Body and Soul by Erica Storm Page B

once a week. No doubt he’s checking on me to run away anyone that may want me.
    Alexis is the one who suggested that we meet her brother. And she took me shopping to thank me for cooking for them. Alexis thinks we’re going to be one big happy family, and together, we could break the news to her family that she and Wayne are getting married.

Chapter 2: Robin
    T he jet finally landed and we were met by a limo driver. I stepped out and it was cold. Before I didn’t have the kind of clothes to go to a resort or a party, but Alexis took me shopping and bought me everything I needed to be well dressed on the ski slopes. I don’t know why I agreed to go other than my brother insisted, and I don’t know why I paid attention, other than I had nothing better to do.
    I can’t ski and I’m not riding on any of those ski machines. I do know how to ice skate, and maybe I can hold my own there if it’s inside a building. I’ve heard stories about people skiing and running into trees and that scares the shit out of me. Besides, this kind of shit isn’t natural to black people, and our skin and hair don’t act right in cold temperatures. I might be worried about my hair getting fucked up, get distracted, and then bam hit a tree.
    After stepping out of the plane, already my lips begin to chap and the altitude makes me feel as if I would faint. Wayne shouts, “Come on Robin, hurry up. Get in the car.” I couldn’t stand one more day of him ordering me around. I shot him a look. You got me out here, you and your crazy girlfriend, now don’t fuck with me.
    Wayne has been saying over and over now don’t do something to make me shame. Hell, the day he decided to tie a woman up before he fucks her, is shame enough, and let your sister see you, how much more shame can you get? I look at him and smack my mouth. But I didn’t say anything. I gave him a pass this time and fold my arms after I jumped into the limo.
    “Look Wayne, I know how to act. I’m just going to be myself.”
    “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he says to me. I shoot him the middle finger. I had started that since I was a girl. I wouldn’t talk back to him because he’s older, and he’s my brother after all, but I had to get my point across. And he got the point and left me alone. Now was not the time for his fucking lectures.
    He got me out here, out of my elements, and now he’s telling me to not act like a black girl. Alexis acts blacker than I do, or hasn’t he noticed. She’s the one that talks like she’s urban from the streets. Maybe she does that because she thinks that’s what Wayne likes. She can out black some of the black girls especially me.
    When I meet black guys they say, “You sound like a white girl.”
    You never know where you stand with black men. One minute they want you to act refine and speak the Queen’s English, then they complain about that, and the next minute they want a street woman to suck their cocks and talk nasty to them.
    I’m confused especially since seeing Alexis and Wayne together doing BDSM.  
    I ambled into the limo with the driver helping me after Wayne rushes in after Alexis. The drive is beautiful. Nothing but white snow and trees. Something you see in a movie and now it would be my experience.
    Now I realize I needed to get out of Seattle. I’m glad Wayne forced me to go with them. I hadn’t been out since we moved from Atlanta, Georgia, when some old boyfriend my mother went to school with promised her a life of leisure if we moved with him.
    We picked up and rode the bus for days to get there. When he met us at the Greyhound terminal, his face changed from a smile. He didn’t know that she had two children who would be coming with her. The first week we were there, the arguments started, and then we were in a homeless shelter. Mama and Wayne found a job and things were better from that day.
    When we arrived at Alexis’s brother’s cabin, it wasn’t what I expected. The cabin was no cabin it was a