Karma's a Bitch

by J. Gail

  “Girl, these niggas is wearing a sista OUT!” Trina exclaimed as she finally lifted her head and nearly spit in Quanisha’s face as she spoke. Quanisha moved out of the way.

  “Bitch, stop trippin’,” Quanisha said seriously as she rolled her neck to the opposite direction, looking around for the guy that was just grilling her. This was just the scenario that she was afraid of. Now all the brothers in the club were going to think she was a nasty stripper ho too.

  “Ewww, look at you trynna be cute. Well fuck you too,” Trina said as she positioned herself to stand right next to Quanisha. Quanisha’s heart was sinking into her stomach. She could feel the stares in her direction now that her outlandish friend was standing right there. Hardly anyone was even looking in her direction before, but now they couldn’t help but notice them both. It was unwanted attention in Quanisha’s opinion. Trina was gyrating to the beat seductively. Probably the same way she do to the pole, Quanisha thought.

  “Let me go get another drink,” Quanisha said, making an excuse to get away from Trina.

  “Oh let me go get one too,” Trina said. She stopped dancing and downed her Tequila Sunrise in less than three gulps. Before Quanisha could protest, a short husky light skinned brother came up on Trina and grabbed her, pulling her close by the waist. Even though he was pretty rough, Trina didn’t complain. She just moved her body to the beat and ground her pelvis into his crotch.

  Quanisha quickly made her way to the bar and asked the bartender for another drink. She then eased her way past Trina and her new man. She made her way to the staircase so that she could visit the next level. But before she had a chance to make it up the first two steps, someone grabbed her hand from behind.

  “Where you going baby doll?” the brother with the red hat asked her.

  “I’m goin’ about my business,” Quanisha said with an attitude. She was really beaming at the fact that he had followed her outside of the main party room, but was trying to play hard to get. “Why, what’s that to you?”

  “Yo cuz, what’s all that attitude about. I’m just trynna see what’s up wit your fine ass, yah mean?” he replied cockily.

  “Ain’t nuffin’,” Quanisha said as she folded her arms and looked at him smugly.

  “Aiight, never mind then. Go ‘head upstairs,” he said, waving her off and heading back towards the party room.

  Quanisha was about to call after him, but didn’t want to play herself. Even though she was crushed, she brushed it off and continued on up the stairs. There were plenty more fish in that sea of clubgoers.

  When she hit the upstairs room there was reggae music playing, and most of the people up there were dancing so dirty that they might as well have been having sex. Reggae music was her favorite, so Quanisha moved slowly and nodded her head to the beat. Almost instantly, some guy came up behind her and started grinding his hard penis on her behind. She backed up into him and leaned over to give him the full feel of her soft round behind. When the song changed, she stood straight up and turned around to look at the guy but he was long gone. Quanisha felt stupid and desperate for assuming he was interested in more than a dance.

  It went on like that for Quanisha pretty much the whole night. She even hit the last floor of the club to no avail. Nobody seemed to be really interested, and her confidence was shot. She felt unattractive. Not even one brother had asked for her number. Finally giving up on finding her baller at around 3:30am, let out time, Quanisha decided to go back downstairs and look for Trina. She was ready to go.

  When she got there, Trina was putting her number in some guy’s phone and falling all over him drunk.

  “Here she go lookin’ like a straight up dirty coochie having hoochie gettin’ all the play,” Quanisha mumbled under her breath jealously.

  “There you go!” Trina yelled. “I was looking all over for you.”

  They went outside together and Quanisha had to endure Trina’s chatter about all the brothers who she had snagged, and how some guy had grabbed her breast right out of her shirt. Trina laughed about that incident; apparently she thought it was cute. Quanisha was boiling inside.

  They stood outside for a while as Quanisha hoped for a last minute baller to notice her cute facial features in the street light outside. When Trina was getting too much attention from one of the guys that she had been dancing with inside the club, Quanisha started hating and told Trina that she was ready to go. Trina gave her male friend a long kiss on the lips and then told him to call her. He begged her to leave with him, but she declined. There was no way that Trina was going over some dude’s house and he hadn’t even bought her something or taken her out to eat first. Her love wasn’t free.

