Who followed what they were taught in Sunday school? In Bill’s case it was Hebrew school and he knew he was breaking The Commandments, particularly number six. He wasn’t thinking about this as he pulled into the Suburban parking lot just a few minutes after leaving Lorraine’s house. He was thinking about how he was starting to speed, how we was going to pop another pill in about fifteen minutes, how he was going to call home again sometime after seven when his fiancé should probably be up and about so as to get to her first class on time.
He was thinking about how he and Lorraine had not quite gotten to finish their conversation about what was really going on with them both, in particular about being afraid of everything all the time. At this point in his life Bill had no idea that it was GAD. He wouldn’t know about such things until it was already too late, already too late being after messing up just about everything good that was ever in his life. But then he would start to see that it was a stacked deck and that the stack was stacked against him and he didn’t really have much say in the matter until after he knew what the matter was. In this regard, he would come to discover some people were just luckier than others.
Mr. Bowman paid Mary more than he had to because he wanted her to work for him and he understood she had three kids to raise. No black man had ever offered her more than what the going rate was, or more than he had to for her work. In fact, every black that wanted her to work for him wanted her to accept less money and give sexual favors.
Mary was not one to work for less than she was worth, even though, like with Bill, as she would discover about him, it was hard for her to appropriately assert her own self-worth. Nor was she one to give it up. If Drenovis could not have been curbed, like the damn dog he was, she would have quit. She would have told him what to do with himself and just walked on out the door.
Bea tempered her some. Robert surely tempered her and spoke to her every chance he could at church. He reminded her that Mr. Bowman would deal with Drenovis and he would deal with Drenovis too. He reminded her that Yulie would not have wanted her to let such a low-life drive her out of town, and that if she did let him do that, then all the fighting Yulie had done on her behalf would have been for naught. It was only by the grace of God that Yulie had not killed Drenovis the first time he learned that Drenovis had tried to pressure Mary for some.
Lucky for Mary, that one time Drenovis had pressured her a little too drunkenly and a little too sloppily, his over-zealousness had caused Mr. Bowman to give her a raise. So she was pretty free of him now, for the most part, and she was making good money, and she was only bothered by the fact that she liked Bill a lot more than she should have and she knew it was all going to end in shit.
“Look at your damn eyes,” Mary said while they were downstairs changing into their uniforms. “You been home last night?”
“Not really.”
“Where you been?”
“Out.”
“Boy, what’s the matter with you? Bad enough you mess with me and stay out late when you know you should be home. Only lucky you don’t get busted for violating probation.”
“Bailey got that fixed mostly. And she wasn’t home last night anyway.”
“And that makes it okay?”
