“Hey, girl, how are you holding up?” Tangela sat next to me, taking my hand into hers.
Ebonya sucked her teeth and said, “Girl, let me know if you need anything.” She walked away.
“Thank you, Vita, for sitting with her,” Tangela said, butchering Ebonya’s name.
“I’m just trying to keep it together for Kashawn.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s in mourning. He hasn’t said much since the hospital.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“I appreciate that, Tangela, but you’re being here is enough,” I said, hugging her hand.
“Well, you know I got your back, no matter what.”
“I know.” I smiled.
“Have things gotten better with y’all since the argument at the welcome-home party?”
“I was just telling Ebonya that Kashawn and I haven’t had time to really sit down and talk about things. I didn’t feel it was appropriate to talk about anything with the planning of the funeral.”
“Of course,” Tangela said, “I can understand that.”
“I just want us to start over, forget last week ever happened, a clean slate.”
“So, he’s good after that mess Katiesha pulled?”
I was taken back that Tangela would fix her mouth to even so much as spit that hood rat’s name. “Girl, I’m not even trying to waste brain cells thinking about Katiesha right now. Best thing she can do is stay her ass wherever she’s at.”
“Did Kashawn remember what happened that night?”
“He said Katiesha came to the house to use the phone after her car broke down. Says he doesn’t remember much after that.”
“Do you believe it?”
“I don’t know what to believe, but I’m going to find out what really went down that night.”
“What are you talking about doing?”
“I’m going straight to the source. I’m going to talk to Katiesha.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea? You two are like oil and water.”
“Oh, trust, I would rather stick a rusty butter knife in my eye than to see that bitch again, but something hasn’t added up since that night. How did she know where I lived and how does she know Kashawn?”
“Bree, don’t you think that you have suffered enough? Don’t you think it would be better if you moved forward and forget about that ho?”
“I got to do this. I can’t get that image of her fucking Kashawn out of my head. Finding out what really happened that night is the only thing that will give me a piece of mind. And, hey, if I end up beating her ass in the process, so be it.”
“Bree, don’t do something that’s going to get you locked up.”
“How can I regret getting to the truth?”
“I’m saying be careful. This bitch did key your car. Who’s to say that next time, it might be your face?”
“If anything, she will end up being the one getting cut up. Mark my words. Katiesha is going to tell me what happened that night.”
“When are you talking about doing this?”
“I’m going to go look for her ass tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“I figure she’ll be working tonight, or at that shit box of an apartment she stays at over on Pepper Drive.”
“Girl, that part of town is dangerous.”
“I grew up in a part of town like that, remember?”
“And what if you can’t find her?”
“A hood rat like her won’t be hard to find.”
“Well, there’s no need of you going on this suicide mission by yourself. I might as well go with you.”
“Hell no. Tangela, I can’t ask you to do that.”
“There is no way you’re going to Risqué by yourself.”
“Tangela, this is my business.”
“Girl, don’t be crazy. I’m going with you and that’s final.”
I sighed, knowing that once Tangela’s mind was made up, there was no changing it. “Okay, fine. We’ll go check out Risqué first. She might still work on Sunday nights. Meet me at Risqué around ten.”
“Bet,” Tangela said.
“I’m going to go see how Kashawn and Mama Liz are doing.”
“Okay, I’ll be outside having a cigarette if you need me.”
“Thanks, girl, again, for coming.”
“That’s what friends are for.”
30
BREE
It was storming the Sunday night I went looking for Katiesha. Being that I can’t stand to drive in the rain, I started not to go out. Kashawn and I were like a wet Band-Aid, barely holding together. I left him in bed, sound asleep. Well, not so sound, considering his snoring was like a table saw going off. I still couldn’t believe Uncle Ray-Ray was gone. That man was like a father to me when I didn’t know who my real father was. His famous barbecue will not be the only thing I will miss about that big ole chocolate daddy bear. That’s what I would call him sometimes. Daddy Bear.
