The Punany Experience Read online

  Brother Marcel Samuels brought the mothers’ board to weeping and wailing as he arose from the pool in a heartrending rendition of “Soon-a Will be Done.”

  On the first Sunday following Brother Samuels’ baptism, Stormy sipped the unfinished portions of grape juice from the tiny communion glasses she had been assigned to wash in the church kitchen, and tried to be invisible as she eavesdropped on her mother’s conversation in the hallway right outside the kitchen door.

  “I don’t like it; I can’t help the way I feel,” her mother said. “That young man is too worldly to be in this church.”

  “Now, Sister Talbert, that’s not fair; we were all worldly before we came to Faithful Baptist. Lord, have mercy on my soul, for the woman I used to be, and the things I used to do!” Sister Thompson exclaimed with a hand in the air.

  “Amen to that!” Sister Sarah chimed.

  “Bless you!” Sister Thomas retorted.

  “You know, Sister Thomas, I understand where you’re coming from, but you’re hardly influencing these young people from where you sit on the second pew. That little heathen is in a very important position, leading the choir. He’s got all these girls showing out.”

  “It’s not only the girls,” Sister Thomas said, cutting her eyes at Sister Sarah. “It’s the women, too.”

  “Hmm,” Sister Sarah said. “Well, I, for one, don’t see any harm in having him.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. And you two shouldn’t either. He’s representing the neighborhood. We haven’t had so many people from this neighborhood join the church since Brother Samuels came,” Sister Sarah told the women.

  “That’s what I am afraid of.” Sister Talbert felt herself becoming angry. “We don’t want too much of the neighborhood inside the church.”

  “My, you’re judgmental lately,” Sister Thomas said.

  “If recognizing trouble means I’m being judgmental, Sister, then I’m guilty as charged. You can judge me all you want, but one thing I know for sure is that being Christian doesn’t make you Devil-proof.”

  “This is true,” Sister Sarah said. “But being Christian doesn’t mean you aren’t human either. Listen, I love Jesus as much as the next Christian; you see what I’m saying? But I’m also a woman. Haven’t you noticed how many women are coming to church, now that we have Brother Samuels?”

  “They’re coming for the wrong reason,” Sister Talbert complained.

  “No, no, Sister Talbert, she’s right,” Sister Thomas said. “No matter why they’re coming, they still get the same word of God that we do. Pastor sees to that. You have to keep your faith. Besides, with women come children and, in their lives, Christ Jesus can make a real difference.”

  “I agree. So what if they’re coming for the music or simply to look at him? It’s not a sin to look,” Sister Sarah replied.

  Sister Thompson laughed. “That depends on how many times you look.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Sister Talbert said. “It depends on what you’re thinking about when you’re looking.”

  “You can say that again,” Sister Sarah said, giggling.

  “But really, ladies, I think Pastor should be ashamed of himself for letting a sinner lead the choir simply because he can sing and play like a professional,” Sister Talbert said.

  “Sister Talbert, you’re much too bitter for your own good these days. I don’t mean any disrespect to you at all, so please don’t take this the wrong way, but I think bitterness and anger can make you sick.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, I’ll have to ask my doctor if he has some happy pills for my Cynical Cancer.”

  “Stop it, you two.” Sister Sarah glanced over Sister Talbert’s shoulder at the young, green-eyed beauty gliding down the church hallway, removing his choir robe. “Shhh, here comes the little pretty boy now.”

  Underneath his robe he wore a white shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, revealing the silver cross all newly baptized members received, and a pair of pleated baggie slacks that kind of danced in the breeze of his trail. There was a hint of a player’s drag in his right foot as he walked toward them in midnight blue, snakeskin Stacy Adams.

  “Ladies…” Brother Samuels nodded at the women as he passed, leaving them in a fog of Calvin Klein cologne. He walked into the meeting hall, opened the closet where the choir robes were stored, and hung his inside.

  “Stop staring at that boy’s ass,” Sister Sarah said under her breath. She cleared her throat. “That was quite a performance you gave today, Marcel.”

