Land of Promiscuity

by Sherryle Kiser Jackson

Genres: African American; Romance

Synopsis

With a string of successful novels, Sherryle Kiser Jackson has won a reputation as a fresh voice in Christian urban fiction. In Land of Promiscuity, her mother's death prompts Rebi Lewis to return to her hometown after years away. It's not long before all the insecurities of her youth begin to resurface and Rebi finds herself slipping back into her old pattern of promiscuity. But then she reconnects with her former friend Will, and together they discover a long-buried secret -- one that will test their capacity for forgiveness.

Release date: November 1, 2012

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

The Madame was dead. A massive heart attack had left her face down on the tile floor in the middle of Boscav’s department store, clutching her chest with one hand and a thirty-eight double-D long line bra in the other. Rebecca Lucas was relieved that the last tidbit didn’t make it into the full-page news report and tribute to the Madame in the Easton Star Democrat that she read from the Madame’s four-poster bed. Her mother would have been horrified, Rebecca thought with a slow shake of her head.

Far from a salacious story, the article was so glowing in its commendation that it could have been written by the Madame herself. It highlighted her philanthropic endeavors, being a major contributor to the city’s library system and Grace Apostle Methodist Church and school. She had made a name for herself by moving her money.

There was probably a write-up in the Salisbury Daily Times. Rebecca had forgotten to check before she left her apartment, left her life, to come back home to Easton. She had driven due west from Salisbury on Route 50 last evening past countless fields, peppered with an occasional farmer’s market and strip malls. On the way, Rebecca had pondered the fact that her mother had been just around the corner from where she lived and worked when her heart arrested. Strange, Rebecca had thought, that no one had driven to or ridden with her on the more than an hour trek. Rebecca didn’t bother wondering why her mother had never popped in for a visit, or at least phoned to say she was in town. “A lady doesn’t come calling,” she could hear her mother say; apparently, not even on her only daughter. But Rebecca had gone calling since the drive in last night. After leaving the morgue and viewing the Madame’s body, Rebecca had taken up with the local mortician.

The Hughes family, who had lived no more than ten miles from the Madame and Rebecca when she was growing up, was entrusted with the preparation of the Madame’s body at their Bucktown funeral parlor. The eldest son, Randall, had been a classmate of Rebecca’s, but not in her graduating class, which was known to everyone as the Chosen Twenty-Three. He was the star of their high school basketball team and the whole Christian school league that consisted of five other schools in the tri-county area. She had always thought he was attractive. He would have been considered out of her romantic league in high school because he was a sophomore when she was a senior, and by all accounts she had been considered a nerd back then; shy, self-conscious, and otherwise off-limits to guys and dating. She was, after all, Madame Ava’s daughter.

Randall Hughes had greeted Rebecca last night as she entered the alcove of the funeral parlor minutes before closing. She had hoped to drastically cut her viewing time by running extremely late. Everyone else had gone and the dead bodies were set for a chilly night’s rest. The thought of seeing her mother’s lifeless body had left her numb. Rebecca didn’t know how she would react to her mother’s limitation—her silence.

She wore the same fitted jersey dress in black that she had worn to work, with sunglasses so big, round, and dark they could shade the eyes of someone off to drug rehab. That morning, she had given the appearance that she was in mourning, so much so that the associate attorney to whom she was assigned to help hadn’t dared ask for an update on his proposal let alone when she would be returning. She had not shed one tear since finding out about her mother’s death. Although sudden and unexpected, the “Oh my God” of it all still hadn’t hit her.

Rebecca had been keenly aware of the gorgeous, six-foot Randall who had stood off to the side of her shoulder, poised with a box of tissues, after he’d opened the cherry-maple coffin for her approval. She had been aware that Randall had grown stockier since her graduating class had left Grace Apostle Methodist school fifteen years ago in pursuit of their futures. While the funeral parlor in general held the scent of well-worn paper and the poignant wisps of something sterile, Rebecca had been aware that Randall’s cologne was spiced with pine bark and spearmint. She could also tell that he had noticed she had dropped over twenty pounds and toned up considerably since anyone in Easton had last seen her. His admiring glances told her as much.

