston papers promised us snowbirds from Michigan, turned out to be one soggy lie. Job opportunity was another lie. In Michigan, I made twenty dollars an hour slapping decals on the fat asses of SUVs. So far, the only thing that boomed in “Boomtown” was thunder. If I didn’t find work soon, I would be out of my hotel room and sleeping under the stars, the manager told me as he smashed a cockroach crawling across his desk. I asked him was that worse than sleeping in bed with fleas? “If you don’t have my money by next Friday, the fleas are going to miss you,” he said.

  Old Man God let loose a couple of farts and the rain came down hitting the window like sheets of needles. I ate my chicken by pulling strings of meat from the bone and chewing slowly. I figured the longer I took to eat, the longer I could stay out of the rain and the longer hunger would stay away. My stomach rubbed against my spine when I lay down at night. I was that thin.

  “Little Bet, John’s sure been talking about you. He was at the club the other night calling you all kinds of fat you-know-what’s,” the tall woman said to Betty.

  “Yeah, he’s mad ‘cause I put his ass out of my house. Girl, first I noticed little dents in the side of my car. I asked him how they got there and all he could say was ‘probably somebody at the club.”

  “I know you didn’t fall for that,” said the tall woman as she licked her fingers and watched me out of the corner of her eye.

  “I didn’t pay it too much attention. I know how jealous our folks can be, especially when you got a Cadillac and ain’t had to hit a lick for it.”

  I looked through the steamed window to get a glimpse of Betty’s Caddy and was met by my reflection of tangled braids and long face. When I saw the car, It looked like a grinning monster painted red—probably the last thing that rolled out of Detroit’s Clark Street Cadillac assembly.

  “Hmm girl, what about that whore’s perfume you was smelling in your car?” the tall woman asked in a sing-song voice to goad Betty on. She had finished her chicken dinner and was eyeing Betty’s purse. She caught me glancing at her and winked. I winked back.

  “He claimed it was air freshener. Then last Sunday morning, I got in the car to go get a paper and I smelled something, kind of like dead fish. You know what I mean. I got out and looked under the seat and there was a pair of woman’s drawers under there. Girl, I got so mad I...”

  “Girl, people said he tried to make you believe they was his.”

  “He did, girl—talking about they was some bikini draws he bought for hisself for me. If he bought them for hisself to look sexy for me, why I never seen him in ‘em? What kind of nigga wears lace draws unless he’s a sissy? I threw ‘em in his face. He started cussing, and I cussed him. Then he slapped me.”

  “Lord, have mercy!”

  “That’s exactly what he said when I got my gun. Girl, that dude went to hollering like he was singing in a choir. That basketball playing he did in high school sure came in handy. He zigzagged one way and then the other. I was steady shootin. He’d jump ten feet in the air, then duck down to where he weren’t no more than three feet tall. When he busted out the back door, I thought he was flying. I swear his feet wasn’t touching the ground.”

  “Yeah, Jean told me she heard some shootin’ over at your place, and the next thing she saw was John running out of there in his birthday suit.” The women laughed and touched each other’s greasy hands. I made an ugly sucking sound with my mouth and looked out the window.

  “Bonnie, go up there and get me and you another soda water and get you some more chicken.” Betty flashed a big fifty at Bonnie. Bonnie obeyed. Betty’s cell phone rang. She fished it out of her purse.

  “Girl, ain’t nothin’ goin on but the rain. I’m at the Chicken N Biskit getting my feed on. Naw ain’t nothing in here but hungry busters.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the flash from Betty’s gold teeth as she grinned at me. My eyes stayed glued to the window and Bonnie’s back reflected in the wet glass. It was as if I was viewing her through a glass shower. Her back shimmered like brown taffy. Her rounded shoulders were right for a man’s hands to cup and caress. My fingers slipped between my thighs. The rain started and beat against the window like a mad drum solo.

  THE SUN BROKE THROUGH the cracks in the venetian blinds in ribbons of white hot light. Betty rolled over and touched my chest. My flesh quivered under her damp palm.

  “Who do you love?”

  “I love little Bet.”

  I have been living with Betty, in Betty’s house, for six months now.

  Her purse dangling at the end of its long chain bumped me when she rose from the table that day in the Chicken N Biskits. Betty rubbed my arm slowly and softly. When she left, there was a c
rumpled wad of paper on the table—a ten-dollar bill with her name and phone number scrawled over Hamilton’s smug face. I was insulted that such a troll would think that the likes of me would give her one second of my time. I kept the ten spot and a little voice told me to put the number in my jacked up flip phone with the missing zero. I say a brother is having a hard time when he don’t even have a zero on his phone. When Friday came and the eagle hadn’t flown, the Manager tossed my things out into the rain, with a nest of bugs to keep me company.

