Chapters (153)
- Beulah Land
- Dedication
- PART ONE
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- PART TWO
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- PART THREE
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- PART FOUR
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- PART FIVE
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- PART SIX
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- PART SEVEN
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- Copyright
- Books by Lonnie Coleman published by Classica Libris (digital editions)
She struggled again and then was still. He took her stillness for surrender and turned her to face him. “I love you, Selma—this don’t mean I don’t. I’ve wanted to fuck you ever since you were a little girl so pretty and proud you wouldn’t look at another soul. Now, you going to be good?”
She drew her head back and spat into his face. His left hand wiped his face with almost as much rage as his right hand slapped hers. “God damn you, girl! You can’t do that to me—” He grabbed both her arms and shook her hard. “Now, you going to be good and do your duty by me? Then everything’ll be all right. You going to be good? It won’t take long, and I promise not to hurt you more than I can help.”
She said nothing, her breathing hard and irregular, her chest rising and falling in spasms.
“Selma, honey, I don’t want it to be this way! Won’t you be sweet to me?” He dropped his hands from her arms.
“I hate you, Bonard.”
“Selma, don’t. Don’t you talk to me that way. I reckon you are just about the most ignorant girl for her age I ever saw. Don’t you know when a man and woman marry, they take off their clothes and lie down together and do things—or he does, and she lets him?” When she remained silent, he shook his head despairingly and said, “You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you, Honey?”
“I hate you.”
His heart and mind closed against her only a second before his eyes showed it. She drew away, genuinely frightened for the first time. Again he was quick. He grabbed her by one wrist and then caught the other and held her. “You not going to let me?”
She drew her chin in and her face back as far from him as she could.
“You not?”
She shook her head.
“You not even gonna let me kiss you?”
She stared at him unblinking.
“Let me kiss your pretty little mouth?”
She shook her head.
“You never gonna let me kiss you? That what you saying?”
She shook her head, her eyes hating and frightened.
“You must think you something, don’t you? You don’t know nothing. Not one damn little thing, you hear me?”
She made a pause in her breathing. “You’re drunk and crazy.”