The Honey Well Read online

  Other Books by the Author

  Promises to Keep

  Weeping Willows Dance

  Shades of Jade

  When We Practice to Deceive

  Distant Lover

  The Honey Well

  GLORIA MALLETTE

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Other Books by the Author

  Title Page

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BABY GIRL

  PROLOGUE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  EPILOGUE

  Teaser chapter

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have been remiss in my acknowledgment of the Lord for blessing me with the skill and the ability to tell a story. All blessings come from the Lord, one must never forget that.

  Much love and appreciation to Arnold, for being a wordsmith and for letting me bend his ear; and a big bear hug to our little boy, Jared, for saying to all, “Did you know that my mommie is a writer?”

  Much appreciation to my sisters, Linda and Brenda Rudolph, and my aunt Jimmie L. Mosby, my niece Tracy Rudolph, my cousin Sheila Hall, and my brother, Early Rudolph, for telling their friends and coworkers about my tales.

  A special thank-you to my editor, Karen Thomas, for letting me keep my voice, and my agent, Stacey Glick, for her skill and expertise. Thank you for addressing my concerns.

  Much affection for my friends in prose—Mary B. Morrison, Karen E. Quinones Miller, Hope C. Clarke, Tracy Price-Thompson, Travis Hunter, Carl Weber, and Michael Presley—for sharing the experience. The journey is ongoing.

  BABY GIRL

  Baby girl, baby girl, you’re born into a world in which you are a pearl.

  You’re precious, you’re pure, you’re lovely to behold, yet you’re ignorant to the world of troubles that shadow you.

  If you are not protected, you will be used, abused, stolen and misused, maybe your life taken to render you voiceless.

  For you, baby girl, are born with something more precious than the golden sweet honey made by the honey bees.

  Kings have abdicated, battles have been fought once eyes have set on your beauty and man has tasted of your honey.

  Some men will not wait to be worthy, some men will seize what is yours by right of birth.

  You can choose, baby girl, you can decide—you have a will, you have a voice, let no one take it from you.

  Baby girl, baby girl, grow in mind, grow in body, grow in spirit, and nurture your soul.

  Protect yourself, respect yourself, and know that only you can lose yourself.

  —Gloria Mallette

  PROLOGUE

  Esther put her arms around Arnell as they exited the subway on Nostrand Avenue and Fulton Street and began their five-block walk home to Dean Street. “Sweetie, we have a problem.”

  “I know, Mommy. We owe three months back rent.”

  “Yes, and I’ve been trying to find a job that pays a decent salary, but I can’t seem to find one. My little clerical assistant job is never going to pay me more than two hundred and fifty dollars a week. The way things are going, I’ll never be able to pay our rent and eat, too.”

  “I have that thirty-three dollars I’ve been saving to buy that dress for the school dance, but I really don’t have to go, Mommy. You can have it for the rent.”

  “Thank you, sweetie, but I want you to have that dress. I want you to go to that party.”

  “But, Mommy, what are we gonna do about the rent?”

  “Actually, I know a way we can wipe out what we owe and start fresh next month.”

  “Really? How?”

  They stopped at the corner of Atlantic and Nostrand. Esther whispered, “Wait,” to Arnell because a hoard of people were standing close around them, also waiting for the light to change. Esther wanted no one to hear what she was about to say.

  As usual, the traffic on Atlantic Avenue was heavy. Overhead, the rumble of the Long Island Railroad coming into the station from downtown Brooklyn heading out to Long Island made Arnell look up. One day she wanted to take that train out to Long Island to see not only how far it went, but she also wanted to see the homes of the white faces and of the few black faces that looked out from the train windows down on the poor, hardworking black people of Bedford-Stuyvesant. The three-story brownstone she and her mother lived in on Dean Street was old, stuffy, and dark. They were behind on the rent, but no one should have to pay to live in a dilapidated, cramped, one bedroom apartment.