I looked at my watch and it was twenty minutes after ten, and Tangela still had not shown up. I called her for the third time, and again her phone went straight to voicemail. “Damn, bitch, where are you?”
Hard to believe that it’s been five years since I was last at Risqué. D’Shon, my piece of shit, dope-pushing boyfriend at the time, had kicked me out because I wouldn’t push rock for his dusty ass. I had moved down here to Tallahassee by way of D.C. to get away from my control freak of a mama who had a revolving door policy when it came to men, dragging them home as if they were wet alley cats who thought I was the sprinkles on top of whatever Mama was serving. Most of them stuck around long enough to take what they could from her and then they were out the door. They were always coming around trying to get a piece of me, feeling and rubbing on me and shit.
I’ll never forget this nigga, Clint, she used to fuck with. He was the one who got Ma hooked on coke. Big, black, and dirty in every sense of the word is the best way to describe him. He was always coming over with gifts, bags and bags of clothes from Macy’s. I knew all the stuff was probably shit he stole, but me and Ma didn’t care. When I did go to school, I was always in the freshest gear. Clint would buy us stuff; take us out to places like Red Lobster and Olive Garden to eat. He was cool until his ass started getting too comfortable. He kept Ma and tried to get me hooked, but I was too smart for that shit. I saw what crack had done to her and I wasn’t about to go down that same fucked-up road.
The night Clint came into my room and raped me, Ma was passed out on the sofa. He was so stank that night like he had his hands up a dog’s ass. I remember that it was the smell that woke me up. I felt the weight of him when he sat down on my bed, smelling like a skunk. When he put his hand on my shoulder, I told him to get the fuck out of my room. I have never forgotten what he said to me that night.
“I want to taste you.”
I couldn’t get away because he was standing his big-belly ass in front of the door. I screamed, but Mama could sleep through anything, even when she wasn’t high, which wasn’t often. Clint caught me and pushed me down on the bed. I kicked and kicked until he grabbed my legs and yanked me across the bed. He tore off my nightgown and lay on top of me. That bastard was heavy as hell. I tried to push Clint off, but he was built strong. He started kissing me, grabbing at my titties. The tighter I attempted to keep my legs closed from his invasion, the rougher Clint got, forcing them open. His breath smelled like ass and gin. When I screamed as he pulled my panties down, he put his hand that was like the size of a baseball mitt over my mouth and told me that if I screamed again, he would kill me and Mama. He held me down as he forced his dick inside me.
Before Clint, I had never really had sex. There was this boy, Dino, at school who I let feel me up behind the gym bleachers, but that was it. Clint didn’t see me reach for the pencil I had sitting on top of my notebook from the math homework I was doing. The end of it was good and sharp. I took it and, as hard as I could, jabbed the pencil in his neck. Yeah,
that got his ass off me quick. He hollered, not focusing on the strength he used to hold me down, but the pencil that was sticking out of the side of his neck. Clint made this loud thud when he hit my bedroom floor. I got out of there and ran as fast as I could out of the house. Ma told me that he didn’t die. I wanted that raping-ass fuck dead for what he did to me. I knew that if I stayed, things would only get worse. The day I decided to leave, Ma was lying on the sofa, slobbering, with a cigarette clutched between her fingers. I was always telling her to watch her damn cigarettes, that she was going to burn the house down, but she never listened to me. I didn’t leave a note or nothing, figuring she wouldn’t notice that I had left one anyway.
I stayed with this girl named Keasha, who ran a small junior food store over on Orange Avenue. She would let me sleep in an extra room she had upstairs, and, in return, I would keep the store clean, mop the bathrooms, and run the store while she went to run errands. Keasha was both like the mama and the big sister I always wanted. She pretty much raised me as her own when I told her what Clint had done to me. I didn’t think of Ma that much. Out of sight, out of mind as far as I was concerned. Months later, I found out that her apartment caught fire. The news said that she must have been asleep when the place went up. “Goddamn cigarettes.” I cried like a baby at the funeral. She wasn’t the ideal mother. She’d made some mistakes, but she was the only mother I had.
