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tell me she had any babies, but
the doctor who examined her says she is a multipara ."
    I screwed up my face. "A what?"
    "A multipara . That
is the word for a woman who has had more than one child in her life."
    I felt queasy.
    "You okay, Billy Ray?"
    "She was a virgin," I muttered. I couldn't even raise my eyes to
look at Mr. Green again and when I heard the front door close, I knew he had
left me with my thoughts, to spend the night staring at the ceiling above the
bed where Charlene had cried out when I entered her for the first time.
     
    ********************
     
    When I didn't show up at work the next morning, Mr. Green showed up on my
doorstep. "I was waiting for you in town but …..." he smiled half
apologetically.
    I didn't feel like letting him in but I knew he wouldn't go away until I
did.
    He handed me a paper.
    I turned it over and saw a bunch of typing. "I don't read good ," I said and I handed it back to him. "Just
tell me what it says."
    "I'll give you the important details. It's the medical report the
prosecution asked for. It says Charlene is a multipara …"
I winced. He went on. "Well, what we discussed yesterday. The report also
states she has had STDs before."
    "STDs?"
    "Sexually Transmitted Diseases. It means she
got diseases from having sex with men. Have you ever had any STD's?" The
lawyer wanted to know if I gave her any sickness.
    "I never had no sex with any girl but
Charlene." I hung my head. I had been teased about that by men in the
liquor store. Some even offered to give me their sister for some money but I
knew they were just playing with me and I never gave them my money.
    The lawyer looked sad for me. I didn't know if it was that I never got none except from Charlene or that Charlene had gotten some
somewhere else and never told me.
    "Charlene has a history of STD's, Billy Ray. This means she got sick more
than once from probably more than one man. We got some men from about an hour
away from here who say they know her from the street. Do you know what that
means, Billy Ray?"
    I knew what that meant. I had seen girls like that
in town once in a while, passing through.
    "Charlene didn't act like one of those girls. She wasn't one of those
girls."
    Mr. Green patted me on the shoulder and left me to spend another long day
and night staring at the ceiling wondering what Charlene told the other men she
lied under while she looked up at the stars, and the hotel plaster, and the
little holes in a Ford vinyl roof liner. I cried so much I couldn't breathe
after a while and I woke up Big Dog with my coughing and the two of us didn't
get back to sleep the rest of the night.
     
    ********************
     
    I couldn't stand to go visit Charlene at the jail anymore. It wasn't just
that she killed a man and that she didn't know who I was no more and it wasn't
just that she lied to me about me being her first man and it wasn't about her
being a whore. It was just I was scared I would hit her and I didn't want her
to hate me for hitting her.
    Mr. Green showed up and tried to convince me to go see her. I held the door
open just a few inches and I kept my foot on the backside of it. I wasn't going
to let him in the house to tell me anything more bad about Charlene.
    He told me she was crying for me.
    "She don't even know who I am," I
countered.
    "But she needs you to visit her anyway," he argued.
    I didn't respond.
    "I need you to visit her," he pleaded.
    "What for? She don't tell me nothing ."
    "She might."
    I laughed bitterly. "Well, she never slipped up all the time we spent
here before she went to jail. All them hours we spent
alone, everyday, just the two of us, talking and talking, and she never told me
nothing about herself."
    I slammed the door. I didn't want to start crying again. I wanted my
Charlene back, the one I knew, the one I thought I knew. Even the one in jail
was still my Charlene, but every time that lawyer talked to me, he made
Charlene say and do horrible things. And when I went to sleep at