by Meesha Mink
At least, I used to.
Now?
This shit is gettin’ old. I’m not being wishy-washy; but I fell in love with Smokey back when we were in high school, back when the hardest thing he smoked was a couple of blunts. Believe it or not. He was once cute himself. Six-two, lean, and the captain of the basketball team. Hell, I was the captain of the cheerleading squad. Back then, it just made sense for us to be together.
Then came the bum knee.
Then the never-ending pity party.
Then shortly before graduation, I got pregnant.
Two hours after I received my diploma, I was standing in Fulton County courthouse, getting married. My momma cried through the whole ceremony. Wailing about how I was screwing up my life. At the time, I thought I was doing much better than her. She’d never been married and claimed a different man was my father damn near every year of my life.
I was doing good. I had a ring around my finger.
Joke’s on me; especially after the first year Smokey turned to crack, he’d slipped my precious ring off my finger while I was asleep and sold it.
In my mind, we were like Whitney and Bobby. I was going to love him to recovery. Our vows meant the world to me. Sure, there had been a few times when I’d get mad, pack up the kids, and head out to my sister’s house out in the suburbs, but I would always come back. Somebody has to look after Smokey.
At least my sister, Cheryl, made it out of Bentley Manor.
My ass will probably die here.
A commotion in the living room draws me out of my private thoughts. I look up and see Shakespeare trying to aid my husband to one of the wicker chairs in the living room. Smokey, with one arm wrapped around his brother’s shoulders, looks more like a puppet than a man.
“Shit,” I mumble and then stop smoothing in Layla’s relaxer. “I’ll be right back.”
Of course the kids hadn’t returned to pick up their things and, this time, I end up kickin’ a Tonka truck.
Shakespeare curses under his breath as he finally deposits Smokey in a chair. “He can’t go in like this. His P.O. will have a fit and make him take a drug test.”
Then he’ll be arrested for parole violation and then finally out of my hair. The second I complete the thought, I feel guilty. What happened to my loyalty?
My gaze caresses my husband’s face. He looks so calm—so blissful. I don’t understand, but a love comes over me; not the sort of love a wife has for a husband, but the kind of love a mother has for a child. I’ve been protecting Smokey for so long I don’t know how to do anything else.
“So what are we going to do?” I ask.
Anguish twists Shakespeare’s face as he runs his hands over his braids. “I don’t know. I gotta come up with some bullshit story.” He heads toward the door.
If anyone can come up with something, it’s Shakespeare. He’s a talented writer who just landed his first publishing contract. He is going to make it out of Bentley Manor, too.
Maybe I did fall for the wrong brother.
“I’ll call you on my cell after I talk to his parole officer,” he tells me at the door. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck.” Instead of immediately closing the door, I watch him as he rushes down the dingy hallway. Bless his heart. Shakespeare is truly his brother’s keeper. It’s hard to imagine what this place will be like without him.
“Keisha! How long are you gonna leave this shit in my head?”
I roll my eyes and finally close the door. When I turn around and face the wicker chair, I’m convinced my eyes are playing tricks on me.
But they’re not.
While Smokey is fast asleep, a long stream of piss seeps from beneath the oval wicker chair and forms a big puddle on the carpet.
“I’m so over this shit.”
4
WooWoo
How can I explain the way Hassan makes me feel? How the fuck do I put into words how his touch ain’t like shit I’ve ever felt before? Nothing or no one can fuck with it. Why else am I out and about at this time of the night?
My heart is pounding and my thong’s already wet with my juices before I even knock on his door. As soon as it opens, I get lost in those hazel green eyes as his hand reaches out to lightly grab my neck and pull me inside the dark apartment. I pant like a dog as he presses my body back against the wall by the closed door. He snatches open the black Claiborne trench coat I’m wearing. I came ready to be fucked like no one else can fuck me. The streetlamps show through the first-floor windows, revealing the black lace teddy I’m wearing.
