Read Online Who Asked You? by Terry McMillan - Free Book Online Page A

his pajama top off and walk him into the bathroom. I put on Miss Betty’s shower cap ’cause it takes me a whole hour to blow-dry my hair, which of course everybody in L.A. thinks is a weave just because it’s long. As if black women’s hair don’t grow long. I take him by the arm and get in the shower with him. He acts just like a little kid when I put a million bubbles on that washcloth and rub it up and down and all over his whole body. He really don’t look all that bad naked. You’d think since he’s so old his skin would be all shriveled up and wrinkly, including his dick, but that thing is just as long and thick and solid as some of these young dudes I been with. What I like about this kind of situation is ain’t no strings attached. Which is why a young woman like myself is grateful to have access to it. Mr. Lee has shrunk some. Standing up, it’s easy to tell. He was almost six feet but now he feels closer to my height: I’m five nine and a half.
    I dry him off with a fluffy towel and then put a fresh pair of pajamas on him and take him out to the dining room and sit him down at the table. He’s still smiling. Poor thing. I really think it’s time Miss Betty think about getting him ready for a facility, but I’m keeping my mouth shut. Hell, I’m looking at my income here. I ain’t never stayed long enough for one of my patients to die on me, but pretty damn close. I can usually tell. They smell different. Well, they don’t have no smell at all, really. And they get this tired look, like they know what’s coming. It’s creepy as hell, and this is when I usually give my notice because I don’t like walking in on death.
    “Hot damn!” Mr. Lee yells out, and then starts laughing.
    He does this a lot. Sometimes I think he’s probably remembering when somebody made a three-pointer or a touchdown or hell, I don’t know. All I know is he’s laughing and it makes me feel good to know that whatever’s going on inside of him is lifting his spirits.
    I feed him some microwave oatmeal and give him some juice in a sippy cup, and then he says, “Well, well, well,” and I walk him back into the bedroom and turn on the Western Channel. It cracks me up to hear Mr. Lee say, “Giddy-up!” except when he says it like five or ten times in a row. I don’t know which is worse, listening to him trying to speak Spanish with Dora or pretending like he’s riding a goddamn horse. Plus, Dora is not cute and I wish they could give her a makeover, because that hairstyle is played out. Even though I’m not crazy about kids, it’s a lot livelier around the crib since those boys been here. Not to be mean, but they’re both a little weird-looking. That oldest one reminds me of Chucky without the freckles and his eyes look too close together. The younger one looks like he didn’t bake long enough. It’s obvious they got different daddies. But what else is new? Watch. They’ll probably grow up to be fine as hell. My brothers were homely, too, but now women and men drool over them. (One of my brothers is gay but ask me if I care?)
    There’s a reason why there’s not that many pictures of me in my granny’s scrapbook. I wasn’t no cute baby. In fact, a lot of my relatives told me people just used to bend down, look at me, and say, “She’s sure got a lot of hair, doesn’t she?” Since nobody had any money for braces back then, I had horse teeth all through middle school. I didn’t think my ass was ever going to stop growing but years later it’s turned out to be my best asset. And then there were the zits. There wasn’t enough Clearasil in Thrifty’s that could make those fuckers disappear. It wasn’t until after I finally got my period that I realized all those years I was nothing but a human crossword puzzle with missing pieces. And then it seemed like all at once, something happened and everything on me fit in all the right places.
    But being pretty don’t guarantee you gon’ find a good man to