Chapter 1
"TWENTY-FIRST BLACK CHILD MISSING IN ATLANTA____" read the headlines of the morning newspaper folded in quarters in Carrie's skirted lap. The public school teacher glanced down at the muddy newspaper photo of a young black boy, Rufus King, age 9, missing from a shopping mall parking lot. His watery, dark eyes implored up into her blue ones.
Senseless murders, racial tension... children arming themselves with baseball bats and karate lessons. What sadness compared to bucolic northern Minnesota where the most violent crime involved a useless, starving horse or a dog's case of rabies!
Perhaps, the thought struck home, moving to Atlanta to teach school and marry Phil showed poor forethought. Perhaps she was biting off too big a chunk of something. If only she knew what that elusive something was!
Whisperings of pain sparked a fidgety anxiety as the Delta jet cut back its engines in preparation for landing. Nervously, she fumbled in the bottom of her leather handbag for the smooth cardboard of the Dunhill Cigarette box. Above, the red light pinged, just as she slipped the filter between her glossy lips.
"Excuse me, M'am... " a voice crept up behind her. "We're about to land, you'll have to extinguish your cigarette." The blonde haired stewardess drawled in a honey voice and fixed a plastic smile on Carrie's un-amused face.
"But I haven't... "
"And fasten your seat-belt, we're circling... "
Cooperatively, she slipped the cigarette back into its box and found distraction in the greenery below. Virulent, rich, sweltering in humidity ƒ_" Atlanta, Georgia, her new home!
The elation of change choked in her throat. Something felt amiss, wrong, poorly planned.
The splash of green came closer, whizzing past the windows as the wheels touched down on Atlanta's airport runway, jolting her backwards in her seat. Like the loss of virginity, she thought with a shiver of dread. Coming to live in the racially tense south was like shedding adolescence and becoming a woman.
Carrie twirled the diamond chip set in gold on her left hand. Her puffy nipples hardened fearfully at the dreaded implications of what that simple band meant. To this date, a few sessions of making out with Phil was the sum total of their romance ƒ_" in the physical sense. Sex was still a fantasy to Carrie, and the hardcore reality of succumbing physically to a man refused to cement in her brain. To succumb to a man's prurient wishes was not far different from being raped ƒ_" or beaten. Carrie's mother could attest to that, having endured twenty years of marriage to a drunken brute who thought nothing of blackening his wife's eye or bruising a rib, while his children shivered and cried in bed.
Carrie's blue eyes stared absentmindedly at the grey strip ribbon, her ears ringing from the sharp roar of engines. Time seemed suspended in space and that space filled with the sharp Germanic features of her mother. Helen Osgood, a proud, well-educated woman from Munich, Germany, married to an ironworker ƒ_" a hard drinking, hard working man.
Leaves on the family tree rustled with rumors of rape. Oscar had forced Helen into submission, so went the story, and out of pride, Helen had married him.
Never had Carrie's mother accepted the humiliation of marrying a man far less educated and sophisticated than her polished European veneer. She loved her daughter Carrie, but hated her husband, and staunchly built cases against men. Dirty brutes, drunken womanizers...
It was with this distaste for men that Carrie matured. Sex was never mentioned. How well Carrie remembered her first menstruation. Terrified, fearing she was bleeding to death, she sheepishly approached the school nurse, only to learn she was becoming sexually mature. Her lack of knowledge about men fed fears and fantasies. She loved her father, but was terrified of his strength. Nights when he would come home smelling of irony earth, his breath reeking of alcohol, he would peel back her covers over her shivering body, his face close to hers. His drunkeness made him unpredictable and mean, but something she couldn't identify, couldn't name, stoked a far deeper, more subconscious fear. It was fear of a reality, not of a circumstance.
Now circumstances were leading to that reality, trapping her in its grip.
Phil... Phillip Edward Carmichael. Sandy brown hair, wide shoulders, handsome... and short on tolerance. Proud as Southern men are, he didn't want his fiancee working. After long, expensive telephone calls, he agreed that if she were to make the commitment of moving to the South, it was only reasonable that she have a trial run at adjustment. One year of teaching and depending on how she and Phil related to each other and she to the South, either she would move back to Minnesota or marry him. The verbal contract seemed a bit knotty to Carrie, but considering Phil's masculine ego, it was a gross compromise that she would be wise to accept.
