by Mink, Meesha
I looked around. All nearby eyes in the restaurant were on me—including Michel’s and Eve’s. My friends were already getting to their feet.
I waved them back down. “I’ll be right back,” I said, turning to follow the detective out of the diner.
He led me to a unmarked car and then pulled a mini DVD player from the trunk. “This is a series of videos of you and one Terrence Gardner, aka Make$,” he began, his coal-black eyes shifting from the screen to look over at me.
My eyes got big at seeing me and Make$ sitting inside his car as he talked to someone. It was obvious whoever it was wore an undercover camera. That shit was clear as HDTV. I remembered those late-night drives into New York when we first started messing around.
The detective turned the volume up.
I recognized the voice of Poppi, Make$’s dope supplier, as Make$ handed him a stack of cash before Poppi passed him the weight. I was sitting back lounging like I wasn’t witness to a major drug deal.
I crossed my arms over my chest as the shit continued to hit the fan.
There was three more scenes of me right at Make$’s side as he handled business. In one snapshot I even counted out the money for Make$ to give Poppi.
I felt like falling the fuck out.
The detective pushed his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “This is enough to get you arrested for possession of drugs and conspiracy to traffic drugs across state lines,” he said.
BOOM.
Talk about scared? My fucking heart raced and for a second I thought about kicking off my heels and hauling ass. But just for a second.
“Now,” the detective said as he closed the DVD player and locked it back in his trunk. “We had Make$ and his crew under surveillance. These little business transactions with your involvement was a little icing on the cupcake . . . for me.”
I couldn’t believe I was about to get locked the fuck up. Humph. Life was filled with irony. I was just thinking Tek-9 was wrong for being greedy and bam, here’s Make$’s shit reminding me to sweep at my own damn door.
“So Make$ is being charged too?” I asked, my heart pounding as he stood behind me and handcuffed my wrist before opening the back door to his car and pushing my head down as I climbed into the backseat.
“When we reached out to your boyfriend almost two years ago, he was very important in leading to the incarceration of several of his business partners . . . including the crew we picked up today.”
He laughed as he slammed the door shut and then climbed behind the wheel to pull out of the parking lot.
Make$ was a snitch-bitch. That’s why he got out of the game. It wasn’t for me. It was to keep his slick ass out of jail. He didn’t even protect me.
I leaned forward and pressed my head to the back of the seat as tears filled my eyes and my gut felt so twisted the fuck up. The cuffs were pressing into my wrists and all I could think of was jail. Going to jail. Locked up in jail. Not leaving the jail.
“Oh my God,” I cried out, feeling like I could pass out in that bitch.
I never had sweat pour off my body so quick before.
The car pulled to a stop and I lifted my head to look out the window. The sight of an empty and dark parking lot confused the hell out of me. And then he got out the car and came around to climb in the back with me. My confusion turned to fear. I pressed my back against the car door when I felt his body heat coming near me.
“When I saw you on that surveillance tape I knew I had to have you,” the detective said. “I been waiting damn near two years for the last of these assholes to get arrested. I kept any of the tapes with you in them. Nobody knows about them but me.”
The darkness of the car and his presence was fucking creepy.
“Let’s make a deal.”
I yelled out from the sudden closeness of his mouth near my ear. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God,” I cried, feeling hot tears racing down my cheeks again. I wished I had my gun. But how could I shoot a cop? Especially one on the way to arrest me?
“Calm down. I’m not gone hurt you, baby,” he whispered. “I don’t want to see you in jail. Now you be good to me and I’ll make that video go away. No video. No charges. No jail.”
He pressed his hand between my thighs and palmed my pussy. Fear and feeling helpless made me literally pee myself when he licked my inner ear. The hot piss soaked the seat of my pants and his hand.
“What the fuck?” he snapped, jumping out the car to come around and snatch the door open. I fell out and my upper body landed on the glass-strewn asphalt. Pain shot through my body.
He picked me up under my arms and pulled the rest of my body out the car. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, turning me around to remove the handcuffs. “And don’t try to run. I know all about you. Everything. How do you think I knew where you were tonight?”
This had to be a nightmare. This couldn’t be real.
He brushed past me to climb in the driver’s seat. “Now walk your pissy ass back,” he said out the window before he cranked up and left me standing there with nothing but my fear. I started to breathe deeply like I couldn’t catch my breath. My chest started to heave. I bent down and let my head hang between my knees as I fought not to hyperventilate and pass the fuck out.
How the fuck did I get into this shit . . . and better yet, how was I going to get out of it?
11
A little girl of about five or six was in her Hello Kitty pajamas, her Afro puffs looking like Mickey Mouse ears, as she played alone in the middle of the park having a tea party with her dolls. It was night time. The park was nearly empty. No place for a child all alone.
But she played like she didn’t know any better . . . until a dark figure floated above her like a cloud. It never got any closer to her than a few feet but it was there like it was watching over her. Like it wanted to play but maybe it was afraid she wouldn’t let it. Or like it just wanted to observe her.
