FLESH AND THE DEVIL by Kola Boof Read online

  RooAmber agreed. “It’s like that with black men nowadays. We can’t trust them. But look at yourself, Sula. You’re no tragic dark girl. You’re dark and victorious. You’re smart, sexy, got a good job. You’re kind, patient and caring of people. You make a mean ass lasagna and you can dance your ass off. When you smile--there is no woman prettier than you. You’re a winner, Sula. No matter how pure your daughter was to come out, I bet with the love and support of you, Dinari and Auntie RooAmber--your daughter would turn out to be one supa-bad black bitch.”

  Sula burst out laughing. She hugged her baby sister, gratefully. “Yeah...lets think of it that way. I love you, RooAmber.”

  19

  •

  Rosaria Roberts followed Shane to RooAmber’s house and parked further down the street from him under a tree. Through her rear view mirror she watched as her husband got out of his car and jogged up the steps to RooAmber’s door. He didn’t knock. He pulled a key out of an envelope and fiddled with the door for a moment before finally opening it.

  When Rosaria saw Shane’s body standing in front of the door one minute--and then disappearing inside the townhouse the next, it felt as though garbage disposal blades had been turned on inside her stomach, ripping her apart from within. Balefully, and unexpectedly, she stooped over in tears, the corners of her mouth stretching out of shape as she cried and cried.

  Why did men have to do women this way? And why did other women take part in such betrayals?

  In her mind, Rosaria couldn’t help but blame it on the new baby. It was the new baby and that hair of hers, Rosaria surmised. But then something inside her, at the deepest bottom of her intuition, knew that it had nothing to do with the baby. Shane wasn’t that type of man. He loved Esmerelda, and in fact, if anything, Rosaria had detected a sense of pride in his eyes whenever played in the baby’s hair or smelled the freshness of her tea brown skin.

  “Daddy’s brown sugar”, he cooed in Esmerelda’s ear constantly, gently kissing her on the forehead and bouncing her, hugging her, talking baby talk to her. “Daddy’s brown sugar--my only love.”

  Fuck it!

  Rosaria opened the glove compartment--and carefully removed the gun. He was the one forsaking their marriage vows, and as mad as she was, there was nothing left to do but go inside and kill the both of them.

  When Shane saw RooAmber with her new hairdo for the first time, it was from the back. She was standing at the sink rinsing out glasses and putting them away in her new cabinets.

  He came in, coolly, his eyes stunned to see that the flowing rust auburn tendrils were gone--and yet, it excited him, and his eyes traveled down the slenderness of her back and arms, the curving bow that led into the most perfectly shaped ass he’d seen since Tangie Brown’s perfect West African bubble butt, and then as she turned around and looked at him with those huge, sparkling green eyes--he realized that his love for her had nothing whatsoever to do with the way she looked.

  There was a spirit in RooAmber; a flavor about her.

  He loved her. Without being able to intellectualize it, there was a joy he felt just in knowing that she was his, and no matter how he tried to ignore the truth, part of that joy came from the fact that she was black like him, both of them having some Indian blood, some Caucasian blood, but still, both overwhelming African blooded. He loved her.

  Every time he looked at her, he felt as though he’d been missing her. He felt home--and felt at home with himself. He belonged to her and he couldn’t explain it.

  Of course, RooAmber was waiting for him to make some comment about her new hairdo, her green eyes flickering nervously.

  But Shane only came over and took her in his arms, kissing her long and deep as she tried not to touch his clothes with her dishwater hands.

  When they finally stopped kissing, he ran his hand all through her fluffy new afro, amazed by the feel of it, because neither him nor his mother possessed the true African hair texture, theirs was more wavy and slick like the Arabic-Italic texture of some Ethiopians or the Spanish curl of most Berbers or blacks in Morocco. RooAmber’s hair, like Tangie’s, was what many North Africans referred to as “the proof”--the one true hair. African hair. Shane told her, “You’re so beautiful. You look sexy like this, more natural. You look blacker. You like everything I’ve ever wanted.”

