Chocolate Kisses Ch. 01

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." James could sense the man's disappointment but there was nothing he could do about it. Buying another car as an unneeded expense right now.

The three men left, narrowly missing several fruit trees as they backed up the truck down the drive.

James cringed as he watched. Those apricot trees were almost ten years old and he didn't want to have to start over with some of them. Catherine had planted them.

Inside, the sound of laughter... How long has it been since there was laughter in this house?' ...two laughing women putting the last cans of food away. He had forgotten what it sounded like.

"Do you think it will be enough?" he ventured. "I mean, for the week?"

"James, it's more than enough... and the toys, that was so nice of you. You know, canned food is good but we can fix fresh better with...

"Oh, my God! You're hurt! Sit down, here and let me look at it. C'mon, sit down. Eliza, get me some hot water and soap. Hurry up."

Her sister was speechless. Bethany Rose, talking to a white man like that, a white man that's her employer. And he is doing what she told him to. What is the world coming to?

What's next? Eating at the same table?

'Oh, sweet Jesus,' Eliza thought, 'she's already sleeping with him after one day? Little sister, so pure and sweet, already the white man's slut...'

Eliza watched her sister closely, searching for that far away look Henry said she had after they... that far away look disappeared soon enough as he became as selfish as the rest of the men she'd been with.

Bethany Rose was happy, smiling, laughing and her eyes sparkled.

Eliza saw he wasn't treating her like a housemaid at all. They must have done it... and she seems to have liked it or at least tolerated it. Maybe he is as nice under the sheets as he was in the house.

He wasn't treating her badly, either. Maybe, it was just the way he was.

James meekly sat down. Bethany Rose carefully unwrapped the cold, wet compress that Susan had put on and then gently touched his puffy, purpling hand. It didn't feel broken. That was good. What had he done? She so wanted to ask but it wasn't her business... or was it?

"Well, James, you could have really hurt yourself, you know. But, you're lucky, just a little skin bruising. The swelling is down quite a bit, already, from what I think it was. Whoever wrapped this up has saved you a lot of painful swelling. You'll be fine by tomorrow. I'll kiss it and make it all better."

Bethany raised his hand to her open lips and she did, to the total shock of her sister and the pleasurable surprise to him. "Now, what do you want for dinner, James?"

What happened to Eliza's going-to-church, prim-and-proper sister? Was this the price for leaving everything behind? Being his lover? Eliza looked at her sister. Whatever they were doing behind closed doors, Bethany seemed to be the instigator. Her little sister...

Eliza left the kitchen and walked into the pantry, pretending to look for something. She didn't know whether to laugh... her perfect little sister the white man's slut... or cry... her perfect little sister the white man's slut.

Maybe, she wasn't being fair to him. He did seem awfully nice. Not at all like she expected... especially when she saw him shoot his gun. How nice he was being to them.

If he just wanted a woman in his bed, he could have gotten a white woman for that. These days, even that came cheap. He didn't need to go find a couple of colored girls and even if he wanted to cross the color line, why would he find someone bringing four extra mouths to feed and take care of?

Eliza wondered about these questions as she stood in the pantry, leaning against the shelves now full of food.

What will he want from her? Oh, sweet Jesus! Did he think she would be easy just because that goddamn Henry ran away and he's opened his home to all of them? Better to let Bethany sleep with him and he could leave her alone. Three children were enough.

Her fingers clutched the apron she had found in the pantry.

'Oh, sweet Jesus!' She smiled, thinking... Bethany Rose didn't seem to complain about anything this morning. Maybe he is good in bed. Lord knows colored men weren't, all selfish and leaving as soon as they came. Probably most men... they're all alike... except, maybe this one?

She could hear them talking back in the kitchen. Not one to pry... 'but, it was her sister, after all...'

"You know what? I've been such a good patient, Nurse Bethany; I could use a big bowl of ice cream with some of that chocolate sauce.

"Where are the children? Maybe they'd like some, too. What do you say, nurse?"

Bethany Rose quickly shook her head.

"Oh, no, you don't, James, remember how you want a quiet evening? Filling any child with sugar is not the way to get it, especially at night. I know you want them to feel comfortable here but, please, let's take things slowly. It might not work out."

