Chapter 1 #2
The tears filling her eyes overflowed and streamed down her face. “I swear to you I didn’t take it,” she pleaded. She looked at Precious, then Lillian, but both women appeared unmoved by her tears.
Precious crossed her arms under her breasts over an off-white silk blouse. “You claim you didn’t take it, so how did it get into your drawer? I’m certain it didn’t grow legs and walk from my jewelry box into your bedroom.”
Justine swiped at her tears with her fingertips. “I don’t know,” she said, as Lillian shared a look with her daughter.
“Maybe we should call the police and have them question her,” the older woman said.
Shaking uncontrollably, Justine feared her knees would give way and she’d collapse to the floor.
“Please, don’t.” She didn’t want to get arrested for something she hadn’t done, and ruin her chances of graduating high school and going on to college.
“I’ll do anything you want, but please don’t call the police,” she continued with her pleas.
“Anything?” Precious asked, her voice deceptively soft.
Justine nodded. “Yes. Anything. Just say it, and I will do it.”
“What I’m going to say to you will go no further than this room. And that means you can’t even tell your grandmother, or you’re going to jail for robbery.”
Clasping her hands together in a prayerful gesture, Justine nodded again. “Okay. I promise I won’t say anything to anyone.”
“I want you to sleep with my husband.”
Justine slowly blinked, wondering if she was hearing what she’d just heard. “You want me to sleep with your husband? Why?”
“So he can get you pregnant, that’s why,” Lillian spat out.
“I don’t want a baby. Besides, I’m still a virgin.”
“That’s even better,” Lillian countered. “Once you’re pregnant, we’ll know it’s not some other man’s brat. After you give birth, we’ll take the baby and then we will make certain you will be compensated.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. These crazy women want me to sleep with a man, get pregnant, then give them my child.
Justine closed her eyes as she attempted to weigh what her employer’s wife and mother had proposed against being arrested and possibly going to prison. The Boones certainly had enough money and clout to have her put away for a very long time.
Justine was only seventeen, and she had her whole life ahead of her; it was obvious Precious Boone was unable to give her husband a baby—otherwise, she wouldn’t have come up with a crazy scheme to blackmail her into standing in for her.
And she hadn’t lied about being a virgin.
She didn’t even have a boyfriend, because she didn’t want to end up like her mother, who’d slept with a man and, upon discovering she was pregnant, he admitted he couldn’t marry her, because he was already married.
Thankfully her grandmother had stepped in to help raise her, and now that she was faced with a dilemma not of her own choosing, she wasn’t able to confide in her.
Now it seemed as if history were repeating itself, because she was going to sleep with a married man; the only difference was that she didn’t have to raise the child as an unwed mother.
A sense of strength came to Justine she hadn’t known she possessed.
“You talk about compensating me. What can I expect?”
Precious exhaled an audible sigh, seemingly relieved that Justine was going to go along with their scheme.
“Once you know for certain that you’re carrying Dennis Boone’s baby, you’ll be set up in a rent-free apartment in Manhattan.
You will be given enough money to buy food, clothes, and whatever incidentals you’ll need.
A midwife will check on you every month, and she’ll be there when you go into labor.
She’ll make arrangements for you to be taken to a hospital, where you will deliver the baby.
And if anyone asks what happened to the child, you will tell them it was born a stillbirth.
You will continue to live in the apartment rent-free for another year.
During that time, you’ll need to get a job that will pay you enough to buy food and other living expenses.
You are never to tell anyone about the baby.
Not only will we deny it, but I’ll make certain you’ll be locked away in a hospital for the mentally insane. ”
“There’s no need to threaten me,” Justine said, exhibiting a modicum of courage for the first time.
“And there’s no need for you to get snippy,” Lillian said, frowning.
At this point, Justine was beyond being intimidated.
She knew she had to go along with the two scheming women, or they would ruin her life, rationalizing she wouldn’t be the first woman to have a baby and then give it up for adoption.
Even though she would give up her baby, she had no intention of giving up her dream of becoming a schoolteacher.
“I’m not snippy, Mrs. Crawford. I know what you want, and I’m willing to do it, but I need you to answer one question for me.”
“What is it?” Lillian asked with a scowl on her face.
“What do I tell my grandmother once she finds out that I’m moving out?”
Lillian’s thinly plucked eyebrows lifted. “You don’t have to tell her anything. Mrs. Boone will inform your grandmother that she’s sending you to a secretarial school so you can learn enough office skills when it comes time for you to look for a job.”
