I got up one morning and spent half of it in the bathroom throwing up. I knew I was pregnant. I knew it was that bastard’s baby, because despite what people at school thought about me, I wasn’t a slut. Letting Carlton Lewis feel my titties behind the baseball bleachers a few times didn’t make me a slut. That same week I was throwing up, I went to Walgreens and bought a pregnancy test. I didn’t even wait until I got home to take it. I did it right there in the bathroom. It was only a few minutes before I found out what I already knew. I was pregnant. I went to the clinic and saw this light-skinned nurse who drew blood and told me how far along I was.
“You’re two weeks’ pregnant.”
It was like I didn’t even hear the word pregnant, but two weeks, and my stomach felt like it had caved in. I had a feeling, but hearing it from a nurse made that shit written in stone. The fucked-up thing was when I told Ma, she sat there on the sofa, fingering collard greens off of one of her cheap Family Dollar plates like telling her I was pregnant wasn’t a big deal.
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before you got your load, spreading your legs for all those nasty boys to run up between.”
That day, I was officially done with her telling me what a ho I was and that I would never amount to nothing. So I hauled ass to my room, grabbed my suitcase, and packed up everything I bought with my own money. Ma stood there in the door of my room with her hands hooked at her hips, watching me pack.
“Where the hell do you think you goin’?”
I didn’t say anything as I stuffed as much as I could in my white-and-black bangle-print suitcase and started for the door. Ma pushed me back in the room when I tried to leave.
“I asked you a question, girl.”
I gave her a look that would kill, letting her know that I wasn’t playing with her. “All you ever do is call me a ho and walk around the house looking at me like you wish you had never had me.”
“Watch your mouth,” Ma said, willing her index finger at me like it was a sword.
“I’m not staying in this house another second with your crazy ass. From here on out, I’m not taking any shit from you or nobody else.”
“You walk around here like you better than everybody else with your magazines and shit. How you gon’ be a famous fashion designer now with a bun in your damn oven?”
“Here’s what, Twanette…” I called her by her name because as far as I was concerned, I didn’t have a mama anymore. “You don’t have to worry another day about what I’m doing. You stay on your side of Ohio, and I will stay on mine.”
I bolted past her with my suitcase and walked out the door. No matter what I did, I was always going to be a disappointment to her. I didn’t know where I was going, but was happy that I finally found the nerve to push myself from under Twanette’s thumb. Brittnee was the only one I could think to call. We were more like sisters than cousins. We’d always been thick like that. When I told her about the fight I’d had with Ma, she told me that I could stay with her as long as I wanted. She was the only family I knew and had. My daddy was living somewhere in Phoenix, but I never knew the man. I told Britt about the pregnancy. I knew she wouldn’t say anything. Britt had always been real good about keeping secrets. She’s three years older than me. My birthday is in May and hers in March.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, spreading mayonnaise on four slices of bread while Britt cooked up some homemade hamburgers, when I told her about Mr. Rick raping me.
“Did you go to the cops?”
“For what? You know how pigs are. They don’t give a damn about you if you ain’t white and rich.”
“Yeah, but, damn, Katiesha, you can’t let that rapist fuck get away with what he did.”
It was like every time I heard the word rape, it felt like a hot fork down my back.
“I don’t want nobody to know my business,” I said.
Britt looked at me like I didn’t have any sense. “So you’re just going to let his ass get away with what he did to you? If it was me, I would go to him, tell him that I’m carrying his baby, and that if he didn’t want anyone to find out, he would have to pay some serious cake.” Britt placed a plate of cooked hamburger patties in the middle of the table. “Hold up. Are you even going to have this kid?”
“I don’t know. I’m only seventeen. What the hell am I going to do with a baby?”
“Well, that’s up to you. Whatever you decide to do, I’m here for you.” Britt set a plate of seasoned curly fries next to the burgers and sat down. She took a drag from her cig before she stubbed it out in an ashtray that was sitting next to a set of salt and pepper shakers.
