It Was Taken From Me

“Shawn, when you get to be a big girl, don’t ever let nobody touch you and make you feel bad, okay?”

“Okay,” I nodded, not having any idea of what my thirteen-year old cousin was going on about. I was almost five years old and I felt like I was a big girl already. Aunt Sarah always said that Cheryl was “fast” and that her hormones made her act all boy-crazy. I just assumed that because of the rain we were having, her hormones were acting up that day.

Crishawna Scott



Theo Woods was the finest boy at our school. I was going to the ninth grade and he was going to the tenth, but he had turned sixteen already and his daddy let him use the car whenever he wanted. I met him in my Sunday school class at church as he tried to cop-a-feel under the table. Ever since then, we were secretly boyfriend and girlfriend. I always thought it unfair that Sarah and Daddy wouldn’t let me have a real boyfriend at my age.

We left junior choir rehearsal early one warm Wednesday evening and drove behind Daddy’s tool shed just behind our old house. Daddy had a new, bigger house built just a block or two away from our old house, but he never bothered to sale the land. Theo parked his car down in the woods and we crept into the old wooden door in the back. I wasn’t too worried about getting caught because everybody was either watching the news or at church at 5 o’clock on a Wednesday evening. That’s how it’s always been. Everything here is predictable that way.

“Are you sure that nobody is going to come in here Cheryl. My pops will never let me take the Cadillac by myself ever again if we get busted.”
“Shhh, don’t worry so much. Nobody ever comes over here ‘cept for my daddy to get his lawnmower. He’s at work, so I know he ain’t thinking about cuttin’ no grass.”

Theo and I put an old mattress down on the oil stained concrete and I had an old mismatched sheet I found in Sarah’s attic. I pulled the door closed; leaving a small crack so that we could hear what was going on in the street. It’s so quiet around here that you can hear footsteps on the grass as well as the gravel.

We started our Wednesday evening loving the same way we always did, by kissing all over each other. I’d seen the skinny white girls on cable get their boyfriends started up in the same way. When daddy first got cable installed, I just knew that I would go blind sneaking downstairs to watch the dirty pictures that would come on at midnight. It had gotten to a point where I would go in my room and practice moving my hips and moaning into my bed pillow. The girls on the movies always seemed to moan a whole lot and I just figured that was what you do when a boy is kissing and touching you.

“Cheryl, I think that you are the prettiest girl at our school. I’ve been wanting to take you out for a long time, but I know your folks think that you are too young to go out with boys.” I pulled my tongue out of Theo’s mouth long enough for me to smack my teeth in frustration.
“Ooooh, Sarah makes me so sick with that. She tries to run me like she’s my real mama and that gets on my last nerve. I wish that she would just mind her own business.” Daddy and Sarah had been together since I was in the second grade and the older she got, the more we would fall out. She was nice, once upon a time, and she used to take good care of us until Daddy told her that he didn’t want any more children. Apparently, Sarah had been trying to have her own baby and he wasn’t having it. Daddy screwed up my cable television fix a many nights, sleeping on the living room couch instead of in his room with Sarah. After that, Sarah turned into Miss Bitch and gained a whole lotta’ weight. She was still a pretty pecan woman, but she wasn’t the little petite thang Daddy brought home to raise me. The older she got, the more she started to resemble “Ms. Sophia” off that movie “The Color Purple” and the more I took pleasure in pissing her off.

Theo sat down on our makeshift bed and took off his shirt exposing his slim muscular physique. He had been playing football since the Pee-Wee league and it sure did pay off in all the right places. He was tall and dark-skinned and a thin mustache was growing above his thick pink lips. He towered over me like a giant, but when we lay down, we were the same height. Older boys always tried to mess with me because I already had titties and a few hairs had sprouted between my legs; a fact that no one would have known if not for the jealous girls in my gym class. After swimming all period, we hit the showers which gave us no privacy at all and this dike named Sonia told all the boys that I had hair on my cat. I was embarrassed about it at first, but then I realized that I liked the attention I was getting.

Theo stuck his hand in my panties and rubbed his thick fingers in and out of my coochie. I was shame-faced the first few times he did it, but now it felt good to me. We kissed and messed around like we always did until he pulled his thang’ out.

“Let me put it in LaCheryl. Come on’, just the tip I promise,” he pleaded.
“Boy, you must think that I’m some kinda’ fool. If you do that I’m gon’ get pregnant; then my mama and daddy’ll know I ain’t no virgin.”
“LaCheryl, you gon’ still be a virgin if I put my dick up in you. You don’t lose your virginity unless I bust a nut.”
“Theo, now you know that don’t make a lick of sense. Why you can’t just do like you always do, That feels good.” Theo sucked his teeth.
“LaCheryl, you gon give me blue balls again. If you keep doing that my dick ain’t never gon’get hard again and I won’t be able to get nobody pregnant when it’s time. Pleeeease, I promise that it’s not gon’ hurt or nothing.”

I looked at his big brown puppy dog eyes and then I thought about his logic for wanting to be so nasty with me. I had heard guys talk about blue balls and how much it hurt them and I liked Theo. I didn’t want him to have to explain why his dick was broken to his parents. I’m sure that my name would have come up and then we would’ve both got in trouble for messing around.