The plane rolled toward the airport and Carrie could feel the steaming humidity as the vents were turned off. Northern Minnesota with its wheat fields and bucolic corny calendar vistas was another galaxy compared to the South with its frightening history of racial tension! Blacks hating whites, whites hating blacks, Cubans and Mexicans fighting the blacks ƒ_" now the killing of innocent children.
She sucked in her breath, her heavy bosom rising and falling under soft snugness of her cotton dress. Bending her head, she put a trembling hand to it and clamped pearly teeth over the glossy succulence of her quivering lower lip. Why was she so uptight? Age twenty-one was ripe for moving away from home; indeed, she had lived in dormitories in college. So why the butterflies?
A habit born of nervousness, she hummed snatches of Madame Butterfly and envisioned operatic stage sets, a passion passed down from her mother who ensconced herself in cultural distractions to wipe clean reality and unhappiness of marriage. Tucking a wisp of soft blonde hair, straight and worn shoulder-length, behind one shell-like ear, she squirmed in the narrow cushioned seat. Three hours in the air had cramped her calf muscles and she stretched her long, stockinged legs.
"Your first trip to Atlanta?"
"Huh... oh," she blushed at the man sitting across the aisle, dressed in a leisure suit.
"Yes... "
Her head snapped back to the window as she caught his eyes roaming over the lush swells of her body. Like Daddy... touching me, hugging me with his breath foul and hands dirty...
Why couldn't a woman dress like a woman without being humiliated by frustrated men who gawked and stared? In cold Minnesota, men of Scandinavian and German backgrounds were discreet in their indiscretions. She prayed to God, wiping her satiny forehead clean of perspiration, that men weren't as hot in Georgia as the weather!
This discomfiting nonsense of fearing men's hungry gazes had started with her first brassiere. Negligent in all matters regarding sex, her mother had waited until her daughter was fully developed before fitting her with her first brassiere, a matter of deep emotional distress to the curvy young blonde. Men always gawked at her. Because of her golden hair shimmering about an apple cheeked face ƒ_" or was it the pale blue eyes under fluttering eyelashes? Men made her blushƒ_" easily. Feeling the businessman's eyes on her, she swung around and caught his tight smirk as he gawked at her breasts. A wormish feeling of disgust rippled through her. Even Phil, the man she should trust, raked over her bumps and curves with a salacious hunger, that turned her cold. Why couldn't men be her friends? Why did they always treat her like an object?
Turning her thoughts inward, she bubbled with a forced anticipation of living alone. Being able to lock her door and say no to late night knocks seemed a good protection against the heated arguments she and Phil were slowly and painfully (on her part) growing accustomed it. Fights were commonplace in her family, and she accepted them as part of the marital package. Phil had suggested they live together as a test before marriage, arguing that Atlanta wasn't the safest place for a woman to prove herself single.
Shimmering mirages of heat wrinkled perspective; hot flashes of white light reflected off the luggage cart and parked airplanes. Unlike Minnesota, everything here seemed congested and ready for explosion. A shyness, a lack of self-confidence tightened her throat. Her heart thumped in her chest, her breasts pressing anxiously against the bodice of her dress. Phil was here to help her, she reminded herself, hysterical at her silliness.
Phil... the image of his sandy hair and tanned cheeks made her squirm in her seat. A tingling deep within her womanhood moistened the nest of her womb. In a rustle of stockings, she crossed her legs and clenched shut her eyes. Behind her flickering lids, flashed white light.
She stiffened then at the crackly voice of an airline stewardess announcing their debarkation. All five feet and five inches of her creamy flesh jumped as she realized this was it.
"Give me another whiskey, bartender," slurred Phil Carmichael, then turning to the Chicagoan sitting next to him perusing the Atlanta Times where the wide dark eyes of Rufus King, latest victim, stared up at him.
"Ah, don't get emotional over that shit... " snickered Phil unsympathetically. "Atlanta's full of niggers... one less kid's ten less bastards on welfare!"
The man next to him stiffened, then turned his back to the offensive young man, bolting down whiskey.
"To hell with ya, then," snorted Phil, turning to two young men sitting across from him in the square-shaped bar off the Seven Sea Restaurant in Atlanta's airport. He snapped his fingers at the bartender. "Give these boys a drink in honor of my gal comin' in from Minnesota!"
