Let It Burn

By Satellite Stevens

I remember being three years old standing inside my doorway in a checkered red dress. My older brothers and sisters were on the porch. I heard a shot and a scream. Everybody yelled for me to get back in the house. My sisters flew inside at the insistence of my mother. We watched from the window as police cars came streaming down the road with their lights flashing.

There were loud sirens. Then an ambulance followed. I was fighting to get my face to the window so I could see but I wasnt big enough. I became frustrated and cried, wet tears filling my face, so my oldest sister lifted me up. Then word got around that the man who was killed was the boy Jasons father, who lived up the street. I knew Jason and liked him. He had a pretty face and a big smile. Every time he came by the house and I was standing on the porch, he would say hi and call me by my name. Sometimes he would say, Are you being a good little girl? Other times he would say, You look very pretty.

I thought about Jason and how he felt. He stood tall and proud and seemed like an old little kid, much older than me. He seemed caring inside and always dressed nice. I never knew my father, so I often wondered what it was like to have a father. I wondered what a man did in the house.

Now I wondered about Jason. I wondered if he was going to cry. I wasnt allowed to go to the funeral, but I really wanted to. I wanted to see him and make sure he was okay. I wanted to tell him I wished those men didnt shoot his father.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483643601

Satellite Stevens

Samuel Say has written one of the most delicious and sensual books on the market. Yvonne and her husband travel to Jamaica for a long over due vacation where they have a great time in an exotic country. On her trip Yvonne encounters either an enchanting fantasy or an unexpected experience that keeps her on edge and she takes home with her. Yvonne is a rich deep person and enjoys a loving relationship with her husband. One thing is missing. You will be constantly surprised, entertained and aroused as you read this unique book about this beautiful woman who is

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Let It Burn

Satellite Stevens

Copyright © 2013 by Satellite Stevens.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 05/22/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Let It Burn

Chapter 1

I remember being three years old standing inside my doorway in a checkered red dress. My older sisters were on the porch. I heard a gun shot and a scream. Everybody yelled for me to get back in the house. My sisters flew inside at the insistence of my mother. My sisters watched from the upstairs window as police cars came streaming down the road with their lights flashing.

There were loud sirens. Then an ambulance followed. I was fighting to get my face to the window so I could see but I wasn’t big enough. I became frustrated and cried, wet tears filling my face, so my oldest sister lifted me up. Then word got around that the man who was killed was the boy Jason’s father, who lived up the street. I knew Jason and liked him. He had a pretty face and a big smile. Every time he came by the house and I was standing on the porch, he would say hi and call me by my name. Sometimes he would say, Are you being a good little girl? Other times he would say, You look very pretty.

I thought about Jason and how he felt. He stood tall and proud and seemed like an old little kid, much older than me. He seemed caring inside and always dressed nice. I never knew my father, so I often wondered what it was like to have a father. I wondered what a man did in the house.

Now I wondered about Jason. I wondered if he was going to cry. I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral, but I really wanted to. I wanted to see him and make sure he was okay. I wanted to tell him I wished those men didn’t shoot his father.

Jason didn’t have brothers and sisters, and I wondered who would hold him when he cried or if he would be Mr. Tough Guy. I wondered at what age boys stopped crying. My oldest cousin was ten, and he still cried sometimes. I used to look at everything on the street from the porch. I had seen Jason’s father only a couple of times, and he was with Jason both times.

I wondered if his father died right away. How much pain he felt, and of course, why somebody killed him, and if they knew he was somebody’s father. I wondered if they were a father to some boy or girl, and if they were, did they know it was bad to kill a father because maybe children need their father. I wanted to know why adults, who were once children, could be so mean.

I wondered about my father a lot. I used to play a game in my mind, thinking about who my father was and what he was doing. I made up stories that he was the president or a king of another country. In these stories, as a little girl, I would plan on taking a ship to see my father and live in his kingdom one day.

In another story, I imagined he had been on a train. Then bad men came on board. My father saved everybody from being killed. I planned to find the families of all the people my father saved so they could thank me and tell me what a good person my father was.

I thought up a story about my father being an important man who was fighting for people’s rights in other countries. I dreamed that he would send me postcards, telling me about the great things he was doing and hoping that I would do great things one day.

My mother taught me about such men. Men who did great things and were killed. She told me about Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers in the South, and Malcolm X. Then she told me about a man who didn’t get killed but who hardly ever got to see his children because he was in jail, fighting for people’s rights. Now they let him out of jail, and he’s the president of Africa.

I wanted to meet his children and to ask them what it was like to have a great man and father in jail and not be able to see him. I wondered what they did when they became older. Were they like their father and did things that were good and could help people? I also wished I could meet Malcolm X’s and Martin Luther King’s children to see what they did with their lives.