With one strong tug, he tears that flimsy-ass lace from my body and flings it across the room. That shit cost me seventy bucks from Frederick’s and trust me, I don’t give a fuck that it’s ruined. As he presses his soft lips to my neck I bring my hands up to stroke his braids. I tingle all over as his tongue traces a path down to circle my rock-hard nipples.
“Yes. Oh God, yes,” I whisper as I push my ass against the wall and then squat my legs.
He knows what I want.
His hands shift up my quivering thighs to palm my whole pussy before he massages it like a tight muscle. “Damn, you wet,” he moans against my tit before he sucks it deeper into his warm and wet mouth.
I place my hands on both sides of his face and look him dead in the eyes. “Make it wetter,” I whisper against his lips before I suck his whole mouth into mine.
His hands come up to deeply rub both of my breasts as he kisses me softly before he deepens the kiss with his tongue. I love to kiss Hassan. That shit is perfect. Not too wet. Not too hard. It’s all slow and freaky. Hassan knows just what a woman wants.
His fingertips roll and twist my nipples as he massages my breasts. My pussy lips go to smacking. He presses one of his jean-covered legs between my legs and grinds my pussy against it. I love the hard pressure against my throbbing clit.
As he pushes both my titties up with his hands and suckles my nipples some more, I rotate my hips like I’m working a damn stripper pole.
“Go on and make that pussy cum so I can lick it up,” he whispers in that raspy voice of his that I love.
My ass slaps against the wall as I grind and slide across his leg like I’m truly riding a dick. His hands come down to tightly grasp my butt as he pushes that leg up against my pussy again.
The dam finally breaks and explodes inside of me as sweat covers my body and my heart feels like it’s coming out of my damn chest. “I’m cuuuuuummmmmmmmming,” I yell out all hoarse and shit while I shake like a junkie needing a fix. Fuck it. My ass damn sure is addicted to Hassan.
He drops to his knees and puts my legs on his shoulders before he brings his hands up to my thighs to press my legs up. I’m flexible as hell, and that move brings all that good pussy right in his face as my knees touch the wall next to my shoulders. “Smells good,” he moans before he licks from my asshole to the top of that pussy like it’s ice cream on a hot summer day.
I tease my own nipples as Hassan eats me like a true professional. He sucks the plump lips and then licks them. He puts sweet hickies on the top of that bald motherfucker. He kisses my clit and then licks it with that tongue trick of his that drives me crazy. He pushes three fingers inside me one by one and then sucks the wetness from them like he’s starving. He circles my asshole with the tip of his tongue and then blows cool air up my ass until I buck against his face.
See…how do I explain how good this shit is?
This nigga got me good and fucked up.
He releases my legs. I drop them to the floor. When I try to stand on them, I wobble and shit. “If you want the dick you better come and get it,” he tells me over his shoulder as he walks into his bedroom.
Oh, I want it. I want it bad.
I kick off my Gucci “fuck me” heels. I’m scared I’m gone fall, so I hold myself up against the wall as I try like hell to make it to his room in the darkness on shaky-ass legs. If I have to walk through hell with a can of gas strapped to my ass to get to that room, then
I will.
Ever since my crackhead momma left me and my sister Lexi with our nana, I’ve been calling Bentley Manor home. My spot. My hood. I learned some of the best and worst shit I know right up in that crazy-ass complex.
I learned how to whup ass and talk shit there. At twelve, I sneaked and smoked my first cigarette in the stairwell of our building. At fourteen, I smoked my first blunt at my friend Sasha’s apartment. At fifteen, my hot ass finally got some of that good stuff in boys’ pants (thank God it got better with age). The first time I lived alone was when I took over my grandmother’s apartment in Bentley Manor. When I graduated high school and then technical college, my ass was right up in the Manor.
Shit, I remember plenty of late nights when we all would hang out in the parking lot drinking and smoking weed, talking shit, and telling jokes. In the summertime we would get water guns like big-ass kids and chase each other in and out of the apartments.