Eyeing the rakish man disdainfully, the gray haired bartender tweaked his moustache cogitatingly and silently complied, pouring the two men drinks. Everyone in Atlanta was edgy from the murders, saddened that such ugliness had tainted the reputation of their city. All but one, that is, and it was his ill fate to have to serve him. Snatching the bills from the bar and slapping them in the cash register, he overheard the man's distasteful discussion of his girl friend who apparently was on the concourse waiting for him while he got drunk with strangers. The bartender shook his head, having seen this movie before.
"Yeah, got my little woman comin' in from up North. Christ, I can't wait to get my hands on her! Hookers don't make it with me no more," he boasted. "Nothing like a tight-assed blondie to get me hard and make ya happy!"
"Yeah? She got nice tits?" one of them asked.
"Christ, she's got a pair of knockers you ain' seen on black chicks! He yanked his tie loose and held upturned palms as if weighing his fiancee's breasts in each. Below, behind the gabardine trap of his suit pants, his cock lurched. "Hey, bar keep... give us another round!"
He slapped six bills on the bar ostentatiously.
"Don't you think you've had enough?" The bartender leaned his hands against the bar and glared Phil in the eye.
"Ah, shit____" Phil staggered to his feet and headed toward the Delta concourse.
Blonde shimmering hair dancing in the air conditioned breeze near the ticket desk could belong to only one woman. His woman. Shouldering his way brazenly through the crown, rousing cold stares, he charged towards her The unsteady gait and bloodshot eyes were childhood indications. Carrie's eyes slitted.
"You've been drinking... couldn't you wait until I got here?" she sniped.
"Hey, not drinking, celebrating!" he defended with a toothy, disarming grin. He slunk his heavy arm around her shoulder, crushing her to him suffocating her with alcohol breath and unwanted embraces... so much like Daddy! she pulled away.
"It's hot in here... please, Phil!"
"It's the South, honey... climate's hot and the men are hotter!" He dipped his head to kiss her on the neck, breath snorting from his nostrils. Sex and alcohol were two sore points with Carrie, and for that reason he loved to exaggerate their importance.
"You didn't have to get drunk!" she averred, tutting, starchly, she charged down the carpeted concourse, up the ramp, past the security station and heading for baggage claim beyond the restaurants and bars.
Phil was fast on her heels. "Stop, Carrie... so help me!" he hissed between clenched teeth as he charged after her swaying skirt covering the half moons of her firm buttocks. His eyes traveled from the slender ankles, up the firm calves and over the rich swell of her hips to the nipped in waist line. Christ, what a looker she was! Feisty and prudish, fun to tease and Christ, what he'd give to sink his cock into her right now!
"Hey, you two have a fight?" Taunted one of the men Phil had been buying drinks.
Phil turned red with rage. Closing in on her, he grabbed her by the elbows. "Don't you ever embarrass me like that again!" he sneered, squeezing her arm painfully. "I'm happy to see you, is that so crass?"
The sweltering heat and blowing air conditioning was eating at Carrie's humor. Her blue eyes lifted to his brown ones that sizzled with something she could not, dared not, define.
True, she had been rash. Letting out a deep sigh she apologized ƒ_" lifelessly. "I'm sorry...
It was a long trip and its so hot here... and, and there was this man on the plane staring at me like I was naked or something!" She raked polished fingertips through long straight hair. Blue eyes turned upward to study his expression. "You know how I hate being stared at!"
He plucked her luggage from the carousel and led the way to the parking lot. The automatic doors hissed open and a gush of hot air so moist it felt like liquid against her face, punched her like a balled up fist. She drew a deep breath, fighting dizziness.
"It's so hot here .. I never would have believed... "
Phil threw the luggage in the car trunk. "Cut the complaining, will you... and appreciate being with me!"
She had been a nag from the moment she stepped off the plane, and knew how he despised nagging women. He couldn't tolerate anything short of perfection. Unfortunately, number two son failed to measure up to number one son. Phil, consequently, never finished college, having accepted a job as an electronics mechanic for an Atlanta based firm.
"Where's my apartment?" she asked, slipping into the hot plastic car seat. She felt sticky and grimy, but fought down ill-tempered urges.
