by Mink, Meesha
My eyes got hard. He could fuck with it if he chose, but then the choice was mine whether to let him get away with it. Love or no love. Being my financial security blanket or not. My father never laid a hand on me—not even to spank me—and I’d be damned if any other man used me as his punching bag. There wasn’t a motherfucker alive who would touch me and walk away the same.
I was as serious as a heart attack.
“Why don’t you tell your mother to stop disrespecting herself, calling up radio stations and giving interviews about random dumb shit,” I snapped, waving my hand at him dismissively. “So you cosigning that bullshit? Huh? You okay with chancing your career? Huh? You wanna go to jail for that shit that she fucking taped? Huh, Terrence? Huh?” I asked him, my voice hard and my eyes blazing. “Y’all better get up off that motherfucking Soprano-Godfather-Scarface-gangbanging mind-set! Fuck y’all think this is?”
“A’ight, Luscious,” Make$ said, sounding aggravated. “I’ll take care of it.”
I came across the room, damn near slipping on the pile of photos. I kicked at them in frustration, sending some flying up into the air to float down around us. “Take care of what? What exactly did she leave you to clean up?” I asked, my hands whizzing across the air. “Where is that girl? What’s going to keep her from going to the police? Who was the people in there whipping her ass? Who taped it? Is that the only copy? Why—”
Make$ flung the DVD across the room and it sliced into our custom-painted walls. “Shut the fuck up! Damn! You fuckin’ five-oh or some shit? What the fuck? I said I would handle it.”
I left well enough alone and just released a heavy-ass breath that was filled with aggravation. I wanted so badly to tell this Negro that his mother and/or his crew would be his downfall. Fuck it, though. That nigga was hardheaded as hell, so why waste my breath?
When Make$ turned to leave the room he was already unscrewing his pendant of the world. Getting fucked up wasn’t going to change shit. Everything he cherished in that small world of his was nothing but an escape. A fucking cop-out. A reason not to deal with the real world. I couldn’t stand that shit. It was a sign of weakness that I didn’t want to see in him.
I looked up and caught sight of myself in the mirror, thinking of the times I did coke with him because I didn’t want to disappoint him. It was a sign of weakness that I couldn’t stand seeing in myself.
I turned away from the reflection.
Funny thing was, it wasn’t the sight of my own image and shame that fucked with me. An image of that girl beaten and laid up in some abandoned house flashed.
Where was she?
How was she?
I sat on the windowsill and looked down at the triangle-shaped Military Park. I didn’t know shit about its history or all the statues but I knew there was many times in the months since we moved here that I would sit in the window and look out at the park and find some peace. I grew up in Newark, and nothing about the small park ever stood out to me as a kid. And now I lived in a upscale apartment building overlooking it.
I should be mad happy.
Not hoping that some girl I fought in the club—to defend my man’s mother—wasn’t in a hospital bed or grave.
It was shit like this that made my parents side-eye my relationship with Make$. The only thing my daddy hated more than me stripping was having Make$ in my life. My father hated hip-hop and especially hated Make$’s use of profanity and half-naked women in his videos and photo shoots.
We all went to dinner when I first introduced him to my parents and they couldn’t wait to call me to their house the next day to beat me over the head about his tattoos, his chain-smoking, his ever-present shades. His everything. So now I just kept them separated, because no one was going to change. When I did fuck with a family function, I didn’t bring Make$, and he didn’t mind one damn bit.
They didn’t even know the half about Make$, and if they did, shit would only get worse. If my parents knew I use to ride with Make$ when he was in the dope game, they would probably kidnap me away from him. Thankfully, he stopped all that hustling and focused on his music. Still, all of that mess plus the nights I cried myself to sleep because I was so lonely and worried that my man was fucking around on me? My parents would flip.
I closed my eyes and drew my legs up to my chest, resting my forehead on top of my knees. I wished things could be different with my parents. My family.
