God Help the Child: A novel Read Online Free PDF

don’t know how many refusals, I finally got a job working stock—never sales where customers would see me. I wanted the cosmetics counter but didn’t dare ask for it. I got to be a buyer only after rock-dumb white girls got promotions or screwed up so bad they settled for somebody who actually knew about stock. Even the interview at Sylvia, Inc., got off to a bad start. They questioned my style, my clothes and told me to come back later. That’s when I consulted Jeri. Then walking down the hall toward the interviewer’s office, I could see the effect I was having: wide admiring eyes, grins and whispers: “Whoa!” “Oh, baby.” In no time I rocketed to regional manager. “See?” said Jeri. “Black sells. It’s the hottest commodity in the civilized world. White girls, even brown girls have to strip naked to get that kind of attention.”
    True or not, it made me, remade me. I began to move differently—not a strut, not that pelvis-out rush of the runway—but a stride, slow and focused. Men leaped and I let myself be caught. For a while, anyway, until my sex life became sort of like Diet Coke—deceptively sweet minus nutrition. More like a PlayStation game imitating the safe glee of virtual violence and just as brief. All my boyfriends were typecast: would-be actors, rappers, professional athletes, players waiting for my crotch or my paycheck like an allowance; others, already having made it, treating me like a medal, a shiny quiet testimony to their prowess. Notone of them giving, helpful—none interested in what I thought, just what I looked like. Joking or baby-talking me through what I believed was serious conversation before they found more ego props elsewhere. I remember one date in particular, a medical student who persuaded me to join him on a visit to his parents’ house up north. As soon as he introduced me it was clear I was there to terrorize his family, a means of threat to this nice old white couple.
    “Isn’t she beautiful?” he kept repeating. “Look at her, Mother? Dad?” His eyes were gleaming with malice.
    But they outclassed him with their warmth—however faked—and charm. His disappointment was obvious, his anger thinly repressed. His parents even drove me to the train stop, probably so I wouldn’t have to put up with his failed racist joke on them. I was relieved, even knowing what the mother did with my used teacup.
    Such was the landscape of men.
    Then him. Booker. Booker Starbern.
    I don’t want to think about him now. Or how empty, how trivial and lifeless everything seems now. I don’t want to remember how handsome he is, perfect except for that ugly burn scar on his shoulder. I stroked every inch of his golden skin, sucked his earlobes. I know the quality of the hair in his armpit; I fingered the dimple in his upper lip; I poured red wine in his navel and drank its spill. There is no place on my body his lips did not turn into bolts oflightning. Oh, God. I have to stop reliving our lovemaking. I have to forget how new it felt every single time, both fresh and somehow eternal. I’m tone-deaf but fucking him made me sing and then, and then out of nowhere, “You not the woman…” before vanishing like a ghost.
    Dismissed.
    Erased.
    Even Sofia Huxley, of all people, erased me. A convict. A convict! She could have said, “No thanks,” or even “Get out!” No. She went postal. Maybe fistfighting is prison talk. Instead of words, broken bones and drawing blood is inmate conversation. I’m not sure which is worse, being dumped like trash or whipped like a slave.
    We had lunch in my office the day before he split—lobster salad, Smartwater, peach slices in brandy. Oh, stop. I can’t keep thinking about him. And I’m stir-crazy slouching around these rooms. Too much light, too much space, too lonely. I have to put on some clothes and get out of here. Do what Brooklyn keeps nagging me about: forget sunglasses and floppy hats, show myself, live life like it really is life.