  As they started towards the car, to Quanisha’s surprise someone grabbed her hand again. It was the same guy with the red baseball cap that had blown her off inside the club.

  “You adjust your attitude yet?” he asked, grilling her intensely. Quanisha loved his gangster, and wasn’t about to let him get away again. She was much nicer this time.

  “I didn’t have no attitude, I’m just sayin’. Some of these niggas out here ain’t about shit, so I had to feel you out first,” she explained with a smile.

  “Yea, whatever,” he replied with a knowing smirk. Some of his boys were calling him from the crowd to come on with them. “Listen, I gotta bounce, so let me get your number and I’ll call you.”

  “Where’s your phone?”

  Quanisha put her number into his phone without hesitation. When he turned around without even saying goodbye, she felt as if she had already given him a lot of power. She was desperate for some attention, and was ashamed of herself for being so easy about giving up her number. She didn’t even get his name or tell him hers so that he would be able to distinguish who she was in his phone. Still she hoped that he would give her a call.

  “Girl he was hittin’, that’s a good look,” Trina said nodding at Quanisha.

  Quanisha looked back at her friend and then started walking to the car again, this time with a little more pep in her step.

  “This’ll teach Tony’s ass. Two can play this game,” she said under her breath.

  Chapter 11

  It was Wednesday, and the doctor had told Tony that he would finally be getting out of the hospital in two days. His recovery was very progressive, and the only catch was that once he was released he would have to keep his ribs wrapped in bandages for support for another week or so. His hearing was slightly off, but the doctor was hopeful that it would be 100% again soon. He had long since been moved out of the intensive care unit to a regular floor.

  Tony was getting stir crazy in that hospital, and he wanted out. Quanisha hadn’t come by to see him since that previous Friday, and he was starting to feel some kind of way about it. She didn’t even answer her cellphone when he called.

  Even more, he wanted to finally find out what was going on with his grandmother. Jenny had come in several more times, and was telling him again and again that his grandmother was in a room that accepted no visitors at the time. He didn’t know why, being that at that point in time his grandmother should have been doing well. Jenny told him that she was doing fine, but that the doctors wanted to keep her under observation. But when he asked another nurse she checked the hospital computer and told him that no woman by the name of Teresa Jackson was currently registered.

  Tony was sitting on the side of the high hospital bed with his legs hanging over the edge. His hospital robe barely covered his thighs; it was so short that you could almost see his balls hanging out. He looked around the room for something to put on, but nobody had brought over any clothes for him, not even Jenny. He remembered the jeans that they had brought him in had to be somewhere in the room. He opened a few drawers but didn’t find them in there.

  “They must’ve thrown them out,” he mumbled under his breath as he leaned back up slowly to steady himself. His head was still hurting badly, and whenever he moved too quickly or got up from the bed too fast he felt lightheaded. O
n one occasion while Quanisha was visiting, he had gotten up without even thinking and fainted right in the middle of the floor in his room.

  “Fuck this, I’m going outside or somethin’,” Tony said. He slipped into some slippers one of the nurses had given him, grabbed a big towel out of the bathroom, and peeked out of the door. His roommate peered over right before Tony left the room.

  Easing his way down the hallway slowly, he made a quick turn down another hallway and was happy when he saw the signs for a staircase not far away. He headed up the stairs to the fifth floor, hoping that he was remembering his grandmother’s room number correctly.

  Everybody was looking at him funny as he passed them in the halls, holding the towel close to his private parts. He was glad the ‘Nazi Nurse,’ Nurse Johnson wasn’t working that shift because she surely would have given him a tongue lashing for this. Room 503 was all the way on the other side of the hospital so he had a long walk.

