“I don’t have to let it ruin my life, it does it without my permission. It controls how I treat and see men and how I’ve created this bullshit of a life. Momma, why couldn’t it have just been me and you?”
“Red, shit, I called you over to talk about love.”
“What’s love got to do with anything?”
“Look, Tina,” Julia said jokingly, “love got everything to do with it.”
“I don’t see how—you didn’t love me when you had me.”
“Oh child, mi niña, that’s what you think? Shit, I loved you the best way I knew how.” Julia pulled a cigarette from the pack that lay on the end table.
“I grew up with no father and a mother that had less than a ninth-grade education. I watched my mother struggle with putting food on the table and clothes on our backs as she struggled with man after man after man. I was the subject of many beatings, called a whore before I even knew what sex was and was working at the age of twelve. So don’t tell me about a mother’s love.”
“Yeah, but yo’ momma didn’t let a man fuck you.”
“You don’t know what my momma let happen to me. Shit, my momma sold me for sex.
“Red, I stayed with Jerome because I thought that was the best that I could do. I’m fat and uneducated so I thought he was the only man that would want me. I was lonely. He beat me but provided for us, and I’d rather have a man who provided than no man at all.”
“But what about me?”
“Damnit, there was no buts. I was looking out for you. Shit, I figured you would get over the shit if he did anything to you. I got over my shit.”
Julia continued to talk about her childhood and things that happened to her. As much as Red wanted to play hard and interrupt her mother with an I don’t care attitude, it soothed her spirit that her mother was trying.
“Red, I really want to leave Jerome but don’t know how.”
“Why can’t you just get up and walk out the fuckin’ door and leave that grimy-ass nigga?”
As Julia was getting ready to answer that question, Jerome burst in the door wearing a smile as if everything was normal. Red turned and looked at her mother with confusion on her face. She wondered if her mother knew that he was coming at this time. Based on the conversation, she concluded that her mother was just as surprised as she was.
Jerome motioned toward the kitchen. “You got something in there to eat?”
“No, Jerome. You home awfully early from work.”
“Don’t be questioning me.”
He walked into the kitchen, sat down in a chair and slammed his foot on the table, suggesting that Julia go get him something to eat. Julia looked over at Red with a grim smirk on her face. It was apparent that neither of them knew what to do.
“Maybe you should leave, Red,” Julia said.
“I ain’t going nowhere until we finish our conversation. He don’t run nothing with me.”
“You see him, Red. He’s just waiting for a fight,” Julia whispered.
“Then there will be a fight,” Red replied.
“Damnit, just leave,” Julia said a little louder, getting nervous.
“You always taking his side, putting him first. You ain’t changed a bit. I ain’t goin’ no-muthafuckin’-where.”
Red sat up on the couch as if she were making her position known.
“Julia, are you gonna come and get my fucking food or am I going to have to pull yo’ ass in here? Shit, what the fuck is the troublemaker doing here, anyway?” Jerome yelled from the kitchen.
Red grew irate. “What the fuck! What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I live here.”
Red stood up from the couch as if she were getting ready to storm into the kitchen and box with Jerome. She looked over once again to her mother, hoping that she was going to interrupt and tell him to leave but she didn’t. Within a split second, Dirty Red came out. She couldn’t believe after all she and her mother had just talked about she was just going to sit there and let Jerome do and say whatever he wanted. The little sympathy that Red had started to have for her mother left as fire began to spew out of her nostrils.
“How the fuck you gonna butter me up, bring me over to this damn shack, just to show me you and Jerome are still together? This is muthafuckin’ bullshit. I hate you, Momma.”
Jerome walked back into the living room and yelled, “Don’t talk to your mom like that!”
“Nigga, don’t tell me what to do. You ain’t my muthafuckin’ daddy.”
“Now you look, heifa, I told you I ain’t did shit to you. You just like to keep shit going, you earth disturber! Get yo’ shit and get the fuck out.”
Red’s mother looked on, not saying a word.