  The traffic light turned green. With her arm still around Arnell, Esther began crossing Atlantic Avenue with the rest of the people.

  “Arnell, I need you to do me a big favor.”

  “What do you want me to do, Mommy?”

  “Before I tell you what it is, sweetie, I want you to know that we don’t have any other way out. If we get put out of our apartment, we may not get another one for months. I just don’t have the money.”

  “I know.” Arnell was getting more frightened by the moment.

  “That’s why I need for you to do something for me. Sweetie, would you do anything for your mommy?”

  “I’ll do anything you want,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Arnell, our landlord, Mr. Hershfeld, said he’d forgive our past due rent if we gave him something he’s been wanting for a long while.”

  “What can that be, Mommy? We don’t have anything in our apartment that cost a lot of money.”

  “That’s kind of true. What he wants is worth more than everything we own a million times over.”

  Arnell couldn’t figure out what that could be.

  Esther couldn’t bring herself to say it. “Arnell, I want you to know that I wouldn’t ask you to do this if there was another way out. I’ve begged Mr. Hershfeld to let me do what he wants, but he wasn’t interested. I swear to you, Arnell, I’d do it myself except it’s not me he wants.”

  She was confused. “Mommy, you’re scaring me. What does he want from me?”

  Esther swallowed hard. “Mr. Hershfeld wants you to have sex with him.”

  Arnell stopped walking. Dumbstruck, she gawked at her mother as people brushed past them on the busy sidewalk.

  “Sweetie, if you don’t do it, Mr. Hershfeld is going to evict us. We don’t have anyone to turn to for help. I went down to welfare but they said I made too much money on my job. Can you believe that? Me? I make too much money.”

  Arnell began shaking her head, not to the question, but to what her mother wanted her to do.

  Esther pulled Arnell into an empty doorway of a closed up, burned out stor
efront. “Please, Arnell, don’t say no without thinking about it. We are in big trouble. Mr. Hershfeld won’t hurt you, he promised me that he wouldn’t.”

  Tears welled up in Arnell’s eyes. “But, Mommy, I don’t want that old smelly Jew touching me.”

  “Sweetie, he’s really not all that old. He just looks old because of his clothes and because of the beard, but he’s only forty-five years old.”

  “That’s old! No, Mommy. I can’t do it.”

  “Shh,” Esther said, checking to see if anyone was looking at them. A down-home, sanctified-looking old woman was passing by and eyeballing Esther. Esther waited until the woman crept on by before she continued. “Arnell, Mr. Hershfeld said he’d forgive all of our past due rent, and if you did . . . it, you know, got with him once in awhile, he’d discount our rent, maybe even let us keep the apartment for free.”

  “No, Mommy!” Arnell started crying. “I can’t. I ain’t never liked the way he looked at me. And, Mommy, you know that I’ve never had sex before. I’m a virgin. I can’t do it. I can’t.” She started to walk away.

  Esther pulled Arnell back to her. “You have to!” Tears rolled down Esther’s own cheeks. “Arnell, you’re my baby. I wouldn’t ask you to do this unless it was life and death. Sweetie, our lives depend on this. I can’t pay the four hundred and fifty dollar a month rent. We will be put out on the street.

  “Arnell, I’ve been trying to find a better job for months. I can’t find one, and you know this. With what little money I get, I feed you before I feed myself, and even then, we’re eating oatmeal for dinner. I put clothes on your back before I even think about my own needs. I’ve been taking care of you by myself since you were three years old. I need you to help me take care of both of us for a little while. I promise you, I’ll get it together. You won’t have to do it for long. Please, baby, you have got to do this.”

  “Oh, Mommy,” Arnell cried, “can’t we call Uncle Matt?”

  “No.”

  “But, Mommy, I know Uncle Matt will give us the money we need.”

  “I said, no.”

