ones I gave to Mr. Boatwright. Pee Wee wouldn’t look at me. I hated working on the farms, and he knew it! I preferred earning my spending money by running errands for Scary Mary and her women.
“I made a whole dollar yesterday,” Pee Wee added. I was mad enough to slap him.
“Well now.” Mama turned to me. Her look said it all. The next morning I went to pick beans. That was my first and last day in the bean fields, thanks to Mr. Boatwright. A lot of mannish boys worked in the bean fields. Some of them had already fathered a baby or two.
When old Mr. Jones stopped in front of our house to let me out at the end of the day, one of those boys slapped me on the butt as I was getting out of the car. Mr. Boatwright was on our front-porch glider sitting straight-backed and stone-faced, with his hands on his knees like a sphinx. He saw what that boy did to me and hopped in the house before I could get up on the front porch.
Before I could get in the door, Mr. Boatwright had grabbed me by my arm and snatched me the rest of the way in. He was filled with rage. I honestly thought that he was going to kill me or at least make me wish I was dead.
“You fat horny pig!” he roared. He shoved me so hard I stumbled all the way across the room and hit the wall so hard a picture of Jesus fell to the floor.
“What?” I cried.
“You heifer! You wench! I seen what was goin’ on in that car!” He waved his finger in my face. “Get a switch!”
“For what?” I had done nothing that warranted a whupping.
“For what? What you mean for what? I seen what just happened. Like you ain’t got no shame atall!”
“I didn’t do anything. Robert felt on my butt—”
“Get a switch!”
While Mr. Boatwright was whupping me, we fell to the living-room floor with him landing on top of me. Suddenly, he stopped swinging the switch. He gave me a thoughtful look, forced my legs open, snatched my panties down far enough, and satisfied himself with just one violent thrust.
When Mama got home, Mr. Boatwright told her how I’d flirted with a boy from the bean-picking crew who had already made two other girls pregnant.
“You ain’t goin’ to pick beans no more, girl,” Mama informed me. “There is too many boys in them fields. The fields is where I got myself ruined by that bean-pickin’ daddy of yours, and look what he done to us! Make friends with some of them girls at the church or when you start your new school. Forget about boys.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” I promised. I attempted to make friends with a couple of girls my age at church but failed.
Mona Mack, who was thin and considered plain, kept reminding me I was overweight. “You should always wear dark colors, girl, and stay away from stripes and plaids,” she told me. I stored away all of my bright-colored clothes and gave my striped and plaid outfits to a secondhand store.
“Ash Hat Shoppe got some new wigs, and you sure ought to get one to cover your head,” Mona told me on another occasion.
She enjoyed putting me down, especially in front of other kids. When I realized that, I dropped her.
Being friends with another girl, Francine Bryant, a plump, dark-skinned girl who was already wearing wigs, didn’t work out either. She borrowed money from me that she never paid back.
Mama gave me a dollar every week, and I earned a lot by running errands for Scary Mary. But most of my spending money came from Mr. Boatwright. Almost every time after sex, he’d toss me a few dollars. Though I resisted and avoided him as much as I possibly could, sadly I approached him from time to time when I needed money. Once I even went to his room and sat on his bed. “Um…Mr. Boatwright, I want to go to the movies with Francine, but we need money for the bus and popcorn and stuff.” I trembled.
Mr. Boatwright was lying on his side looking at me with a straight face. He didn’t react until I stroked his arm. “I see,” he growled. He pulled ten dollars out of his pants pocket and handed it to me, then he reached for me.
“Um…the movie starts real soon,” I said, rising from his bed. He sighed with exasperation, then