  When he finally got there, he glanced around as if he were up to no good and looked into the room expecting to see his grandmother laying there. But all he saw was an empty bed. He walked to the other side of the curtain, and was taken aback when he saw a frail old white lady looking back up at him with the most frightened look on her face that he had ever seen.

  “What do you want!” she screamed and pressed the button for her nurse immediately.

  “Nothing, nothing. I thought you was somebody else,” Tony said, backing up slowly and holding his forehead. His head started to hurt and he felt light-headed as if he were about to faint.

  “Can I help you?” a nurse said with an attitude from behind, startling Tony and causing him to jump a little.

  “Oh, uh… yea. My grandmother was in this room. She’s supposed to be in this room,” he said with a confused look on his face.

  “Unless you half-white, your grandma ain’t in here,” the young Latina nurse said, peeking over at the old white lady, who was still looking terrified.

  “Teresa Jackson. She wasn’t supposed to be in here?”

  “Who, that nice old black lady Mrs. Jackson? They let her out like a week ago. She ain’t here no more. Who you to her?” the nurse asked, questioning Tony now and becoming defensive. Mrs. Jackson had been so nice to her during her whole stay and didn’t cause any problems.

  “Tell this boy to leave my room!” the old white lady said angrily. It was apparent that this lady didn’t like black people around her.

  “Boy? Who you callin’ a boy?” Tony responded as he turned back around to look at the white lady. The lady was now quiet and the nurse rolled her eyes at the fact that these two were eating into her time playing solitaire on the computer.

  “Yea, that’s what I thought. You stupid white bitch!” Tony spat at the lady nastily as he brushed by the nurse and stormed out of the room. He vaguely heard the old white lady bitching and moaning about how she wanted a lock on her door from now on, and that she wanted to call her son. When he got two doors down, he started to feel the effects of his quick movements and had to lean back against the wall.

  What did they mean his grandmother had been out for a week? Jenny had told him that she was still there and under close watch by the doctors. Why did she lie about that? His anger at Jenny grew with each moment that passed. He couldn’t wait to see Jenny again so that he could strangle her.

  When he regained his composure, he walked further down the hall and the smell of food caught his nose. He had eaten two hours ago, but his stomach was grumbling again from hunger. His grandmother and Quanisha were always pissed at him for eating so much food, even after he had already eaten a full meal. He regularly emptied out their fridges and never bought any groceries to replace the food he ate.

  He wandered down another hall and saw that there was a small room with a couple of trays of food laid out. Both plates were some kind of beef dish with macaroni and cheese on the side. They smelled so good, he just couldn’t resist, even though he knew deep down that this was probably somebody else’s dinner. He glanced around nonchalantly and then sauntered into the room. He snatched both of the plates off of the tray and grabbed a fork. Plates in hand, he rushed out of the room and hustled to a nearby men’s bathroom made for one occupant at a time. He sat down on the toilet and started grubbing.

  Only 20 minutes later, Tony emerged from the bathroom with his stomach full and satisfied. He had eaten both full course meals in no time because he had been shoveling the food down his throat and barely even tasting it. He had been laughing as he ate, at the patients who were probably mad and hungry somewhere on that floor. He got an excitement from doing things he had no business doing. That excitement made his loins tingle with delight. He had forgotten all about his grandmother while he was tearing into the warm food.

  Tony quickly made his way back around the corner and into a nearby elevator going down that was just about to close.

  Back where Tony had found the food trays, the orderly walked into the room where he had put the dinner rejects. The cafeteria had already notified him that the Beef Carrington trays were to be pulled because the macaroni and cheese was bad. He looked down at the trays that were missing plates for a long while, and then just assumed that someone had come behind him and chucked them as he was about to do himself. The orderly shrugged his shoulders and grabbed one of the jello bowls to eat before emptying the rest of the trays in the garbage.

  By the time Jenny came into Tony’s room to visit that evening, Tony’s stomach was doing flip flops, he was dizzy and his head was sweating. He looked up at Jenny and saw a woman’s face that he wanted to rearrange, but he could hardly move.