It had been months since I been to their house, and we all lived right within the limits of the city of Newark. They were in Weequahic, a working middle-class neighborhood of single-family homes. But our disagreements over the way I chose to live my life kept plenty of distance between us. The nurse and college professor didn’t dream of raising a college dropout turned stripper turned live-in wifey of a rapper. (Kanye they would swallow up, but Make$, with his tats, open love of weed, and jail record? They wasn’t cosigning that at all.)
But I felt their disapproval way before I climbed my ass on the pole. I was never their perfect angel. By the time I went to college and got some freedom to do what I wanted, whenever I wanted, I went crazy. I did everything I thought they wouldn’t want me to do and it made it all even more fun. Partying. Smoking weed. Drinking. Fucking. No church on Sundays. No curfews. No rules. No disapproving looks.
Life was bananas back then and secret as hell, until my grades got sent home. My parents wanted to know just what I was up to since my grades wasn’t up to shit. But I was too far gone by then. Freedom was everything to me and there was no turning back.
That was the beginning of the end of my relationship with my parents. Now it was all about quick phone calls over visits and dropping gifts off on the holidays. The less time we all spent together the better.
Bzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzz . . .
I looked over at my BlackBerry vibrating on my nightstand. Fuck it. I didn’t feel like talking. In that moment I was feeling too much like my parents were right about the world I chose to live in. I used to laugh off their claims of danger, thinking they was just being hypersensitive middle-class black folks who didn’t understand that a lot of hip-hop was about upholding an image more than anything.
But that DVD was fucking with me. There was no excuse for that girl to get jumped like that. No excuse.
Bzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzz . . .
Pushing up off the windowsill, I walked over to the bed to pick up my cell phone. I frowned at the number before I answered. “Hello?”
“Miss Jordan?”
I rolled my eyes, feeling irritated as hell. “Yes?” I said, just short of snapping.
As the words filled my ear, I went from feeling weak at the knees to being strengthened by anger. “Oh hell no.”
My heart pounded.
I felt nauseous.
I felt like crying.
I was fucked up. Fucked all the way up.
I dropped the phone. I was shaking all over like I couldn’t control myself as I stormed out of the bedroom and came marching down the hall like I was going to war.
The sight of Make$ and his motherfucking mooching-ass minions howling with laughter without a care in the world just kicked shit up a hundred notches for me. Wasn’t a bit of pause on this shit.
I pushed niggas out my way hard as fuck, ignoring their shouts of surprise, grabbed the remote from Make$’s hand, and flung that motherfucker dead into the center of the flat-screen on the wall. The silence in the room came with a quickness.
Make$ jumped to his feet. “Fuck wrong with you, Luscious?” he spat, stepping up to press his face close to mine. Nose to nose. Angry eyes locked. Both chests heaving.
Fuck it. It was on.
“Get the fuck out!” I yelled at the top of my voice, giving him one last hard stare before I turned and pushed past these openmouthed, shell-shocked motherfuckers to throw the front door wide open.
“Yo, Make$, man, what’s up with your girl?” someone asked, with way too much attitude.
I paused and calmly nodded
my head as I walked back toward our bedroom like I didn’t have a care in the world. “I got nine motherfucking reasons why this living room better be cleared out when I get back,” I said, easy as hell. No worries. Make$’s nine-millimeter was in my name anyway.
We’ll see if these heads get a little less hard when the barrel of a gun is pressed to them.
Yes, I was that serious.
“Yo, let me handle this little dustup real quick. I’ll get with y’all later.”
I turned and stood, hands on curvy hips, as they all filed out the apartment. As soon as the door shut behind them I stalked over to Make$ with long strides and arms already swinging. “You no-good, lying son of a bitch,” I spat, landing two blows to his chest that caused him to stumble his skinny ass backward.
“Bitch, what the fuck wrong with you?” he roared, stepping forward to grab at my throat.
“Get your fucking hands off me,” I said in this hard voice filled with all the emotions getting at me in that moment. I pushed him away from me and he stumbled again. I snatched up one of the glasses sitting on the end table and flung it at his ass.
He ducked.
It bounced off the window.