Mostly now, I thought about Jason and hoped he wasn’t too sad. I wondered how mad he was with those horrible men and if he wanted to kill them. I just wished I could do something so Jason wouldn’t be sad. I wished everything were a dream and I would wake up and see Jason down the street with his father.

I asked my mother when she came back from the funeral if Jason cried. She said he tried to stay strong, and then at one point, he lost it. She said everybody was there for both him and his mother. When somebody dies, the hardest part comes later.

I didn’t see Jason for almost a month. Then on July 4, the whole street was blocked off for a block party. The song Summertime by Will Smith was playing. I looked up at Jason to see if he was still sad. He had that big smile, but I could see in his eyes that there was something wrong.

He played with me and threw me in the air. He told me if I guessed which hand he had fifty cents in, he would give it to me. I guessed the wrong hand. He told me he’d give me another chance another time. Every time he walked by my house, Jason would stop to say hi or show me a magic trick. He had this way of making like he was pulling his finger off. I still don’t know how he did it.

I didn’t have a big brother or a father, so sometimes Jason felt like my big brother. I watched him play football on the street. Sometimes when my big sisters brought me to the park, I would watch him play basketball. Then he moved several streets away. I only saw him every once in a while. When I did see him, I’d look into his eyes to see if he was still sad even though he had that big smile. He was.

I told my mother one time that I really liked Jason, but I thought he was hiding from the whole world how sad he really was. My mother worked at Jefferson Hospital in the psychology unit. She said I was very insightful for a little girl. When a boy loses a father, it is a big shock that stays with him his whole life, my mother said.

How about a girl who never knew her father? How does she feel? my mother asked. I wonder sometimes if that little girl is sad.

I’m not sad because I never knew him, I said to my mother. I make things up about him being a great man like the many great men you tell me about. The great men who couldn’t be with their own children because they were helping children everywhere. Remember, you told me about that.

Are you always going to listen to the things I say like you do now? my mother asked.

I hugged her around the legs.

There are men who are great men, my mother went on, "who don’t do great things, but every day, they do good things. You need to look and try to find out who these men are. They go to work every day and come home and take care of things around the house. Sometimes they go to school so they can get a better job. These men wash their cars on the weekend.

"Good men do things that don’t hurt other people, like go fishing or watch college and professional sports. They belong to bowling leagues. Some play music not in a famous band but with other men in small clubs around their way. Many times these men are quiet. You don’t hear much from them, but when you watch what they do, you see these are good men, and they get simple pleasures out of life.

"These men are happy being with one woman. Oh, when a man is young, they try out other women to get to know what a woman is or how different women can be. Women do the same thing. Then a man realizes he has to make a commitment to one person to make a relationship work. Happiness is not something somewhere else. It is something close by. Some people are always looking for a mystery, something they don’t know or can’t have.

"They chase something because they like the chase. Then when they get what they’re chasing, they don’t want it anymore. You see, if you’re happy with what you’ve got, no one can ever control you by offering you something you think you want.

I just keep talking, don’t I, baby? Maybe I’m talking to myself. Maybe I’m trying to learn from my own mistakes. Are you understanding what I’m saying, baby?

I’m listening to every word, Mommy, I replied, because I want to have a good man when I get older so that he will be a good father to my children.

I’m going to play a game with you, my mother said. For every good man you can find, I will pay you ten dollars. You will get two dollars now and eight dollars to save for something you really want.

I tried to trick my friends at school into telling me about their fathers. There were a lot of them that were like me: they didn’t have fathers. Many didn’t have mothers and were being raised by their grandmothers. Before I found any good men who were fathers, I found good men who were grandfathers.

My mother made me write one page about why I thought they were good men. She told me I had to give evidence. I had to make three strong points about why these men were good. I had to back these points up with evidence. The best way to give evidence, my mother told me, is by giving examples.

In two years’ time, I was able to convince my mother about twelve good men. It took a lot of really looking hard. Five of them were teachers in my middle school. I asked them about their lives and their children. I watched them when they coached sports. Sometimes their families would come to watch. I saw them at the school play and spring concert.

My mother had been going out nights for a while. She told us she picked up another night class. She always said she didn’t like bringing lots of men around the house before she was pretty sure about them. That being the case, she didn’t bring many men around. I only remember a few who came to pick her up.

Then when I was ten, my mother told me she had a surprise for me, and when I saw what the surprise was, it was going to be worth money. I begged her to tell me what the surprise was and when I was going to see it. I thought she meant I’d see it in a few days or a few weeks. When it didn’t show up, I didn’t believe her. I thought she was tricking me.