She shrugged and went back to pretending to pour tea in the cups with her pretty porcelain teapot. Lightning suddenly struck, and the little girl jumped, dropping the teapot to the ground. It cracked in half. She cried as her heart pounded.
The black cloud suddenly swooped down and surrounded her.
She screamed and ran, breaking through the cloud. The park suddenly turned into a hallway of rooms with doors on either side. Lots and lots of doors. She tried her best to open each one. They were locked. All except the door at the end of the hall. The knob turned and she raced inside, closing the door behind her. She tried to lock it but couldn’t, and so she raced around the dark room until a bed suddenly appeared.
She scrambled to fit her body beneath it just as the door opened. She prayed. She was afraid. She was alone. She didn’t understand why her parents weren’t there to protect her. To watch out over her. To fight for her.
“It’s okay, Harriet. You didn’t mean to break it. Come out from under the bed. You’re such a good girl, I know you didn’t mean it. Not a good girl like you.”
The little girl with the Afro puffs and Hello Kitty pajamas cried out as a hand reached under the bed and pulled her from safety. . . .
“No!” I cried out, sitting up straight as I woke my ass up from the same fucked-up dream I’d been having for the last two weeks. Damn.
I hated to sleep, but my body needed what it needed. I mean, I’m only human. And when I woke up I was always drenched in sweat, my heart racing, my guts filled with fear and this feeling of helplessness that I couldn’t explain or shake for shit.
“Damn, Luscious, you a’ight, cuz?”
I looked over at Eve sitting on the floor of my living room across from Michel as they both watched me instead of the television. I wiped my face with my trembling hands as I tried to shake the dream and all the fucked emotions it brought out of me.
“You was screaming and on your back with your legs up like you was running and shit,” Michel joked, rising from the floor in his maxi dress to walk into the kitchen. “Girl, sound like Ghostface fr
om Scream 4 had ahold of your ass.”
Eve laughed. “O-kay. We was sitting here watching you, talking about how you a good girl,” she added on, making a comical face as she used the remote to flip through the channels.
I accepted the glass of wine Michel brought from the kitchen for me. “Girl, please rest your nerves. Don’t worry me and Eve here to watch over you, boo,” he said, lifting the hem of his dress to kick his long leg high in the air before bending his body into this crazy-ass karate stance.
Eve jumped to her feet and air-punched. “Fuck the karate shit, ain’t no fight like a hood fight, bitch,” she said, ducking like she was in the ring.
I sipped my wine and watched these fools try to entertain me, but they didn’t even understand the shit I was going through.
I looked over at my cell phone sitting on the end table. That crazy detective hadn’t lied. He called my cell phone like two nights after he left me pissed up and scared in that parking lot.
That had been two weeks ago and I never knew when that nut was gone call telling me to meet him at that nasty motel that looked like it probably charged by the hour.
This sick shit with that dirty cop was really messing with me. I didn’t even know his real name. He just told me to call him Detective Dick. He got a kick out of that shit when he was making me do all kinds of shit to him I wished I could forget. I didn’t know what it had to do with my dreams, but I was sick of all of it. My nerves were shot. I was steady drinking trying to forget. I even had to stop myself from hunting up a bag of coke—just the memory of Millie and so many others beaten down by that shit made me pour another glass of wine instead.
It was like my life was on pause again.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to the shooting range. We didn’t have an event or nothing lined up for August. I didn’t even leave my apartment. It was the only place I felt safe.
Bzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzz . . .
I clenched my jaw as my cell phone vibrated on the sofa next to me. I knew it was him. I. KNEW. IT. Shit had to change. Shit HAD to change.
I might go fucking crazy.
Michel and Eve continued play-fighting while I picked up the phone. PEVERT flashed on the screen along with the number to a cell phone I knew was prepaid and untraceable. I answered the call even as I rose to my feet.
“Meet me in thirty minutes and have that nice fat pussy wet for me.”
Click.
He didn’t even wait for me to say shit. He knew I didn’t have to. He had me by the clit.
I was a fucking mess. I pulled out the soda bottle from my purse and took a deep swig of it. I poured half the Pepsi out the window and added Crown Royal. Even with the chaser the liquor burned my throat going down. The pain felt good, because I was still numb. Lost. Out of body.
I let my head fall back against the headrest as I looked out at the flashing neon lights of the short-stay hotel. It was run-down. Beat-down. Needed to be torn down.
I felt pains in my stomach when the curtain shifted in a first-floor room. Room 12. I saw a flash of overly tanned skin. He was waiting for me. With his nasty requests. His degradation. The thought of the shit he put me through made my skin crawl. It made my eyes fill with water. Before. After. During.
I took another swig of the liquid in the soda bottle before I forced myself to climb out my car and make my way to the door. My feet felt as heavy as lead or some shit. I’d rather have jumped into a pool of broken glass butt-naked than knock on that motherfucking door.
