The Elopement
I tapped on the window to Shondra's room and whispered her name. Nothing. The rain was starting to fall, and it would be coming down hard in a few minutes. I whispered her name again. If her dad–or mine–knew what was happening...
I jumped out of my skin as I got tapped on the shoulder. Shondra was already wearing her wedding dress. It was pure white, and looked ghostly in the night against her dark skin. The hem reached clear to the ground, and I could see it was about to get soaked. "Don't you have something else to wear?" I asked.
"No time or room. I've got another dress on under this; that's all," she whispered. She carried a small suitcase, and we ran together to my pick-up truck. She crawled inside as I helped push her dress and petticoats across the seat behind her. She smoothed everything, then sat in the center of the wide bench seat. We kissed.
Shondra and I were quite different. She was black; I, white. Her father was disabled from an oil-refinery explosion; her mother died of breast cancer when Shondra was ten. My parents were divorced: Dad was an assistant manager of the local supermarket, while Mom worked in a riverboat casino in New Orleans. Yet Shondra and I were alike in some ways: our birthdays were two days apart (she was older), we both liked to play piano (though I couldn't read music very well), and her mom died not long after my mom left us.
Shondra had nine toes: at the age of three, the little one on her right foot got smashed in an escalator, and the doctors could not reattach it. Her parents sued the store where the accident occurred, as well as the escalator manufacturer, and settled out of court for a lot less than they should have got. But, aside from the fact that some shoes made her foot sore where the toe had been, she grew up little the worse for the experience.
Dad was a racist. He didn't belong to the Ku Klux Klan, but had his own Free Citizens Committee, which seemed to support Klan activity. He never spoke well of Shondra's dad, even though he had worked for many years before his injury and could have retired before the accident occurred. As far as Dad was concerned, any black person who didn't hold down a job was a freeloader. Naturally, he opposed my relationship with Shondra, though he never treated her badly when I had her over.
An hour after Shondra and I had hit the road for Las Vegas, where we were going to get married, she said, "Steve, I gotta go."
"What?" I asked.
"I gotta go pee," she said. We were out in the middle of nowhere. "Stop here," she said.
I stopped the truck in the middle of the highway. One could see for miles around; the road was straight and level. We saw no lights in either direction. Shondra got out of the truck with me on my side, straddled the yellow line, pulled up her wedding dress a couple of inches to protect from splash, and leaked onto the road. She looked at me as she finished, and said, "Crotchless."
When it got daylight, she pulled on a sweatshirt over the top of her dress, took off her shoes, and drove most of the day. The trip across New Mexico and Arizona was primarily on a freeway, so we had to do bathroom breaks in rest areas. She took off her wedding dress to use the restrooms, but she had on a tight floral-print miniskirt underneath, so she didn't look out of place.
Finally, we got to Las Vegas, and Shondra had her wedding dress back on, though she had removed her miniskirt. We found a nice all-night wedding chapel, did the deed, went to a motel and exchanged body fluids all night.
We woke up about noon, had sex, then went and ate lunch. Afterward, Shondra said, "Let's get our butts tattooed–your name on mine, and mine on yours!"
I didn't like the sound of that at all. First, I didn't want anyone looking at her ass; second, I didn't want anyone looking at mine; third, we had a long drive home ahead of us, which would be much longer with fresh tattoos to sit on. I finally agreed to get one on my back, while Shondra got my name tattooed to her right ankle.
The return home took a little longer than our journey to Vegas. We stopped at every other rest area to have sex. Shondra was always taking off her wedding gown or putting it on; once she wore it into a truck stop. Her miniskirt did not attract as much attention, a bit to my surprise.
Shondra was driving in the wedding gown when we arrived at my dad's house. He wasn't home. Worried, we drove over to Shondra's dad's house, where we found the two of them, drop-dead drunk and laughing like hyenas. When they had sobered up later that day, Shondra's dad told us, "We knew that if you two kids thought we opposed your marriage, you'd elope. Save us from springin' for your wedding."
I asked Dad, "What about your racist Free Citizens Committee? I thought you hated blacks."
"That? That was part of the game, son. I used that committee to make sure the Klan didn't bother you, your girlfriend, or her daddy. I pretended to hate him so you wouldn't know about our little plan. I knew you were going to marry her the first time you set eyes on her. Shondra, your daddy and I grew up together. We were best friends. I think it's wonderful you two are going to give me grandchildren. Speakin' of which, Steve, carry her in the house and get to work on one."
Shondra pulled up her dress and showed Dad the tattoo on her ankle. He said, "Whenever you have a kid, get his name tattooed on your hide. I'll pay for it."
"Dad!" I said. "Pay for your own damn tattoos. I plan on getting this young lady pregnant now."
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