She looked at her sister after saying that, warning Eliza to keep the children under control before the whole house of cards she experienced the last two days came falling down.

"Well, all right, if you say so, you're the boss. I've some work to do, so I'll be in the library if you need me."

"What time would you like supper?"

"A couple of hours... if you have to feed the children... that might be better, feed them first, so that you don't have to worry about them while we eat. Can you make them take a nap or something?"

"I'll give them their lessons."

Not quite the answer he expected but he was quickly learning that Bethany Rose was anything but what he expected, exactly what she was thinking about him. As he left the room, he missed seeing her shy smile just as she missed his.

"This pot roast is excellent! I haven't eaten like this since..."

Bethany Rose noticed that every time he talked about the past, he went into a funk. She had to find out what happened, if only to make sure that she could avoid anything that would upset him and make her own life harder.

There was some bad hurt hiding.

While Eliza was clearing the table, James told Bethany Rose that he wanted to discuss some new duties he had in mind.

Eliza's mind flew through all the possibilities she could think of. She understood men much better than her sister and as far as she was concerned, this rich white man, as nice as he seemed to be, wasn't any different from any other man, white or colored. They only wanted one thing and once they got it, they always found a way to leave you... usually with their bastard children.

So, as dishes were washed and dried, Eliza imagined her sister and the man in his library; she was probably already on her knees or maybe he just bent her over his desk and took her that way. 'Why sully the bed when that was good enough for a colored whore?

'Truthfully, though,' Eliza wondered, 'would I be willing to do that for a good place to live for my children?

'There didn't seem any end in sight to the country's problems... at dinner, he did say he thought it was going to get much worse.'

Next year were the elections and James doubted Hoover had a chance to win re-election. It probably didn't matter who the Democrats ran, he had said, the inaction of the Hoover administration had only made things worse. The whole world was going to ruin.

She did notice he was careful how he spoke around them and the children. For whatever faults she imagined he had as a man, he was at least a gentleman with them.

'They've been in that library an awful long time,' she noticed. She licked her lips as she pictured the two them, together... her sister on her knees, her mouth full with his hard... he's probably good for at least twice, maybe three times. Eliza's thoughts aroused her as she thought of that... she saw he was in good shape and wondered what he would taste like.

Just as she put herself into that dream, "Momma, hold me." It was Mary Lizbeth, quickly pulling her back into reality.

"Bethany Rose, I would like to go over these books with you. I'm hoping you to make sense of what's been going on with the store and see if we can find a way to cut even more costs. I don't want to let anyone go if I don't have to so that's not going to be an acceptable answer. I've been sort of an absentee-owner and it's time to come back."

"Yes, James, I'm sure I can do that. Just show me what you want to find out."

For almost the next three hours, they went over the books, line by line... and an unsettling fact came to light: there were more people on the books than could ever have worked at the store. There were people that James had never met and even though he had retreated from the world he still came into each of his supermarkets at least once a week just to see how things were. He was surprised that neither he nor the girl with Bill knew who the other one was.

Since that horrible day, James's former manager had taken advantage of his personal depression and had been stealing him blind at the El Segundo store.

Well, that was over, he hoped and with Bethany Rose watching his financial back, things should soon return to a better bottom line. An educated, well-mannered woman was hard to find during the depression and a colored one... that was near impossible.

'Maybe,' he thought, 'things are going to get better. What would Catherine think, a colored woman... colored women... and their children, living in the house?'

He remembered she never had a bad thing to say and had tempered his own hard attitudes over the years.

An hour after that, they decided that it would be possible to give everyone a raise... not a large one, but a raise just the same. The average full-time worker was making almost less than twenty-five cents an hour after taxes and a raise of even ten cents an hour was an incredible increase.

"Wow! That guy was really fucking... oh, Bethany Rose, forgive me, I'm just so angry at him. Well, he's in jail so that ought to end that problem, I hope. Boy, have I let things go to hell."

He smiled at her, almost staring and she felt herself melting under his attention. She had never considered herself very pretty. When she looked in a mirror, she saw a woman she considered too dark, almost the shade of chocolate milk with that syrup she was becoming addicted to. If she kept that up, she knew she would soon be as fat as Aunt Jemima.

