The Bad Lady (Novel) by John Meany Read Free Book Online Page B

You can do the scraping. It’ll be fun.”
    Well, I did not know whether it would be fun or not, but I had been thinking that at least this would be a project that would give me and my mom some quality time together.
    “I was also considering getting you new carpet,” she added. “Since what’s on your floor now, this worn out rug, has basically been here since the day you were born. If I get new carpet, Billy, do you want it to be blue to match the wallpaper?”
    I nodded. “Yeah. That would be neat. Make the floor look like a river or something to go along with the sailboats.”
    “Then blue it will be.”
    “Thanks. I can‘t wait to see what the room will look like when it‘s all done.”
     
     
    ***
     
     
    Born in Indiana in the early 1970’s, to parents who were farmers, my mom, during her preteen years, was said to have been a mischievous tomboy. No one had ever thought that she would one-day start wearing makeup, perfume, and growing her thick brown hair long, beyond her shoulders. But that’s what she did.
    Soon, my mother had gone from milking the cows, feeding the chickens, and tending to her other responsibilities on the farm, to rebelling against her parents, desperately wanting to run away. After graduating high school, she and a few of her girlfriends, had, with their suitcases and youthful dreams, hopped in Katherine Sheldon’s Jeep, and off they went.
    My mom and her friends traveled around the country, to New York, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and California, and had had a ton of fun. Had experienced some of the best times of their lives. They had even briefly stopped in Las Vegas, to gamble.
    However, in the end, after being on the road for two and a half months, they had gotten bored and had somehow wound up here in the state of Ohio, in Cleveland to be exact.
    My mother would stay in Ohio; get an apartment. (The house would come years later.) In contrast, her giggling girlfriends and Katherine Sheldon would eventually return to Indiana. Some kind of squabble, between my mom and her parents must have taken place; otherwise, she would have gone back to Indiana as well. Whatever the dispute had been about, it must have been serious, as my mother had stopped speaking to her folks. Yes, like my daddy, I never knew my grandparents either.
    Now I don’t know the specific details regarding how my mom had met my biological father, since, as with her parents, she had never been willing to share much information. All I know was that she had met him sometime during this period.
    During this time was also when my mother had begun to send her poetry out to literary magazines, and would ultimately find her niche in the greeting card writing business.
     
     
     
     
     
     
    PART THREE
    BETRAYEL
    CHAPTER 7
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Although I was supposed to keep what Nancy and I had done a secret, later on that night, I began to think that the naked touching might have been wrong.
    I think I started to mull this over because, for whatever reason, I suddenly remembered watching, on the Oprah Winfrey Show roughly a month before, a dramatic episode about adults who had sexually abused children.
    “Your ice cream friend lady did what?” my mother abruptly hollers, slamming a dish into the cluttered sink. “I’ll beat the shit out of that sicko!” With a claw like grip, she seized my feeble wrist and then forced me to sit down at the kitchen table. I could tell by the horror-struck expression in my mom’s eyes that she was utterly shocked by my allegation.
    She made me tell her everything, including what Nancy had had me do to her, with my mouth. My mom became so enraged I thought she might hit me.
    I started to cry, not just small tears either, big hysterical tears that made my cheeks soaked. I do not think I had ever cried that hard in my entire life.
    “How could someone behave so repulsively?” my mother shouts, gazing up at the ceiling and shaking her fist. “What kind of God are you anyway? How