  “For now anyway”, RooAmber smirked, rolling her eyes. “But you know what? I don’t care if what we’ve got going on is just for now, because I’ve never felt this way before in my life. I’ve never felt so...complete. It’s as if we’re the two halves of the same thought.”

  Shane closed his eyes and delved his hard tongue in her wet mouth again, the largeness of his hand going down her back until it grasped the cushy contours of her ass, squeezing gently. Like a dance, their tongues dueled between mouths, and like ghost energy--the front door of RooAmber’s townhouse opened slowly as Rosaria Roberts skillfully planted her snake-like bare white foot inside the house--quiet as a mouse.

  ••

  She heard them in the kitchen--the dirty bastard and the dirty bitch. She heard RooAmber say, “My only complaint is that since I took out the hair weave, I’ve been having this mild headache. And my head feels so lightweight now. It’s weird. I took some Tylenol, but it’s unshakeable.”

  Clutching the gun with the gigga-beating heart rhythms of a gorilla, Rosaria Roberts tiptoed very slowly down the entry hall, the darkness of night making the house very dim and shady with just a little orange light coming from the kitchen.

  “Here. Let me eat your pussy--that’ll make it feel better.”

  Rosaria almost dropped the gun! My husband said that!

  Her eyes bulged wide open as she heard RooAmber giggling, playfully resisting, but then apparently giving in. Shane telling her to lay across the kitchen table.

  Hot tears burst in Rosaria’s eyes and her throat felt as though a fist were clogging it.

  She struggled to get control of both the gun and her breath. And then she walked on...into the light.

  ••

  Shane’s tongue tickled at first, but as RooAmber relaxed and let it penetrate her--the headache went away.

  Leisurely, skillfully, artfully, he licked inside her soft, wet folds. His nose digging and parting rose petals of flesh as the sound of his kisses turned into a crescendo of succulent soulful slurp-smacking. With his finger assisting him, he darted and darted his tongue until warm ripples of cat-hollering woke up the angels in RooAmber’s spine and hardened the nipples of her breasts, her whole body shaking and spooning. She couldn’t help but moan in ecstasy, her knees coming up over Shane’s head as though she were wild game fighting the effects of a hunter’s tranquilizer dart...her panting voice begging him to calm it down, turn down the intensity, but not to stop.

  And he wouldn’t calm it down. Shane liked eating pussy more than he liked eating table food. He licked, sucked and devoured RooAmber’s pussy like it was a dripping freshly baked icing swirl--oozing and discharging the hot icing, the sugary sweetness of her screams gnashing against his mouth and nose like hot buttered pooni syrup.

  Rosaria stood in the doorway entranced, the gun hanging from her hand and her eyes in a dead stare of hypnotic confusion.

  “Ouh Shane!...eat my pussy, daddy. Eat it.”

  He ate, licked and sucked, his soul smack driving her into spasms of foot kicking and unintentional yodeling.

  “Eat this pussy, daddy...ouh...ouh...ouh...ouh!”

  RooAmber’s right hand pushed his head down, his wet face covered in sunshine and cat funk. Rich christian butterscotch.

  “You ready for Mr. Chico Stick to give you something to cry about?”

  “Ouh yeah”, she cooed like a little girl as Shane squeezed at the thick pipe-like bulge in his trousers. “Tap this ass with the Chico stick, daddy!”

  Shane lifted her off the table, onto his hips and turned around...turned around to face the doorway...and then carried RooAmber’s hot, trembling body straight through the dark hall a
nd up the stairs to her bedroom. They never saw Rosaria, because she had ducked into the darkness of an open closet and watched as they went by, smack-kissing and lust-moaning.

  Rosaria clicked the gun. She was ready to blow their brains out, but she thought she’d let them get upstairs in bed first.

  ••

  As Shane carried RooAmber into her bedroom, the heat between them was so delirious that they felt intoxicated, the two of them floating into the room like a sweet crash. RooAmber reached out to the wall’s entertainment unit and flicked on some music. “Your Love Is King” by Sade filled the room as angels in heaven were blessing the couple’s good fortune.

