Abby, a young divorcee, encounters her first black man, an older black man. (Explores the way that mild taboos like hidden racism and age gaps intensify sexual settings. (At least for me.) Hope you enjoy.
"God, this just isn't FAIR," Abby yelled into the empty room as she struggled to lift another heavy box and carry it up the stairs to her son's bedroom. After the divorce they'd sold the house, which was mostly paid for. Her half had given her a generous down payment on a place to live with Tyler and left money in the bank to spare. It was smaller, but plenty for the two of them, and they were well away from that drunken, violent bastard of a husband and father.
A new city, a new job, a new life. It all sounded so good, starting over. But she'd tried to save some money by going with a cheaper moving company. Now very few of the boxes were in the rooms they'd been labeled for and neither of the beds had been reassembled. The four men had dumped things pretty willy-nilly and left, grumbling, because she had rightfully declined to tip them.
It was a good thing her job didn't start for another two weeks. It was summer vacation and Tyler was out of school, staying with her parents until she could get the house set up, so she had the solitude to work as hard as it would take to be sure he had a nice place to lay his head when she picked him up from Grandma and Grampa. She only hoped they wouldn't spoil him too much.
But this work was back-breaking. The packers had put too much in boxes that were too large and it was nearly impossible for Abby to move them. In some cases she'd taken to opening them where they were and carrying the contents off into the room where they belonged. It wasn't that she was out of shape or feeling her 34 years, the boxes were just too damned heavy! After several years of pilates and planking and god knows what else to try to keep herself in her impossible husband's favor, Abby was a fit woman who still got carded when she tried to buy a bottle of wine. But these big boxes were so awkward. She couldn't get her arms around the bigger, heavier ones to get them off the stacks.
So she muddled along the best she could, cursing herself for her choice of movers, a group of college hunks whose yard sign she'd seen in a neighbor's yard. And she cursed her judgment in men and the husband who'd swept her off her feet while she was still in college. She should have gotten a clue when he tried to get her to stop short of finishing her degree. He turned out to be a controlling alcoholic who could be charming as long as he got his way, but when he didn't or when he was angry he turned into a monster. Abby had endured several beatings and kept trying to make things work. But when he'd turned on their son when he yelled at him to stop hitting his mother, she knew she had to leave.
Fortunately the ER records were clear evidence of Abby's plight, and the judge had awarded her sufficient alimony that she and Tyler could live comfortably on her entry-level job until she acquired some experience. They had changed cities, moved far away with the judge's permission. Tyler's father was only granted visitation with supervision, so they didn't expect to see or hear from him much.
Moving into a larger city had seemed a good idea when she looked for places to go. More jobs, more anonymity, but the housing markets had also been more expensive. Abby hadn't wanted anything spectacular, but she did want three bedrooms, one for herself, one for Tyler and a leftover guest-bedroom and office, because she hoped to be working from home at least part of the time. Women who were good at coding were still a rarity, so she thought she'd be able to negotiate some work flexibility, and she'd been right.
In order to find the space she'd wanted at a price she wanted to pay had meant that she had chosen a house in a poorer neighborhood. It had once been an all white suburb when white flight drove people out of the downtown districts, but in recent decades gentrification had drawn the white wealth back into the city and new rail lines had caused high-end developments to spring up farther from the city center, so Abby's new home found itself on a block of slightly-run-down two story capes occupied mostly by people of color. "Niggers," her ex would have called them. This house had been well maintained, but it was 23 years old and needed some paint and sprucing up. The yard was patchy, but not too bad. The whole effect was "comfortable but a little seedy." Still, she'd gotten a deal on the place that left her with six figures in her new bank account, so she was pleased with it.
Living around this many black people presented a few challenges for Abby. She never had. She'd gone to private school as a child and even in college she'd been in an all white sorority that pretty much kept themselves to other white frats. She didn't hate them or anything, but they just felt a little foreign to her. Something she'd have to get over she told herself. It might take a while, but she would shed those hidden racist attitudes she'd grown up with.
She went to a new stack of boxes and tried to move the top one. It wouldn't budge. "Office" it said on the side. She was sure it was full of her books. "How the hell do you fill a medium sized box with books?" she screamed. Try as she might, she couldn't lift it, and it was too high to open and unpack in place. She'd need a ladder and she didn't have one yet. "Fuck it! I quit!" she screamed and slapped the box, then she stomped into the kitchen and grabbed a beer, went to her new front porch and sat in the swing that needed a new coat of paint and sat down to drink it and cool down. "Maybe I can cut a hole in the side of the damned thing without ruining what's inside," she muttered to herself, staring into space.
"Cut a whole in the side of what?" said a deep voice from the sidewark. Abby nearly jumped out of her skin. With a hand over her mouth she stifled a yelp and looked up to see a nice, somewhat older black man looking at her quizzically from the direction of the street. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that out loud," she answered. "Ain't nothin' to apologize for honey, but you're lookin' pretty perturbed about now, and I was a little worried you was gonna do somethin' you'd regret later. So what's the big problem?"
"Oh, nothing really. I just can't get this one box moved and it's up so high I can't unpack it, so I'm trying to figure out how to get the stuff out of it. I'm just moving in, but then you probably knew that."
"Oh yes, we knew that. Saw the truck yesterday, saw them lazy assed boys puttin' your stuff in the house. They wasn't too careful with it, you know, you should check your stuff for scratches and what not. Yeah, you movin' in was all over the block before long. First white family moved IN to the neighborhood in nobody remembers. We still got a few but most of 'em move out, not in, so it kinda got our attention."
Abby became suddenly and uncomfortably aware of the reality that she was a minority in her own neighborhood for the first time. Apparently, the new tension in her limbs was visible to the man on the sidewalk, because he said, "Oh, now, don't you worry none, we're glad to have you here. Fact is my Beverly said she was gonna fix y'all a casserole and bring it over some time!" Abby smiled, finding that the corners of her eyes burned as her eyes moistened. "Oh, thanks, that's really amazing, but um, it's just me for right now, Tyler won't be joining me for a couple weeks. Could she bring us something then?"
"I"ll tell her, I'm sure that will work. But you all alone in that house? No wonder you look so tired. How about tomorrow I come by tomorrow and give a hand. I can at least move some boxes around, even if I can't put stuff away!" He smiled warmly. Abby felt a tiny sliver of something frightening shoot from her chest right through her toes.
"Oh, I couldn't put you out that way. Thank you though."
"Don't think nothin' of it. I retired from the Marines after 31 years a couple months ago. I'm dyin' for somethin' to do!" He laughed heartily this time. "Beverly says I'm failin' at retirement! Oh, and my name's Jake. I"ll see ya after breakfast!" He didn't even pause to get Abby's name. Maybe he knew it, maybe it didn't matter to him. Whatever the reason, it screamed a kind of low-key confidence that kept Abby from protesting further. Instead she watched him as he walked away without looking back, shaking her head slightly.