After the store got broken into and vandalized, Keasha didn’t have money for repairs and had to close the store. Things got real bad after that. Keasha started drinking and would come home drunk and take her frustrations out on me. When she tried to beat on me, I knew it was time to move on and leave her with that shit. I wrote her a letter, thanking her for everything. I threw what little I owned in a garbage bag and left. I was fifteen. I stayed at the Y a few nights. It was filled with nasty-ass homeless pervs, so I didn’t lay my head there long. I didn’t have a dime to my name. I hustled until I was seventeen, sleeping mostly in abandoned apartments. I was always trying to figure out where my next meal of something to eat would come from when I saw this flyer on the abandoned window of Keasha’s old store about Blue-Black looking for dancers. I figured I had the ass and the titties, so why not. It was a hell of a lot better than flipping burgers at Mickey D’s.
The day I walked into Risqué, dudes looked at me like I was a piece of meat. Blue asked me how old I was. I lied and told him I was nineteen. He laughed like he knew I was lying. My first impression of Blue was that he looked a little like a fat-ass Bernie Mac. He was tall, six-three, six-four maybe, shit-brown eyes with black processed hair combed in waves. He had big everything. Big hands, big arms, big legs, big chest, and a big dick he made all the new girls suck. Blue told me that I would have to suck his dick if I wanted the job, that it was something all the girls did. He talked about me sucking his dick like it was no big deal. I thought about Clint and him raping me four years earlier, but I had to put that shit out of my mind and do the do if I wanted the job. Shit, it wasn’t like I didn’t know my way around a hard dick by then no way. Out on the streets, that pride shit goes right out the window when you stuck between not eating and sleeping in a warm bed versus the lobby of a bus depot.
The first night I started, I had them thirsty fucks eating out of my hand, making four to five hundred a night and a stack on the weekends. I bought some new gear and got myself one of those nice apartments on the east side of town near Florida State University’s football stadium. Even though I was pulling enough cake that I didn’t need a roommate, I wasn’t used to living by myself, so I put an ad on ApartmentSeekers.com, advertising for a female roomie, someone clean, and not some catty, cutthroat, man-stealing bitch like the girls from the club. Tangela was the first to answer the ad. We had the same taste in movies, clothes, and music. She was my kind of bitch. We have been inseparable ever since.
• • •
Tangela knew that I said to meet me at ten o’ clock. Fuck it. I don’t have time to wait on her. I folded the hood of my black raincoat over my head, stepped out of the car in the heavy downpour, and started toward Risqué. I was a little nervous, but I was more than ready to kick some stripper ass if need be that night. If I had to go upside Katiesha’s head in order to get the answers that I came for, then I was down. The plan was to go in and not pop off.
Wishful fucking thinking, I thought.
In Risqué, there was no telling what could get started. Chet, one of the bouncers out of ten I remember Blue having on staff, was standing outside under a red tarp. He was dressed from tip to tail in black. A black windbreaker, black jeans, and black Timbs. Chet used to be a linebacker for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers until he blew out his knee playing against the Chicago Browns back in the day. Supposedly, he and Blue have been boys since they were in diapers. Chet was the size of a Hummer. He looked at me inquisitively as I neared him.
“Chet, what’s up?”
“Bree, is that you?”
“Who the hell you think it is?”
Chet pulled me into arms that were the size of tree trunks, giving me one of his big grizzly hugs. It reminded me of the hugs Uncle Ray-Ray used to give. “How you doin’, ma? Where you been at, shorty?” This fool didn’t know his own strength, squeezing me like I was a turnip he was trying to get juice out of. He finally turned me loose without cracking a bitch’s rib.
“Enjoying married life,” I told him, showing him the rock on my finger.
“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard you got hitched. A doctor, right?”
“Kashawn Parker, yes.”
“Ain’t he that dude that’s in the corny car commercials on TV?”