  Shane dumped RooAmber on the cushy bean bags that sat on the floor in the middle of the room.

  “I see you haven’t put your bed together yet”, he said as he began unbuckling his belt. He pulled his pants and underwear off, and like some bobbing rubber instrument, his penis levied and hardened, hanging in the air long and thick...just before it entered RooAmber’s warm, wet mouth.

  Intuitively, her head arched up just a little, the wand of her tongue wrapping his golden staff in splendor, her sucking sincere and famished, the rhythm of her neck and shoulders fed as though by energy currents from the power in her chest. She sucked and sucked--with a beauty.

  By the time Rosaria reached the top of the stairs, the music drowning out what little noise she made--RooAmber was already pecking at Shane’s crotch like a power drill.

  Skank chicken head, thought Rosaria, wearily. She raised the gun.

  Shane took his dick out of RooAmber’s mouth and pulled her into standing position. He shoved his tongue in her mouth and kissed her as though her tongue were some champagne popsicle. He ran his hand over the bare naked moon of her ass as though he couldn’t wait to hit it.

  And although light skinned, RooAmber wasn’t pale butter like Rosaria. She had color in her skin, richly folded in like flavor, the brownness of a butterscotch honey making her nakedness look sweet, wet and insatiable. Not drained (which is how Shane had come to regard his wife’s pale flesh).

  Shane laid her down and got on top of her, the weight of their bodies squishing the bean bags. When he said, breathlessly, “I love you”, it was as if a knife stabbed between Rosaria’s shoulder blades.

  Right before her eyes...they became one.

  Their bodies seeming to merge until they were a tangled dance of brown honey and Xhosa drums. Moving with a spirituality that Rosaria had never seen between people making love. It was so private and beautiful, sort of like spying an unborn child inside its mother’s tummy via computer technology. Everything about it was feverish, impatient, clumsy and yet poetic. How could two humans move like that and it not be planned, Rosaria wondered?

  Shane’s bare buttocks pumped between RooAmber’s long, honey dark legs as though he were a dolphin nose-leaping from colder and colder waters to warmer and warmer waters. The smell of it was like the living part of the sea. The sea and cum. It smelled so delicious, in fact, that some ancient un-jealous part of Rosaria wanted to disrobe and lay down beside RooAmber...let Shane’s Nut-Nongo fuck inside both their hooni hoosi holes, their flesh united as sisters being sprayed by the urine of a single lion. She wondered, for just a moment, if that was what she should do? Why couldn’t he just have two wives, she wondered? We could all be happy and have more love to go around.

  But then she snapped out of it. The image of her dead son’s funeral rising in her mind like a river dirtied by floods, the open casket exposing his sweet, white face--the solemn silence of Shane’s eyes and mouth regarding the sun over the cemetery rather than the body.

  And now...here was that sun again. Hot and bruising.

  For as Rosaria looked at the human man pounding his Nut-Nongo into the human woman, they became the color of rich, dried infant’s blood, old blood. Their flesh suddenly juicier than plums, the skin coal black like vanilla beans. They became so black, in fact, that Rosaria could suddenly see the whole world being made. The every inch of everything...coming like splinters of sun out of the royalty of blood, the royalty of darkness.

  “I love you!”, Shane moaned as he burst inside RooAmber. Tears tripped over Rosaria’s puckered up lips when he groaned, “Damn, I love you!”

  Rosaria realized, at last, that she didn’t have the courage or the heart to kill them. She was neither a weak or a bad person. She took a deep breath, turned around and went back downstairs and out the front door.

  As she came out of the house and descended to the sidewalk, she was suddenly not alone.

  A pair of chilly blue eyes stared at her, studying her.

  It was Scotch Childress on the other side of the street. His eyes following her all the way back to her car, and his right hand, deep in his pocket--brandishing his gun.

  He watched as Rosaria got in her car, cut on the lights, cut on the engine, and then drove off into the night.

  His blood quickening, Scotch tightened the grip on his gun and moved his stare back to RooAmber’s townhouse.