Sliding into the seat, Phil started the motor and put the air conditioner on high. His fair lady would hit the ceiling when she laid her blue eyes on her new home! Oh, it was modern, like most low-cost tenement projects in Atlanta, but not far enough away from the steaming black ghettos. He snickered to himself conspiratorially as he revved the motor.
How long would it take before she begged him to move in with her for protection?
His bloodshot eyes swept to the luscious ripple of her bouncy breasts. Stemming temptation, he clenched his teeth to keep from grabbing those milky mounds.
"What part of town will I be living in?" she wanted to know, slipping a lithe arm along the car seat and tucking a stockinged leg beneath her firm buttocks. "I won't have a car for a while... I hope it's within walking distance of my school. George Washington High?"
Throwing back her blonde head, she giggled. "Wouldn't it be funny if that was your alma mater?' A lecherous grin creased his handsome face. "You're my alma mater, honey. I'd love to graduate with all your honors!"
An arm swept about her shoulders and happy for the contact, Carrie nestled against his chest, relieved the tension had smoothed. Still, his drinking and treating her like a sex object was offensive, two elements of marriage she must get used to.
"Missed you, babe," he whispered hotly. This time she didn't fight him. Casting her a quizzical glance out of the corner of his eye, he let his hand drift down over her shoulder to the firmness of her full breasts. His leg slid across the cooled plastic seat and rubbed against the suppleness of her firm thigh. Usually sudden contact frightened her, but today, in Atlanta, she was loose and reckless ƒ_" the way Phil Carmichael liked his women!
"Tell you what," he whispered, kissing her hair. "Why don't we take a spin to your school. If I'm not mistaken, it's about eight blocks from here." Then in a concerned tone: "Hope you don't get stuck with too many niggers in your class... Christ, those bastards have been raising hell down here. Nigger vigilantes, nigger karate teachers... pretty soon they'll be ruling the place!"
"PHIL CARMICHAEL!" she snapped, temper flaring. "How can you say something so-so-so utterly inhumane!" She pulled away from him. "Can't you understand they've been underprivileged and that Americans are responsible for their being in this country?" she tutted.
Phil stiffened behind the wheel. Carrie was a fragile thing, fragile as a magnolia blossom and just as sweet. Perhaps it was cruel to get her an apartment so close to the black projects, but if she was going to live in the south, he averred stoically, she was going to have to toughen up and shed some of her goodie goodie ideas about life. A month of living on Hayes Street and teaching in Washington and she would be elated to stay home, watch soap operas and cook stew for her husband.
"You're right... I'm an insensitive bastard," he sighed, capturing her shoulders again and pulling her to him. His finger traced the outline of her bee-stung nipple through the soft cotton. Predictably, she pulled away.
"Phil, you're so aggressive sometimes."
"The word is macho, and women like it," he defended.
Blue eyes rolled to the side, taking in the masculine square-jawed strength of his handsome features. Air conditioning blew under her dress, cooling her warm, stockinged inner thighs. She shivered from the caress. She pulled away impulsively; it felt too good.
Times when he closed in on her, like now, her mother's screams form the adjacent bedroom chilling the walls, echoed in her brain. She stiffened, and not from the air conditioning.
He felt her tension. "Relax, honey. Doesn't matter how frigid you are, you can't ice up in Atlanta!"
It was intended as a joke, but sourly. Carrie's button chin began to tremble. Why did he have to say something like that? As much as calling her half a woman? Trains of thought chugged through her psyche ƒ_" and not for the first time on this subject. If she were frigid, afraid of sex, then why did men insist on staring at her? It didn't make sense. Tutting in annoyance, covering hurt, she reached for the radio dial and turned it on. A news report crackled over the radio.
"Atlanta police today discovered the grisley remains of a nine year-old boy... no report on the cause of death____" Quickly she turned the dial. Enough of murder and racial tension and fear! Resolving to lighten her mood, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, tasting his sweet after shave lotion with her glossy lips. She must forgive him his brassiness, because it was that strength, almost cruelly judgmental, that she loved about him. Funny, in a perverse way, her father, despite his drinking and lack of tolerance, possessed that same strength.
Abruptly her attention was drawn to the car window, noticing that the tree-lined avenues were slowly relenting to the pressure of buildings, apartments, apparently, identical in design. Identical, except for the graffiti scrawled over the stucco walls. Her blue eyes widened, pulse quickening, as she gawked at children playing in the streets while their mothers sat on the grass, fanning themselves. The streets were littered with trash, abandoned furniture and kitchen appliances rusting on sidewalks. Broken windows and boarded up windows. This was the ghetto.
