The next Sunday, he asked to kiss her, and jammed his tongue in her mouth. It didn’t feel good, but she liked the attention. How, when she returned to church, and then, after a long time, Tony did, too, he watched her. The following week, he put her hands on the place at the front of his pants, put his hands over hers, and what she touched began to move and lengthen and grow, and she remembered when her grandfather Gandee’s penis had done the same. But Tony didn’t force her to keep touching him. He didn’t threaten to kill her and her whole family. Tony begged, please, girl, please, he was crazy about her, and Lydia felt powerful. People always told her what to do, even when they loved her. She liked that she had a choice of what she wanted to do. Nobody ever was going to tell her what to do, not again, and it made her want to see what else she was capable of.
She knew enough to keep Tony a secret. Even though he wasn’t a boy, he was in the male category, and her mother had warned her to be careful. Even more, he was much older than Lydia, and Mama was fond of pointing out men in Chicasetta who chased behind young girls, because they couldn’t handle a woman their own age. She didn’t know why Black folks in the country acted like that was okay, when it wasn’t. It was nasty and against the damned law and they needed to put those niggers in jail and throw away the key.
So Lydia began to make plans with Tony in their short time in the church outhouse. She would wait for him at the creek on Sundays, after church, and then every day after that, until that afternoon when he begged her to let him stick it in. Just the tip, he said. Not the whole thing. He wasn’t good-looking, but his begging made him handsome. When she told him yes, he changed from a tender, begging man. He put his full length inside her, ignoring her cries, and then shot a white stream onto her stomach that she remembered from bathing with Gandee.
But afterward, Tony told her he loved her, and she felt strong again, and she consented to ride with him in his truck, crouching down on the seat so nobody would see her as she left her granny’s farm. He drove them up the highway to a motel, and got a room, and Tony begged her again. Even when she said no, he begged, and she relented, and soon it was early morning. Lydia was scared to go home to her granny’s home and face her mother, but she didn’t have anyplace else to go.
When Tony dropped her off in front of her granny’s house, he kissed her, and then Mama was down in the driveway and screaming and crying. A few days later, she overheard her uncle Norman tell her mother, he’d fixed that sumbitch Tony Crawford. He’d beat his ass good, and if Uncle Norman weren’t scared of going to the chain gang, he’d have cut that bastard’s dick off and let him bleed to death. And before Lydia and her sisters rode back north to the City, she pleaded with Mama not to tell Daddy, and her mother said, of course she wasn’t about to tell. Did she look like somebody’s fool? Even in a few weeks, when Lydia discovered she was pregnant, Mama kept the secret from Daddy. And after the abortion, Mama said she hoped her lesson had been learned about what men and boys would do, and now, it was time she got on some birth control.
Even with the pills her mother gave Lydia and the daily, private reminders to take them, Mama kept up with her cautions about men and boys, but her warnings no longer carried a bite. Lydia already had been pregnant, had traveled the same road as a grown woman, and when she came to Mama in winter after she turned sixteen saying a boy had asked her to the movies, and was that all right, Mama said, okay. She guessed that was fine. She looked defeated as she told Lydia she hoped he was nice. Before the boy had rung the doorbell and introduced himself to Mama, she’d slipped Lydia a handful of condoms to put in her purse. The pills would keep her from getting pregnant, but the condoms were to keep the worst from happening.
Lydia had her own condoms, and she’d already slept with her movie date. He seemed to really like her, though that didn’t matter to Lydia, only that she felt a power when he’d climbed on top of her. How his face had changed when he was inside her, and he made his weak noises, and she moved fast to get it over with. She was strong, like a bear that had awakened during a barren, cold season. She could hurt somebody. She could destroy, like she did her movie date when she told him they’d had a few nice times, but she’d moved on to someone else.
The bear only roared for the time somebody was inside her, or when she was discarding them. When she hurt their pride. But that only lasted a short while. And then she was ashamed of herself. She hated herself, so every time a boy asked her, she let him climb on top of her, so she could feel powerful again. She didn’t have orgasms with anyone but herself. She faked and moaned with whoever was on top of her. They asked, you like that, baby? and she told them, yeah, yeah, that was nice, but really, she felt nothing. She thought sex wasn’t her thing, like how Aunt Pauline ignored the flesh in service of the Lord. She’d had a hysterectomy in her early thirties. The doctor had said the growths inside her were benign. Just leave them alone, but Aunt Pauline made him take her whole womb, and then she hadn’t felt the Devil’s urge anymore. What a blessing, she liked to say.