But there been some bad shit, too. Some real bad shit. Murders. Violence. Drug busts. Newborn babies thrown away like trash. Robberies. Crazy shit.
I still get sick when I think of how close my sister came to killing her faggot-ass, on-the-down-low-ass, no-good-son-of-a-bitch-ass husband. Emphasis on ass since that’s what he likes so damn much. Walking in on Lexi holding that gun on Luther almost made me shit my damn pants that day.
Yeah, I’ve had some good- and bad-ass times in Bentley Manor, but I always thought once I was out of that motherfucker I wouldn’t come back. Hell, my nana been dead going on ten years. I ain’t seen my bitch of a mother in God knows when. My sister moved her kids into their own house outside Atlanta. I moved out of my apartment the same day Reggie proposed three months ago. I left so fast that I didn’t get all my deposit back. From the hood to the burbs where life is all good. And I thought that day was the last day I would see Bentley Manor.
But I do go back. It’s always late at night while most people are asleep. So no one can see me. So that no one will know. I park my car down the street and walk into the complex to head straight to Hassan’s apartment.
Just like last night.
I shiver as I think of the things he did—we did to each other. It was worth it. Fuck it. Even though I overslept because I didn’t want to leave his bed or his arms, it was worth it. I was almost late for one of the most important days in my life…but it was still worth it.
And it was significant because it was the last time I would ever allow myself to see that nigga again. So hell, yeah, last night was worth everything I risked.
“Aleesha…Aleesha?”
I shake myself from my thoughts. “Yes?”
I hear a slight rumble of laughter behind me.
“I said do you, Aleesha Moore, take this man, Reginald Carver, to be your lawfully wedded husband?” Reverend Yarborough asks.
I feel nervous as hell. Through my sheer wedding veil, I look up at my boyfriend of the last three years and lick my glossy lips. He smiles down at me and squeezes my hand. He’s a good man. A hardworking man who wants nothing more than to give me a good life. A good marriage.
“I do,” I say, as I look up into his warm brown eyes.
We are as different as night and day.
He’s suburbs. I’m hood.
He’s laid back. I’m wild and crazy.
He walks the straight and narrow. I like my Crown Royal straight and my blunts rolled wide.
He’s never given me a reason to think he’s cheated on me, and I can’t count a solid length of time where I didn’t have a dick on the side—a backup plan; a security blanket; an escape route.
I know that he loves me and I do love him.
“By the power vested in me by our Lord and Savior and by the state of Georgia I now gloriously and joyously pronounce you Aleesha Moore and you Reginald Carver as husband and wife for now and forevermore.”
Reggie raises my veil over my head and lowers his head to kiss me. I close my eyes and try like hell not to compare his warm and fuzzy sexuality to that heated fire I have with Hassan.
Uh…had with Hassan. Had.
5
Keisha
By nature, I’m not a morning person. When I wake up, I feel like my arms and legs are being held down by weights; my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth, and I even manage to rip a few eyelashes out by their roots, tryna pry my eyes open. This morning, I’m a little disoriented because I can’t understand, for the life of me, what the hell I’m looking up at.
After blinking a few times, I realize it’s a bed, but that doesn’t make sense. Something moves beside me and then a small hand plops against my face. Now I remember. I’m in one of the children’s bunk beds. Jordan had a nightmare last night and wouldn’t go back to bed unless I went with him.
I try to sit up. When I do, I realize my nightgown is wet and plastered against my skin. Apparently Jordan had a little accident.
Like father, like son.
I groan under my breath and pry myself out of bed. Since there’s only one bathroom in this shitty apartment, I’ll shower and change first, then come back and get him cleaned up.
It’s early, and though most children are probably up and watching Saturday morning cartoons, my kids sleep in, certainly not because they don’t like cartoons, but because we don’t have a TV.
We can’t.
Smokey keeps pawning the motherfucker. It’s also the reason why we don’t own stereos, iPods, disc players, any kind of kitchen appliances—except for the refrigerator and stove, and that’s because those are too heavy for Smokey to carry out of here.