“I trusted you, motherfucker, and now you and one of your nasty little side-fucks gave me a fucking STD,” I told him in a voice that was a small whisper that was filled with all these big-ass emotions. PAIN. ANGER. HURT. HATRED.
“An STD? That’s some bullshit, Luscious,” Make$ said, holding out his hands to block anything I might fling across the room at his ass.
Tears filled my eyes, but I fought the urge to crumble to the floor and have a good cry. Fuck that shit. I started picking up random shit and tossing it at that cheating bastard, hoping I knocked him the fuck out.
The remote.
CRASH.
His new diamond and platinum watch.
BOOM.
“Luscious!”
A box of blunt cigars landed against his cheek.
“Stop it, Luscious!”
The CD cover they used to snort powder whizzed across the room.
“Why you tearin’ up the fucking house?!”
“Because my doctor just told me I got trich, bitch.”
A old takeout container filled with chicken bones and remnants of fried rice landed against his chest.
I looked around for something else to throw and Make$ came storming across the room, wrapping his arms around mine and locking me tight against his body. The little fucker was thin but strong. Shit.
We both stumbled, lost our balance, and fell backward. My head caught the corner of the glass buffet table against the wall. The table tipped forward and crashed down on us. He pushed it off.
“Luscious, baby, you all right?” he asked.
I cried out, closing my eyes with a wince as I felt the warm oozing of blood against my scalp. Even as the pain throbbed, I fought his hands off me, not able to stand his touch. “You lying motherfucker,” I screamed, tears burring my vision and pain searing my heart.
I clawed him like a cat with nothing to lose.
My fingernails dug into the skin of Make$’s face and he cried out.
That shit wasn’t nothing against the pain I was feeling. Fuck the gash on my head and the blood I felt running down my neck. This nigga right here broke my heart. My world felt like everything was crashing around me. It felt out-of-body. I wished it was unreal. But this was the realest shit ever.
There was no denying a nasty-ass STD, and there wasn’t but one way I could get it. In my twenty-four years I had never even had a fucking yeast infection. Ugh!
“Luscious, that’s a fucking lie,” he said again.
I eyed him hard before I pointed my finger against his forehead. “No, you the lie, motherfucker. You the no-good, cheating, disease-spreading trick master. Motherfucker,” I said with emphasis, swatting them stupid-ass shades off his face.
He slapped my hand away.
Whap.
“A’ight, Luscious, keep your hands to your fuckin’ self before you get hurt,” he said.
I laughed, bitter as hell. So bitter. “What you gone do, whup my ass? Huh? Huh? Nigga please. Try me, nigga,” I said, claiming my anger and letting it fuel me because the pain of his betrayal and his disrespect would destroy me if I didn’t.
“You ain’t even had enough decency to strap up with them dirty birds you out there fucking ’cause you a Mr. Jay-Z wannabe, fucking Lil Wayne 2.0 bitch.” I fought the urge to straight box that nigga in his face. “Huh, you excited them bitches want you for your money and your name that you raw-dogging bitches? That’s how you out there? That’s how you handling your B.I. Negro? Huh? That’s how you handling . . . me?”
I broke. Tears filled my eyes as I looked at him. I patted my chest, the diamond jewelry he gave me flashing from my hand and wrist. That shit meant nothing. “That’s the respect you got for me? For this?” I asked, waving my hand around our apartment. Our home.
Right then, in that moment, I wanted nothing but a kiss on the forehead from my father or to bury my head in my mother’s lap to make me feel better. It’s funny how grown and independent you think you are until something fucks your world right up and nothing can straighten you out like Mommy and Daddy.
Make$ reached for me. I stepped back from him, shaking my head, my lips twisted downward. “Nah. You want them bitches? Have them, Terrence. Oh, no no no. I’m sorry. You’re Make$. Right?” I gave him a nasty once-over with my eyes that I knew were filled with the pain I couldn’t fight off.
“Luscious, you know I ain’t fucking nobody. If I have something I must’ve had it before we starting going together,” Make$ said, his eyes all over my face.