  Brother Marcel looked up at the women, then up and down at Sister Sarah to find out if the flirtation in her eyes was also in her hips. He smirked and nodded slowly as he walked toward the church hens. From this direction, with the kitchen light shining through, he could see that Sister Sarah wasn’t wearing a slip under her pink silk dress. Just behind her, he could see Stormy washing communion glasses.

  “Thanks, Sister,” he said. “But it’s these beautiful angels ya’ll have given me to work with; they make the heavenly sounds you heard.” He stepped behind Sister Sarah, letting his shoulder brush against the woman’s back. He leaned into the kitchen door. “There’s one of them now. Hey there, Stormy.” Stormy could feel those familiar butterflies flutter about her insides when he said her name. “I’ll see you at choir rehearsal next week, right?”

  “Yes, of course, Marcel. I’ll be there.”

  “That’s a grown man you’re speaking to. You’ll address him as Mister or Brother Samuels. That is your name, right?” Sister Talbert checked with him.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. Brother Samuels will do fine.”

  He smiled softly at Stormy and brushed against Sister Sarah once more, before retreating back down the hall.

  “Please don’t get any bright ideas about calling me by my last name, Stormy,” Sister Sarah said. “If I hear anyone say Sister Dippman, I’ll be looking around for my mother!”

  “Never mind all that,” Sister Talbert said. “Stormy, you mind your manners around that young man. You understand? He’s not a boy. He’s a man.”

  “Yes, Momma,” Stormy said.

  Sister Talbert could feel Sister Thomas and Sister Sarah looking at her suspiciously. “Bless you, sisters. Bless the both of you!”

  She tossed her nose in the air and walked down the hall. She hoped to speak to Brother Samuels, but she was stopped in her tracks by Pastor, who prayed over her Cancer in front of the church. When she opened her eyes, Brother Samuels and nearly everyone else was gone.

  STORMY WOKE UP EXTRA EARLY ON SATURDAY MORNING so she could leave the house before her mother woke up. Stormy was only fourteen. Too smart, her mother said, for her own good, and too young to be wearing black stockings with a seam up the back. Her mother had told her to throw them away when she bought them at the liquor store on Sunday. But she liked the way her legs looked in them. They made her legs look exactly like the ones on the package. So instead of tossing them, she had stuffed them into her purse and had been posing in them in the mirror all week long; sitting on her dresser, legs crossed, toes pointed, stomach sucked in, budding breasts forward, silently laughing, and touching fingertips to her chest, she had practiced being grown up in them.

  Her dress was short enough to show them off as she walked to the bus stop. The bus driver noticed them with a bright golden grin. The old ladies, with huffs and snubs, noticed the grown-up legs on the teenage girl. Stormy silently hoped for a more favorable reaction from Marcel Samuels as she crossed her ankles and turned her face away from the women.

  Stormy and Melissa, the soprano that stood next to her in the choir stand, had been jabbing each other in the thigh during rehearsal, in girlish competition for the young director’s attention. Melissa, he said, had a voice like Tramaine Hawkins, so he offered her the lead on “When You Pray.” Stormy was sulking in defeat as Melissa melted in the sultry attention of the director, whose hands manipulated their way from her shoulders to her diaphragm, compelling the young vocalist to push
the song out. Melissa giggled when Brother Samuels told Stormy that her voice was shaky and compromised his entire choir, but she swallowed her laughter whole when Brother Samuels offered Stormy some personal assistance after rehearsal.

  Saturday afternoon, when choir rehearsal was over and all of the good Christians were gone, Stormy lay cradling herself on the floor, where young Brother Samuels had abandoned her wilted body, with her virginity bleeding slowly down her thighs in the Pastor’s study.