“What would you do?” I asked.
“Me? I couldn’t take care of no kid. I’m too damn selfish. I like other people’s kids, yeah, but…uh-uh, I’m not mama material,” Britt said, blowing smoke into the air.
With lettuce, tomatoes and condiments splayed out on the table, we started making our hamburgers. My stomach was growling at how good they smelled. Britt had a full-time job working as a production assistant for WTZL. The money was nothing to write home about, but you let Britt tell it, and you would think she was working for Tyler Perry or somebody. Britt was the most headstrong person I knew, couldn’t tell her nothin’. Like me, she was about doing shit her damn self ever since her mama kicked her out the house when Britt told her she was gay. You would think she was a dude if her titties weren’t so big. She might not have been a man, but I’d seen her fuck dudes up like one. She had this huge collection of Jet magazine beauties in this shoe box she kept. She knew that I was cool with gay people. I always said, love who the fuck you want.
I loaded my burger up with the works: lettuce, tomatoes, ketchup, mustard, and pickles. My first bite was a big one. “Mmm…damn, this is good.”
“Good, ain’t they?” Britt asked. “I like to cook the onions right in the meat. That’s my secret.”
I had so much on my hamburger, mustard and ketchup squished out onto my fingers. I took a napkin and wiped them clean. “Girl, I’m pissed that he did that shit to me. It’s like…if you can’t even trust teachers, who the fuck do you trust, you feel me? Parents kick us out, and you ain’t got nobody.”
“You trust yourself. ’Cause at the end of the day, yourself is all you got.”
“You ain’t never lied.”
I took another bite of the good-ass burgers Britt had made. “So have you talked to your mama?”
“I’ve called, but she don’t answer. I’ve gone to the house, but she don’t come to the door. I see her peeking out of the living room window, so I know she’s home.”
“Damn, that’s fucked up.”
“It is what it is. I’m done. This is the one life I get, and I’m living it. Plain and simple. If she wants to talk to me, then she knows where I’m at.”
I was the first family member Britt came out to before she told her mom. She cried when I told her I knew, and that I was cool. But it was hard for her mama to deal, so she told Britt to make a choice: Jesus, or her being gay, that if she chose her sexuality, she had turned her back on Jesus, and turning her back on Jesus, meant she turned her back on her family. I hated when people hid behind the Bible to justify their own ignorance. Britt packed up her stuff that night and left.
I wanted her to stay with me, but Ma said, “I don’t want no dyke staying up in my house. I don’t give a damn if she is family.”
Britt stayed at the YMCA for a few weeks until she was able to get a job and an apartment. She was this close to being homeless. It went to show if you don’t have family, you got nobody.
23
KATIESHA
A few weeks had passed. I had come to two decisions: to keep my baby, and to confront Mr. Rick that his raping ass was going to be a daddy. I picked up some more shifts at the college cleaning up, which put me at almost thirty hours. All the bills were split in half, including the groceries. Brittnee and I were doing real good. We would stay up for hours, w
atching movies, shooting the shit about how we used to be when we were kids. I officially dropped out of Shawnee High School and enrolled at Sharon Lynn’s School for Girls on the east side of town. It was way cooler than that shit stain that I hated going to day after day. All the kids were down, and I liked starting over without the rep of being known as a slut. None of them knew who I was. I might as well have been from Russia or someplace, which was more than cool with me.
Britt and I found out where Mr. Rick lived through his last name. It was real easy to find somebody these days. Britt insisted on going with me to make sure that he didn’t try nothin’. We took the J train to Milford Avenue where he lived. Britt fished a piece of paper out of her jacket pocket where she had written down Mr. Rick’s address.
“2414 Milford Avenue. This is it.”
We could hear him hollering at a game from inside his house, which was one of those low-income, one-bedroom setups. Fuckin’ loser. Britt rang the doorbell.
