Best Black Women's Erotica 2 (19 page)

“Pour yourself some lemonade, Miss Cicero. See, I picked you some flowers out my garden?”

“What'd I tell you 'bout using them sharp knives? You done already cut yourself more times than a dog has fleas!”

“I still got all the fingers I need to do what I got to do.”

Miss Cicero smiled beside the yellowed keys of the player piano. Slowly, she tipped across the braided rug, coaxed a few petals from the fragrant pink blossoms, and stuffed them into her brassiere.

She pulled striped candies from the cut-crystal bowl, resting her cane against the blue glass table. A pendulum shuttled back and forth behind glass doors of a grandfather clock as it stood guard over sepia photographs of high-collared faces.

“Miss Cicero? You done evaporated or something?”

“I'm fixin' to get the lemonade!”

“Then what you tippin' around the parlor for? I'm blind, but I ain't deaf!”

“Well, maybe you just oughta be. You see too much with those ears. You want something to drink?”

“Liquids is life, ain't they, Miss Cicero? I still got a lot of life left in me, if you know what I mean!”

Her hips pushed the rounded Kelvinator door closed. She drank in the frigid air escaping from the refrigerator, and balanced two glasses of lemonade and a straw bag toward Mr. Thackeray's room.

“I thought you was never coming in here,” he said, patting the cushioned rocking chair beside his bed. “Was you meditatin' or something out there? You ain't into that New Age stuff, is you?”

“New Age? Shoot! I'm still trying to deal with old age. Here, take this glass so I can sit down.” Mr. Thackeray let the
cool lemonade dampen the edge of his mustache. He ran his gnarled fingers along the outside of the tumbler, and brought it to his temples. Tiny violets on a field of white muslin surrounded the silk pajamas he wore over his thin, sturdy frame. His white hair was Fuller-brushed to perfection. He felt Miss Cicero watching his not being her husband.

“Think you gonna live through one more chapter?” she asked as she did every Saturday.

“If the creek don't rise,” he answered as always. They sipped in the comfort of an ancient silence.

“By the way, Miss Valdosta sends her regards.”

“Well, I hope you didn't bring none of them regards in my house! Ain't that old white biddie dead yet? She got to be 'round a hundred years old by now.”

“No, she 'bout your age, I reckon, ninety-four, ninety-five. … Matter of fact, I think she kind of sweet on you, Mr. Thackeray.”

“What you talking about, woman? I'm eighty-six, and don't be trying to start no foolishness with me!”

“Didn't I hear something about yo'all fooling around up in her daddy's barn, and you having to jump out the window half-naked when he almost caught you? Heard you was picking straw out your butt for a week!”

“Now, you know ain't a bit of truth to that story, Miss Cicero!” Mr. Thackeray jerked forward, and shook out the pillows behind him. He leaned back against the mahogany headboard, his arms folded under tightened jaws.

Miss Cicero's whole body seemed to chuckle. She pulled the book from her straw bag and began ruffling through its pages.

“And don't think I can't feel you grinnin' at me!”

She could no longer keep laughter from breaking past her lips, bouncing from the mirrored dresser to the fringe on the night table lamp, and landing on the corner of Mr. Thackeray's reluctant smile.

“Woman, why you like to vex me so?” He held his hand out in a question mark, then let it fall to the edge of the bed. “You know I don't be messing with no white meat!” Miss Cicero's finger lightly traced the thick vein on the back of his hand.

“And what kind of meat
do
you like, Mr. Thackeray?” He shifted his body to face her words. She leaned back into the rocking chair and focused on the page. The grandfather clock struck one.

“‘…Janie wanted to ask Hezekiah about Tea Cake, but she was afraid he might misunderstand and think she was interested…'”
she read.

Her voice filled the room's corners and painted his darkness a lighter shade. He lay fully on his side, breathing in the cadence of her words and the lilac persistence of her hair. His vein remembered the touch of her finger and carried his hand across the narrow space between his desire and her chair.

Miss Cicero angled her body toward his outstretched arm and continued to read.

Mr. Thackeray found the soft grayness of her hair and stroked each strand as if it were a memory.

“Let it rain, Miss Cicero. Let it rain.”

Still reading, she guided his fingers toward the steel restraints holding her twisted bun in place. He removed the hairpins, letting them drop one by one onto the carpeted floor. Her hair, surprised by its sudden freedom, stayed nestled close to her neck.

The gentle toss of Miss Cicero's head caused the wild silver waves to tumble down her back like a waterfall. His hungry fingers walked into the jungle of her hair and massaged her scalp with a spiral strength.

Miss Cicero felt his hand reach inside her for air, and push behind the rise and fall of her chest. She felt him walking the same path her mother had traveled, Cherokee fingers struggling to comb the African presence from her daughter's hair. She sighed and pushed herself from the rocking chair, facing his bed, smoothing the back of her dress with one hand, and holding the book with the other.

Mr. Thackeray curled his arm around Miss Cicero's heavy waist. He touched the sight of her face with his fingers, the high terrain of her cheekbones, the clear border surrounding her lips, the warm breath she paused long enough to blow onto his wrist.

She slid her hand inside his silk pajamas, and ran her fingernails up the valley of his spine. The words deepened and lowered her voice. A thin slice of sun slipped past the edge of the shade, casting a shaft of light toward Miss Cicero's making no effort to put the book aside.

He loosened the buttons on her seersucker dress and buried his face in the bouquet of her bosom. His arm moved across the wide expanse of flesh below her waist, pressing a handful of her between his legs.

He kissed the scalloped lace of her black brassiere, moaning and inhaling the sweetness of her loose wrinkled skin. The river rose inside her. She held its waves under tight rein, pushing them back behind the dam. She captured the swell of his body in the hypnotism of her hips swaying from side to side.

