“What the hell did that bitch do to me? What happened?”
“You, um…”
“What? Brittnee, tell me,” I said, grabbing at her arm.
“I’m sorry, cuz. You had a miscarriage. You lost the baby.”
I touched my stomach and broke down crying knowing I had lost my baby. Britt tried to calm me down, but I snatched away from her. “Bitch, this is your fault.”
“My fault? I didn’t do nothin’.”
“All this shit with you killin’ Mr. Rick. Why did you go over there with a fuckin’ gun? All I wanted to do was talk to him. I didn’t say shit about a gun.” With tears streaming down my face, choking me, I got up out of bed.
“Katiesha, what are you doin’? You heard that doctor. You need to rest.”
“Fuck you. Who was that, some kind of back-alley psycho bitch? How could you let her anywhere near me?”
“You had passed out. There was blood all over the bathroom floor. I had to call somebody. You would have died, girl.”
I plucked my suitcase out of the closet and threw it on the bed. I tossed all my clothes into it. It felt like my insides were going to bust open, but I kept packing.
“Where the hell are you goin’?”
“I’m going to see if Marquise will let me stay with her until I decide what to do.”
“Katiesha, don’t be stupid. You can’t go nowhere in your condition.” Britt pulled at me to keep me from leaving, a scene that was all too familiar.
“I don’t want to be anywhere near you when the cops come around, and they will, trust and believe.”
Britt’s look turned cold. “Fuck you tryin’ to say, Katiesha? You gon’ snitch?”
“I don’t need to run and tell nothin’. You’ll fuck up again. You’re sick, Brittnee.”
“I don’t believe this. I put a roof over your damn head and food in your mouth, and you turn on me? You take a nigga, who raped you and got you knocked up, over me and you say I’m sick? Bitch, please. I tell you this, though, if I find out you went to the cops, I’m gonna forget you family.”
I couldn’t believe she was threatening me. My own cousin.
“It’s like I say: trust nobody but yourself. It ain’t your enemies you need to watch your ass with. It’s your own flesh and blood plunging a knife in your back,” Britt said.
I kept packing, wanting nothing but to get out of there, away from Britt.
“Fine. Take your ass on then. All you do is eat me out of house and home anyway. Let’s see how long you last in these streets without me watching your back.”
I cut past Britt toward the door.
Two weeks later, I got word that the cops were looking for me and Britt. I figured they must have found something or someone said they saw us leaving his crib. Britt was blowing up my phone every two minutes. I didn’t want to talk to her, so I cut off my phone. When I turned it back on, there were seventeen messages on my cell, all of them from Britt’s crazy ass.
“What the hell did you tell the cops, bitch? We need to be on the same page, ’cuz.”
I stopped listening by the time I got to the eleventh message where she talked about me being nothing but a liability and being a loose end. Britt had lost what was left of her mind. She was full on cray-cray. I found out that Britt had gotten pinched by the cops for some shooting that happened over on Collinwood Boulevard. I knew it was only a matter of time before po-po came looking for me, so I quit my job and bought a bus ticket to Florida. There was nothing but a black cloud over my head in Ohio anyway. I needed a fresh start.
I used the money I had saved to put a deposit on an apartment. With the money I had spent to get to Tallahassee and buying food, I was blowing through my savings fast. I needed a job and quick. I was busting the pavement, putting in applications when I saw a flyer that was advertising for topless dancers at Risqué. I had the body and a decent set of titties, so I figured why not? I had never stripped before, but thought how hard can it be? I went to the club that same day. It was as sleazy as I thought and smelled like stale cigarettes. I walked in with this black dress on, the neckline cut low, showing just enough goodies. I had these fools drooling from their mouths and probably dicks, not even ten minutes after walking in.
I sauntered up to the bar and asked this girl where I could find a dude that went by the name Blue-Black. She pointed me in the direction of this dark-skinned man who was sitting in the corner of the club. He was as black as pitch, sucking on a cigar, blowing a fat body of white smoke into the dimly lit club as he watched some chick shake her big ass on stage. Blue couldn’t take his eyes off my tits, but I didn’t care. I was used to my twins being stared at as if they were sweet snow cones.
“You ever danced before?”