"Welcome to Atlanta," snorted Phil disapprovingly. "These are the kids you've come to save."
Carrie was wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Children, noticing the white couple in the new Toyota, scattered from the sidewalks. Some darted for baseball bats hid- den under shrubs. Angry, twisted expressions lined their young faces with bitterness; their eyes sparked threateningly.
"Let's get out of here!" Carrie grabbed his arm.
""You said you wanted to see George Washington High____!" He cast her a challenging look.
"But this is____"
"Yup... its where all those kids have been disappearing! Not a nice sight, is it?"
Carrie's blue eyes squinted. "And the school I'll be teaching in... "
"Is near here."
Carrie sucked in her breath, rubbing her temples with pinching fingers. Her heart pounded in her chest. Why hadn't Phil told her? Why hadn't he helped her find another job in a safer part of town?
"You don't have to work, you know. We could get married and find a bigger place across town." The suggestion came softly, but refused to soften Carrie's mood. "Oh, no! I came here to teach school and that's what I'm going to do!" Every goosebumped inch of her creamy flesh was charged with anger as Phil pulled up to a curb and put the car in neutral. "I would love nothing better than to have you with me all the time honey. I don't want you endangering your life teaching a bunch of black ghettos thugs." Frustrated, reading the suspicion of deceit in her eye, he shook her by the shoulders. "Can't you see I love you?"
Her eyes descended to her lap. "Let's go see the school."
To her amazement, the school was relatively new. Splattered graffiti marred the walls and a playground resembled more the prison exercise yard than a high school football field.
Wire fences encircled the property and the building wore the air of something ominous and cruelly mature compared to the youth educated there. Civics... what do I know about civics... about government and poverty and racial tension? she thought defeatedly to herself. Her social consciousness centered around German Christmas with a jolly St. Nick and listening to Puccini on Saturday afternoon FM radio stations crackling over the air from Minneapolis.
"Listen, honey, they've got a million day-care centers around town... how about... " He eased into the subject for the last time.
"No! I'm going to teach high school and that's it!" she spat out the words in measured rhythm, letting each one sink into his brain for the final time. Repetition always bored her.
The trapped, claustrophobic feeling engulfed her again, and she felt herself sinking into a world of fantasy to dispel despair. Everything, she assured herself, trying to quell her heartbeat, would be okay. Yet she felt like a newly landed alien from a foreign planet, looking at American society at a first glance. It wasn't a pretty sight. She shivered, shoulders quivering. Times when this feeling crept up on her, she needed Phil more than ever.
"Seen enough, honey? Want to go back to your place?"
She nodded, staring down into her lap's wringing hands. A U-turn and the yellow Toyota was headed back through the ghetto' project. At a stop sign and cross walk where a buxom black lady in fuzzy bedrooms slippers waddled across the street, both arms laden with grocery bags, Carrie sucked in her breath. From nowhere a street gang jumped out from behind the scraggly shrubs, armed with baseball bats wielded over their shoulders.
The incongruity of youth versus cruel maturity masked their faces. Large, chocolate eyes snappy with hatred. Muscles developed from a fight for the fittest.
They surrounded Phil's new Toyota and started to rock it. One young black boy jumped on the hood of the car and glared, down at Carrie's creamy fleshed body. Through the windshield her ears stung with his racist accusations.
"White honky bitch!" The boy spat, his black face greasy with lusty vengeance. "Big titted bitch! Get the fuck outta our neighborhood!" His voice was garbled, his tongue thick.
Pooching out his thick black lips, he spit a wad of drool onto the windshield.
Inside, Carrie shuddered with fear, her body rocking from right to left with the movement of the car. Fear tightened in her throat. "Get us out of her, Phil! They hate us! They'll kill us!"
Balancing herself, she threw out her arms on either side of the car seat, her breasts bouncing from the rocking of the car axis. She blinked, blue eyes glassy with fear.
The hood jolted as a second boy jumped onto the hood, baseball bat clutched hatefully in his fists. Up on his knees, he pulled it back over his shoulder, ready to crash in the windshield!
"Yeah... Miss Tits," her second tormentor grunted. "We wanna see dem white tits or dat windshield's gonna crack into dat pretty face!"
