Friends: A Love Story Read Online Free

and listen to Al Green on the eight-track tape over and over. We’d kiss, and then he’d try to unbutton my little shirt and get into my bra. I’d jump, button it back up and say, “You can do whatever with those other girls over there, but we’re just going to kiss and that’s where it’s going to end.” I remember him playing “You Got It Bad Girl” by Stevie Wonder.
    When you believe in a feeling,
    And it’s holding you back from my love,
    Then you’ve got it you got it bad…
    â€œWell, I’m just gonna have to have it bad. Because I’m gonna be somebody one day!” I’d tell him. And I remember laughing to myself and thinking, That’s not gonna work on me!
    Sometime during this time my mother got a new boyfriend. His name was Theodore Slaughter and went by the name of Teddy. Teddy seemed to be nice, one of those quiet dudes. He built swimming pools for white people. They dated for several years. I always liked Teddy, he was always nice to me. And I was a good kid. I never disrespected him. If Ma told me to be home when the streetlights came on, that’s when I hit the step.
    Over the summer between ninth and tenth grade, Mommy and Teddy got married. A day or so before the wedding we moved into Teddy’s home. After spending most of our lives living in the projects, it was our first time living in a house! D’nette was especially happy about the move up and that we were getting a daddy. D’nette was always talking about wanting a father. When she would get mad at our mother, she would say, “I want to go live with my daddy.” I’d remind her, “Well, your daddy ain’t here. He ain’t sent no birthday card, no money or nothing. Mama has to take care of everything. And now you’re mad at Mama and want to go with your daddy? Do you think things will be better with him?” Then she’d quiet down and reconsider her fantasy life with Daddy.
    Mommy and Teddy got married on a Saturday. The next day she sent us up to Winston-Salem for our annual summer vacation. Seven days later she called to tell us she was getting her marriage annulled.
    This is the story she told me about the annulment. It had been raining “cats and dogs” in St. Pete’s one night that week. My mother went to her girlfriend Mattie’s house. They werepicking out patterns and sewing. When Mommy came home, Teddy asked, “Where have you been?”
    â€œThat’s for me to know and you to find out,” she answered. It was very much like my mother to say things with a lot of attitude. (“It ain’t what you say, it’s how you say it,” she would tell us.) Well, a little altercation ensued. All of a sudden he’s beating and slapping her and whatnot. Now, my mama done talked “smack” before they were married, she done talked and said whatever she had to say, and he never raised a hand to her. But here it was a week after getting married and he was beating her up. I guess maybe it was his idea about what being husband and wife meant. My mother told us she had rollers in her hair and that every roller got knocked out, save one. In the process of beating her, he fractured her nose. Afterward, he took her to the hospital.
    Now, to get to this one particular hospital you had to go down a cobblestone road that ran by a little crick. I don’t know the actual name of it but we called it Bugga Crick. It was dark there, with overhanging trees—mossy, swampy, spooky. Well, Mama says that while they were driving by Bugga Crick, Teddy told her, “And somebody’s gonna kick Angela’s ass, too, ’cause she’s just like you!”
    Now why he would want to speak that destiny on a sixteen-year-old girl, I will never know—I never did anything to him. When I found out about it, it hurt my feelings. Mama told me, “I wanted to defend you, baby, but we were going down Bugga Crick