“The hell you didn’t do shit to me. I remember everything. I remember your hands up my dress and your big-ass dick in my mouth. I remember the blood that crept out of my small-ass pussy. I remember my mother not believing me and telling me that I just made it up. Fuck both of y’all.”
Red grabbed her purse as if she was getting ready to pull something out of it. As she flung her purse onto her shoulder, she turned to her mother and punched the hell out of her.
“This is for not believing me,” Red said, huffing.
“Oh hell, no. Ain’t nobody gonna be hitting my wife but me.” Jerome took two steps toward the couch and karate-kicked Red in the stomach like she was a nigga in the street. Red fell back and grabbed the lower part of her stomach. She heard something inside of her go plop and immediately felt something wet run inside of her panties. It felt like she was urinating on herself, but she knew instinctively it was not pee soaking her underwear.
“Oh, my baby,” she groaned, doubling over, holding her lower stomach. Wave after wave of cramps hit her and sweat beads formed on her upper lip.
It was just a matter of seconds before blood began to gush out of her vagina, all over the plastic on the couch. In shock, Red stared at the blood running down her legs, staining her white pants, and the plastic on the couch. Her eyes bulged with fear; she’d never seen that much blood. Was she dying? She’d heard miscarriages could be more dangerous than childbirth. The pains sure hurt.
Meantime, her mother gasped for air, and Jerome just mumbled, “How is the ho gonna be bleeding from a kick?”
With a loud scream, Red cried, “I’m pregnant, bitch!”
Frantically, Julia ran to the phone to call 911. She had no intentions of hurting her daughter. She’d just wanted there to be peace as she figured out a way to escape.
When the medics finally came to the door, Red began blurting out obscenities, vowing to fuck both of them up.
Between the excruciating pains, she panted, “Y’all gon’ pay for what y’all did. My baby’s daddy gonna fuck y’all asses up.”
She continued with obscenities.
“You dirty, stankin’ bastard, Jerome! You ain’t seen the last of me!”
The medics tried to keep her calm. A young-looking EMT glanced over to where the blood was on the couch and saw what appeared to be a thick clot. Helping to strap her onto the gurney, he looked at Red and asked her if she was pregnant. She answered yes, nodding her head. With a deep, long sigh, the medic answered, “Not anymore.”
As the rickety-rockety ambulance drove swiftly to the nearest hospital, Red’s mind was filled with anguish, pain, confusion, revenge and her next scheme. Karma is a muthafucka, she thought. She lost Q’s fake baby and now the baby she really was carrying. Shit was gonna hit the fan because although she never told Q about the actuality of her being pregnant, she’d told Bacon he was going to be a daddy. She’d had plans to go to the nearest abortion clinic to erase her mistake, but too late now. Q was gonna find out and Bacon was gonna beat her ass.
“Watch it, watch it,” the medic yelled as he pushed the gurney through the entrance of the emergency room. “The patient has lost a lot of blood.”
“Put the patient in room two,” a nurse yelled out.
“Room two,” the medic said to
his partner.
Red’s heart began to beat very fast, partly because she had lost a lot of blood and she was becoming faint. She was also scared as hell. A nurse came into the room and asked her if she needed for them to call anyone for her.
“Yes, my baby’s father, Q. His number is 555-6667.” The nurse put a light sedative in Red’s IV to help calm her down and allow her to get some rest. As the sedative began to work, Red adjusted her head on the pillow and fell asleep.
When Red awakened, Q was right above her bed, rubbing his fingers through her hair.
“Hey, sleepyhead. You okay?” Q asked.
“I’m all right. When did you get here?”
“ ’Bout an hour ago. Just been here waiting for you to wake up. What the hell happened?”
With a rush of tears running down Red’s face, she sobbed, “I lost the baby.”
“Fuck, I know that. The nurse told me. Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?”
“I didn’t tell you because I wanted to make sure by going to the doctor and getting things done right this time.”