I looked at Chet and sucked my teeth.
“I laugh my ass off every time that commercial about acid reflux comes on,” Chet said, grinning through the set of gold-capped teeth in his mouth.
“Laugh if you want to, but he’s going all the way to the bank with the cake he makes doing those commercials.” I loved singing Kashawn’s praises, letting these simple-ass niggas know that I had come up, especially the naysayers who didn’t think a bitch like me would amount to shit.
“No disrespect. I bought a Cadillac off one of his dad’s lots. They hooked a brother up. See it out there parked in the back of the lot?”
I looked past the pouring rain at the cranberry-red whip that sat idle from the school of other cars. “Nice,” I said.
“That’s my baby right there, my pride and my joy.”
“Well, you look good, Chet. I see you haven’t missed a meal,” I teased, patting his belly like he was a big ole Saint Bernard.
“I’m trying to lay off the salt and sugar, but, damn, girl, married life looks good on you,” Chet said, checking me out from head to toe. “I bet you don’t miss this place.”
“Baby boy, not even a little bit. I came by to say hey to some of the girls. Is Blue working tonight?”
“You know how he do, in the office counting money.”
“Figures. Can I go in? I’ll try to avoid him.”
“Yeah, girl, go on in.”
“Thank you, baby,” I said, giving him a kiss on the cheek. That would be enough to keep his dick brick for the rest of the week. He held the red pleather-covered doors open as I walked in.
The smell of beer and cigarettes filled my senses. It felt surreal, like I was walking in for the first time. Ursula, Katiesha’s running buddy, was working it to some Rick Ross. She was butt-naked, but I would have paid the scallywag to put her clothes back on with titties that sagged to her knobby knees. Her cottage cheese ass was nothing nice in the neon-green G-string. From her dried-up chocolate weave to her Payless Shoes heels, Ursula looked a hot ghetto mess. It hurt my eyes to be witness to those droopy boobs. I was a bit more surprised that she was still shaking her low-budget ass in this cesspool at her age. A stripper has a five-year shelf life. After that, it’s time to get off the pole. None of the suits were paying any attention to her. It wasn’t that busy. Most of the losers were saddled up to the bar, nur
sing on watered-down drinks and overpriced beer.
Hell no, I didn’t miss this shit hole. All eyes were on me as I sauntered across the club to the bar tended by this chick dressed in jeans and a black leather bra that barely held her breasts in. Her arms were huge. She looked like one of those weightlifting chicks. Montez, this law school bookworm, used to sling drinks back during my booty-shaking days. Nothing had changed much.
“Hey, is, um, Katiesha on tonight?” This muscle-bound bitch wasn’t paying me any attention, so I walked around in front of the bar and sandwiched myself between these two suits who were checking out my booty. “Hey, do you know a dancer here by the name of Katiesha?”
“I’m not sure. I just started my shift thirty minutes ago,” she yelled through the thump of the club speakers. “If she is, she’s probably in back.”
“Cool. Appreciate it.” I leaned back from the bar, out of the sight of the drunken suits that should have been home with their wives instead of drooling like sloppy hogs over stripper pussy.
“Can I buy you a drink, baby?” she asked.
“Vodka Cranberry.”
“You got it.”
I was flattered that she was flirting with me. It’d been a long time since a lady has done that. I took a seat in the corner of the bar as I watched her make my drink. She had pitch-black hair that was pulled back slick and tight in a pony. Her lips were as red as cherry tomatoes. If I had a dick, it would be brick-hard for girl right now. She looked Latina, maybe a little chocolate mixed in. I would probably holla if I weren’t married, if I swam in the lady pond. She didn’t have an ounce of fat on her. Definitely the type Blue would hire.
“There you go. Best Vodka Cranberry you will ever drink.”
I took a sip and she was right.
“How is it?”
“You ain’t lyin’. That’s good.”
“Bet your ass it is, girl. I’m Marisol,” she said, holding out her hand for a shake.
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