  Stormy didn’t know how he had removed her pretty black stockings. She had only wanted to kiss him. She had only wanted to see what kissing his special mouth would be like. That first kiss was the sweetest thing she had ever felt. Everything else happened so quickly that she couldn’t think straight. Her face was stinging, there was something around her neck, his salty hand was over her mouth and nose, and she couldn’t breathe. Then she was on the floor with her hair being pulled back so far she thought her neck would snap. Her fists pounded the flesh and muscles of his big, strong back, and someone was screaming “no” and “stop” and “it hurts” and “please, Jesus, stop him.” Things in her stomach were being pushed around as her bones seemed to split and give way to a digging inside of her and everything between her legs was throbbing, aching, and bruising. Then time was still and she left the room and floated into space and looked for Jesus. She was calling His name and looking and calling and looking, but she couldn’t find Him anywhere. She found a quiet place, lay down and waited, unsure of what she was waiting for.

  Suddenly, there was a loud grunt in her ear, and then panting, squeezing, shaking, and breathing and then…he was soft again, kissing her with his special mouth.

  “Now that’s some pussy that can make a brother sing,” he said, kissing her again. Stormy didn’t say anything. She stared at the cross on the wall behind him, where Jesus hung. “Hey, are you in there?” Brother Samuels knocked on her head with his knuckles. She turned her empty eyes toward him. “Don’t worry. It won’t hurt the next time.”

  He stood up over her. She saw his dick; the first one she had ever seen. It had blood and white stuff on it. She felt her stomach retching and thought she would throw up, until she swallowed hard and looked away, at the cross again.

  Brother Samuels picked her dress up off the floor and wiped his dick with it. “You ain’t never even seen one before today, huh?”

  Stormy lay there. She did not answer. She did not cry. She kind of lay numb and wondering. What had she done wrong? Why was God punishing her? Was this what she had to look forward to with men? If God is everywhere, she thought, why couldn’t He hear my prayers from inside a Pastor’s study? Her eyes were fixated on that cross, where a hippy-looking white man hung with nails in his hands and feet. Her Sunday school teacher said Jesus was a carpenter. Maybe he built his own cross, too, she thought. Jesus, where were you when I was looking for you?

  She shivered.

  “Are you cold?” Brother Samuels asked. “Here, put your dress back on.” He tossed the dress onto her body, but she didn’t move a muscle.

  For a moment, there was tenderness in his voice that Stormy appreciated. Even when he wasn’t singing, praising God with his tenor tone, his voice sounded like a song. Are you cold? Even in the aftermath of him stealing her virginity, Stormy was drawn to his voice and waited for him to say something that would make her feel better.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked her. “Why are you laying there, staring up at that cross?

  “Oh, so now you’re not talking. What happened to ‘Oh Brother Samuels, you sing so pretty?’ And ‘how old are you? Hee hee hee’; I saw ya’ll up there in the choir stand giggling. I be seeing ya’ll all the time, talking about me. Now that you have my attention, you can’t talk. You all hurt. Shit.” He curled his lip in disgust at her. “You know, you females make me sick, prancing around in front of dudes, dressing like little sluts, switching your little asses around, batting your eyelashes, flirting and shit. Then you have the nerve to cop an attitude when men want to fuck you; especially you young chicks. Sometimes I think God be playing games. I mean, He be giving ass and titties, like the ones He gave to you, to kids, and expects a man not to want them. It don’t make sense. It’s just wrong. That’s why I’m in this church, playing the piano, singing and getting paid. My pretty hands make seventy-five dollars every time they touch the keys on Sunday. All this shit is fake. You are hell of fake.” He kicked Stormy’s leg. “I’m going to give you some advice, young lady. You would be smart to take it. Don’t take this situation and try to use it to play victim. You’ll only be fucking yourself up for later. Pussy wasn’t created for anything but fucking and having babies. So if you think I’ve done you wrong, think again. I simply got you ready.”