“A secretarial school is not college,” Justine countered.
A frown settled into Lillian’s features. “Your grandmother can barely read and write, so I doubt if she would know the difference between a secretarial school and a college.”
“There’s no need for you to talk about my grandmother like that,” Justine said, her eyes narrowing.
“And if you continue to disrespect my mother, I will call the police and have you arrested for theft,” Precious threatened.
Justine knew challenging the two women wasn’t in her best interest. She nodded. “When do you want me to sleep with Mr. Boone?”
“Tomorrow night,” Precious said. “That is, if you don’t have your period.”
“I don’t,” Justine confirmed.
“Good. I want you bathed and dressed in one of my nightgowns, and then I’ll come and get you once my husband is in bed. He always has a nightcap before he turns in, so he’ll be slightly drunk, and I doubt if he’ll know it’s you and not me in bed with him.”
“What about perfume, Mrs. Boone?”
“What about it?” Precious snapped angrily.
“I’ll be wearing your nightgown, but I won’t smell like you.”
“You’re quite the sly little heifer, aren’t you?” Lillian drawled. “Not only will you be wearing a silk nightgown, but you also want to wear an expensive perfume.”
“She’s right, Mama,” Precious said. “I’ll give you a bottle of my perfume you can keep for yourself. You can also keep the nightgowns.”
Expensive perfume and silk nightgowns are nothing compared to what I am going to give you. And there’s no guarantee that I could even have a baby, because I’ve never had sexual relations with a man.
Justine wanted to voice her thoughts aloud.
It would serve both women right if she wasn’t able to get pregnant.
What would they do then? What Justine couldn’t understand: why didn’t Precious try and adopt a child like so many women who were unable to have children?
But it was apparent Dennis Boone wanted his own child and not someone else’s castoff.
Justine wasn’t totally immune to Dennis Boone, despite his being twenty years her senior.
He was wealthy, handsome, and undeniably charming.
Under another set of circumstances, she could see herself becoming his mistress if only to reap the benefits of being a kept woman, but that’s not what she wanted for her future.
She wanted a career before falling in love and marrying and then starting a family—with her husband, not with some other woman’s.
“You claim you’re a virgin,” Precious said, meeting Justine’s eyes. “And if you bleed, then I’ll make certain to put down a towel to protect the sheet. Dennis always gets on me, then rolls over after he’s finished. You can take the towel with you once he’s asleep.”
“How often do I have to sleep with him?” Justine questioned.
“Two or three times a week. I’ll let you know when I want you to take my place. Dennis will never touch me when I have my period, so that’s something we will have to coordinate.”
Justine waited until the two women walked out of the tiny bedroom that suddenly felt like a tomb.
When she’d first moved into the sprawling six-bedroom, six-bathroom Colonial, set on three acres in picturesque Mount Vernon, she felt as if she’d come to another world; it was nothing like the cramped two-bedroom apartment in a Bronx tenement she’d shared with her mother, two aunts, and an alcoholic uncle.
When she’d come to her grandmother crying that she couldn’t study because of the constant bickering among her relatives that never seemed to stop, Grandma Flora had asked Dennis Boone if her granddaughter could move in and help her with cleaning and cooking.
When he’d given his approval, Justine packed her clothes and books and moved out without a backwards glance.
She could still hear her mother accusing her of deserting her, but Justine refused to accept any guilt because she’d wanted a better life.
After sharing a bed with her mother, she would get up early to find discarded beer bottles, ashtrays filled with cigarette butts, and plates of half-eaten food left in the sink, on tables, and sometimes on the floor.
She would try and straighten up, put things away before bathing and getting dressed to go to school.
On most days, she stayed late, either in the library or study hall, to study for a test or to complete her homework assignments.
Her mother would come home exhausted after cleaning motel rooms, and Justine was left to make dinner whenever her aunts worked the night shift in a local city-run hospital’s laundry.
Her uncle, who’d suffered shell shock during World War II, had sought to erase his demons with liquor.
Since he moved in, she’d never seen him sober, and most times she stayed away from him whenever he imagined someone was coming to kill him.
She’d moved out of a home filled with chaos unaware she would be thrust into a situation over which she had no control.
Her employer’s wife and mother-in-law had concocted a conspiracy where they held her future tightly within their grasp.
She would give the scheming bitches what they wanted; then, she’d walk away and never look back.