New Orleans Noir

Rita knew the details, and the ultimate impact of all of this was way beyond his understanding. So much of Rita’s reality was based on events she would never reveal to Tyronne, such as the fact that Sammy’s father was Silas Moore, Snowflake’s oldest brother, and that she and Snowflake knew each other in ways that were hard to explain.
    “Stand up, baby, show this boy what a woman look like.”
    “Silas, I don’t have any cloth—Silas, I’m naked.”
    “I know you naked. This my little brother. He ain’t nothing but ten years old and he ain’t never even seen no pussy.”
    “I done seen it before.”
    “Yeah, when?”
    “Joanne showed me her thing.”
    “Who you talking ’bout?”
    “Joanne dat live ’cross the hall.”
    And Silas had laughed at Paul. “Bo-Bo, that ain’t no pussy. Bet she ain’t even got no hair on it good yet. How old that girl is?”
    “She eight and it’s still pussy, it just girl pussy.”
    “Yeah, well, I’m talking ’bout real pussy. I’m talking ’bout a woman’s pussy. Rita, stand up and show this boy what a woman’s pussy look like.”
    “Sil, I don’t want to.”
    “Do it for me, baby.”
    “She ain’t got to show me nuthin’, I done seen pussy befo’.”
    “Rita, I said stand up.”
    As Rita recalled standing up that day with Silas, she turned around to see if Tyronne was still there looking at her, but he was gone. Rita lowered herself into a sitting position in the closet doorway and another wave of memories flooded over her.
    When she was seventeen, the fact that twenty-two-year-old Silas “Silky Sil” Moore considered her a woman filled her with pride. Sil was the biggest player in the courtyard. He always had money—had a big car and could have any woman he wanted, and he wanted Rita.
    “Why you like me?”
    “Look here, Rita, let me give you some good advice. When you hit a streak a good luck, don’t question why. Just ride it long as it last, and when the luck leave you, get up off it and be thankful you got what you did.”
    “You saying you gon’ leave me?”
    “Naw, baby, I’m saying life is like the weather—it’s always changing. Sooner or later, everything gon’ change.”
    “I ain’t gon’ never stop lovin’ you.”
    “Now, nah, girl, you can’t say that. Don’t be judging tomorrow by what’s happening today. Suppose I take to liking another girl? Would you still love me?”
    “As long as it was liking and not loving, what I care? My love for you ain’t got nothing to do with you liking or not liking somebody else.”
    “You don’t sound like no seventeen-year-old. That’s one of the reasons I likes you.”
    “Yeah, and what’s another reason?”
    “Come here, I can show you better than I can tell you.”
    Rita could see her silly little seventeen-year-old self trying to act so womanish, and really doing nothing but being a stone fool for a man who was just using her.
    No matter how hard she tried, Rita could never forget that day. Sil had pulled her close and kissed her. As her tongue flickered into his mouth, he sucked it hard, almost to the point of hurting her, and then released her.
    Sil unbuckled his pants and let them drop at his feet. He slid his shorts down and sat on the side of his bed. “You want a mouthful of this?” he said, while guiding her hand to his erect penis.
    Rita knelt quickly and started to give him head—she knew he liked the way she did it. She practiced doing it, sucking on a banana sometimes for five minutes straight without stopping, strengthening her jaw muscles. And other times she would chew five sticks of gum at a time, over and over, and over and over, and over, building up her stamina.
    Some of the girls said they didn’t like it but they had to do it to keep a man, but Rita liked it. She liked feeling him in her mouth and liked the soft, slightly salty taste of his sperm. As with most of the girls she grew up around, Rita knew there were only two ways out for most women: one was to hitch your wagon to a man on the move and the other was to luck up and get a good job if somebody put in a good word for you, or somebody who was related to you got you on somewhere. There generally wasn’t no other way out, and usually finding a good job, when all you had was, at best, a public high school diploma, was harder than finding a good man. At least every young girl had a body and most of them could attract a man for a good six or seven years after they made eighteen. There