“No, but lookin’ at white girl up there, I know I’m a hell of a lot better than her.”
Blue chuckled. “What’s your name, Lil’ mama?”
“Katiesha.”
“All right, Kat. Kitty-Kat. Let’s see what you got. Snowflake, get off the stage!”
“You want me to dance now?”
“Hell yeah, now. I’m not gonna give you the job without seein’ how you shake your ass first.”
Any other time, I would have told someone like Queasy to kiss my ass, but since I was new in Tally and needed a job, I sucked it up. White Girl mean-mugged me as I stepped on stage. I looked over at the DJ, who started to play “Red Bottoms” by Trina. I started dancing all sexy, like I was making love to Blue.
“Take your dress off,” he yelled from the back of the club.
I was hesitant at first, but said fuck it and unzipped out of the little black number until all that was showing were my bra and panties. After twenty minutes of dancing like a slut, Blue yelled at me.
“All right, Kat, you got the job. Can you start tonight?”
“Yeah, that’s cool.”
“Welcome to Club Risqué, New Booty.”
It wasn’t that good of a new beginning, but it was my new beginning.
24
TANGELA
I wish Ma could see me now. I have my own home, I work at the most high-end salon in Tallahassee, and, to top it all off, I’m head over heels in love with a wonderful man. I’m also smart enough to know that it won’t make a damn bit of difference to Mama. I can hear her now:
“The house looks smaller than the pictures you showed me.”
“There’s a salon in Fort Lauderdale that’s nicer than this one.”
If it’s there to be ridiculed, Mama’s going to be the one to blow my house down. Ever since I was a little girl, she has always had something to say about anything and everything I’ve done or attempted to do. When I wanted to try out for cheerleading, she told me I was too fat. If I wanted to run for student body president, she would say I wasn’t smart enough. When I told her that I wanted to be a Girl Scout, she told me that she had never seen a black Girl Scout before. What mother says that kind of shit to their daughter? Only thing that woman would give me props for was doing hair. “If you’re lucky, you might make someone a half-decent wife,” she said to me once.
One thing for sure was that I was good at doing hair. Pretty much taught myself how to braid by watching my big sister, Taniesha, do her friend’s hair. They used to come to the house, wanting their nappy-ass heads braided or permed for dates and proms. Taniesha would charge them twenty dollars a head when she first started, but when word got around that she was the go-to girl, Taniesha went up to forty dollars. She would get so busy, she would have to set girls up for appointments.
Mama didn’t have a problem with it as long as Taniesha didn’t let it interfere with her college education. I would clean up all the hair and made sure all of Taniesha’s hair curlers, scissors, and hot combs were clean. She would give Mama half. Even though Mama never lifted a single lazy-ass finger to help Taniesha, she still wanted a cut.
“As long as you’re using my house to do hair in, you gotta pay up. You oughta be glad I’m letting you stay here rent free.�
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Mama is the meanest woman I know. I guess you could say I inherited that mean streak from her.
I would sit for hours and watch Taniesha do hair. She did braids, twists, perms, blow-outs, everything. Taniesha was eighteen and I was two years younger. Whenever she got busy, she would have me answer the phone and make appointments. I loved helping out my big sister. When I wasn’t busy, I would practice doing hair on old dolls I outgrew. It wasn’t long before I got just as good as Taniesha. People started asking me to hook them up with new dos if Taniesha got too backed up or was at school. Everything was cool until she got caught up in Eldridge Harris’ shit. He was Taniesha’s boyfriend at the time. Could tell that he was nothing but trouble. He was tall and boney with skinny legs and was blacker than roofing tar.
I remember he was blind in his left eye. The eyeball was white and nasty. Shit always creeped me out. Taniesha said he lost it as a child when he was running through the woods by his house one day and caught a twig in the eye. Nasty eyeball of his made him look mean. Eldridge would always come over with these flowers that looked as if he had yanked them out of someone’s yard. The dirt and roots were still attached. Mama treated him like he was some kind of Boy Scout when he was a snake in sheep’s clothing. I saw clean through Eldridge while he had Mama and Taniesha eating out of the palm of his drug-pushing hand.
