Love Knows No Color Pt. 28

"Maybe I didn't want you to stop. Maybe I wanted to see if I could take it. Maybe I wanted to offer you all of my body. Maybe you were so gentle with me that I trusted you. Maybe I knew you wouldn't tear up my insides. And maybe, just maybe, I kinda like it even if it does hurt a bit."

Shavonda pulled me into an awkward hug. My cast was wedged between us as she held me tight. Letting go, she led me by my good hand back to the living room, where Althea was waiting with a drink.

"What's this, I asked.

"Drink up," Althea ordered. "Don't stop till it's gone." I looked at Shavonda, who had a knowing smirk.

I tentatively sipped the drink, which tasted of alcohol and a few other things I couldn't place. "This is pretty good," I said. "What is it?"

"GO on now," Althea ordered with a wave of her hand. "Drink it all up. It'll help you."

"Finishing the drink, I tried again. "What was it?" I asked.

"Home remedy," Althea replied. "We call it hippo laxative. Now sit down and let it do its job." Shavonda doubled over with laughter, slapping her thighs. I sat in my easy chair. Within a couple of minutes, I could feel the pressure build. After about 15 minutes, I was seized by powerful cramps. It felt like my insides were dissolving. I moaned in pain.

"Get him to the bathroom," Althea ordered. "He's ready. Quickly, now. You don't want him to explode out here." Shavonda led me to the bathroom as I doubled over in pain. She sat me down on the bowl, wiping my forehead with a cold washcloth as the drink continued loosening my insides. Suddenly, all let loose. It was like I had popped a cork, and everything I'd been unable to pass for days came out at once.

Shavonda stayed with me until I was done, then put me to bed. "Mama says you'll be fine now," she said. And I was. The worst was over. I did have to keep running to our private bathroom during the night, but the pain was gone. Over the next couple of weeks, Althea made me drinks whenever I felt blocked up. To this day, she won't tell me what is in them.

The next morning when we lit up Althea and I had a long talk.

"I feel so useless," I confided in Althea. "Von has so much to deal with, the kids cutting up, the new store, her demons. I'm supposed to be taking care of her. I can't even take care of myself."

"Don't ever talk that way," Althea scolded. "Von is happy to take care of you. She'll do whatever it takes to make you well again. She'd take care of you for the rest of her life if she needed to. It's the least she can do."

"What do you mean?" I asked, confused.

"You don't get it, do you?" Althea gave me a strange look.

"Get what?" I asked.

'You're her world. She almost lost you. He whole world would crumble if anything happened to you. She could lose one of us, or even all of us and she'd carry on. But you, it would devastate her. She can't survive without you. You're her angel."

"No," I said. "I'm no angel. I'm just a man trying to do right by the woman and children I love."

Althea took a long time before she answered, shaking her head. "Do you understand all the heartache she's gone through? I watched her unravel when she was with Tony. I knew he was beating her, but I couldn't get her to leave him. She wanted her baby to have a father. Tony didn't see it that way. He resented her pregnancy and took it out on her. When she lost the baby, it killed her inside. Everything fell apart. The only reason she still has the business is because Velma kept it going for her.

"After that day, the only thing that kept her focused was caring for her Nana. It gave her a reason to live. She didn't date, wouldn't even look at a man for a couple of years. The first relationship she had after Tony was a woman."

I stared incredulously. "I, I didn't know," I stammered. "She never told me."

"She never told me either," Althea said. "But a mother knows. When she brought her 'friend' around, you could tell by the way they acted they were more than friends. I guess Von is too ashamed of that time in her life to admit it to anybody."

"But it doesn't matter to me," I said sadly. "She did what she had to do."

"Yeah, I get that." Althea sighed. "That's why the family loves you so much. You never hold anything against her. After she started dating again, there was nobody serious. I was afraid she was turning into her sister. Shaunice dates a lot but nobody stays for long. Von was a wild child for a while there. Then here you came."

I nodded, and Althea continued, "Don't take this the wrong way. You were so different from what she had before. Shavonda has a nice figure and she knows it. She has always had men fawning over her, wanting to get her into bed. Especially the white boys. But we have a saying, a white boy will never marry you.

