Mama by Terry McMillan Page B

seen it come true too many times. Janey Pearl got caught in the Starlight Motel under the Bluewater Bridge, laying up with Sissie Moncrief's old man, and Sissie tried to strangle Janey Pearl with her own garter belt and stockings. Shirley Walker's husband caught her in bed with his brother. Put both of them in the hospital with a .38.
    This town was entirely too small to be sneaky and slick. Be different if this was a city like Detroit. Messing around was the surest way to get yourself killed by some jealous church-going woman, especially if she was a Baptist. Them Baptists could get the spirit all right, Mildred thought, right on your ass, and the very words they chastised their children for using would sizzle off their tongues like water hitting a hot skillet.
    Mildred didn't have any trouble getting the attention of most men because she was still young—a few months shy of thirty—and well equipped. Her hips didn't exactly curve out now, but when she turned to the side her behind looked like someone had drawn it on, made it a little too perfect, and it was this luscious behind that drew many a man's eye. Even though she still stuffed her bra with a pair of the girls' anklets to give her breasts more cleavage, Mildred wasn't what you'd call promiscuous. She liked to look her best and had gotten tired of sitting around the house all those months getting sucked in by soap operas. It wasn't even so much romance she was looking for as it was to have some fun, maybe roll over and feel a man's body in her bed again. These days no one was there except maybe one or two of the kids, trying to keep warm.
    One night a tall, caramel-skinned man strolled through the doors of the Red Shingle. He walked right past Mildred. She could hardly swallow her drink; couldn't believe something this handsome would set foot inside the Shingle without advance notice. In all the years she'd been in here and even when she worked here, she'd never seen anybody that caused her to do a double take.
    This man had deep-set eyes and thick bushy eyebrows and a smile like you saw in toothpaste commercials. His hair was charcoal mixed with gray and he was as tall as a basketball player. He had a body like a boxer and instead of walking, he strutted like his ego was sitting on his shoulders. Mildred liked his style immediately. This man had class. She could barely speak when he walked up to her and introduced himself. His name was Sonny Tyler. She told him her name, then tucked in her lip and broke out her long-forgotten-that-she-still-had "Yes, I'm alone" smile. He sat down next to her at the bar and offered to buy her a drink but all she asked for was ginger ale.
    Sonny told her he was stationed at Selfridge Air Force Base in St. Clemens, which was thirty-odd miles from Point Haven. One of his old running buddies was playing at the Shingle tonight and he had come to hear him since he hadn't seen him in almost a year. "Is that so," was all Mildred could say. She was trying to sound intelligent and figuring out the best way to carry on a conversation with this man, who was causing her panties to get wet.
    They talked through two shows.
    "I'm divorced and got five kids. The oldest is thirteen and the baby is seven," she told him.
    "You sure know how to keep yourself up," he said, smiling. Mildred was shocked that he didn't go flying to the other end of the bar where there were quite a few women with less responsibility but also less sex appeal. They were all tapping their stirrers on the rim of their glasses to the beat of the music, and watching Mildred like hawks.
    Sonny asked Mildred for her phone number, which made her feel seventeen again. She loved it. A few nights later he called her. He wanted to come over to her house; wanted to meet her kids. "Not yet," she said, but she met him at a motel in Canada. She told him she didn't let just any man in her bed, didn't care how good he looked or how good he smelled. "What's that you wearing anyway, Sonny? Lord,