Chapter 4
"What did you call her a whore for?" he asked her mother as he stood in the doorway, dark and glowering. "Nobody can speak that way about the girl I'm going to marry!"
The small, round woman looked at her daughter and then at the man in the doorway. Looking back at Naomi, her face darkened with anger and she pushed past him and left the room.
"Ask her why I called her a whore!" she snapped at him over her shoulder. "Ask her!"
Lincoln waited until the heavy sound of her mother's footsteps had faded down the hall before he spoke. Then he said the words in a low deadly tone.
"You haven't taken any money from a man for ... for anything, have you?"
Naomi knuckled the tears out of her eyes and sat up on the edge of the bed. "No, Line, I haven't taken any money from any man," she told him wearily.
"Then what's this all about?" he demanded.
Naomi looked at him and then shook her head in slow resignation. How do I tell him the truth without hurting him! Line's a good man ... but it just isn't enough. Not anymore! But how do I make him understand that it's not his fault?" That it's not anyone's fault. How do I make him know that?
It was then that he became aware of the suitcases on her bed, and his reaction was quick and painful. "You going away?" he asked with a hurt expression.
"Yes, I'm going away," Naomi answered in a tired voice.
"Where? Where you going?" he demanded.
"Just away, Line. Just away." She couldn't say more than that, and she hoped he would accept the limited explanation. But he didn't.
"Where you going? I want to know where you're going? We're supposed to be getting married in three months, and I've got a right to know where you're going!"
Naomi got up from the bed and went over to the dressing table and began to put on her lipstick.
Angrily he grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. "Never mind that now! he snarled at her. "You're gonna be my wife, and I want to know what you're up to!"
Somehow the touch of his huge hand on her shoulder made her shudder. Somehow it repulsed her. And when she blurted out the words-it was because she wanted to hurt him.
"I'm not going to be your wife! Not in three months ... not ever!"
The shock of her words pinched his face into lines of agony and his hand dropped limply to his side.
"What do you mean you're not going to marry me? What's wrong, Naomi? Tell me what's wrong!"
The image of Randy Harcourt shattered into her consciousness. And of his offer. The clothes. The apartment. Everything. And when she responded, it was a wry smile.
"Nothing's wrong, Line. For the first time in my life, everything's right!"
He shook his head in confusion.
"What do you mean by that?" he said in a shaky tone. "Tell me what you mean by that?"
Neither of them had heard the return of her mother and they greeted the words from the door with shocked expressions.
"She means she's gonna live with a white man! That's what she means! She's just sold herself to him!"
Line paled at the words and quickly turned to Naomi for verification.
"Is that right, Naomi? You're gonna live with a white man?"
Naomi bowed her head and nodded.
Why does it sound so rotten when they say it like that? So dirty! It's not like that at all! I haven't changed ... I'm still a good girl. Can't they see that?
In his anger, Line grabbed her shoulders and began to shake her. "Why are you doing it? Why are you doing it? I love you! I want to marry you! What's he offering you besides shame and hate from whites and blacks alike?"
Once again she flinched under his touch and then she shook free from his grasp. Once again she wanted to hurt him.
"He's offering everything, everything you can't!" she cried. "I don't want to live like this anymore! I want nice things ... good things! And you can't give them to me! You'll never be able to give them to me!"
From the look on his face, she knew that she had hurt him. And now she wished that she could take back the words. But it was too late. And when he finally spoke, it was as if he were trying to get even with her.
"And that's why you're selling yourself to some white man?"
"Don't say that!" she screamed at him. "Don't say that I'm selling myself. I'm not! I'm not!"
"You are! Your mother's right. You're no better than a whore! You're worse than a whore! Because at least a whore is honest about what she's doing!"
His rage and his hurt suddenly erupted into blind fury and he slapped her hard on her face. There was a stunned silence because of what he had done, and then, with a cry, Naomi's mother ran from the room. Line stood facing Naomi, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
He was a tall, muscular man, a hard worker who could bring himself no higher than the other Negro boys he graduated from high school with, even in a northern, supposedly liberal, state like Massachusetts. There were just some things that a black boy couldn't change, some levels he couldn't hope to attain, not because he wasn't capable of doing better or the white man loved him less. It just wasn't expected of him to do better, and anyone who broke that mold could well plan on being a "bad Negro," a trouble-maker.
Line knew where he stood. He'd always known. With athletic prowess he'd be cheered on and petted even by the whites, but he couldn't sit with them at the victory dinners held in Boston's better night clubs. When an injury had come to his knee, ending his hopes of becoming a part of the Celtic team, he'd had to retire alone to the silent streets and lonely, rushing crowds to find a job that "suited his talents." Menial labor with no hope of promotion or improvement in any way-that was his lot in life.
The only thing that had ever offered him hope was something that frightened Naomi. She'd have no part of it. God had done nothing to make her mother's life any easier. Why should the religion of Allah do any more for Line? He'd been with the Muslims for three years now. He wasn't an unknown in the group, and had a part in the building movement that was catching up the black countryside. A part of the more active members like Harlem's notorious Mau Maus, his life was occupied with the status of the Negro, not with keeping in one piece and spoiling a wife. The fears, bloodshed, and police battles that went with his life, no matter how non-violent the Muslims were supposed to be-the whites wouldn't stand by for any of their efforts, peaceable or otherwise, on behalf of a minority group-were not a life that Naomi wanted to face. She would flee first to a less hostile world to try to find the gifts she wanted of life. To have them bloodstained and soaked in tears were not worth having at all.
Indignant and hurt at being struck by him, she no longer cared about his feelings. She only knew that she wanted to lash back at him. To hurt him as he had hurt her. To get even.
Deliberately and provocatively, she undressed in front of him. Her hard eyes never left his face as she removed her clothing. And she smiled with satisfaction as she saw the flicker of desire build within him.
Now completely nude, she plunged the knife of vengeance in and twisted it.
Flaunting her body at him with an upward thrust of her breasts and a gyration of her pelvis, she said, "Maybe I'm a whore, and maybe I'm not, but you'll never find out again! Take a good look at me, Line..a good look ... cause it's the last look you're ever gonna get! Wanna feel! Wanna touch? Go ahead, because it's the last time you're going to do it! Unless you got the price!"
Her laugh was bitter as she watched him quiver with anger.
"Even a Muslim will never get the price," she taunted him. "I'm going over to where the money is. Why waste your blood and sweat on something that'll never come to a nigger boy!"
His open-handed blow across her face sent her head-long across the bed. Then with a sigh of regret his hand dropped limply to his side.
Without saying a word, he turned on his heels and walked out of the room. The hysterical laughter followed him down the dark, crowding hall and out the front door.
Still laughing, Naomi looked at the watch on the dresser.
"An hour before I meet Randy. Just thirty more minutes, and then I'll be out of this forever!"
She was still laughing as she began to dress. It wasn't until after she'd finished and had lifted her suitcases from the bed that she stopped.
Then she looked around the room for one last time, and the laughter turned to tears. She ran down the dank, narrow hall and out of the house.