“Take all the time you need. It’s okay,” Randall had instructed her. “I’m here if you need me.”

Rebecca had taken him at his word. She was in need. Perched on a stool in front of her mother’s satin-laced lounger, she had looked back at Randall as if in a museum asking a guide if it was okay to touch. She’d told herself the Madame was sleeping, to separate herself from reality. She toyed with her mother’s favorite strand of pearls around the Madame’s neck, which she had always thought would be hers but she saw that Gail, her cousin, had obviously gotten to them first and brought them as part of the Madame’s final costuming. For that, she had wept, if only to bring Randall closer. Rebecca had orchestrated a chorus of fake sobs because she was in need of a hug. She feared that being the only daughter of Madame Ava Lucas at the occasion of her death was a liability. She thought she had escaped the rank and file and order and procession of her past life. She had gotten accustomed to living as an adult in anonymity—not by association. Even in death the Madame still cast a shadow. Now, Rebecca felt she was expected to ascend the throne as some kind of mini Madame.

Rebecca had wondered if Randall gave good hugs. Is he the kind of guy who holds sincerity in his touch? He draped one arm around her shoulder where she sat, maybe for support, or maybe to rush her along. She climbed up his torso to bury her face in his solid chest. He told her once more that it would be okay, and she prolonged their embrace as Randall hugged her straight on. Rebecca used the slightest of nuzzles into his collarbone to communicate how good his body felt up against hers.

“It’s okay,” Randall said again, trying to break their embrace for a more appropriate hold.

Rebecca held on and muttered, “I don’t know what I should do. I’m just not ready to be alone in my mother’s house yet. You know of any place I can hang out?”

She stared at him intently and waited.

Randall was first to pull away. He motioned to her with a finger that he needed a moment. She watched the wrestling match between Randall the bereavement specialist and Randall the man, as he went to the door of the viewing room and looked up and down the corridor. She watched him take his cell phone from his pants pocket, and with one hand apparently check his availability based on any incoming text messages. He paused, with phone still in hand, before returning to Rebecca’s side. The man had won out. The look of sincerity had been replaced with opportunity. He told her he was going straight home, and that she could join him if she’d like.

From there, Randall had appeared in a rush to close up shop for the night. He had rolled a protective lining up over the Madame’s head in preparation of shutting the cover on her casket. Rebecca had diverted her gaze. She couldn’t bear to look at the finality of her mother’s closed coffin. That would come soon enough. She had fallen into his frame for support as soon as he was finished. He melded into her as if it were his civic duty to comfort her at all cost.

Rebecca followed him to a nearby Hardee’s to grab a bite to eat before proceeding to his small brick house off of Cynwood Drive. She knew not to bring him back to the Madame’s house, for fear her mother would haunt her for the rest of her life, or at least for the extent of time she decided to hide out at the family estate. She had questioned herself, as always, on the drive over as to why she needed to hold on to him—to hold on to someone. She wouldn’t have been completely alone at home. Her cousin Gail was there, but Gail couldn’t give her what she needed.

“Never depend on a man. A man will never give you what you want.” As she watched Randall abandon his tie upon entering his home, Rebecca thought about this lesson her mother had preached to her. He led her to the less-than-modest eating area off the living room and sat across from her. It had taken her less than two seconds to surmise he lived alone. She had watched Randall play with his straw before finally unwrapping the long stripped column and taking deep pulls from his thirty-two-ounce soda. Wanting desperately to feel the scratch of his five o’clock shadow against her face, she forced herself to eat the burger he tossed her way. He had apparently completely devoured his food on the short ride from the strip mall to his house and held the balled-up fast food bag in the palm of his huge hand. He got up to dispose of his trash.

“Rebecca, right?” he had asked.

