Deliver Me From Evil by Mary Monroe Page B

shroud. Some days I got depressed as soon as I opened the front door.
    But not today.
    My neighborhood was located near Shattuck, Telegraph, and Alcatraz, three of the most well-known streets in Berkeley. Shattuck contained a lot of business offices, our main library, and several restaurants and movie theaters.
    Berkeley was still one of the most prestigious college towns in the country, despite that ruckus that the hippies and the demonstrators had caused during the sixties. And, a lot of those activities had occurred on Telegraph and Alcatraz years before my mother brought me into the world, after enduring forty-eight hours of labor.
    Things were fairly quiet in Berkeley now. But the city still had a dark side that could not be ignored. There were a lot of crimes committed on our street, often in broad daylight. Just last week a man down the street had been attacked and robbed in his own garage in broad daylight by two men in ski masks. The thieves had made off with the man’s wallet, his watch, his briefcase, and his new shoes.
    I’d been lucky, so far. I had managed to avoid the pedophiles and other garden-variety thugs that had given our part of Prince Street such a bad name.
    Before I’d left Wade’s house, I’d rinsed out my mouth with warm, salty water, but I could still taste him. Wade had cooled me off, but my crotch still felt like it was on fire. That didn’t bother me half as much as the turmoil that was going on in my mouth. I wondered what kind of nasty-ass motherfucker had dreamed up oral sex!
    Even though where I lived sometimes depressed me, I was glad to be home. This was the only place in the world where I knew I could hide not only myself, but my feelings, too. My parents didn’t bother me, and I didn’t bother them.
    I didn’t know what it looked like inside the other three units in our building, but ours was pretty dull. We had dreary plaid furniture that didn’t match, a goose-necked lamp with a 40-watt lightbulb in a corner in the living room, roach paste on the walls in every room, and carpets so thin, you could see the hardwood floor beneath.
    I peeked into the living room, where my mother and my father were watching reruns of old television shows from the fifties on a nineteen-inch black-and-white TV.
    â€œMama, Miss Louise wasn’t home, but I left her roasting pan and the money she wanted to borrow with her son. You remember Wade? He’s a nice boy,” I said, grinning. I had gargled so hard with the salt water and rubbed my lips so hard, they were numb. And, my throat was so dry, it ached when I swallowed.
    â€œDid you shut that front door?” my father asked, not even turning around to face me. From the back, Daddy’s head looked like a large peanut, and the front of his head didn’t look too much better. Daddy had never been a handsome man. At least not that I could remember. His looks had slid even further down the drain. He looked like a hound dog, and I didn’t know when that had happened, because the last time I took a long look at him, he’d looked all right to me. Unfortunately, Mama was the female version of Daddy. They had been together so long, they now looked alike. As a matter of fact, they’d always looked alike as far back as I could remember. They both had nut brown skin and large, sad, droopy black eyes that looked like they’d just been carelessly dug into their long, narrow faces. Mama and Daddy even had the same kinky gray hair, which they covered in stocking caps every night, when they went to bed.
    â€œYes, sir. I did shut the door. And, I would have been back home sooner, but I ran into some girls from my gym class,” I volunteered.
    It had only taken a few more minutes of my time for me to suck Wade’s dick long and hard enough for him to come. But he’d enjoyed it so much, he invited me to stay with him and cuddle on the bed for a little while so he could share his thoughts with