“Who the fuck is that?” he yelled from inside the house.
Neither one of us said anything. We heard him inside stomping toward the door to answer. Britt’s hand was stuffed down in one of her jacket pockets. I could make out something shiny and black between her fingers, but before I could say anything, a gust of wind slapped me in the face when Rick answered.
“What the hell do—” Before he could spit another word, Britt stuck the barrel of a semiautomatic in Rick’s stomach, forcing him back into the house. “What the hell?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Britt yelled. She gripped the gun tightly in her hand, her finger pressed behind the trigger.
“Britt, what the fuck, girl?” I asked. “Where did you get a gun at?”
“My fuckin’ fairy godmother.” Britt waved the gun at Mr. Rick. “Sit yo’ ass down.”
“If you all want money, I got some stashed. I can get it.”
“Shut up.”
I could tell from the expression on Britt’s face that she was dead serious. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m gon’ make this bastard confess what he did.”
“Bitch, put that burner away,” I said.
“Not until he confesses what he did to you, to both of us.”
“What are you talking about?”
Britt shot a razor-sharp glance at Mr. Rick, who was by now starting to sweat, realizing that Britt wasn’t playing. “He knows what I’m talkin’ about. Tell her what you did.” Britt pressed the nose of the gun against the right cheek of Rick’s face. “Tell her what you did to me, rapist.”
“Katiesha, I don’t know what all this is about,” Mr. Rick said.
“We were downstairs in the field house, under the gym. It was after softball practice. He asked me to help him put away some equipment. He was a coach, so I didn’t think nothin’ of it. Everything was good until he grabbed my ass. When I knocked the shit out of him, that only made him madder. He pulled at my shirt. I tried to fight him off me, but the more I struggled, the crazier he got. I tried to get away, but he ran after me. He pulled me into one of the storage rooms, pushed me to the floor, and forced himself on me. I scratched and pushed, but he just kept on. That’s how he got the scar on the side of his face.”
“That’s bullshit. Katiesha,” Mr. Rick said. “She’s crazy. Don’t believe her.”
Britt kept the gun pointed at Mr. Rick’s face. “After, he told me the same thing he told you, that if I ever I told, he would kill my brother and moms, so I didn’t say nothin’…until now. Now I got your ass exactly where I want you.”
“You ladies need to think about what you’re doing,” Mr. Rick warned. “Don’t throw your life away over this craziness.”
“Oh, now you want to play mentor now, huh?” Britt said. “ ’Cause of what you did, my head is all fucked up. I still be havin’ nightmares about that day.” With the gun aimed, Britt took something out of the inside pocket of her jacket.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A tape recorder.”
“Britt, this ain’t the way to do this shit.”
“Listen to your cousin,” Mr. Rick said.
“Shut the fuck up.”
Britt looked at me like I had committed a mortal sin. “Tiesha, I thought you would be with me on this. This bitch needs to confess.”
“Yeah, but, Britt, this isn’t the—”
Suddenly, Mr. Rick rose up and grabbed the barrel of the gun. He and Britt struggled. My heart felt like it was pounding in my stomach. She fought like she wasn’t about to give up the gun. They knocked over lamps and vases in the struggle. I jumped on Rick’s back, digging my nails into his face, scratching at his flesh like a wild animal. The three of us fought until I heard a loud bang that had my ears ringing. Still holding onto Mr. Rick, I collapsed with him onto the floor, landing on my stomach. As I slid from under him, he was still alive, holding his hands at his gut where blood started to stain his white tank top. Rick was going on like he was struggling for breath. The blood kept coming, growing into a bigger and bigger blob like some kind of plague spreading.
“We need to do somethin’,” I said.
Britt stood there frozen, with a crazy look in her eyes, holding the smoking gun down to her side.
“Britt, did you hear what I said? We need to call nine-one-one. He’s dyin’!”