  The first time I said that I loved Betty I thought a frog had jumped in my throat. My voice cracked and my insides fluttered. She wrapped her fat arms around my neck and stroked the back of my head.

  “Who you gonna love forever?”

  “Nobody but Little Bet.”

  I knew what was coming next. I jumped from the bed and slid into my pants.

  “Baby, I’m sure hungry. How about some bacon and eggs?”

  “When did you start being so hungry? You know in my house, my eggs don’t crack for nobody unless I say so.”

  I tickled her feet to put her at ease and went into the kitchen to start a late breakfast. The ten o’clock sun peeked through the venetian blinds. Betty shuffled into the kitchen in sky-blue baby doll pajamas. Her hair looked like it had been in a fight with a cat and lost. She plopped down in her red velvet dinette chair with its heart-shaped back. Her feet barely touched the floor. I looked at Betty and hated myself.

  “You know baby,” I said flipping an egg, “It’s time I got me a job. I’ve been watching the Greensheet. It looks like things are picking up a little and . . .”

  “You don’t need no job. I’m your job.”

  I sat a plate of four eggs and five pieces of bacon in front of her. I tried to do a con number on her. I said, “My mother would die if she knew her son was living off someone’s generosity. She always taught me to be self-reliant.”

  Betty nudged her toe between my thighs. “You very reliable.” I jumped back in my chair.

  “What you jumping for?” Betty smiled, but a hint of malice knitted her eyebrows into a frown. “Ain’t too many folks down here going to pay no Black man twenty dollars an hour to slap a name on a car. If I recall right, they don’t make no cars in Houston. I’ll give you a job though,” she said touching my leg with her big toe. She laughed and skipped back to her bedroom.

  I dried the dishes and swept the kitchen three times. I hammered a thin board across the door John had busted in his haste to get away from Betty. I made a mental note to buy thicker boards when I went to Lumber Depot. I arranged the cans in her pantry in alphabetical order, puzzled over whether green beans should come after or before corn. I heard Betty clearing her throat as if she were about to make a big announcement. I knew it was her way of calling me. I had started on her spices—allspice, bay leaf, cinnamon, and nutmeg when Betty cleared her throat a third time. It was time to do my duty. I sulked back to the bedroom like a child going to get punished. Betty reclined on her round bed, shaking up a bottle of red nail polish. My breathing was tight and my jaw locked. She pointed at her toes. I took the bottle and applied the crimson paint to her cracked toenails. I had to use long steady strokes to avoid getting polish over the edges. I did not want to arouse Betty’s fury as she watched Jerry Springer. On the TV, two women pulled each other’s hair over a dude with no legs sitting between them. Betty kicked her heels up laughing, making my job harder. I squeezed her toe. She shrieked and rolled her eyes at me. I tried to smile, but my lips quivered as if I were having a stroke. Betty looked at me suspiciously.

  “You ain’t got another woman is you? You’re acting mighty funny. I’ll kill you if I find out.”

  “I love Little Bet,” I said like a mechanical doll.

  “Well prove it!”

  I closed my eyes and imagined Bonnie’s sweet brown back. I bent over and brushed her velvet skin with my lips. Her nipples large as blackberries drew my tongue out of my mouth as I tasted their sweetness. Her soft thighs held me tight around my waist and her feet massaged the sweet spot near my tailbone. I plunged and bucked like a wild horse. I locked my lips tight to keep from calling out Bonnie’s name as my juice exploded all over Betty.

  Betty rolled over and went to sleep. I got up and showered vigorously, washing her smell from my body. I dressed and took a walk down the avenue where Betty used to “work.”

  “Know why I got so much money, Kenny Boy?” she had asked me one day as she was cleaning the shit off a fresh batch of chit’lings.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Cause a man is a filthy beast,” she said holding a handful of guts under hot scalding water. “Ain’t nothing he won’t pay for if it gets his rocks off.” Betty was topless and scars from beatings and bite marks crisscrossed her back like a road map.

  “I paid my dues, and a nigga gotta pay his,” she said as the funk from the chitlins filled the kitchen.

  BETTY’S FORMER COMRADES stood in front of an old abandoned funeral parlor. They whistled at men passing in cars. One sat v-legged on the hood of a rusty hearse. She wore a shiny silver leotard. Her sales pitch was a slow wink at the passing cars while her comrades were more vocal.

