Sleeping With the Enemy Read Online Free PDF Page A

hands clasped together in her lap, her head down, her gaze fixed on the toes of her faded sneakers.  Aghast, Rose asked, “Why? Why would you go back to him after what he did to you?”
    “He said he love me, Miz Kenneally,” Keisha whispered.
    “And how many times has he told you that before?”
    “You don’t understand.  He come to me with tears in his eyes.  He promised me he gonna change.  Said he won’t hit me no more.”
    Ah, those sweet promises.  How well she remembered.  Rosie, baby, I’m so sorry.  It won’t ever happen again, I swear to God.  You just gotta give me another chance, baby, I can’t live without you.  Here, let me get a wet cloth for that split lip.
    “Damn it, Keisha, can’t you see that he’s manipulating you? And you were doing so well.  You’re just a step away from your GED.  You’re taking classes.  You could get a really good job.”
    “I can still do that, Miz Kenneally.”
    “You can,” she said with resignation.  “But you won’t.”
    Keisha bit her lower lip.  “This is my life, Miz Kenneally.  I gotta do what I gotta do.  That man is the father of my babies.” She raised her chin, and her voice softened.  “And Leroy and me, when we ain’t fighting, he gives me real good loving.”
    And there it was, laid out on the table between them.  The one thing she couldn’t fight.  How many women had she lost because a single act of mind-numbing sex had wiped out weeks of education, weeks of training, weeks of nurturing? Rose sighed and ran her fingers through her hair.  “You take care of yourself,” she said gruffly.  “And those babies, you hear?”
    “Thanks, Miz Kenneally.  For everything.”
    When she was gone, Rose folded her arms on her desk, buried her face in them, and tried to stem the scalding tears.  She’d failed Keisha, as surely as if she’d inflicted those battle wounds herself.  Social Work 101 , she reminded herself.  Don’t get emotionally involved with the clients.  But she couldn’t bear losing someone with Keisha’s potential to some hulking Neanderthal who would be using her for a punching bag before two weeks were up.
    The door to her office opened and she looked up, bleary-eyed, to see Lillian Cameron, her right hand and God’s blessing to the world.  Lillian locked the door behind her, pulled up the chair Keisha had recently vacated, and plunked a grease-spotted bag on Rose’s desk.  From inside the bag emanated smells both incredible and enticing.  “Lunch,” Lillian said.  “I figured you’d be needing it about now.”
    “God, tell me it’s from Sing’s.”
    “Where else?” Lillian plunked her derriere in the vacant chair and opened the bag, took out combination specials for both of them, distributed plastic forks and duck sauce and cold cans of Diet Coke.
    Rose wiped the tears from her face, opened up her foam carton, and inhaled the luscious aroma carried on a head of steam.  “What would I do without you?”
    “You’d be a basket case, that’s what.  More than you already are.  You want to tell me what’s had you bouncing off the walls for the past eight weeks?”
    Rose nibbled at a sliver of water chestnut.  “My life,” she said, “sucks on ice.”
    Lillian bit into a tender chicken wing.  Through a mouthful, she said, “So what else is new?”
    “It cost me four hundred bucks to get the car fixed.”
    Lil snorted.  “If that man had invested all the money you’ve paid him, he’d be a billionaire by now.  What else?”
    She ate half a forkful of fried rice.  “Eddie was late with the check again.”
    “Eddie’s a jerk.  Nothing new there.”
    Rose played with her rice.  “I met a guy.  At my brother’s wedding.”
    “Ahh…at last we’re getting somewhere.”
    “And—” She looked up at Lillian, then quickly back down at her food.  “We sort of did the wild thing.”
    “Consorting with the enemy? Really, Rose, I’m shocked.”
    “You should be!” Rose