I turned from him, not at all buying the bullshit he wanted to sell me.
“Oh shit, you bleeding,” he said. “It’s blood everywhere.”
I felt him step up behind where I stood with my arms crossed over my chest. “Don’t fucking touch me,” I told him, my voice hard.
“Man, Luscious, it’s blood all down your shirt and in your hair. You must’ve busted your fucking head open on that table,” Make$ said, his voice filled with concern.
FUCK HIM.
I turned and pushed past him to get to our bedroom. When I came back the gun was in my hand and pointed at him. I’d never really held the gun except to move it, but it felt good. My finger resting lightly on the trigger felt natural. “Get the fuck out,” I said, picturing him fucking some other bitch. And then me. And then another bitch. And then me.
Make$’s eyes got big as shit as he held up his hands. “Yo, Luscious, shit ain’t even that serious. Put the fucking gun down,” he said, trying to sound calm.
There wasn’t shit calming about a cheating man and an STD.
He stepped closer to me.
I extended my arm and tightened my grip on the gun as I turned it sideways. “Who you fucking, Ter-rence? Huh?” I asked, a tear that wasn’t near as lonely as I felt racing down my cheek.
“Man, Luscious, if I gave you—”
I made a dum-dum face. “If? If? Nigga, ain’t no ifs about it. You trying to say it’s me that gave you this shit?”
“Man, I love you, Luscious, and you know this. I give you everything I have and I promised you more,” Make$ said, holding his hands up like I was robbing him. He was the one who stole my heart and then broke it.
I shook my head and bit my lip. The gun felt heavy in my hands, so I locked my elbow tighter. “I’m not that bitch. Clothes, money, fucking jewelry. Your Jag. This apartment. Your promises? All that shit means nothing to me compared to loyalty. See, I’m that bitch. The one you can trust. The one you can depend on. The one you rely on. That’s me, motherfucker . . . and that’s why I deserve it in return. Fuck materialistic shit.”
The truth of my own words did me in. My shoulders slumped as my heart finished crumbling. The tears flowed. It was like a broken faucet I couldn’t turn off. With my free hand I tried to wipe them away. Nothing. More fell in their place.
I cried out when suddenly one of his arms was around me as he wrestled the gun from my hand and then tossed it onto the sofa away from us. I caved and cried like a baby. My knees gave out, but his arms held me up. I didn’t have no more fight in me. Not in that moment.
I let him check the back of my head as I cried from a hole deep in my soul that he created. I’m talking snot running. Eyes hurting. Mouth wide open. Head flung back. Straight wailing.
“You might need stitches,” Make$ said. “I’m taking you to the ER.”
I hated how much his touch still felt good to me. Hated myself for wanting to know this nigga cared about me. Hated that I was hoping he was telling the truth about having the STD before we met. Hated that I didn’t want to lose him.
I’m weak.
Love got me fucked up all the way up.
4
I opened my compact and double-checked my makeup as we pulled up to Club 973 in Newark. My makeup was a little over the top but it matched the deep purple Gucci dress that clung to my curves like a second skin. Michel had styled my long ebony weave until it was nothing but loose and airy curls surrounding my face and cascading down to the middle of my back. Twenty-inch Indian remy. Goldie put me down on the good shit. Fuck yaki. Give that shit a good two weeks and it was shedding like cat hairs.
There were cars lined up and down the blocks surrounding the club. The line to get in, for the non-VIPs, was around the corner. Goldie said she wanted a big blowout for her belated birthday party and the proof was in the pudding, because everybody was talking about it. I’d seen more club flyers floating around Newark and New York in the last two weeks than a little bit. All the local radio station DJs were planning to be in attendance. East Coast celebs and athletes were supposed to make appearances. Shit was bananas.
“Looks like Goldie’s party is going to be the shit,” I said to Make$, excited to get in, get me a cocktail, and enjoy myself.
Make$ leaned forward in the seat of the Jag. “That must be her new Benz,” he said, tilting his chin toward the silver SLK 500 parked—and definitely posed up—in front of the club like she wanted it seen.