“Rebi.” His question reminded her that they really didn’t know one another. She knew of no other black woman named Rebecca. She hated her name. Then again, there was no other person whose mother was referred to as Madame. It was a self-proclaimed title, she was told, that her mother had given herself when she tried and failed to get her PhD in philosophy. Her mother desired a title. Rebecca felt her mother needed a title to explain her eccentric nature, and there were some in the community who felt she deserved explaining. The Madame resigned herself to being a community advocate, master fundraiser, and den mother of sorts for the Grace Apostle school, and everyone resigned themselves to calling her Madame.

“Do you want to watch TV or maybe listen to some music?” she remembered him asking. His mind seemed to be moving faster than his body as he fumbled with several remotes, dropping one or two after picking them up from the edge of an impressive entertainment center. She watched every lever and pulley in his upper arm and back muscles through his thin, starched white dress shirt as he bent and stretched in an attempt to tidy up. She was in the presence of modern-day Adonis. Rebecca smirked, thinking about her love of Greek mythology. So what did that make her? She decided that for that night she would play the siren, alluring to men but potentially dangerous. That made her smile.

He knew he was being watched. Angst took over his expression, as it would with anyone receiving a visitor who was not quite sure as to the nature of the visit, she thought. He snuck suspicious glances of her as he busied himself with trying to find a home for the gaming system controllers, attachments, and games that took up residence on the couch inches away from the wide television console. She felt empowered that he was not completely comfortable with her being there. Rebecca allowed him to squirm a little before deciding to help him out.

She had joined him in the living room. Her intention to stay was clear when she kicked off her two-and-a-half-inch heels before folding one leg beneath her on the couch. “Did they ever find a guard who could stop you on the court after I left Grace Apostle?”

One mention of Randall’s former basketball career broke the ice. He was quite chatty. She learned that recruiting to a NCAA team was nearly impossible from their small town and nearly unknown Christian league, but he was quite talented. He played abroad in Italy right after high school for two years, trying to work his way up to their pro league after an acquaintance of his summer league coach invited a scout to their championship game. He was very dissatisfied overseas. Superstardom never came; Italy was expensive, and he missed his humongous family.

Randall also spoke of a woman he had been dating over there. His very intonation changed. It became slow and measured but no less passionate than when he spoke of basketball, as if every syllable reminded him of her. He and this woman parted ways when talks about returning home and taking over the family business with his siblings became a reality.

For a moment, Rebecca wondered what it would take to make a handsome and hardworking man like Randall fall in love with her. She listened to him drone on about himself, but none of what he had said mattered to her. She felt she had never met anyone so foolish. He had been somewhere, had actually gotten away, only to return to the eastern shore of Maryland. Rebecca didn’t even try to keep her tone free from judgment. “You left Italy to come back here?”

“It’s home—mines, and, if I am not mistaken, yours as well,” he replied.

“Yeah, but you got to admit, it’s wicked slow here. That’s why I had to leave.” Among other things.

“Outside of the vineyards of Tuscany and Rome, a city is a city, same dissatisfied people with the same struggles, just another shade and dialect. Where I stayed outside of Sicily is not that different than Easton if you ask me,” he said after taking a loud slurp of his drink. “So, where do you live now?”

Rebecca felt ridiculous for revealing, “Salisbury.” It was a jewel of a town to those on the eastern shore of Maryland, but it had nothing to boast except a fairly decent university and the Perdue Farms.

Randall smirked. “Oh yeah, that’s the fast lane.”

Rebecca smiled and shrugged her shoulders at the irony. Their banter had given way to silence. She was lapsing into the reality of her own very recent past and what lay before her in the days to come. She moved closer to him on the couch as if Randall could catch her from falling. “You are such a sweetheart for entertaining me and letting me hang out. How can I ever thank you?” Rebecca asked.

She peeked her eyes in his direction while sending her fingers through her own shoulder-length bob. She was waiting for them to talk about why they were there together and what they were going to do with the time they had. She knew men, and men always had a plan.

He expelled a puff of air before smiling sheepishly in reply.