"She told me all about you after I'd met you. She told me how you'd been talking for months but never met. How you'd bared your soul to her. How you'd always treated her with respect, and never once made a move on her. How she had to ask you if you liked black girls before you'd ask her out. And how when she walked into restaurant to meet you, you looked at her like she was the most beautiful person in the world."

"She is, you know," I said softly.

'Althea smiled and shook her head. "Gotten love the irony. Shaunice spend a fortune getting her hair done trying to attract a good man. Von walks in to meet you with her hair natural and you fall hopelessly in love with her." She chuckled. "And I could see it in your eyes the first time I met you. You two loved each other. You just didn't realize it yet. And it gets better. You two would fight the world for each other. She was hurting because she'd lost the baby and all the doctors told her she'd never have another. You came along and told her, here are my two. Love them as your own. And when Rose tried to make you choose between Von and your children you refused to choose one over the other. All the things you two have been through and your love for each other has never wavered. You were so gentle and kind to her. You accepted her unconditionally, and the rest of us too. She mattered to you. And even now, you are more worried about being a burden to her than you are about your own health."

'I don't want to add to her stress," I replied.

"This family has your back," Althea said. "We take care of our own. And you're ours now. All of you."

I thought for a minute. If you'd have asked me ten years ago where I would have been, this would have been the last place I would have guessed I'd end up, living with a family of a completely different race. Our worlds were so completely different. And yet, we loved each other unconditionally, and life without each other was unthinkable.

"Barbara told me about Rose and you," Althea continued. "She said there was no love there. Rose just wanted somebody to take care of her. And you would have. You know you would, for the kids' sake, even though you were miserable. It's who you are. But now you have somebody better."

Althea paused for a minute before rising. "I'm going to make us some lunch. And Jason, I told you this because I know you won't use it against her. She needs you. Just let her take care of you. When you're better you can dote on her again."

Althea made her signature chicken and rice, cutting the breast filets into little pieces for me. We ate in silence as I pondered what Althea had revealed to me. Most of it I had already known, but it was somehow now in perspective. My mind was at ease, even if I still felt like I'd let everybody down.

I was, for better or worse, now at least temporarily crippled, and I'd have to accept that. Dressing myself was difficult. It's hard to work snaps and buttons with only one hand, and almost impossible to pull clothing on with only one arm. When I wanted to eat, I had to have others cut my food up for me like Althea just had. I could no longer cook for myself. I could no longer drink Dr Pepper unless somebody opened the bottle for me, so I mostly drank the ghetto Kool-Aid that was always in the refrigerator. Shavonda made sure to make it in a pitcher without a top so I could pour myself a glass whenever I wanted.

Worse yet, I had way too much time on my hands during the day. Surfing the net would have helped pass the time, but using the keyboard was difficult and time consuming with only one hand on the keyboard. I ended up watching TV or listening to music.

The thing that disturbed me most of all was being an observer. I couldn't play cards with the ladies Monday nights, run trains on Wednesdays, or play music when we had our jam sessions. All I could do was sit back and watch. I have to admit, it was kind of fun on train nights. It was like being in the mountains where I was originally from, watching train after train grinding their way through the spots I knew so well in real life.

With the music, we were able to make some accommodations. For one, I could still sing. Before, I'd never really liked to sing. Shavonda and Kenny had better voices I thought. So did Edie and Tamika, who had begun showing up as well. Kenny took over my bass parts, and we were playing now with just Shavonda's synth, and Kenny on bass.

"Don't worry, man," Kenny said. "You're lucky. You didn't break your left arm, so you don't have to relearn the chords." Shavonda insisted I pull up a stool and sit with her as she played. The lower notes on the synth were played with the left hand, so she taught me how to work that end of the keyboard. Ironically, this freed her left hand up to work other parts of the keyboard, and we started to experiment with our sound. Having three hands available let us do things that were not possible before. It partially compensated for not having a lead guitar anymore.

One of the weekly train nights we did something different. Without my knowledge, Shavonda and Kenny had been working to combine the footage I had of our recent train ride with what Kenny and Edie had taken from trackside. They edited it and burned it onto a dvd, and on that particular night our whole crew gathered in the living room to watch it.