Wasn’t long before Taniesha took a turn for the fucked up when she started staying out all times of the day and night. Started looking like skin and bones, like she hadn’t eaten in days. Taniesha went from having pretty, cocoa bean-brown skin, long pretty hair, and a body to die for, to looking a haggard, cracked-out mess. Eldridge had turned my sister into a damn junkie. Taniesha had stopped doing hair, so I took the reins. Mama was working double shifts as a waitress at Huddle House, so she was never around to see how fucked up things had gotten. I think she knew exactly what was up, but didn’t want to face the fact that Taniesha was on junk.
Her friends, Akeila and Milan, were always asking me about her. I would cover for her by telling them that Taniesha was out of town, visiting my cousin in Buffalo. Milan and Akeila would give each other that look like they knew I was lying. Fort Lauderdale is small, so I knew it wouldn’t be long before Taniesha was spotted on the streets somewhere, if she hadn’t been already. When I was able to nail Mama down long enough to tell her what was up, she would only turn the conversation around on me.
“You’ve always been jealous of your sister.”
“Are you serious? What exactly am I supposed to be jealous of?”
“She’s smarter, prettier, and thin. Taniesha can’t help that she got her looks from my gene pool and you got yours from your no-account damn daddy.”
I couldn’t say I was surprised by the venomous words that were coming out of her sewer of a mouth. It was, by far, one of the shittiest things she had ever said to me. Course, she was drunk off her ass, but I’ve always thought that people use booze as an excuse to do and say dumb shit, and then want to come off the next day like they don’t remember what they said or did. That was one thing I was smart enough to understand.
“Leave your sister alone. She’s tired from school to be bothered by her bratty, meddling little sister.”
Oh, she’s tired all right.
I was officially done with trying to convince Mama that Taniesha, her perfect and pretty daughter, had a problem with drugs. But, then again, she had her own Christmas list of issues. Liquor being one of them. Mama spent many a night under a bottle and would often come home drunk as a damn skunk. If I was going to help my sister, I was on my own. Taniesha was too sick and messed up to get help herself. I was only sixteen and had no idea where to start.
When Taniesha did manage to find her way home, she was so drunk and cracked out, she spent most of the day in her room with the door shut. My sister had lost so much weight. She would get herself together about as much as a crackhead could, and then was off with Eldridge again. I wouldn’t see her weeks at a time, not knowing if she were alive or dead in a ditch somewhere. Mama also managed to pull her ass together long enough to get to work, only to come home reeking of gin. I couldn’t help them both, so I chose Taniesha over Mama. The night of my plan, I waited until Mama left for work. She was covering a shift for one of the waitresses, so she had to pull a double at Huddle House. She didn’t mess with me about getting a job since I took up much of the slack doing hair.
Mama had to be to work by six and left around a quarter ’til. As soon as I saw her get into the truck driven by her flavor-of-the-month boyfriend, I put my plan into action. Taniesha had been in her room all day, sleeping off her high. I cracked the door to find her sprawled across her bed with her dress hiked above her butt. She was hovered over a pool of vomit that had the entire room reeking with the worst kind of funk. It was my first time seeing Taniesha like that, and it wasn’t hard to see how far she had fallen.
I took one of her arms and threw it over my shoulder and lifted her out of the bed. Got to the point where she weighed less than me so she wasn’t heavy. I literally dragged her to the bathroom as she went in and out of consciousness. Taniesha smelled like she had not bathed in days, probably longer than that. I managed to peel off this black pencil dress she was wearing that she had gotten from Top Fashions, a store that’s a stripper’s and hooker’s dream. I knew that Taniesha wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress like that and figured that bastard, Eldridge, made her wear that slutty ensemble. I gently eased her into the tub. I thought of Eldridge and how strung out he had her.
“I don’t even want to know what he’s got you doing.”
I was shocked to find track marks down both of her arms. It was worse than I thought. I turned on the shower and let the cold water run on her street-battered body, which was enough to shake Taniesha out of her drug-induced slumber. She screamed so loud, I thought she would send the whole neighborhood shuddering. You would think Taniesha was being burned with lye, the way she was hollering. I doubted she even knew where she was. She screamed so much, I had to slap her to calm her down.