  “Tony? What’s wrong?” Jenny said, immediately noticing that Tony was out of it. He had been fine when she came in to see him the day before.

  “Ugghh. I don’t feel good,” he said shaking his head from side to side.

  Jenny sat on the side of the bed and put the back of her hand on his forehead. “Baby, when did you start feeling like this?”

  “I don’t know, like an hour ago,” he said weakly. His stomach turned even more when he heard her call him ‘baby.’

  “What hurts?”

  “My stomach, I feel like I wanna throw upppp,” he complained and tried to get up. Jenny helped him up and then followed him into the bathroom where almostly instantly, Tony started throwing up violently into the cold white bowl. The force behind the food that was flying out of his mouth was so strong that he felt as if his eyes were going to bug out of his head.

  “Oh my goodness Tony, what did you eat?”

  “Nothin’… just that hospital food,” he answered as he took a pause between spewing his guts. It must have been that beef, he thought to himself. He knew something didn’t taste quite right in those plates of food.

  “I think you got food poisoning. I’ve got to talk to the cafeteria,” she said, nodding her head as she rubbed his back. Tony burped in response and another long round of food came flying out of his mouth into the toilet as Jenny turned her head and scrunched up her nose in disgust.

  * * *

  Quanisha was in a daze as she stood at her register swiping item after item to close out a customer. She was supposed to be working the Express Lane that night, ten items or less. But of course the lady she was ringing up either didn’t read or didn’t care, because she was still piling stuff up on the conveyor belt. Quanisha would have normally told the lady about herself, but she was too caught up in her own thoughts.

  Why hadn’t the guy she met at the club called her yet? It had been almost a week now, and Quanisha still didn’t see an unfamiliar number pop up on her phone. No messages, no missed calls, nothing. She was discouraged, because she had honestly thought that this guy was her opportunity to break free from Tony for good. He must have just been playing with her, just to get another number that night and look good in front of his boys. She wished she could go back to that night and take back her number. He deserved to be the one that got played.

  One thing was for sure,
Quanisha didn’t want to be at work that night. It had been her day off, but she ended up having to not only come in, but do a double shift that night. She was pissed, tired, and feeling down on herself; a bad combination for someone like Quanisha who had a temper like a killer bee.

  “Wait, that rang up wrong,” the 40ish woman in her line said all of a sudden as she examined the screen.

  Quanisha sighed, rolled her eyes, and kept ringing up the items.

  “Excuseee me,” the woman said obnoxiously as she rolled her head. “Did you hear me? I said that bag of Fritos rang up wrong. It’s supposed to be $1.99, it rang at $2.29.”

  “Far as I know, there ain’t no sale on the Fritos. You probably got the wrong size bag,” Quanisha said lazily. She really didn’t feel like doing a price check.

  “No, I know what size I got. Get somebody to do a price check,” the woman insisted.

  Quanisha was put off by the woman’s demanding tone. “I just said, I saw the aisle earlier today and there wasn’t no sale on Fritos.”

  The woman looked at Quanisha menacingly and put her hand on her hip. “Girl if you don’t get on that little phone and call somebody to do a price check Imma get ghetto up in here.”

  “Lady, you half past ghetto crying over 30 cents that’s gonna go on some damn food stamps. You betta get out my face with that,” Quanisha said loudly, as she continued to ring up the lady’s order as if nothing had happened. The people standing in line behind the lady were amused, and they covered their mouths to hide their smiles. One older black man threw his head back and laughed, not even attempting to cover his amusement.

  “Oh shit,” he said when he finally recovered from his laughter.

  The woman gasped. Now she was embarrassed. “Come from behind that register and I’ll show you just how ghetto my black ass can really get,” she threatened. Quanisha stopped ringing up the items and squared up behind the register.

  “Bitch, if I have to come from behind this register you gonna be coughin’ up those Fritos. You don’t want none of this,” Quanisha responded, as serious as a heart attack. Nothing could have made her feel better at that moment more than beating this woman’s ass.