Deliver Me From Evil by Mary Monroe Page A

snake. Not only was he mad because I’d made him forget about some ball game, but he cussed me out for getting blood on his mama’s sheets, too.
    â€œOh shit! Damn you, girl! I done missed my basketball game! And, you are going to get me in all kinds of trouble with my mama! Look at all that goddamn blood on them sheets!” he screamed, struggling to zip his pants. “Go home and take a douche!” He gave me a sharp look, and then he laughed. He laughed like I was the biggest joke he’d ever seen.
    To this day I can still feel the sting of those words. Knowing that he’d been amusing himself at my expense didn’t make it feel any better. That day, I knew that I’d have to figure out a way to put men in a place in my life where they did me the most good. It was the first goal that I’d set for myself. But I had still managed to smile at Wade after his outburst.
    â€œAll girls bleed the first time. Didn’t you know that?” I said, sliding back into my panties.
    â€œHuh? Yeah, I knew that. But not the girls I been with!” he clucked.
    â€œDo you mean to tell me that I’m your first virgin?” I asked, feeling more special than I thought I would.
    Wade shifted his eyes, then gave me a thoughtful look. “Uh, yeah.” His voice had softened. He even smiled as he sat down next to me on the messy mattress. “You ain’t never done it before? You let me be the first?” he asked, with a proud look on his face.
    I nodded, giving him a shy look.
    â€œIt was kind of good, huh? I think we should do it again. Spread open them legs,” he ordered, glancing at a clock with a Mickey Mouse face on the wall facing his bed. “Hurry up!”
    â€œDo we have time? What about your mama? What about your basketball game?”
    â€œMy mama is at the nail shop. And that game is over with,” he said, tugging at my panties.
    â€œIt still hurts,” I confessed, making a face and rubbing my crotch. I slapped his hand away.
    â€œOh, that’s right. Okay, then,” he muttered, clearly disappointed. He perked up almost immediately. “Suck my dick then,” he suggested, with a shrug, licking his lips.
    I shuddered and made another face. “I never done that before,” I whimpered. Despite what my girls had told me, and what I’d seen in some of the nasty magazines they’d shared with me, sucking dick didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t want anything to go into my mouth that I couldn’t swallow, and I told him so.
    Wade talked me into doing it, anyway. He talked the whole time I was down there between his thighs, my head bobbing up and down like a cork. He told me which way to do it, and which way not to do it. Except for sore cheeks, I wasn’t getting a damn thing out of this dog and pony show. But I did everything I could to keep Wade from realizing that. I grinned like a joker when he squirted everything he had into my mouth. It was the most disgusting thing that had ever happened to me.
    While Wade was on his back, hanging off the mattress, breathing through his mouth hard enough to blow out a burning bush, I was quietly spitting his juices onto the floor. Then I swiped my lips with the corner of the sheet, wondering what I had got myself into.

CHAPTER 14
    â€œM ama, I’m home,” I yelled tentatively, letting myself in the front door of the second-floor apartment we lived in on Prince Street, in a big, brooding beige building facing another building that looked just like it. There was nothing but plain-looking apartment buildings on our block. From the outside, most of the buildings looked presentable. Some even had an orange, a lemon, or a palm tree or two. But in some, where the stairwells had no lights and the halls that separated the units were so eerie, you could hear the wind howling through cracks you couldn’t see. There was also a sense of despair that seemed to cover our building like a