Looking at her, not sure if he should believe what she was saying, he repeated, “What happened?”
“I went to visit my momma.”
“This happened at your momma’s? I thought you and yo’ momma wasn’t even cool like that to be visiting and shit.”
“Q, shh . . . let me explain. When I was a kid, her boyfriend, Jerome, sexually abused me. She didn’t believe me and stayed with him. She called me to come over and I thought she was gonna tell me that she had left him but that didn’t happen. He ended up walking in on our conversation.
“I got mad because he was saying some fucked-up shit to me and my mother stood there not saying anything, so I punched her and he karate-kicked me in my stomach.”
“What? You were what when you were a kid? That fucker did what?” Q was pissed. Red couldn’t tell if he was madder at her losing the baby or Jerome abusing her. “What is that nigga’s name?”
“His name is Jerome.”
“Jerome, huh?” Q repeated. “Oh, that nigga gon’ be dealt with. And my baby, he killed my baby!” Q was so loud that a nurse had to come in and ask him to tone it down.
Red trembled because she had no clue what Q was going to do and if he was going to stay with her. He had made no mention of their relationship, so with concern Red asked him, “What about us now?”
“What? Red, shit, I don’t know about us. I want to stay with you, but then again I just don’t know. Anyway, how the hell could you be thinking about that shit after losing another child? I got other shit on my mind—like finding this Jerome muthafucka.”
Red knew she had lost Q by keeping secrets. There was no need for him to stay around even after fucking up Jerome. She watched as Q paced the floor. He kept rubbing his head, mumbling under his breath. There was nothing that Red could do or say at that point.
The doctor entered the room and told her that she appeared to be okay. Although there was a little scarring she would be able to have more children in the future. He was going to keep her overnight for observation, but she could be released the next day; she needed to rest and stay off of her feet for at least a week. Once the doctor left the room, Q turned to Red and said, “You okay, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then I gotta go.”
“Q, where’re you going?”
“To think and handle some business,” Q snapped.
“But, Q—”
“What, Red? I need to go. You fed me a lot of heavy shit. Your past, losing another baby of mine—just let me be.”
Q left the room, huffing, and Red sat there looking dumb. For the first time since she’d been in da game Red had no clue what was going to happen next. She knew she was scheming on Gloria for the broker’s license, but now it all seemed so unnecessary.
She clenched her pillow as tears dropped full force out of her eyes. Why wasn’t I good enough for my momma? Why did my momma hate me so? Am I worthy to live? As the questions continued in her mind she sobbed and moaned for God. She hadn’t called on God much before, but that day Red didn’t have any other place to turn. She knew she had done some fucked-up shit in the past, but she couldn’t help but wonder about all of the fucked-up shit that had happened to her.
Red cried herself to sleep, wondering if she was going to end up alone in her own pitiful, dreary life.
CHAPTER 20
The Shit Hits the Fan
After leaving the hospital, Q was full of emotion. He wanted to take his mind off of his situation and check in on an old friend. In the streets you were limited with ones you could trust. Yet, Q did have a friend that had been tried, tested and proven throughout the years.
Q walked across the cracked pavement of the hood. He read the sign that boasted “Poindexter Village Apartment Homes.” Q felt that there was no way the government could call these places homes. They packed the disenfranchised into these run-down quarters like sardines.
His nostrils caught the familiar scent of piss, vomit and dead rodents, which caused him to cough a little. Every so often, Q would make this kind of trip to the hood to remind him of why he pursued the street life in the first place. It was necessary to get away from this life. He banged on a steel-gated door and heard a feminine voice behind it say, “One moment.”
“It’s Q,” he replied before the double-latched lock was undone.
“Hey, Daddy!” the woman whispered as she peeked from left to right and then held the door open for him to enter.
“Ms. Foxy.”
“Q.” Foxy smiled softly as they held in a long embrace.
One of the things that endeared Q to Foxy was the fact that if you were Q’s friend—and few people were—then he was by your side whether it be in public, behind the scenes, on the low or whatever!