"Oh, my God, Phil... get us out of here!"
Phil stared at the baseball bat and back into the snappy, hate-filled pupils. "He's not kidding... open your dress!"
"PHIL! You can't mean that! Get us out of here!"
Between clenched teeth Phil repeated his demand. "This is a new car... I haven't the fuck paid for it, and if you don't want your face in bloody ribbons ƒ_" SHOW HIM YOUR FUCKIN' TITS!"
A cold shiver of dread sent a ripple of dizziness to toy with her senses. Her mouth felt as if she were chewing on a wad of cotton. Blue eyes sparred with black ones ƒ_" two sets of them ƒ_" leering down at her, knowing they had her cornered. Carrie's eyes lowered from the sweat glistening foreheads crowned with kinks of Afro hairdos long uncombed and unwashed, down the oily cheeks in their strong muscled chests covered flimsily in fish net tops dirtied with sweat. Their strong, domineering bodies, tight young thighs... Oh, God!
She clenched shut her eyes while trembling fingertips worked one by one at the pearl buttons of her cotton dress.
Tears, wetted her eyes, her ears buzzing from their lewd tauntings, making her an object of their hate.
Slowly, she pulled open the jacket of her dress, showing off the white lace of her brassiere. That wasn't enough for their hate-filled hunger.
"We wanna see dem tits!"
Choking down disgust, a wad of fear-born nausea clogging her throat, Carrie pulled it open wider.
"Take off your dress... or we're both dead!" hissed Phil.
"I can't... " she whimpered, her face taut with fear.
Through one fear-dilated pupil she watched the first tormentor, up on his haunches, baseball bat balanced on the car hood, yank at the tab of his zipper and peel down his pants. His young black penis sprung into view, spearing toward her, jumping from a black kinky mass of pubic curls!
Carrie thought she might faint as numbly, she watched his black fist descend to his groin and pump the black snake. A pearl of pre-cum oozed from the tip. She gagged, cheeks burning with disgust, revulsion and rage. Compliantly, she slipped one arm, then the other from her dress bodice and peeled it down to her waist.
"Take off that bra!" Phil was as angry with her reluctance as with the street gang's damage to his new car.
The feel of her own hands on her clammy flesh sent a shiver to worm up her spine. Her back goosebumped as her normally nimble fingers, now uncooperative as hunks of stone, unhooked clumsily the hooks of her brassiere and pulled let it flutter from her naked breasts. Shamed, humiliated, she lowered her head and wept.
Through the glass the boys on the car hood whooped and screamed to their friends to come take a look. Black faces mashed to the glass windows taking in the milky loveliness of Carrie's breasts. Their black eyes bored into her flesh like tiny lice. Her nipples hardened into diamond chips and the fleshy orbs swelled, throbbed in shame.
Beside her she heard Phil suck in his breath. Damn him! How could he sit there gawking while she was exposed naked to these tormentors? How could he?
Lifting her head she let out a screech and covered her burning face with her hands. On the car hood, a black boy pumped at his penis, threw back his head and whooped toward the skies as a white jet of male cum spewed geyser and dribbled in thick, creamy rivers down the windshield.
"Ta's for you, white bitch!" rasped the boy. "BASTARDS, FUCKING BLACK BASTARDS!"
yelped Phil, stomping on the accelerator. The yellow Toyota's tires screeched down the block, zigzagging to avoid the hammering baseball bats cracking the brake lights and denting the new chrome bumper. "Dirty fucking bastards...!"
Beside him, Carrie cried into her hands, sobbing in shame and feelings she could not define. She hugged her brassiere to her breasts and bracing her elbow on the car window, let all emotion flow.
She jumped as he cupped her shoulders. "You can put your dress on now honey. Let's forget this happened, okay? Let's just forget it and enjoy each other."
Forget? How could she possible forget such ugliness? If only she could understand the reasons behind it. She must be strong, she thought, raising her head, tears burning down her flushed cheeks. Or she could never teach in this tension-filled city. It could have happened to anyone, she assured herself. No, she hadn't been singled out as a victim. It was a circumstance, that was all. Not her personal reality, because she had done nothing to provoke the incident.
"Honey," he whispered hotly. "Please don't teach here... let's live together... please."
Her blonde hair shook in a firm negative. No... she had come here to learn to be independent. "No... I want to teach."