Tania Mosswell was a tall, imposing African American woman with large, smothering breasts and clutchable buttocks at the culmination of strong thighs. Her face was noble, with high cheekbones and intriguing arches of eyebrow over intelligent eyes that seemed to see right through you. At 44, she was a tenured professor of Women's Studies at the university who had earned the admiration of her colleagues and the respect of her students, but she couldn't keep her raucous family in line.
She and her husband, Robert, had four children, but only one remaining at home. Tillman, 19, and their youngest, was going to the university and they saved money by having him live at home in a basement room that would give some sense of separation from his parents. Robert Jr. was 22 and he was their eldest boy. After his graduation from college, he had taken a job out of town, and so he was no longer in place as the calm mediator among the children.
It was the girls and Tillman who needed mediation. Cherie, 23, and Sherona, 24, were both lovely women who had good careers and were secure financially. Of course, if the truth were to be told, Cherie was kind of a bitch, and Sherona had been over-sexed since she hit puberty and should always have been kept on a leash.
The two girls and their youngest brother, grew up scrapping with each other. And, though it was verbal more than physical, their fights could be intense. Robert Jr. could be counted on to pull the sides apart and sort it all out when their parents weren't available. Unfortunately, Sherona had come home yesterday and Robert Jr. was nowhere in sight.
"You've got a whole house to lay around in! Why you gotta be in my space? You gonna sleep on the couch down there, too?" Tillman was shouting at his sister as he came up the stairs. "Damn fool is messing up my space," he said to his mother at the top.
"Tillman, you've got to give Sherona a chance. Give her . . ."
"I can sit anywhere I want and watch any TV I want and you can shut your own damn mouth, boy!" Sherona bounded up the stairs barefoot in her dressing gown and looking exactly as though she had moved into Tillman's "space." "You think you own this place? You don't own squat and ain't gonna own squat cause you ain't worth squat."
"Sherona!"
"All I'm doing is watching the movie down where there isn't sunlight glaring on the screen," the slim young woman said. "I'm not moving in."
"Hell you aren't," Tillman snapped.
"Both of you shut up," Tania said sternly. "Tillman, you let Sherona watch her movie and stay out of her face. You've got your own bedroom down there."
"Yes, but . . ."
"But nothing. Give Sherona her space. And you, Sherona, don't start getting too comfortable. You've got your own life, too. Right?"
"Right," Sherona replied with a small flip of her long, softly waved hair. "Exactly right."
She turned and flounced down the stairs again, leaving the mother and son alone together.
"Till . . ."
"Yeah, I know. Bitch gets a divorce and I've got to pay for it," Tillman said.
"Don't talk like that about your sister," Tania admonished him. She couldn't really blame him, and so she left it as a word to the wise. "Let's please have some peace for as long as she's here."
"She'll be here forever."
"No, she won't. I promise you that." Tania had already made that promise to herself and she intended to keep it. She knew she'd never be able to stand having her eldest daughter home for more than a month.
"Okay," Tillman said. "I'm going out."
Tania kissed her son on the cheek and patted his shoulder. "Dinner around five," she said. "Don't be late."
"I won't."
She watched him go with a loving eye, thinking of what a good boy he was. He was a man, really. He was six feet tall and muscular and handsome as hell. Of course, that was a mother's perspective.
Sherona was a piece of work, if she had to be honest. She was intelligent, beautiful, witty, and loving. Yes, all of that. But she was also willful, belligerent, and driven into bad decisions by her over heated libido. She was man hungry.
She had even admitted to her mother that she'd married her ex husband for purely sexual reasons. "Jesus, mama, the man's got about a yard of dick," she said, laughing. Tania, of course, replied, "Too much information, girl. You keep your man's equipment to you self now."
"I intend to, mama," Sherona had assured her.
She'd managed to keep it to herself for about a year and a half. Tania wasn't sure of the true circumstances of the divorce, but she felt fairly certain that hubby wasn't the only one straying from that marriage. She couldn't imagine Sherona staying two years with one man.
And she couldn't imagine marrying a man because of the size of his penis. If she'd told her that before the marriage rather than after, Tania would have held an intervention to keep the girl from going to the alter. A big cock doesn't put food on the table. A big cock doesn't take out the garbage or mow the lawn. She hoped the girl was done with her chasing so the next man she might decide to be in love with will be someone to stick with.
Yeah, dream on.
#
Sherona sat in the basement family room staring at the TV but not really seeing it. She was thinking of life and how it had brought her right back to fighting with her brother. Life had brought her right back home like a little kid. And it had brought her to the point where she had to admit that her mother had been right about everything. Everything.
Sherona was close to losing her job due to her husband's harassment at work. Her boss advised her that she should take some time away until the whole thing blew over. He gave her a month, and she decided to spend it at home.
Of course, this wasn't really her home. This was a white bread suburban cul-de-sac full of stuck up white bankers and whatnot. It was a very nice house, but not her home.
If this were their old home, she'd be able to hook up with someone and have some fun. She needed a little something, a recreational fling, to soothe her now. She was too horny to be stuck in the middle of all these white strangers.
The fight with Till had begun when she asked him if "anybody in this pale ass neighborhood likes to party. I wanna have some fun, little brother."
"Go downtown and stand on a street corner," he said. "You want dick so bad, maybe you can get paid at the same time."
"You're still a snotty little brat aren't you?" she snapped back. "I just asked a question. Just say everybody around is an asshole and be done with it. Don't be a snot."
"They're not assholes. They got a lot more going on than you would believe."
"Jesus, Tillman, you love that white tale so much you beginning to sound like them. You getting some white pussy? Is that it?"
"Just a minute ago you were sniffing after white dick, you cock-hound."
"You still beating your meat looking at those white dykes?" Sherona said. "Can't get it up for a sister?"
"Fuck you," Tillman shouted. "You want to get laid? I'll go round up a gang and you have them line up to drill you, bitch"
"You don't know any gang of men. You got no friends and no girl and sure as hell ain't got any smarts. Now leave me be to watch the movie," Sherona said.
That was when Tillman threw a couch pillow at her and stormed up the stairs.