We’re down to the bare bones—the essentials. Sure, from time to time other things come up missing: furniture, toys, and sometimes socks. Hell, I went through one period when Smokey sold my underwear. Now who the fuck wants to buy someone else’s raggedy drawers?
It’s a damn shame, I know, but after a while, you get used to it.
I make the short journey to the bathroom, not bothering to check to see whether Smokey made it in last night. In truth, I’m not ready to deal with him right now, especially after he embarrassed me.
And in front of Hawkina.
Now everybody is going to know our business. Not that they don’t know already.
I flip on the bathroom switch and grumble at the sight of Smokey’s clothes lying all over the damn place. I swear nobody in this bitch picks up after themselves. Before I jump on a soap box, let me calm the fuck down. Bitchin’ ain’t gonna solve nothin’.
After peelin’ my pissy gown off, I stop and stare at the mirror. I barely recognize the woman looking back at me. What happened to my slim, curvy, cheerleader’s body I had just eight years ago? My once perky breasts now look like a couple of flat tires; my waist has expanded and left me with a small pouch beneath my belly button. My thighs are a little thicker and I try like hell not to notice how my arms jiggle. Overall, I’m not fat, but I ain’t slim either.
My face is another story. At twenty-six I look a good ten years older, maybe a little more than that. What the fuck will I look like in five more years? Ten?
Tears spring outta nowhere, and the woman in the mirror’s face twists and contorts into something that ain’t pretty.
Trust me.
Crying turns into sobbing, and then the next thing I know I can’t stop. I slump down onto the bathroom floor, hugging my knees and rocking back and forth. God, what I wouldn’t give to turn back the hands of time. To have it all to do over again.
“Momma?”
Jackson’s voice floats out to me, and I quickly scramble around the floor and shut the door. I don’t want my baby catchin’ me like this. A few seconds later, he knocks.
“Momma?”
“Y-yes, baby?” To stop him from comin’ in, I press my naked body against the door just as he turns the knob. “Momma’s not dressed right now, honey.”
There’s a long silence, but I know he hasn’t moved away from the door. Instead, he tries the knob again.
I finally press the small lock button and
move away. “Jackson, go and play with your toys. Momma’s fixna take a shower. I’ll make ya somethin’ to eat in a minute.”
After another long silence, Jackson shuffles away. I’m sad to say it’s not the first time we’ve done this. Sometimes he’ll ask if Daddy hit me again or whether I hit his daddy. What the hell am I supposed to say to that shit?
My other three stopped askin’ me about my cryin’ fits and now acted like such things are no more unusual than me washin’ dishes or doin’ laundry. Fuckin’ great example, huh?
After a few minutes, my tears dry and I manage to get off the floor. This time, I avoid the mirror and head toward the shower. I need to make it quick and get breakfast started.
I yank back the green shower curtain and scream at the sight of a naked body slumped in the tub. I don’t even check who it is before I race out the bathroom door. Hell, I don’t give a shit. When I smack into something hard, I think my dumb ass has just hit a wall. But then it speaks.
“Keesh, what is it?”
I whip my head around and I’m stunned shitless to see Shakespeare. “What the fuck?” My eyes roam over him like I’m expecting him to change into someone else.
“What is it?” he asks again; his concerned gaze rakes over me and I remember: I’m butt-naked.
“Shit.” I race to my bedroom. When I slam the door behind me, I quickly lock and slump against it. Pantin’, I can’t believe what just happened. Shakespeare just saw me naked. I glance across my cluttered bedroom to the dresser’s mirror and shudder with disgust.
From the other side of the door, I hear the children cryin,’ and I remember the body in the tub and my crazy screamin’. I quickly grab some clothes from off the floor. No, they’re not clean, but nothing is since I haven’t had time to do laundry. In record time, I’m back out the door and pushin’ my way through the kids to reach the bathroom.