  He knelt at her side, watching her lay still. Young Brother Samuels spoke slow and deliberately to her. “I know you’re feeling kind of bad about it right now, going out like a hoe and all; especially at church, and being only fourteen. But I can see it in you. You’re going to be one of those bitches who love to fuck. Trust me; don’t worry about it right now. Hey…” He waved his hand in front of her eyes. “What are you doing? What are you looking at?” He followed her eyes to the cross on the wall behind him. “What? Do you think He’s going to climb down off that cross and whip my ass? Hey, my cousin said that Mary, you know, from the Bible, Jesus’ mother, was around fourteen years old. So you’re in real good company.”

  Stormy just lay there, not responding. He looked at the catatonic girl on the floor, laughed, and stood on his feet.

  “Naw, for real though; that’s some real good pussy you got. You were fighting me for a minute. That’s something you can hold on to, for sure, for your honor. But I could feel you wanting to fuck me back. I could feel you holding yourself back. You even got a couple of good pumps in there, didn’t you?”

  Stormy turned her face away. He reached for her chin and turned her face back over to him. She closed her eyes.

  “Open your eyes. I want you to look at me and remember me. I want you to remember what I smelled like, what I tasted like, what I felt like, before all those other men come rushing up inside you. You should do yourself a favor next time; don’t hold back. You ain’t being raped if you’re fucking back. Remember that.”

  Stormy watched Brother Samuels as he walked away from her, shaking his head. He checked his hair in the mirror by the coat rack, where the Pastor’s robe, hat and coat hung, and continued to talk.

  “Pussy ain’t all special like you females try to make it out to be. That’s all I’m saying. Men know what pussy is for. We have to have it. We would kill to get it. We pay for it! I mean, I don’t pay for it but some fools do. Men are the ones that give it value; not women. Pussy ain’t worth anything; not really. It’s just that men have a need for it. So in the future, if any of these fine, upstanding church men want to run up in you, you need to get a little something for your college fund. You know what I’m saying?

  “Besides, fucking is in our nature. It’s something people do. We’re all animals with urges to procreate and shit. That means have babies,” he said, looking back at her on the floor. Stormy was starting to look like she was going to cry. “You need to get up off the floor, and stop feeling sorry for yourself. You don’t even know. I did you a big-ass favor.” Brother Samuels pulled his arms through his choir robe and zipped it. “I swear,” he said, “Females can be so unappreciative.” He walked toward the door. “Every girl has got to become a woman some time. It’s probably better that you became one in the house of the Lord, don’t you think?”

  In that moment, a single tear crawled through the corner of Stormy’s eye. She could feel a well of them rushing in to pity her. He was almost out of the door. She willed her tears away; she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

  Brother Samuels opened the door to the Pastor’s study and was stepping through it when he had an afterthought. “I know you don’t want to embarrass your momma with any of this. With that cancer eati
ng her up like it is already, you might kill her with foolishness. I heard, back in the day, your momma knew what pussy was for, too.”

  With that, he disappeared behind the door. Stormy could hear him, already humming his next musical gift to God as he shut the door and walked down the hall with her innocence still ripe on his dick, under his choir robe.

  After a few minutes, when she could hear the organ flooding the sanctuary, Stormy stood up on her trembling legs. She pulled her pretty stockings from around her neck and tossed them in the trashcan by the Pastor’s desk. She picked her pink cotton panties up off the floor and stepped into them. Then she put on the dress her mother had warned her was “too short for the church house” and folded her choir robe. She could hear Brother Samuels on the organ in the sanctuary, singing…

  “I find no fault in God; He’s wonderful. I find no fault in Him…”

  CHAPTER 2: THE VIRGIN FILES:

  THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

  The night Korea gave her virginity to Keith, she didn’t even bleed. Over the next couple of months, she let him hit a few more times, hoping it would get better, but she was starting to wonder what all the excitement over sex was about. She was about to stop fucking him altogether when he started getting more creative.

  Keith was pretty sure that he wasn’t getting Korea off with his usual moves, so he decided to try something different. He wasn’t usually a weak fuck, but he had to admit to himself that he could understand if Korea thought he was. After all, she never made a sound when he fucked her, even when her pussy was dripping wetness. Her silence was so intimidating. It was all he could do to stay hard most of the time.