by Noire
Brody made sure she suffered as much as possible. Every few hours his belt would rise and fall on her stomach and breasts as she vomited bile and shivered on the frigid concrete. Her broken ankle turned black. Her toenails paled and curled backward as her flesh died from lack of circulation. All the muscles in her body stiffened. Her nose dripped. She prayed to God. Please. Please, dear Lord. Give me what I love. Give me what I fear. Give me what I need!
He left her alone for the next two days. And when he came back she was sicker than she’d ever been in life. When the door was finally raised up on its tracks Brody had to beat back flies and wave his hand in front of his nose at the shitty smell.
Eva lay there spread-eagle, one leg still up in the air, her eyes half open. Her lips were caked and parched, and black rats had bitten and chewed on her flesh all through the night.
“Fuckin’ bitch prolly dead,” Brody said, unconcerned, but when he kneeled down next to her he saw she was still breathing. She was still jonesing too.
“Here,” he said, holding out a package before tossing it across the room, just beyond her reach. He sat on a small stool and watched as Eva used the last of her strength to retrieve the dope. She stretched her arms and scooted her torn body across the cement, and when her broken ankle swung on the chain, she moaned deeply from the excrutiating pain and had to rest and catch her breath before she could try again.
The bitch was determined—Brody gave her that. She dragged the package toward her with her big toe, then scooped it up in her hands like it was made of gold. He tossed her the dirty works that had been used on countless fiends before her, and watched as the once-beautiful Eva cooked brown skag with grimy, trembling hands.
Eva prepared her fear like an old pro. And truly, she was. There was enough for three hits in the package and she knew exactly what she was doing as she pulled back the plunger and filled the syringe with every drop of cooked fear in her spoon.
By the time Brody realized what was up it was too damned late.
“That’s too fuckin’ mu—!” He lunged toward her and warned, but Eva’s deft fingers had already found her sweet spot. She depressed the plunger and pushed the dope into her groin as fast as she could, and by the time Brody managed to tear the syringe from her hands, Eva had already hit herself with a lethal amount of fear.
Brody went fuckin’ bonkers. “Stupid bitch!” He kicked her in the head, the face, the back. He swung his fists, and then grabbed his belt and swung that too. Exhausted, he dug his boot into Eva’s stomach sending clear liquid shooting out her nose and mouth.
Eva just lay there. She didn’t feel a thing. Her life was a tragic collage passing slowly in front of her eyes. She saw the closet she used to get locked in and the bathtub with the fat water bugs crawling out the drain. She reflected on her near starvation. That odd feeling of having a stomach bloated full of chewed toilet tissue, yet still being weak from hunger. She remembered those early days of desperation, when, forced to feed her own habit, she had to get out on the cold streets and sell her body to any man who had the cash she so desperately needed.
As Eva spiraled into that forever tunnel of darkness, her fear slowly turned to joy. She saw her friend India, and her baby sister, Rosa, whose life she had entrusted in Eva’s care. Miss Threet came into view. She was sitting on the bench in front of building 420, surrounded by mad little kids. Eva’s curly-haired baby boy was one of them. His name was Cameron, and he was staring at Eva with a birthmark under his chin and love in his big brown eyes.
Life only hurts until it starts feeling good.
Eva looked up with a smile on her face. Mello’s hands were on her. Tickling that weak spot right behind her knees. She grinned at her baby. He was it, and she was his. Brody still raged over her, but she was way beyond his reach now. “Thank you, baby,” Eva whispered, although her cold lips never moved. She felt Mello’s weight pressing into her from behind. His strong arms scooped her up from her ankles to her waist, holding her in his protective embrace. “Thank you, baby.” She whispered it again, and she meant that shit. “Thank you.”
Fiyah was the last person released from Rikers for the day. He’d spent a week on lockdown, fuckin’ around with his stupid parole officer. Daniels had showed up at the house the night the little gimp kid had gotten shot, and the first thing Fiyah had thought was that Mello had given his name up and they were gonna try to somehow railroad his ass and hang the shooting on him. When his PO started making noise about his failure to sign off on some fuckin’ kind of parole document and turn it in, he thought dude was joking.