  Arnell didn’t want to accept no. “Mommy, last year, Uncle Matt told me he’d always be there if we—”

  “Not we, Arnell. He said you. My brother called me a whore. When you were three, he called child services on me. He tried to take you from me. As far as I’m concerned, he’s dead. I don’t have a brother. Arnell, we’re on our own. Get use to it. We have to take care of each other. Since your father died, you and I are alone in this world and no one gives a damn about us.”

  It felt as if something had grabbed Arnell’s belly button from the inside and was twisting it hard enough for her to clutch her stomach. “Mommy, please don’t make me—”

  Esther suddenly took Arnell’s face in her hand. “Listen to me. All my jewelry is gone. I have nothing else to hock. Arnell, you have got to do this. We don’t have a choice. Life isn’t fair sometimes. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do, but we must do any- and everything to survive.”

  Arnell’s tears flowed as she looked deep into her mother’s eyes. The fear she saw there scared her all the more.

  “Sweetie, I swear to you, I won’t let him hurt you,” Esther said, tearing. “I swear.”

  They both stood in the doorway crying. People walked by, curious, but no one stopped. Arnell fell into Esther’s arms where she wanted to stay forever.

  “You know I love you, don’t you?” Esther asked, gently pushing Arnell off her.

  Although she wondered about that love, Arnell nodded.

  “Sweetie, if there was another way for me to get the money, I wouldn’t ask you to do this. You know that, don’t you?”

  Although Arnell knew how close they were to losing their apartment, she would have never dreamed that her mother would ask her to have sex with their Jewish Orthodox landlord in order to keep a roof over their heads.

  “Sweetie, will you do this for us?”

  Crying and taking short gaspy breaths, Arnell nodded. Only then did Esther hold her again and let her cry herself out. Esther kept her arms around Arnell the rest of the way home, mostly to hold her up to keep her weak knees from deserting her. Beyond that, Arnell remembered little else about the rest of that day. All she knew was that Mr. Hershfeld was coming that Friday, a day away.

  One

  Misshapen, the stretched out wire clothes hanger, angrily flung across the large bathroom, hit the sandstone-colored tile floor with a tinny clank as it splattered specks of contaminated water on the wall and floor. The hanger bounced twice and vibrated before settling and lying still like a petrified, undernourished snake. For the last twenty minutes, Arnell had twisted and maneuvered the hanger in a myriad of different shapes trying to hook her diamond engagement ring and pull it out of the unflushed toilet bowl. She just couldn’t seem to get the tip of the wire to slide under the ring so that she could hook it. Her futile efforts had only frustrated and nauseated her. Thank God she had eaten some time ago. Still, Arnell wretched time and again when the ring kept slipping and sliding on the porcelain on the bottom of the toilet bowl. Several times she had almost hooked her ring but it would slip into the narrow hole, completely out of sight, scaring her, making her work harder to pull it back into sight. In the end, the clothes hanger had only wasted Arnell’s time, making her later than she already was. And that was just it, she was late. She hated being late for any appointment, but more than she hated being late, Esther was going to hate it even more. Esther—or Queen Esther, as she liked to be called by her girls or people that worked for her—didn’t like anyone messing with her money, and Arnell being late was doing just that. But wait a minute. Arnell wasn’t supposed to be one of Esther’s girls anymore, and really, she wasn’t supposed to be working for her in any capacity. Yet, she was stressing herself out trying to keep an appointment that she wanted nothing to do with.

  The appointment with Mr. Woodruff Parker, from the upper west side of Manhattan, had been set up a week ago by Robert Morris, one of Esther’s favorite clients; and Esther wanted Arnell to take care of him personally, which was the reason her ring was off her finger in the first place. She couldn’t very well wear an engagement ring to meet a man that she had never laid eyes on and that she was going to take to bed. After she brushed her teeth, she had slipped the ring off her finger and set it on the back of the toilet tank. When she finished her business and stood, she must have bumped the tank because the ring slid off into the bowl before she could catch it. She had screamed, “No!” but that was about all she could do. She watched her beautiful three-carat marquis-cut diamond ring sparkle brilliantly just before it sank amid the putrid waste. For the first five minutes she had shouted, “Damn!” no less than ten times. She was angry at herself for taking the ring off in the bathroom and for putting it on top of the slippery smooth tank, but then she had cursed Esther for putting her in the position to have to take the ring off her finger in the first place.

