Separate Beds by Lavyrle Spencer Page A

sister, you better think again!” Then he fell to mumbling in the repetitive way she'd learned to despise. “Told me . . . she told me, ha! She told me goddam nothin' . . .”
    “I'm going to school,” she said resignedly, turning toward the doorway.
    “You just keep your smart little ass where it is!”
    She stopped with her back to him, sighed, waited for him to finish his tirade so she could pretend to go to classes and he'd leave the house in his usual, aimless way.
    “Now I wanna know what the hell he means to do about this mess he got you in!” She heard the exaggerated slam as the coffeepot hit the stove burner.
    “Daddy, I have to go to school.”
    Whining, mimicking, he repeated, “Daddy, I have to go to school,” and finished by roaring, “You wanna go to school, you answer me first! What's he intend to do about gettin' you knocked up!”
    “He offered me money,” she answered, truthfully enough.
    “Well, that's more like it! How much?”
    How much, how much, how much! she thought frantically, pulling a figure out of the air. “Five thousand dollars.”
    “Five thousand dollars!” he exploded. “He'll have to do better than that to see the end of me! My ship just come in and he wants to pay me off with a measly five thousand bucks? One o' them diamonds in the old lady's rings was worth ten times as much.”
    Slowly Catherine turned to face him. “Cash,” she said, pleased with the greedy light that responded in his eyes, promising herself to remember it and laugh when she was gone. He pondered, scratching his stomach.
    “What'd you tell him?” His face wore that sly weasel's expression she despised. It meant the wheels were turning; he was scheming again about the best way to get something for nothing.
    “I told him you'd probably be calling his father.”
    “Now that's the first smart thing you said since I come in here!”
    “You'll call him anyway, so why should I have lied to him? But I haven't changed my mind. You can try bleeding him all you want, but I won't have any part of it, just remember that.” This too was her long-taken stand. Should she suddenly veer from it he would undoubtedly become wary.
    “Sister, you ain't got the brains God gave a damn chicken!” he blasted, yanking a dirty towel off the cabinet top, then slapping the edge of the sink with it. But she'd long grown inured to his insults; she stood resignedly in the face of them, letting his spate run its course. “You not only ain't got enough brains to keep yourself from gettin' knocked up, you don't know when your ship's come in! Ain't I told you it's come in here?”
    The term sickened her, she'd heard it so often, for it was part of his grand self-delusion. “Yes, Daddy, you've told me . . . a thousand times,” she said sarcastically before adding firmly, “But I don't want his money. I'm making plans. I can get along without it.”
    “Plans,” he scoffed, “what kind of plans? Don't think you're gonna sponge offa me and raise that little bastard around here 'cause I ain't raisin' his brat! I ain't made outa money, you know!”
    “Don't worry, I won't ask you for a thing.”
    “You bet your boots you won't, sister, because you're gonna call up lover boy there and tell him to fork over!” He pointed a finger at her nose.
    “To whom? You or me?”
    “Just don't get smart with me, sister! I been waiting for my ship to come in one helluva long time!” She almost cringed again at the hated expression. He'd built his pipedreams upon it for so long that he was no longer aware of how often he used the term, nor the shallowness of character it only served to emphasize.
    “I know,” she commented dryly, but again he missed the sarcasm.
    “And this here is it!” He jammed a dirty finger at the floor as if a pot of gold were there on the cracked, green linoleum.
    “Your coffee is going to boil over. Turn the burner down.”
    He studied the pot unseeingly while the lid lifted with each perk and the