“C’mon, please LaCheryl. I promise that I’ll put it in and take it right back out.”
“Mmm, okay. But you have to promise to take it right back out.” Theo enthusiastically pulled his pants and boxers down just enough to pull his long black dick out. It didn’t look like much when it was just sitting there, but now it was hard and straight like an arrow. I laid back and Theo lay on top of me balancing himself on his elbow while he used his other hand to rub up and down my coochie. He mumbled something about me being wet and then he put his dick inside me.

“Aight Theo, you said that you was just gon’ put the head part in.”
“Shhh, I know Cheryl, but just hush, I’m trying to concentrate,” he grunted, pushing himself in a little more. He pushed in deeper and deeper until it started to hurt.”
“Ouch boy! It hurts. STOP! You said that you wasn’t going to put it all the way in.”
“Please Cheryl, just hush I’m almost there,” he managed to say between gasps of air. Then he pulled himself out and then pushed himself into me as hard as he could until I felt something give between my legs. Theo plunged himself in and out of me a few more times before he pulled his dick out and squirted piss all over Sarah’s sheet. I sobbed for a few minutes and then got up to wipe the stickiness from between my legs.

“LaCheryl, was you on your period or something?”
“No boy, I ain’t got my period yet.”
“Well look!” Theo pointed to the circle of blood on the back of my yellow dress and the blood smeared on the mattress.
“Theo what did you do?” I cried.
“I ain’t do nothing. I thought you said that you wasn’t a virgin.”
“I’m not. You were the first boy to put his hands down there.” Theo pulled his pants up and laughed.
“Girl, that didn’t make you lose your virginity. I just now popped your little cherry….”
“Shhh, did you hear that?” I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard the sound of footsteps outside. My hearing had become quite keen watching the cable movies with the sound barely up. “Theo,” I whispered, “Somebody’s out behind the shed.”
“It’s probably a stray dog or something. Stop tripping.”
Theo put on his shirt and I tied his letterman jacked around my waist as best I could to cover the stain until I could change my dress. I slowly pushed the back door open so that we could sneak off.

“My, my, my….look what we got here.” I put a scowl on my face to hide my embarrassment. I figured, no sense in both of us looking guilty. “LaCheryl Broussard, aren’t you supposed to be at choir rehearsal?”
“I don’t think that’s any business of yours Carl Lee,” I said with an attitude. I heard Sarah say that to me a thousand times and it seemed like a grown-up thing to say in my current situation.
“Little girl, your daddy is going to tear your little red behind up when he gets wind of this. And is this Woods’ boy? Now you know you don’t need to be sniffing around here.” He glowered at Theo and the man I just had, turned into a little boy all over again.
“I know Sir, just don’t tell my folks. We was both supposed to be at church.”
“Well you go ‘head and get to where you supposed to be. I’m gon’ deliver this young one personally.”

Theo rushed past Carl Lee and I heard to roar of Deacon Woods’ Cadillac in the distance. I leaned against the outside of the shed with my arms folded pretending not to care that we got busted. Carl lee was a friend of our family and he used to be married to one of my daddy’s sisters. I never got a chance to call him Uncle because they weren’t married but a few months and they lived out of town.

“Gal, Sarah is going to beat you good when she hears this. I should whoop you right now! That’s just what I should do!”
“Carl Lee we wasn’t doing nothing,” I lied halfway pleading for clemency.
“Don’t lie to me you little red whore. I done caught you two sneaking back here befo’ and I kept my mouth shut. James should be pulling in from work any minute now.” Carl Lee looked around the side of the house. The sun was still shining so Daddy still had a while before he got home.
“Please Carl Lee, I’m telling you. We didn’t do nothing.”

Carl Lee raised up his work shirt and started unfastening his belt. Tears started to well in my eyes, but I was getting to big to try and ball my way out of an ass-whooping. “Go on in the shed, LaCheryl.” Carl Lee cleared a spot on Daddy’s work bench. “Don’t act like you a first timer guhl. Take that jacket and your panties off now!” he demanded. I stepped out of my panties and reluctantly unfastened Theo’s jacket hoping that the blood stain magically disappeared into the fabric. He didn’t say nothing about it so I imagined that it did.

“Now I don’t want to hear a peep out of you, ya hear? You just do what I tell you to.” I nodded my head and a strange chill came went down my spine. I heard Carl Lee pull down the zipper on his pants and I turned around to see him standing there holding himself. He walked up behind me and rubbed his hands over my bare behind.
“You let that lil’ black nigga’ put his hands on you like this you little whore, hunh?” I couldn’t do anything but shake my head in disagreement as a lump formed in my throat. Tears started to well in my eyes again, but this time I let them fall. Carl Lee put one of his hands between my legs while he used his free hand to rub himself. He pushed me over Daddy’s work bench, put his dick between my legs and rocked back and forth as he cursed at me. He slapped me hard across the back of the head when I cried too loudly, and he moaned and cursed even louder when he squirted all over my dress. He stumbled backwards and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“You breathe one word of this bitch, and I’ll really give you something to cry about.” I pulled my hair away from my eyes and nodded. He threw my panties at me. “Now go home and clean yourself up before James and Sarah get home.”