"For the past year and a half you've been helping us build the model railroad," Shavonda explained. "We thought that you'd like to see what it looks like in real life." She started the dvd, and they watched as the familiar places showed up on the screen.

Danny and Ziggy were particularly interested in the operations at Moss Run, where we'd combined our train with one that had run earlier. I'd often been asked why we ran 15 coal car trains on the layout, with two locomotives on each end. It seemed like an awful lot of power fir such a short train. The answer was that, like the real railroad, we were combining the trains at Moss Run into a massive 30 car train to send into the hidden staging area. It would return later, and run the whole railroad, as a 30-car empty train. If we'd run 20 car trains and combined them, the resulting 40 car train would have been too unwieldy for reliable operation. It would probably have rolled over on some of the sharper curves, and the sheer weight of it would have forced the cars at the front of the train off the tracks descending the grade from Spruce Bridge on the original section.

But what I liked most was the footage we'd taken from the cab on the ride down the mountain through the two horseshoe curves. Kenny and Shavonda had spliced Kenny's video of us passing the ore train just below KR into my footage and I think that was my favorite scene of all.

The rest of the crew now understood what we were trying to accomplish in model form. They also understood what I meant when I'd often said, "We can never do this place justice. It'll never be like actually being there." The views, the towering mountains that loomed above everything, the roaring creeks tumbling through the rocky gorges. These were things we could never realistically duplicate in miniature. But overall, we'd done the best we could in the limitations we had.

The Saturday before Christmas, we had the usual company Christmas party for the stores. Every year, we became a little more crowded as the business took off and we hired more people. We were up to ten employees now, including Shavonda and myself. Next year, we were probably going to have to rent a place if we expanded any more.

Overall, it had been a good year for the business. The original store was holding its own, South Side had taken off like a rocket, our internet business was also very strong, and the African Marketplace had decent sales due in large part to the ads Shavonda had placed in the Courier (dedicated to the African American community) and the City Paper (which covered the alternative and arts communities.)

We had the usual pizza from Salvatore's, something I NEVER got tired of. There were chain pizza shops that were closer, and would deliver to the house, but we wanted REAL pizza not a corporatized imitation. Salvatore's meant we had to make a run into Wilkinsburg to pick it up, but for us it was time and money well spent.

Shavonda was able to hand out Christmas bonuses of $2000, though she pro-rated them for the newer employees. She also mailed a partial bonus to Beth, who'd kept in touch after she graduated college. "She worked for us for part of the year," Shavonda told me. "If I give partials to the new employees, she deserves one too. Honestly, I wish I had her back."

By Christmas, I was still in a lot of pain, but we'd gotten me down to one Vicodin a day. I had refills on the prescription, but we only used one. Shavonda and Althea's insistence that I smoke weed for the pain had lessened the need for something stronger. The two women carefully monitored my intake of everything. I understood why. There was no way they were going to lose me to addiction, not if they could help it. So many others had fallen victim to the pills, ending up strung out on heroin. I wasn't going to be one of them.

But the lack of an active lifestyle, and the munchies I had, took its toll. My weight was creeping up. I wasn't getting fat, mind you. I'd always been somewhat underweight, and now I was in the normal weight range. I was constantly eating something, not because I was hungry, but because I craved the taste and sensation of something in my mouth. My senses were heightened, and I enjoyed it.

The hardest thing to deal with, though, was the forced celibacy my injury imposed upon us. Shavonda, as she had in our first pregnancy, was feeling the effects of hormones gone crazy. I myself was going crazy with lust. The most beautiful woman in the world slept naked in my bed, and all I could do was hold her. My arm got in the way of everything else.

Christmas eve it all came to a head. Shavonda had come home from work, shaking off the cold as she entered. I had been asleep in my heated chair. Miracle, as usual, had crawled up on my lap and curled up, her head resting against my cast.

"Wake up!" Shavonda shook me. "We need to talk!" I could feel the apprehension building. When a woman tells you "We need to talk" is usually doesn't bode well for you. I wondered what I did wrong. Shavonda was never like this.