But he wasn’t. That cat was dead serious. His dick had been hard for Fiyah since the day they met, and he was on a mission to see to it that Fiyah went back to the joint to serve out the remainder of his time.
It was pure luck that Fiyah had landed a judge who had a little bit of sense. She’d taken a look at the same violation charge that the judge at Central Booking had signed off on, told him to sign the document in her presence, and tossed the whole case right out the door.
“Man,” Fiyah had bitched and whined when his public defender told him his charges were being dropped. “I been fuckin’ around out here for almost a week! I shoulda never been locked up in the first place! Who the hell can I sue?”
“Actually,” his public defender had laughed, “you aren’t in a position to sue anyone, but the judge did chastise your parole officer for being ‘overly enthusiastic.’”
Fiyah was given a MetroCard to get on the train, and that was the end of that. No apology, no explanation as to why these clowns had detained him behind some simple-ass “failure to sign a document” charge.
It was dark when he made it back to Harlem. The trap boys were out grinding but the foot traffic on the streets was real light, even for a weekday. Fiyah approached his mother’s apartment and looked up at the windows like he always did. Every room in the crib was dark, and something about that bothered him as he climbed the stairs.
“Yo, Ma!” he called out as he stepped into the apartment. The smell of rotting garbage snaked down his throat and forced him to cover his mouth. Milena was a neat freak and never in his life, even during her heavy drugging days, had Fiyah seen his moms’s crib so fucked up.
He stepped deeper into the living room and that’s when he saw her. Milena was balled up in a knot on a cut-up sofa cushion. In the middle of the living-room floor.
“Ma!” Fiyah yelled. He rushed over to her and shook her shoulder. “Ma! What the fuck is up! Wake up, Ma. What the fuck is up!”
Milena rolled over on her side. Her grill was swollen and dented and her front teeth were shot the fuck out. Fiyah saw a crazy big noogie on her forehead where somebody had clocked his moms in her dome. Milena looked up into the eyes of her only child and wept.
“Fuego…” she wailed. She reached her arms out to him and knocked over a half-full can of warm beer. “Rosa…” She shook her head, unable to say the rest. “Rosa…Rosa…Rosa…”
Fiyah rocked his mother in his arms as fear slowly spread through his body. He knew something vital had changed in their lives. It felt like the old days. Back when Milena had been on a mission drinking and drugging all over Harlem. He let her cling to him. It had been a long time since she had hugged him or had let him touch her at all. But all around them were empty bottles of beer and rum. There were endless ground-out cigarette butts all over the floor and his heart almost broke when he caught a glimpse of the fresh track marks on his mother’s arms.
“What happened to Rosa?” Fiyah kept asking her softly. But each time the drunken Milena tried to tell him she would burst into tears. She cursed herself for being an addict and a selfish mother. She pulled at her own hair as she wailed in Spanish that everything that happened was her own fault for having a weakness for bad men and evil drugs.
Milena went on like this for hours. Clinging to her son and alternating between fits of extreme grief and bouts of debilitating guilt. It was well into morning by the time Fiyah got the story ou
t of her. And even then a lot of things were still unclear to him. But one thing he understood without a doubt. Little Rosa was dead. Right now she was laying all by herself somewhere in a cold morgue, where Milena had been forced to go identify her head.
Excruciating pain shot through Fiyah and tears fell from his eyes. He had loved Rosita. They all had. She’d been a part of their family even before India was murdered, and it killed him that he hadn’t been there to protect either of the sisters from their horrible fate.
“What…” Fiyah asked his mother through the haze of his tears. “What happened to Eva? She was in the car too, right? Did she get hurt? Where is she now?”
Milena had burst into fresh tears at the sound of her niece’s name. “Evita…” she wailed. She clutched Fiyah tighter than she ever had before. “Evita…” Milena moaned. “They took her, Fuego. People said they took her outta the car right there on the streets in front of everybody.”
