CHAPTER THIRTEEN
By the time Ricki showered and made her way back into the room wearing Vince’s oversized dress shirt, he was still fully clothed lying on top of his bed talking with an executive in his office.
But as he watched her roam around that room in that shirt, knowing she wore nothing beneath it, he started getting aroused.
And her smooth legs beneath that shirt, and her big breasts outlined even in that big shirt, gave him a full erection.
So much so that when he got off of that phone, he grabbed his toiletries case and a pair of pajama pants from out of his overnight bag, and then he went into the bathroom and took a long, cold shower of his own.
But when he finally got out and saw that Ricki was already in bed, he got in his bed too, and crashed. Within a few minutes, it seemed to him, he was out like a light.
It was hours later, but when he woke back up he could hear what sounded like someone sniffling. He looked over at Ricki’s bed and realized it was her. She was trying her best to muffle the sound.
“Rasheda?” His voice was soft and laced with concern.
But it was what Ricki didn’t want to hear. She didn’t realize he had awakened. Did he hear her cries? She didn’t want him to hear her! She was being as quiet as she could, but she knew she was sniffling too. And he did call her name. “Yes?” She attempted to conceal any cry in her voice.
“Come here.”
She didn’t want to go to him right in that moment either. What was he going to do? Lecture to her about how her sister wasn’t worth her tears? She didn’t want to hear that because she knew she was worth every tear!
But when she didn’t go to Vince, he got out of his bed and got into her bed.
Ricki, at first, didn’t know what to make of a move like that.
It wasn’t what she expected at all! But when he said, “it’s okay,” in such a soft, caring voice, and when she felt him wrapping his big, warm arms around her small, cold body, she broke.
She couldn’t conceal it any longer. She cried like a baby. She sobbed in his arms.
Vince held onto her and didn’t try to comfort her with words of reassurance or anything remotely resembling sweetness.
Mainly because he didn’t know how to be that man, but also because he felt he knew Ricki well enough to know she didn’t need reassurance.
She wasn’t that kind of weak girl. She needed what she was getting: somebody to hold onto.
She cried for nearly an hour straight. But he never said a word, and she appreciated that. He just held her.
It wasn’t until the crying completely stopped, and then several more minutes later, before she began to open up. “It’s wrong that poor people have to sit in jail because they have no money, while rich people can get bailed out. That seems so wrong.”
Once again, that sister was on her mind, Vince thought. “Some states are trying to change the laws.”
“Will they, you think?”
“No,” Vince said honestly. Then he glanced down at her. “Is that why you were crying?”
“That and the fact that I can’t even help myself, you know? But here I am trying to help my sister. And I’m just . . .”
“You’re just what?”
“And I’m scared, Vince. I’m scared.”
“About her fate?”
“Yes! She could get Life in prison. Life! And I know she didn’t do it, I don’t care what you or that prosecutor or even what her public defender says. Erica wouldn’t do that. But that’s not the crazy part.”
There’s a crazy part, Vince thought. “What was the crazy part?” he asked.
“I was scared that you were going to wait until I went to sleep and then leave me here alone. In this town I hate.”
Vince was touched by her words. “I wouldn’t do that to you,” he said, pulling her closer against his body even as he was already fighting against his own arousal.
Ricki was touched by his words. She lifted her head from his chest and looked up at him. “You wouldn’t?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
Vince studied her anguished face. He started to say he didn’t know why, but he knew that wouldn’t be entirely true. “Because you are somebody I will never hurt, Rasheda,” he found himself saying. Which shocked even him. “That’s why.”
It shocked Ricki too. But warmed her heart at the same time. “Nobody’s ever treated me like you treat me,” she found herself confessing.
At first Vince chuckled, thinking it was a joke, because they certainly had their share of battles already. But he saw that sincerity in her eyes. “What way am I treating you?” he asked her.
She stared at him. “Mostly good.”
That was news to him. He thought he’d been rather harsh to her on every turn. But everything in its context. “How have others treated you?” he asked her.
Ricki didn’t hesitate. “Mostly bad,” she said to him.
Vince continued looking into her big browns with sadness in his own eyes. She was such a wonderful soul. Such a hard-charging, caring young lady. How could anybody mistreat this person?