Britt didn’t say nothin’. After a few minutes, Mr. Rick had stopped struggling for breath. He had gone still and quiet. He was dead.
“We need to clean up.”
I turned to her in a state of panic. “What?”
Britt started rummaging through Rick’s pockets.
“What the fuck are you doing? We need to bolt.”
“We need to make this shit look like somebody robbed him.” She grabbed his brown leather wallet, took out one hundred dollars in twenties, and handed me the money.
“I don’t want that shit. That’s a dead man’s money.”
Britt stuffed the cash in one of the front pockets of her baggy jeans. “You still superstitious like that.” She took the gun and shoved it back into one of her jacket pockets. Britt went to the kitchen and grabbed a wet dishcloth out of the sink and started wiping down the door.
“What are you doin’ that for?”
“Damn, girl, don’t you ever watch those detective shows? The killer always wipes off everything he’s touched so he won’t leave any prints for the cops. Did you touch anything other than the door?”
“We need to get the hell outta here. Somebody probably heard the gun go off.”
“Did you touch anything else?”
“No, I don’t think so, no.”
Britt started feeling around on her jacket and jeans.
“What are you doing?”
“We need to make sure a button or whatever didn’t come off in the struggle. I’ve watched enough CSI episodes to know that’s how they get you.”
I checked myself to make sure nothing came off of me when I fell. I kept looking at Rick lying there dead, blood staining the beige living room carpet.
“Forget him,” Britt said. “Ain’t nobody gon’ miss that pervert. Who knows how many girls he’s raped? Hundreds, fuckin’ thousands probably. The way I see it, we did all them, and all the girls he hadn’t messed with yet, a favor by sending that demon straight to hell.”
“Come on, girl, hurry up.”
Britt carefully started turning over tables and chairs to make it look like it was a break-in.
“That’s enough. Come on, let’s go.” I hauled ass toward the door when Britt stopped me.
“Hold up.”
“What?”
Britt eased the door open, peeked her head out to make sure everything was cool. “Okay, come on.”
On the way home, Britt threw the gun in a ditch. I kept thinking about Mr. Rick and all the blood. Dead was the last time I saw him.
When we got back home, Britt was cool as a cucumber. She took a cig from her pack of 305s, and lit the end of it, taking a couple of long drags
. I, on the other hand, was climbing the walls.
“Britt, are you serious right now?”
“What?” She pushed smoke from one side of her mouth.
“Fuck do you mean, ‘what’? You just shot that man.”
“You were there, Katiesha. You saw the gun go off. That shit was an accident. And what the hell is up with you anyway? I thought you would be glad his ass is dead.”
“What if the cops come sniffin’ around, askin’ questions?”
Britt took another drag from her cig. “Just say we don’t know nothin’. Cops come around here. They know they ain’t gon’ get shit.”
“What if someone saw us?”
“Nobody did. We were careful.”
I felt like I was going to throw up. I knew then that if I didn’t put some distance between myself and Britt, I would end my ass up in one place: prison. “I need to get the fuck outta here.”
“Where you goin’?”
“Fuck if I know as long as it’s away from here.”
“You mean you need to—”
I looked at Britt to hear what she had to say. “What?” I looked to see that I was bleeding. “Oh, my God.” I ran to the bathroom and pulled my jeans down. My panties were soaked with blood. I knew enough to know what was up.
The next thing I knew, I was in bed. Britt and some old lady were hovered over me. I jerked up.
“Lay down, cuz. You need to rest.”
This lady, who I had never laid eyes on in my life, was tall and thin with a short, salt-and-pepper Afro and wire-frame glasses on her face. “Make sure she takes these. Two every eight hours for the pain.” The woman packed up whatever she had used to butcher me. “You’re going to be okay. Just make sure you get plenty of bed rest.”
It felt like my insides had been ripped out and stuffed back in again. The lady took her bag and walked out of my room. I watched Britt give the lady some money and send her on her way.
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