Then one night, a man showed up at our house. He was big and strong, but gentle. My mother took me aside and told me to find out as much as I could about him because he might be worth money to me.

I asked him question after question. He told me he was the first black accepted into a Texas A&M in Texas. He said it was hard at first because there were a lot of racists there. But he was able to pave the way for many others. He’s a sportswriter for the Daily News. When he was younger, he loved to draw and paint.

He was married when he was younger but because he had to travel so much, the marriage didn’t work out. He had a son, and the son was born with a disease. His son died two years ago. He said his son dying was by far the hardest thing he ever went through. He said he would do anything just to sit around and talk to his boy or take him to another game.

When the man left, my mother asked me to rate him with the other men I had gotten ten dollars for. I rated him number one, and she told me to write three pages about everything I learned about him. Then she told me she was giving me one hundred dollars because my looking for good men helped her to find a good man for herself. Ten dollars for now and ninety for later. When I was ten I bought roller skates and when I was twelve I bought a ten speed bike.

Chapter 2

I went around to the park after school one day, and I saw Jason playing basketball with some friends. He was fifteen now and wore a chain around his neck. He had grown much bigger. I looked into his eyes, and where I used to see sadness, I saw anger. He was also starting to look mean.

These three mean looking boys came onto the court. They were big and the smallest guy was as big as Jason. They stole the ball, and Jason was the only one who stood up to them. They jumped him three against one. Jason had quick hands and landed a few punches in two of their faces. Then it was their biggest guy against Jason. Jason hit him twice and was swinging his arms furiously. But the guy had so many muscles, it didn’t do very much. The big guy hit Jason five times in the face before knocking him to the ground.

He jumped on Jason’s back and put one arm around his neck while he punched his sides with his other fist. With his body, he pushed his face into the ground, and Jason tried to protect his face by putting his arms around his head. Blood was coming from Jason’s face, mostly his nose, and also coming through his shirt.

A crowd of people gathered, and I didn’t know why nobody was helping or why this asshole kept punching Jason since he had already beaten him. I was so mad and felt so sorry for Jason that I was the only one brave enough to stand up to them. I ran up to them. With my right hand, I pulled the asshole’s hair with all my might. My left hand pulled on his ear, and at the same time, I bit as hard as I could into his shoulder.

He screamed. I drew blood and didn’t stop until he threw his arm back and was able to push me to the side. I saw a big bite mark in his shoulder with blood coming out. He held his arm—feeling like he had been bitten by a dog, When he looked around and saw it was a little girl that bit him, he looked at me with contempt. Everyone standing around looked like they were in shock.

Jason turned his back from everybody. I could see he was wiping tears from his face, and I could tell from his back moving that he was crying a little bit but held it in the best he could. As my girlfriends used to say, he was sucking it up. Then he turned back around when he was calm. His face was filthy with blood and dirt. His clothes were ruined.

I wasn’t sure if he knew what I did or even if he recognized me. It had been a number of years since we had seen each other. The one thing I knew was that I would never forget him. I would never forget his face from before his father died, after his father died, or when he got into that fight. I knew Jason was out there on his own. I looked to him as a big brother or even a father. I liked everything about him. But I saw he was alone, fighting his own battles, and there was no one there to help him.

Chapter 3

My sisters didn’t like Mike, and I don’t think they would have liked anyone who was serious about my mother. I liked him. He came by the house in the evening, and he was my mother’s eyes and ears. He made sure we did our homework, and he went with my mother to talk to our teachers.

I liked reading about him in the papers, and he took my mother and me to baseball, basketball, and my favorite football games. I went to a hockey game once, but I didn’t like it. Mike traveled a lot, so he wasn’t around all the time. My sisters were glad when he was gone. He took my mother on vacations and bought her a van.

I ate dinner over Mike’s house with my mother a number of times. He had big pictures in his house of Marvin Gaye and some other singers. There was really nice art all around the house. In his living room, he had a big screen TV. His office was in there, and everything he needed was right there. I heard him on the phone sometimes, asking people questions.

There were tons of books all over the place, and Mike told me it was his dream to one day write a novel and then the biggest dream was to have a movie made. He said there’s nothing wrong with dreaming. His favorite writer is Ernest J. Gaines.

I asked Mike if he had a novel in mind. He told me his two loves were politics and sports. So he wanted to write a thriller about the acquisition of the Washington Redskins. This rich young guy got the team, and there was a mystery around it. He wanted to build a story about this right-wing group that was involved and create a political thriller around it. It would be about those wanting to take over and destroy our government. They would try to come off as patriots.

I looked forward to Mike being home. My sisters were always out doing things. They