  “Over here baby! Sweet Potato pie for sale! Hey, sweet Daddy!” Their fat thighs shook like jelly.

  Skinny boys on bicycles flirted with the women. They rattled their pocket change, grabbed their crotches and invited them to meet behind the funeral parlor.

  “Get away from here, boy. Your baldheaded mammy is calling you,” the girls responded.

  Cops wearing mirrored shades, prowled in their squad cars slowly along the avenue scattering the women like chickens. I saw my reflection in their eyes as they gazed at me dressed in the purple warm-up suit Betty had “Fly Guy Tailors” make for me. One cop moved his lips as if he were going to spit. I looked away.

  I squatted on a wooden box in front of the “Cafe de Paris.” Hamhox all U cAn eat $1.00, was scrawled in chalk on a green board covering a broken window. Dogs with more bones than skin nosed around for scraps. Old men who ran Lyons Avenue when it was the “Bloody Fifth” sat around spitting brown juices from their hollow cheeks and talking of a time when the place used to hop.

  "You member when Lizzie Mae used to shake and shimmy at Duke's Place?"

  "Man she shook so hard, I thought Fifth Ward was having an earthquake."

  "And Lord, that Friday when three niggas got killed in six hours..."

  "I remember that. One was killed on Waco Street over a dice game. A nigga shot another nigga over that gal, Mattie. And the last one was killed when he ran in front of a cab trying to keep from getting cut. I never will forget that Friday."

  “Yeah young blood, the “bloody fifth” was badass back in the day.”

  “Shit, you was a badass yourself if you made it back home safely. You had to have God on your payroll.” The old men hooted and hollered and played the dozens.

  “Didn’t your Mama use to walk you to the store?”

  “Yes, she did, because your mama was so ugly she scared everybody to death.”

  They broke out in snaggle-toothed knee-slapping laughter I took it all in. It felt good to see the sunshine again and be away from Betty. The smell of frying chickens, low mumblings and growls lulled me into a half sleep.

  I was on the edge of a dream in which a clown shouted, “you da man” at me as I ran down the street buck naked chased by cops on bicycles. Then I heard a screaming in my ear.

  ”I said, is you a man?”

  I looked up, startled by a black bear looking dude. Willy, the can collector, was hollering at me. He was known for his shouting and standing in front of the Power House Church of God answering and signifying to the minister’s voice spewing from the loudspeaker. This time, I was Willy’s reason to be. He pushed his red shopping cart against a fence and sat next to me. He reeked of wine and piss. He threw one yellow eye on me and repeated his question.

  “Is you a man?” The other white porcelain eye rolled
around in its socket. It stopped and focused on a light post while Willy’s good eye squinted at me.

  “What do you think I am?”

  “Don’t git smart wif me, boy.” His laughter rattled, scratched in his throat, and made my spine tingle. “Now you see me? I’m a man. I works ever’day—Saturday, Sunday, even on Christmas.”

  “I work. I’m just laid off at the moment,” I said.

  “What they do up there in Washington don’t affect me none. Look at my hands. C’mon, look at ‘em!”

  His bruised and calloused hands looked as if he had found them in a pile of rubble behind the funeral home. His palms were as black as a chalkboard. He closed his fingers and made a fist.

  “Now that’s a hammer, ain’t it? Feel it. C’mon feel it!”

  His fist felt like rough wood.

  “Now look at yours—softer than a woman’s.”

  “Hey man, I had a job. I was making twenty dollars an hour up North.”

  “What was you doing up there?”

  “I... I helped build cars.”

  “Aww hell, that ain’t no kind of work. All you do is stand there, and when your part comes down the line, you stick it on somewhere. You stand and wait for a piss break. You stand and wait for the boss to hand you your check. Uncle Sam be done stole half of it from you. Now me, I hustle. I live by my wits. I ain’t worked for nobody in forty years. You young cats don’t know how to hustle like a man. Oh, Y'all put on them shiny suits and twist y’all's hair and try to hustle some woman. Some of Y'all will steal or sell dope, just makin' the undertaker rich, that’s all. Now look at you all done up like a purple lollipop. Is you what they call a Candy Man?”

  “I’m much of a man as you are, Pops.

  “Oh yeah? I’m gonna show you how a man’s s’posed to act.”

  Willy grabbed my left arm and twisted it behind my back. I swung around to hit him in his big belly, but the fire in my joints doubled me over.