“I mean, I know this can’t be customary in your profession,” Rebecca baited him. At least she hoped she was special in this regard and that he didn’t take any other grieving daughters home with him.

Randall shrugged his broad shoulders. “Everyone grieves differently. It’s about whatever you take comfort in.”

“Is that what you call this?” Rebecca asked, tapping his thigh, then deciding to leave her hand there. “Taking comfort?”

Randall cleared his throat. “Some people need to see their loved one twenty times before the final service, or expect us to dress them over and over again. One woman even called to speak to her deceased father on the telephone.” He shook his head and chuckled before getting suddenly serious again, as if his training had taught him never to make fun of those who mourn. “I can’t presume to know what’s going through your head right now. I could tell you wanted—I mean, were in need of—something. I’m just happy I can help out a fellow Grace Apostle Guardian.”

Go team, she thought sarcastically. She didn’t want lame loyalty. She had been the aggressor in their exchange, and now she craved to be pursued. She was dying to speed up their involvement into a relationship on steroids, bulked up and believable. She wanted someone to make her extended stay in Easton worthwhile.

With arms across his chest, he bumped her playfully. “Plus, it doesn’t hurt that you are smoking hot now. I mean, it was real good seeing you again, but, I got to say, I don’t remember you quite like this.”

Smoking hot, I’ll take that. She wanted to propose to him. She decided to oblige Randall with much more than a hug in that moment. She imagined him extending his hand with that compliment as if in a dance, and she curtsied. In one fluid movement, she straddled him and then hugged his neck like a long-lost friend.

Randall was reluctant to continue this sudden affectionate trail at first, letting his arms dangle to his sides like a young boy forced to hug his fat auntie. Maybe he was caught off guard or maybe he was thinking of his ex-girlfriend in Italy.

“Hug me back,” she whispered into his ear, “like you mean it.”

Rebecca nuzzled her face into Randall’s neck and sniffed and kissed and nibbled until he brought his arms to the dull ache in the middle of her back before paving his own trail down her backside with his hands. Her conscience and common sense were silenced under his touch. He hugged her back and held on way into the night.

In their own postcoital confusion, partially clothed and lying side by side, Randall asked, “ Why didn’t we ever hook up before, huh? I guess, in high school, you were so big time that you didn’t have time for an underclassman like me?”

Rebecca took that to mean that if she was passing out cookie back then like she was now, then why didn’t he get a piece. “No, I think it was the other way around, Mr. Basketball Star.”

He’d have been surprised to know she took her purity vows seriously in high school, unlike some of her classmates. Something had changed about her attitude and outlook after graduation though. While everyone was taking the summer off before college, she took advanced courses in anatomy and physiology by losing weight and sowing her wild oats in the process. She learned there was an art to attracting men by taking an interest in her own appearance and hanging around the local boom boom room. The more weight she lost the more she loved to show herself off.

They both shifted, she on her back and he on his side, to better share the space and the conversation.

“I mean evvverybody knows Madame Ava. The funny thing is that I didn’t even know that you were Madame Ava’s daughter back then. It’s like I never made that connection,” he admitted with a chuckle.

She didn’t know whether to thank or curse him for that comment. With that, Rebecca began to feel the ridicule and scorn of her former days. The majority of her classmates didn’t so much make fun of her, but, rather, of the Madame which seemed to further fuel her mother’s idiosyncrasies. Then there were her mom’s own ill-conceived notions of love and perfection that had driven Rebecca to her breaking point. She balled herself up on her end of the couch.

“I probably have to play low-key with my family handling your mother’s funeral and all, but make sure we exchange numbers, all right? That way we can hook up again before you go back home.” Randall yawned and absentmindedly turned toward the back of the couch.

“I may be staying for a while,” Rebecca admitted. “Like you said, this is home, right?”

“Even better,” Randall pushed through a yawn. “We’ll definitely get it in before you go.”

The reality of her mother’s death was rushing to the surface, compounded by the fact that she had just had sex with her mother’s mortician before they . . .