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, Iwillcall 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 comparedto 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.
CHAPTER2
Justine felt as if she’d been doused with a bucket of ice water. She’d tried rubbing her arms, but it hadn’t helped her feel warm. Mrs. Boone had given her several silk nightgowns and a bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume, and demanded that she take a bath. She told Justine to dab a small amount of perfume behind her ears and between her breasts.
She didn’t know why, but she felt like a glamorous actress about to go onstage and listen intently to the director as to what he wanted her to do or say. It wasn’t the first time that Justine realized she would’ve been better off staying in the overcrowded apartment with her squabbling relatives than living on the estate with people who were not only wicked, but lacked a soul.
Justine had become so withdrawn since her encounter with Precious, and even her grandmother had noticed the change in her and asked if she was feeling okay. She hated lying to her grandmother, telling her she was thinking about missing her classmates, since she was finishing high school in January when they had to go until June. She almost burst into tears once Grandma Flora said she was luckier than herclassmates, because she’d have her a lot longer before she would take the train from Mount Vernon into Grand Central Station, and then the uptown subway to City College.
She sat at the foot of the single bed and closed her eyes, wondering how much longer she would have to wait before becoming a prostitute. Precious Boone and Lillian Crawford had blackmailed her into offering up her body in order to stay out of jail. The two women had become pimps who were forcing her to have sex with a man; unlike women who sold their bodies for money, she was selling hers to avoid being arrested and charged with theft.
They executed the scheme so smoothly that Justine wondered if it had been their first time. How many other unsuspecting young girls had they blackmailed into sleeping with Dennis Boone, yet he hadn’t gotten them pregnant? She wondered, and not for the first time, if Precious’s inability to become pregnant wasn’t her problem, but her husband’s.
Her head popped up when she heard the soft tapping on the door. Pushing to her feet, Justine crossed the room and opened the door. Precious stood there in a matching nightgown, the scent of Chanel No. 5 wafting to Justine’s nose.
“Come quickly.”