  ••

  By the time Rosaria made it back to Fort Washington’s Skipjack Drive, she thought she knew exactly why she was losing Shane.

  Esmerelda. That little black bitch!

  Why had God taken such a good little boy like Sergio away from her and put such an ugly baby in his place? A baby that looked nothing like her, nothing like Shane, and could only symbolize bad luck and heartbreak? Why in the hell, if she had to be so damned masculine (dark skin in the natural white person’s mind representing masculinity), couldn’t she have been a boy?

  Rosaria was so furious--she ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and bolted into her bedroom cutting on the light. She grabbed a pair of scissors from her dressing table and went to the baby’s room, bursting in as though she were a cop breaking in on criminals.

  The baby was sleeping peacefully as Gerta Maria had just fed her, burped her, sang to her, rocked her and was now placing her back in her cradle.

  “Hush”, frowned Gerta Maria. “You’ll wake Esmerelda.”

  Rosaria was like a mad woman, out of her mind. She lunged screaming, “Give me that rotten little bitch!”

  She bumped into the cradle and shoved her mother, which caused Gerta Maria to drop the baby against the cradle’s pillows!

  “Oh my god--stop it!”, Gerta Maria screamed in horror as she saw the gleaming scissors.

  Rosaria grabbed Esmerelda by her shoulder, the baby’s pretty brown eyes flashing open as her mother’s white fingers pinched deeply, yanking the infant out of sleep and grabbing her up with a rough hatred.

  Esmerelda burst into a wailing cry, her little tanned body shaking as though she were being beaten unmercifully, but Rosaria only shouted for her to be still. When Esmerelda wouldn’t stay still or be quiet, Rosaria slapped her across one of her fat little brown legs. “Shut the fuck up, you goddamned home wrecker!”

  She took the scissors and got immense, instant gratification!!

  Her hands shearing off the baby’s soft luxurious nappy hair in thick globs. Hysterically out of her mind, she yelled at the child, “You’re trying to make your father think I cheated! That’s what you came here to do, you typical jealous little black bitch. You’re trying to make your father think I cheated!”

  Gerta Maria picked up the phone and commanded her daughter, “Put that baby down right now or I’m calling the police! Put her down and get out Rosie!”

  And then, suddenly, Rosaria came out of her spell and was herself again. She realized what she had done--the child’s hair looking as though a cow had eaten it out in patches. She burst into wailing sobs, matching the frightened baby, and pulled Esmerelda to her bosom saying, “Ohmygod!, ohmygod! I’m so sorry...I didn’t mean it. I love you with all my heart, Esmerelda. I’m so sorry. Mother never meant to hurt you. I love you!”

  20

  •

  Shane left at two in the morning. Scotch Childress watched from across the street, his icy blue stare training Shane�
��s jovial stroll like a bullet.

  In her bedroom, RooAmber took a deep breath and pulled the silky sheets up to her neck. Not only had she been fucked into a paradise of the mind and senses, but daddy had put her bed together before he left, so she now languished in the afterglow of his love for her. Sleep coming soft and sweet.

  Quiet as a shadow...Scotch Childress went around to the back of the townhouse and jumped the fence. In the small space behind the walk up houses, he padded through the darkness until he was at RooAmber’s back door. With clear, twinkling diamond blue eyes, he peeped through her kitchen window. His measured breathing...searching.

  ••

  When Shane entered his bedroom, Rosaria was sitting on the side of the bed wearing a negligee he’d bought her from Victoria’s Secret years before and holding a drink in her hand. From the look on her face, she was devastated and wounded, and because of that, he felt incredible guilt.

  “You’re determined to get AIDS, aren’t you? Fucking that whore.”

  “I asked you this morning for a divorce”, Shane reminded her.

  Rosaria stared at him, shocked and astonished by his selfishness--his willingness to break her heart as though she were nothing at all.

  Shane said, “I told you that I’m moving in with her as soon she gives me permission. I love both of you, but her...I’m in love with. I want to spend the rest of my life with RooAmber, and to lie to you about that Rosaria, would only bring you greater pain down the road. We might as well get a divorce now and let this be over with.”