Fiyah went cold. “Who took her, Ma? What are you talking about? Did somebody take Eva to the hospital? Is she hurt?”
Milena sighed and tried to ball up in a knot again. The truth was just too painful for her to face. “A man saw her,” she muttered. “The Chinese man who sells fruit on 125th Street. He said Eva wasn’t really hurt, but her boyfriend Mello almost died. And Eva…” Milena trembled and squeezed her eyes closed tight.
“What, Ma?” Fiyah urged. “What the fuck??”
“Eva got snatched, Fuego. By Brody and his friends. They put Eva in Brody’s car after the accident, and ain’t nobody seen her since.”
Mello’s injuries had been quite severe, but he was young and strong and the doctors said he would definitely recover. He’d taken a big hit in the accident and had sustained a serious brain concussion. In order to keep him still so that his brain could cease swelling and begin to heal itself, Mello had been sedated with strong tranquilizers for four whole days.
On the fifth day he had begun to stir and come awake, but his broken left hip had been so painful that they’d shot him up full of medication and he’d gone gratefully back into oblivion.
But on the sixth day Mello was wide awake and riding his pain. He had cuts and bruises all over his face and his neck, and his left shoulder had been dislocated by the impact. His boys had been coming up to the hospital nonstop, checking for him and making sure everybody was handling him with care.
“Where’s Eva?” was the first thing outta his mouth as soon as he was able to form words. The young nurse’s aide who was attending to him had stopped fiddling with his tubes and gave him a look that showed she was uncomfortable.
“I’ll go get a doctor,” she’d said as she scurried out of the room without answering his question.
Mello was in intense pain, but he wanted to know where his baby was, and he wanted to know right then and there. “Where the fuck is Eva?” he roared as loud as he could. His voice bounced weakly off the walls and fell back on his ears. He reached for the call button and pressed that shit over and over again. Finally the door to his room burst open and the scary white nurse and two doctors came in.
“Mr. Williams,” the older doctor said soothingly. “I see you’re awake and feeling a little better, yes?”
Mello felt dizzy. He’d used up all his energy doing all that hollering.
“My girl was in the car with me. Her little sister was too. Where are they? My girl’s name is Eva Patterson. Is she okay? Did she get hurt too?”
The doctor spoke slowly, like he wanted to choose his words carefully.
“There was no Eva Patterson brought into the emergency room,” he reassured Mello. He deliberately failed to mention Rosa’s horrible death. And of course he was aware that the woman in question had been taken from the accident scene by unknown persons. The police had come by several times to interview Ramel, but he’d been too heavily sedated to talk. “I’m told the young lady who was in the car with you seemed to have sustained very minor injuries.”
“Where is she? Has she been up here while I was sleep?” Mello asked, his voice growing weaker. He was tired. Fuckin’ exhausted. Every inch of him felt like he’d been stomped out. All of his bones felt cracked and broken. “I need to call…I gotta make sure my baby’s straight…”
The doctor watched as Mello dozed off, overtaken once more by the medication.
“We’ll keep him under for the rest of the night,” he told the nurse. “Let the poor kid get a little more rest. He’ll have enough to deal with in the days ahead.”
Mello slept a deep, solid sleep. But not even the drugs could stop his heart from crying out for Eva in his slumber. Trapped deep in the recesses of his dreams, he ached for her and yearned to hear her voice. He was dying to hold her hand and see her face. And he swore that he would. Just as soon as he could keep his eyes open and stand up on his feet.
The next morning Mello was awake before the sun came up. He eyed a phone sitting on his nightstand, and pain cut through him as he reached out to get it. Gritting his teeth, he lifted the phone with his good arm and sat it on his stomach. He punched in Eva’s digits, and listened as the call went straight to her voice mail.
“Yeah, it’s Birthday Cake and I’ll give you a slice so you can slurp your plate! You’ve reached Eva Patterson, premiere model for Noire’s Birthday Cake Urban Wear. I’m probably out doing big things right now but if you want to leave me a message just wait for the beep and…hell, you know what to do! One luv! Peace!”