Each night, her fingers traced her curves, not those of the skinny flappers a few years ago but those of a real woman with real breasts and real hips and a real flashing white smile centered in that milk chocolate.

"Looks like you've earned yourself a fine raise, too," he laughed. He closed the ledger for the last quarter. There was no sense worrying about what happened further back, that money was long gone.

"We need to leave the house about 7:30 tomorrow morning, so please tell Eliza to have breakfast about seven or so. Tell her she's the new housekeeper, if she wants it."

"We?" What was this we? What crazy idea did he have in mind, now?

"Yes, Bethany Rose, we've got to get to the store. I'm going to tell everyone about what happened yesterday, introduce you and then you can tell them about the raise."

"Me? I really don't understand, James. What does the store have to do with me? This won't be good... colored girl with a bunch of white people... there were no colored people in El Segundo" '...at least, until now.'

"Well, I've been thinking. With your sister here and God bless her, but she doesn't have the education you do; she can take care of the house and the children and you can come to the store with me and take over the office there. And, of course, I'll pay your sister what I was going to pay you and you'll get a nice raise and you won't have to do the housework. You're much too valuable to me for that."

'Too valuable to me... that's one way of putting it,' he thought. His unexpected arousal last night... thinking of her across the hall... thinking of chocolate kisses. It had been a long time he had bothered to pleasure himself.

Bethany Rose still sat closely next to him since she had needed to see the small handwritten print. 'Too closely,' she thought now, 'but I can't just pull away. It would be too great an insult to him and he didn't deserve that from me.'

'My problem is, she believed, 'he was the too nice, too friendly and now, too close.'

She saw the marked contrast between her darker hand holding her pencil and his much lighter one. He was one of those white men with dark reddish-brown hair that seemed always to be pale. She had seen some sharecroppers in the South like him that just burnt under the sun rather than tan. And, he lived walking distance to the beach... 'who had time to go to the beach? If I did... oh, not so not good.'

"A raise?" She wasn't paying attention at all, lost in her dream of swimming in the ocean. She had never been in the ocean. 'Probably wouldn't like it, anyway.'

"Why, of course. Why?"

"It's just that..."

"I never told you what you would be making did I? That was stupid. Why didn't you say anything?" 'How could I have forgotten so simple as that?'

He hated being out of control. Bethany Rose was his salvation and would be his ruin, if he wasn't careful.

"I... I don't know. I just never thought about it." And, she hadn't. Any money would have only gone to pay for what meager food they could buy... and now, that seemed to be taken care of by his generosity toward her family.

She looked away. 'How could I tell him I am so glad to have a job, especially one like this, that whatever he gives me is a gift. How could I tell him something like that? That I would have worked for free just to be with someone like him?

'Did Jesus keep me standing there for over a week waiting for him to stop and talk with me?'

"What clothes do you have for tomorrow? I think what you were wearing yesterday is a little too good for the store."

"I only have a few dresses good enough for outside the house." ...all going to Sunday church... which she didn't do... any longer.

"All right, let's see what we can do. Why don't you wait in your room and I'll meet you there in a short bit?"

He quickly left the room, leaving her to put everything away and close the door.

By the time she came to her room, he was standing in the hallway with dresses draped over his arm. He respected her privacy, she saw, waiting for her to open the door to her room in what was still his own home. 'When did I start thinking of it as home and not house?'

Several were a perfect fit. She especially liked the dark emerald dress but, she decided, it was too good for her. No sense in getting uppity. Bethany Rose took a light pink one and held it before her to see how it looked in the mirror.

"You..." Oh. God, look at her, so much like Catherine and so, so different.

She glanced up into the mirror and saw him standing by the bed, staring at her. 'How long had he been standing there like that?'

"You look beautiful, Bethany Rose." There was apprehension, now. "I'll see you in the morning, please make sure that Eliza understands the changes. Good night."

He left the room so fast she thought he was running away. Maybe, he was. Where did these dresses come from? The locked room? Oh, Jesus, she now had part of the mystery. How could she have been so stupid?

Those and other vague impressions came and went through her heart as she desperately tried to find sleep as her hands frantically roamed her body seeking relief. Oh, Jesus...