“Miss Cicero.…” His body trembled.

She played in the coarse hairs at the nape of his neck. His breathing came in staccato exhalations. He squeezed the nipples
inside the black fabric, then started to undo its front hooks.

“Oh God.…”

Mr. Thackeray pulled the soft dress up around her waist and let his hand glide past the elastic of her satin panties. Miss Cicero clenched her legs like teeth. Her waters beat against the walls of their confinement. The folds of skin floating from her stomach fell into the caress of his fingertips.

He reached into the space between her moist hairs and found it locked. She held onto his hand as he was about to unfasten the last hook. Words still trickled from the book's pages. Bewilderment looked through Mr. Thackeray's eyes. The dampness of his desire swept his pores, and gathered inside his parched throat.

“Goddammit, woman! When you gonna put that book down?”

“I'm waiting 'til I get to my favorite part.”

She gripped the fullness of his longing in her hand and read, “‘…
She couldn't make him look just like any other man to her. He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom—a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God.…
'”

Miss Cicero set the book on the night table, placing her bifocals on its cover. She kicked off her wide flat shoes and squeezed him again in the warm cup of her palm. As he opened the final hook, an intoxication of breasts, rose petals, and sweat cascaded before him.

She pulled her arms from the unbuttoned dress and let it fall to the floor beside the hairpins. She stepped out of the black satin underwear and stood with her legs open. He lifted her sagging breast and sniffed the fragrant petals that still clung to it. The moist entanglement between her thigh parted to welcome his fingers home.

“Miss Cicero, I'm about to read you
my
favorite parts.”

The river's current drew his finger inside her. Again and again it dove beneath the waters, swimming to the surface with muscular strokes, only to plunge deeper into the abyss.

Miss Cicero arched her back and let a slow moan fly toward the ceiling. A tremor ran through her body and dropped into the stockings rolled beneath her knees. She leaned forward to rip open his buttons. His steel passion molded itself to the curve of her hand. She pulled its column to her navel, then pushed it back to its roots.

Mr. Thackeray's groans caught the rhythm of her fingers. He felt for the smell of her breast and drew it into his mouth. With tongue and heart wrapped around her nipple, he sucked fifty years of guilt for having loved his best friend's wife.

“Oh yes! Oh, Jesus, yes!” She dug into the curve of his back.

The dam began to weaken. Pieces of the river spilled over its edge and trickled down Mr. Thackeray's arm. They mingled with perspiration and yearning seeping from his pores, and took him to the place of his dreams. Laughter and screams danced at the back of her throat.

The reins slipped through her hands. She felt the walls being sucked through her skin. They breathed each other into their lungs. He let her breasts fall behind his neck as he lay his cheek on her stomach. He tightened the circle around her hips, and pressed into her with a new fever.

“Let it rain, sweet darlin'. Please, let it rain!”

Laughter and screams leapt to the front of her mouth, and fell into the river, breaking free. The torrent raged through the cracked dam, pulling chunks of concrete, loneliness, and fear of death in its path. Her knees softened. Her bones cried for release. The river rained afterbirth, sweet wine, and buttermilk down her leg.

Mr. Thackeray slowly drew himself from her rainforest,
lightly treading the path toward the tears he left laying on her stomach. He sniffed his wet fingers as if they were roses. Miss Cicero's hand grazed the skin on his chest. Her voice rose from the room, spinning in half-circles.

“Zed,” she said, leaning on the rocking chair's edge, “I need to lay down!”

 

 

 

 

The phone rings. A wet hand picks up the receiver. An acrylic red polished nail attached to a right index finger pushes the TALK button. “Hello?” she answers, winded from toweling off her body.

“What'cha doing?” the familiar deep voice asks, sending shocks down her thigh, causing her to wipe between her legs again.

“I just got outa the shower.”

“Damn, that's a lucky bar of soap and how I wish I were that rag. I bet you didn't know that the water was my tongue rinsing off your suds.”

She drops the towel, lets it fall on the cold tiled floor, says, “Stop, don't start, I'm going to be late for work.”

With receiver wedged between her neck and shoulder, she walks naked toward the bedroom, grabbing feminine hygiene products off the shelf as she passes by the linen closet. “Give me a minute to get situated,” she says.

“Not a problem, I'll call you in a few.” Click, the phone hums.

The phone rings ten minutes later.

The same red nail presses TALK. “You miss me or something?” Not questioning who's on the other line.

“What'cha doing now?”

“Getting dressed.”

“Put me on the speaker.”

Four red nails and a thumb take the receiver, place it on the base, index nail presses SPEAKER, she asks, “Can you hear me?”

“So let me guess. Deodorant first, rolling slowly under caramel arms to shaved arches that need my face nuzzled there right now. Lotion oozing in your hand, pressed together between palms then caressing you up arms, between breasts, along indented waist, across stomach. Spreading seductively along hips, adding moisture between ample thighs, slipping slowly toward the back of knees, entering each space of toes—one, two, three, four, swallowing the fifth.”

Each movement she dances perfectly with the script, inhaling with word and touch. No longer separated by umbilical cord wires, they merge.

The voice continues, “That baby powder is a lucky mutha 'cause it gets to sink into places, lay there like I wish I could.”

She lies down on the bed, on her back, takes the baby powder, tilts it at an angle, and twists the top till the open holes protrude with white specks wishing escape. She closes her eyes and with lacquered red nail tips squeezes the white plastic bottle, releases powder flakes into the air that float over her like stars on clear midnight evenings. They search for a spot, then settle to their resting place in the crevices of her body.

Massages her aches,

“…all over your body, I want to be.”