“Taniesha, it’s me,” I yelled. But she kept screaming like her skin was on fire, so I slapped her again. “Girl, shut the hell up.”
She finally stopped. I took some soap and washed her. Lather ran down her arms, over fresh track marks that looked like she had been picking at her flesh with an Exacto knife. I took a mirror from one of the drawers of the vanity and held it up to her muscle-wasted face.
“Look. Look at yourself. Girl, you sick. You need some help.”
Taniesha pushed my arm away, knocking the mirror out of my hand, causing it to shatter on the bathroom floor. “Get the fuck off me. What are you, a dyke or somethin’? Get the hell outta my room.” Taniesha attempted to lift herself out of the tub, but was too weak. “Get out. I don’t need your damn help.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Eldridge got you strung out on that shit, didn’t he?”
“You don’t know shit, Tangela. Eldridge treats me good. He loves me. He buys me whatever I want, takes me out to eat. He does more for me than you and Mama ever did.”
“Bitch, don’t even try it. You know I’ve had your back since the third grade when you stole ten dollars out of Mrs. Bullock’s purse. Do you know how many times I have covered for you, have lied for you every time Milan and Akeila ask where you at? I’m the one who has taken up the slack when you’re too fucked up on shit to do hair. I’ve done nothin’ but look out for you.”
“Well, ain’t nobody ask you to do shit for me. Fuck do you want, a medal? This is my life.” Taniesha was slung over the rim of the bathtub like the drugged-out, trifling mess she was. “I don’t need you. I can take care of my—” More throw-up obstructed Taniesha from finishing her sentence.
“Yeah, I see how well you takin’ care of yourself. Sit down in the tub.”
“Fuck you, Tangela.” She swiped the back of her hand across her mouth. I took a towel from the rack between the sink and the tub, and sta
rted to clean up the funky-smelling vomit that felt warm and slimy as I wiped it up with one of my Mama’s good towels before I took it and pushed it deep down in the hamper. When I tried to finish washing Taniesha, she said, “Get off me. Bitch, I ain’t a damn bull-dagger.”
I didn’t take what she was saying to heart, knowing it was the junk talking. “Fine. You clean enough anyway.” I turned the shower off. The more I thought of Eldridge, the more pissed I became.
Love, my ass. If that’s love, you can have that shit.
I grabbed one of Mama’s robes and handed it to Taniesha. When she managed to find the strength to lift herself out of the tub enough to put on the robe, I couldn’t believe how much weight she had lost, how she had wasted down to nothing. My eyes began to fill up with tears.
“I don’t care what you say. I’m your sister. I’m going to look out for you no matter what.”
Taniesha caressed my face and then slapped me hard across it, sending stings of pain to course through. “Mama always said you was a weak bitch.”
Whoever said words will never hurt was full of shit. They hurt. They cut, rip, and tear.
For a good, solid week, Taniesha was clean and back to her old self, eating well and doing a few heads. Everyone was glad to see that she was doing hair again. I was just glad to see my sister healthy. Taniesha was gaining some weight, looking real good. She was even talking about going to beauty school with me to take a few classes, maybe get our license. It wasn’t long before Eldridge started snooping his ass back up around the house, sweet-talking Taniesha, saying he missed her and wanted her to come back. It wasn’t long before she started to sink back into her old ways. Eldridge had a hold on Taniesha that wasn’t so easily broken. I told Mama what was going on, but she was so deep in denial and wrapped up in her own addiction with booze, she didn’t give two shits about her two daughters being in peril.
I went out one night to search for Taniesha after not seeing her after two weeks. It was killing me, wondering if she was alive or dead. I figured she was laying up with that bastard, Eldridge, somewhere much like Mama, who on her days off, was drunk under her latest conquest, some greasy white man of a trucker she met at work, no doubt. The night I went looking for Taniesha to bring her home, I sneaked into Mama’s bedroom where she and the trucker were in bed sleep, butt-naked and drunk. The room reeked of sex, sweat, and vodka. I thought I was going to throw up, but I managed to keep it together long enough to grab the car keys out of Mama’s purse. Taniesha and I were pros at sneaking out of the house whenever we wanted to go to the movies or a house party someone was throwing in the neighborhood.
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