  Esther had promised Arnell she would not have to work after she got her B.A. in Fine Arts, which she got a year ago from Long Island University after attending classes part-time for six years and a day. Arnell’s dream had been to teach high school English, but she was realistic. An ex-prostitute teaching a classroom full of sexually fertile minds was even too scandalous for her, so she let go of that dream real quick. Turns out though that she was a damn good editor. Arnell found that out by helping a classmate with her term papers. So she started working from home as a freelance copy editor. She made good money, but even so, her degree was thirteen years past due, and had been hard-earned, mainly because she had, in hindsight, stupidly continued living in Esther’s house, at Esther’s pleading, and servicing clients all the while she was in school busting her butt. One would think that Esther would respect Arnell’s determination to stay in school and do well to boot. But no, Esther saw Arnell’s education as a “foolish waste of time” when she already had a “God-given moneymaker—your vagina.” This is why Esther disregarded he
r promise to let Arnell completely quit the business when important, free-spending clients like Woodruff Parker called. According to Robert Morris, Woodruff Parker, Wall Street maverick, had money to burn, and Esther intended to be the furnace. She ordered Arnell to be especially beguiling in order to entice Woodruff Parker into being overly generous. Esther didn’t care what she had to do or whom she had to use to get what she figured was due her, and that was all the money she could get her hands on.

  The money she hoarded was not from need but from greed. Esther had more money than she’d ever dreamed of, more than enough to keep her in the lifestyle of the grand madam she had set herself up to be. Besides her fancy cars and expensive clothes and jewelry, Esther lived in a sixteen-room mansion that she had moved heaven and earth to purchase. Esther would not be satisfied until she could afford to buy the century-old Victorian house, in the upscale Ditmas Park area of Brooklyn, that was once owned by the very proper and very rich Mrs. Abigail Hawthorne, although Esther used the mansion, which her clients had dubbed The Honey Well, for a business that Mrs. Hawthorne, long dead, would never have approved of. But did Esther care? No. Esther planned on taking the hate she had for Mrs. Hawthorne to her grave.

  Esther’s mother, Alice Moore, had been Mrs. Hawthorne’s housekeeper and cook for four years when Esther was a teenager. Esther said that Mrs. Hawthorne treated Alice like she was a slave, always yelling at her, demeaning her if the food wasn’t cooked to her liking, ordering her to dust the furniture over if she saw a smudge, but worse than that, demanding that Alice wash and massage her feet every Friday afternoon. At times, Esther said she had to help her mother clean Mrs. Hawthorne’s house and those were the times she saw how her mother was treated. Those were the times Esther wanted to punch Mrs. Hawthorne in the mouth, but her mother would always rein her in, stop her cold. Alice needed her job. There was nothing else she was qualified to do and Mrs. Hawthorne did pay better than most. But Esther, when she turned fourteen, after calling Mrs. Hawthorne a crotchety old bitch for calling her a pickaninny, refused to step foot inside Mrs. Hawthorne’s house ever again. That is until Esther set her sights on buying the mansion. Her only regret was that Mrs. Hawthorne had to die before she could get her hands on that prize. But that didn’t spoil the satisfaction for Esther. She was content thinking that Mrs. Hawthorne was turning over in her grave every time the doorbell rang. Esther thought that was really funny. For a time after she bought the house, Esther would ring the bell herself, tickling her own funny bone. Esther was very proud of what she was able to accomplish. Her money put her where she wanted to be and as long as she made the money, she would stay there. Nothing and no one would stand in the way of Esther making her money, including her one and only child, Arnell.