"Mama," she said to Althea, "Will you watch the kids a little longer?" Althea nodded and picked up the sleeping toddler from my lap. Shavonda pulled me from the chair with my good arm and led me back to our room. Shutting the door behind us, she threw her coat and purse on the dresser, and turned to me as I sat on the bed.

"This can't go on!" she said forcefully. "I'm sitting here going crazy these past few weeks and you can't do anything about it. This has to stop NOW!" She stood in front of me, eyes ablaze and nostrils flared. "All I can think about is making love to you and I can't take it anymore!"

I looked her up and down. In my heightened state I could smell her arousal, and it was driving me crazy.

"Von, baby," I protested. "This hasn't been easy for me either. I've gotten no relief since I got hurt. And it's going to be another week and a half before I get the cast off. How do you think I feel? I've got the woman of my dreams and I can't take care of her needs anymore."

"This is some BULL shit!" Shavonda fumed. She kicked off her shoes and purposely strode to the closet. Rummaging, she pulled out a pair of red heels. "Recognize these?" She looked at me, then slowly turned the shoes until the heels pointed upward. "Recognize them now?" Her tone had turned sweet and seductive.

I DID recognize the shoes. She'd worn them on our first date. And when she flipped them, her intent was clear. That night, she'd refused to take them off, and they pointed in the air as I took her for the first time. That night had been better than any fantasy I'd ever seen played out in porn. Best of all, it was the start of an obsession we had with Each other that continues to this day.

Shavonda sat on the bed beside me, putting on the open toed shoes that showed off her feet so well. She looked deep into my eyes as she lifted the hem of her dress and slid her fingers deep inside her. Removing them she smeared her juices across my upper lip then gave me her fingers to lick clean. I eagerly complied, enjoying her taste for the first time in weeks.

Pulling her fingers from my mouth, Shavonda stood, striding purposefully toward the door. She bent over as if to turn the doorknob, but instead, she flipped the hem of her dress over her hips. She was wearing no panties, and her folds glistened with desire. I sat there dumbfounded. She knew I couldn't...

"Well, boy?" she demanded. "Do you want some or don't ya? It ain't gonna fuck itself!"

I slowly stood, fumbling with the waistband of my pants. Since the injury, I'd taken to wearing sweat pants. They were so much easier to deal with. Ever try to unbuckle a belt of unbutton a fly with one hand? I slid the [ants over my hips and stepped out of them. As I approached my wife, erection jutting like a flagpole, she reached back with her dark hand and guided me home.

"Mmmmm," we both groaned as I sank inside her body. Shavonda was wetter than I'd felt in a long while. Her body provided little resistance as I pushed inside, her tunnel opening to accept me, then closing tight around my shaft is a way that sent ripples of pleasure through my body. Knowing I couldn't last like this, I paused for a minute buried inside her, then withdrew completely to give myself time to calm down. After a minute, I plunged back inside once again, my good hand on the swell of her hip, my cast hanging folded across my belly.

Shavonda reached back as far as she could and. Grabbing my ass, pulled me deeper inside her welcoming warmth. "Come on baby." She softly purred. "You feel so good. I missed this." I felt her tightening up around me as I began my gentle thrusting. I tried to hold my arm in the cast still, but it thumped against the bottom of my ribcage as I moved anyway. This was going to be difficult.

The problem was, I had the urge to really pound her hard. It had been so long. But with the cast thumping against my body, it was like being repeatedly hit in the ribs. Shavonda realized what was wrong, and said, "Let me do the work. You just hold on and enjoy the ride." I stood still and let her smooth heart shaped ass work against me. Shavonda was in control. I trusted her.

We started out slowly, but the pace picked up as Shavonda came closer to her climax. My arm still thumped, but not quite as bad now. I rode her quickening movements with ever increasing pleasure as she tightened around me, giving my member the squeeze I'd come to know so well. She was right there, and I was close too.

Shavonda cried out in a strangled scream as the wave of pleasure overtook her, driving back against me to impale herself as deeply as possible. Her vicelike contractions forced me over the edge at the same time and I emptied myself deep inside her pulsing womb. "Ohhh God," I cried as every little bit of energy flowed out of my body into hers.