But apparently just about everybody did. Including him with his harshness. But if all she knew was horrific, his harshness was more than it should have been to her. “Why do you hate this town?” he asked as he continued to stare at her.
Ricki was scared to go there, but she knew he had a right to know. He was bankrolling her entire visit in a way that allowed her to take her birthday money and pay her bills back home, at least for a month, and to be there for her sister. He had every right to know.
She turned onto her back while Vince remained on his side watching her. “When Erica was twelve years old,” she said, “she thought she was pregnant.”
“Pregnant at twelve?”
Ricki nodded. “It was awful.”
“Did she say who the father was?”
“She told me he was some eighteen-year-old, but she claim he was passing through Milton and she didn’t know his name.”
“Damn. What about your parents? They allowed her to have boyfriends at twelve?”
“Allowed it? Absolutely not! She was sneaking out and running away and doing whatever she was big enough to do. They couldn’t control her so they stopped trying.
I left town when I was eighteen, so by the time she got pregnant I’d been away from home for like four years.
I was living in Brooklyn by then. I couldn’t wait to get away from Milton. ”
“Or away from your parents?”
“Them too,” said Ricki.
“Why?”
“Daddy was a military man and he treated us like his subjects rather than his children. And Mommy did whatever he said. Me and Erica had mouths on us. We just couldn’t go along with all that drill sergeant shit.”
Ricki started to correct herself, but decided against it.
He never corrected himself when he used profanity.
“Erica would call and confide in me about what she wanted me to know, so I made her take a pregnancy test. It was negative, but she was certain she was pregnant. Since she heard that sometimes those tests are wrong, she wanted me to come to town and take her to Dr. Proctor’s office. ”
“Dr. Proctor? The man she’s accused of killing now? She went to see him when she was twelve?”
Ricki nodded. “He was the most prominent African-American doctor in town, and everybody trusted him. So I came to town and took her to see him so that it could be confirmed as yea or nay by an OB/GYN.”
“Was she pregnant?”
“No,” Ricki said. “She wasn’t pregnant. Dr. Proctor’s nurse showed me the test results since I was twenty-two and was her big sister, and she was only twelve.
But I noticed she was in his examining room for a long time.
I even asked his nurse about it. But she said Dr. Proctor was counseling her on her bad behavior.
As if a twelve-year-old was the problem.
What about that grown-ass man that slept with a twelve-year-old? ”
“I agree,” Vince said.
“So we eventually left the doctor’s office and I took her home.
Erica was acting funny then, like something wasn’t right, but she always acted funny.
But a couple months later, I come home to our grandmamma’s funeral and I catch Erica throwing up in the bathroom.
So I’m mad. She let that boy mess with her again?
But before we could say anything more, our parents overheard the conversation and made her take a pregnancy test. This time it was positive.
They were blaming me, as if I had something to do with it, and they were treating Erica like she was a dog. It was awful.”
“What did they do?”
“They made her get an abortion.”
“Against her will?”
“She wanted one,” said Ricki. “She wanted that baby out of her now was how she put it. But of course our parents made me take her to the clinic in Hartford to get the abortion. They were too high and mighty for that. So I took her. I didn’t want to, but you just didn’t go against our parents.
But after she had the abortion, she told me the truth. ”
“Which is?”
“She told me that she was pregnant that first time too, and that Dr. Proctor gave her an abortion in his own clinic. That’s why it took so long.”
Vince was confused. “Wait a minute. He gave abortions?”
“Not that I know of, no. But he gave my sister one.”
“Why would he do that?”
Ricki exhaled. “Erica said he was the father of that baby.”
Vince was floored. He sat up in bed. “He was the father? How?”
“She went to see him with a friend of hers, this fifteen-year-old fast-tail girl who thought she was pregnant. He saw my sister with the girl and said she should be examined too since she was sexually active as well. But instead of examining her, my sister said he picked her up from a park later that evening, took her to this little house he owned on the bad side of town, and raped her. And that was how she got pregnant.”
“She didn’t tell anybody?”
“Nobody.”
“You believed her?”
“Every word of it. She doesn’t lie, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. No matter how bad it makes her look, she’ll tell you the truth. That man raped her and then gave her an abortion to cover up his tracks. She never lies. She’s always been that way.”