The next number he dialed was Speedy’s. His boy answered on the third ring, but Mello could tell he had been knocked out sleeping.
“What it do?” Speedy grumbled.
“I don’t know. You tell me,” Mello answered.
“Oh shit. You up, niggah? I been up there looking in ya grill for hours every fuckin’ day. I been talking all kinds of shit to you and you ain’t talked none back.”
Mello chuckled a little bit.
“Yeah. I’m up, dude. I’m up. Yo,” he said quietly. “Where the fuck is Eva?”
Speedy coughed real quick and then said, “I don’t know, man. Don’t no fuckin’ body seem to know and the cops don’t act like they care.”
Mello listened as Speedy ran shit down to him raw. His boy knew he’d been banged up, but he still gave it all to him. The good and the ugly. Speedy knew a niggah needed to have all available info so he could sort shit out. Wasn’t no need in holding nothing back. Mello was a big boy and it was time he got up outta that fuckin’ bed and handled his.
“Come get me” was all Mello said when Speedy finished talking.
“Man, you all broke the fuck up! Now I told you. We been out there looking for her. We got eyes everywhere, man. The moment she pops up—”
“Come and fuckin’ get me!” Mello yelled. He threw the phone down on the floor and started pulling tubes from his arms and hands. He even pulled one outta his dick. By the time Speedy showed up twenty minutes later, Mello had already cursed out two nurses, threatened a doctor, and signed himself out of the hospital.
“Mr. Williams!” a young resident cried out as Mello limped down the hall, supported on both sides by Speedy and Gita. “You’re in no condition to leave! If you walk out of here now, we won’t be responsible for what might happen to you!”
Mello just grunted and kept right on moving, shuffling like an old broke-down man. He wasn’t giving a fuck about himself right about then. His mind, his heart, his soul was on Eva. She was who he was responsible for, and he was about to get out on the streets of Harlem and find her.
“We been all over the fuckin’ place,” Speedy told him. Gita was driving and Speedy rode shotgun. Mello was stretched out in the backseat. Groaning and grimacing every time the whip hit the slightest bump. “That niggah Brody been laying low. He ain’t showed his face in Bricks at all. His brother Bullet stays somewhere in Harlem but don’t nobody outside of they click know where Brody rests.”
Mello held on to the arm rest and tried to stay cool. He’d called Eva’s phone until her voice mai
l was full. Where the fuck could she be?
“What about her fuckin’ cousin? Fiyah. Anybody get with him?”
“That fool got knocked the day before you crashed your shit up, man. I heard he got took down on a parole violation. Stupid-ass fuck.”
Mello nodded. He was gonna find Eva. Find her or die trying.
His first stop would be at her aunt’s crib. He’d find out what the fuck Milena knew, then come up with the rest of his plan from there.
“Stop right here,” he told Gita as they pulled up outside of Eva’s building. His boys jumped out the whip and came around to help him get out, and Mello leaned on them gratefully and breathed through the sharp pain.
“Nah,” he said, checking them as they tried to help him to the door. “I got this. Y’all chill down here for a minute.”
“Niggah,” Speedy said, “who the fuck you think you is? The Incredible Hulk? Yo ass got pins in ya fuckin’ hip and you can’t even sit up straight. How the hell you gone get all the way in that building by yourself? And then up the fuckin’ stairs?”
Mello shrugged. He’d asked himself the same questions. But it wasn’t even six o’clock in the fuckin’ morning yet. The sun still hadn’t come all the way up. If he rolled up on Eva’s aunt at this time of morning with his goonies checking behind him, she might clam the fuck up and not tell him shit. He couldn’t risk that. He shook Speedy off and dragged his bad leg as he limped slowly toward the building. If he wanted to find Eva then he would have to approach Milena on his own. And that was exactly what the fuck he was about to do.
It took him forever just to get to the front stoop. And once he was there, he had to rest for a few before he could open the door to the vestibule. Mello was breathing hard and sweating. Never in life had he been in so much pain. But he kept moving. Inching his way to the staircase where it was gonna take a fuckin’ miracle for him to get up those steps.