Foxy and Q met in Jackson State Penitentiary in the days before they had separate holding facilities and protective custody set up for gays. Foxy was a transvestite.
Putting a homosexual in a male institution was just like putting a virgin in with these hardened men. They saw Foxy just as a woman. And since most of them hadn’t been with one in years, they took the next best thing. Any hole was better than no hole was their motto.
Time in the joint can make the hardest nigga go soft. When they return to the street, they leave the “any hole” motto behind. For others that got turned out, sex with men changed them forever. Foxy was born gay, but she had class so she refused to be degraded for the sake of sex.
Foxy did a grown man’s crime and didn’t snitch like a bitch, so the justice system saw no reason to treat her like one. Her lawyer petitioned the courts for alternative incarceration, but she was turned down.
Her primary hustle now was for the numerous hormone pills she ingested daily, her breast implants, and most recently, her sex change operation. Foxy never had a problem getting her basic life bills paid, but she couldn’t come up on the forty grand she needed to make her life complete. So she took it to the streets, hustling.
Foxy became a mule, taping dope to her body, traveling in and out of the country. She was one of Q’s workers, and when she caught her case, he took care of her.
Q got out of the pen months before Foxy; and when she got out they spoke occasionally. Whenever Q needed the hood 411, he did a drive-by to satisfy his curiosity. It wasn’t much that Foxy didn’t hear. It wasn’t many that she didn’t know.
“So what’s been going on in da streets, Foxy?”
“The same old bullshit. This damn ghetto got everybody on their toes. It done been ’bout three shootings in the last week and a half. The government ought to be ashamed to have people call this place a home.”
“I was just thinking the same thing as I walked up to this piece.”
“Daddy, Lando got shot as he slept in his own damn house over some weed bullshit.”
“Lando? Damn, that nigga was cool as hell.”
“Yeah, now he hot in hell.”
Q
chuckled. “You so silly, girl.”
“Huh, and you know yo’ girl Moesha?”
“Yeah.”
“She got beat down in the alley back there ’cause she was caught fucking another girl’s man. Her man beat her and the girl, Wanda, beat her, too. Shit, they should’ve killed her ass ’cause they left her face all fucked up.”
“Shit, these bitches are scandalous.”
“Speaking of scandalous bitches, did you hear ’bout some bitch name umm . . . name umm . . . Faqwana?”
“Naw.”
“Well, that Faqwana bitch been going ’round trying to pull rank on every nigga that cross her path. She claiming to be the queen of da streets. Shit’s funny tho ’cause people trying to compare her to Red and shit. Saying, Red betta watch out ’cause somebody trying to take her territory. Now, that bitch Red has been on everybody’s lip. The notorious R-e-d.”
“Red?” Q looked puzzled.
“Yeah, that ho that you been hanging around. She been known for doing some scandalous shit.”
“Naw, not Red.”
“Q, pull yo’ dick from around your heart. Have I ever lied to you before?”
“No.”
“Okay. That scandalous bitch been pulling game over every muthafuckin nigga who’s crossed her path, and some bitches, too. She been in da streets causing all kind of havoc.
“Q, this chick name Lisa found out that Red was stealing checks from people around the way and threatened to tell if she didn’t cut her in on the scheme. Red wasn’t having that shit, so she set up a trap for Lisa’s ass. She got her nigga, Hulla, to act like he was interested in Lisa and had him take her to this construction site as if he was gonna cut her in on the scheme.
“When Red pulled up on the scene, Hulla grabbed Lisa and tied her up with rope and put tape over her mouth. Red approached, saying, ‘Bitch, don’t you ever try to blackmail me.’ ”
“Hulla then poured cement all over Lisa’s legs. It took two days before someone found her. Lisa was so scared that she refused to tell the authorities who did that shit to her. All she said was that she accidentally fell in the cement.”
“What! Red did that shit to Lisa? She can’t even walk no more.”
The Dirty Red Series Page 16