This had to be what slaves felt like when the master came calling late at night. Tugging at their clothes and underwear. Forcing them to lay and take their sex or be punished.
I was his slave.
God, I hated it. I hated it so much. Jail had to be better than this.
I raised my hand to knock and the door opened before I could. The stale smell of mildew choked me as I stepped in. I didn’t have to look around to know the room, I knew it well. The hard mattress. The scratchy sheets. The stained covers. Dirty rugs. Dingy walls. Old TV without a remote. A small fridge that smelled like the pussies of the whores who tricked out this same room.
The whole place screamed STD and crabs. It made me itch.
The door swung shut and I knew it was like a director yelling out “Action.” His hands squeezed my shoulders before he pressed an overly wet kiss to the back of my neck. The first tear of the night fell as he yanked the tube-top dress I wore down, exposing my naked body to the funky air. He ordered me to never wear underwear.
I jumped when he pressed his small dick to my naked ass and brought his hands around to pinch my nipples hard. I cried out. It hurt. But I stood there. I took it.
Just like I would take everything else he had for me.
Detective Dick suddenly grabbed a handful of my hair into his fist and pushed me down until my knees were pressed into the sticky carpet. He came around to stand in front of me and I caught a glimpse of his short fat dick barely reaching out from under his big belly. Tight black hairs covered him like a forest and ran down his legs.
“Suck my balls,” he ordered, his accent making it sound more like “bawls.”
I fought the urge to bite them as I bent my head and tried my best not to flinch as I did like he said. I learned early that showing him I didn’t like doing what he ordered made him more fucked up in his thinking. Then it was “Oh, okay you don’t like that, how about this?”
This pervert done peed on me. Fucked me in the ass. Cum on my eyelids. Made me suck his asshole . . . his fingers . . . and his toes. Tied me up. Gagged me. Talked shit to me.
No, I couldn’t let this sick motherfucker know how much he made me sick to my damn stomach. How much I hated him. How much I wanted to take my .357, lube the barrel, slide it in his ass, and shoot.
I dreamt about that shit.
POW! POW! POW!
“Oooh,” he moaned, thrusting his hips forward until his jelly belly kept knocking me against the head. “Suck both of my bawwls in your nasty mouth you black bitch.”
I gagged and squeezed my eyes shut as he tapped the top of his dick against my chin—that short motherfucker couldn’t reach my cheek if he even fucking tried.
“Suck ’em harder you no-good bitch!”
I did. Oh God, I did. Ugh.
He wrapped his hands around my throat, this thumb pressing on my windpipe. “Suck my dick.”
I hated to even swallow. I was taking enough of his shit and I didn’t want to feel like I was taking in any more of him. “Put the condom on, you dumb cunt!” he snapped, snatching what little of his dick he had out of my mouth. “I’m not taking your fucking nasty germs home to my fucking wife.”
My germs? Motherfucker, please.
I at least took some pleasure that he insisted on condoms. Thank God for small favors. I rose to my feet and grabbed the box of condoms sitting at the foot of the bed. He came up behind me and massaged my ass. If my skin could literally crawl it would have. “You sure got a sweet tight ass on you,” he said, slapping each of my cheeks, back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. Over and over.
The same way I wanted to slap the shit out of him. Across his mouth. Over and over.
This was the sex I was having after going without for a year. This sadistic criminal bullshit? This couldn’t be life.
I turned and gave him a fake-ass smile as I sat down on the bed and slid the condom on his dick, the whole while hoping the fucking blanket had been washed recently. I got back on my knees and I took him into my mouth, fighting that desire to vomit.
“Oooh, that’s so good. Yes. Suck it tighter. Oh, yes. That’s a good girl . . . that’s a good girl,” he moaned.
That’s a good girl . . .
And just like that. In an instant. I remembered. I remembered and everything made sense. Horrible. Disgusting. Fucked-up sense. Tears filled my eyes as I was taken back to a different time and a different place, where another man had used me for sex. For power. For perversion . . .<
br />
I was just five or six, sitting on the bed in Mr. Alvarez’s extra bedroom in my pajamas. I was over there to spend the night with Sophie, but she was upstairs sleeping. He had come to her room and carried me down the hall to the room Sophie and I played in. He talked softly and brought me a big bowl of ice cream, but I still hated the way he touched my hair, told me I was so pretty, and asked me to keep secrets.
When he whispered softly to me and pulled me onto his lap on the bed, I kicked my foot out at the first feel of his hand on me. It hit the side of the teapot sitting on the small table where we had our pretend parties and knocked it to the floor. It cracked in half.
I jumped off his lap and rushed under the bed to hide because I just knew I was in trouble.
“It’s okay, Harriet. You didn’t mean to break it. Come out from under the bed. You’re such a good girl, I know you didn’t mean it. Not a good girl like you,” he whispered under the bed as he reached for me.
“That’s a good girl. . . .”
One by one, images of that night came flooding back to me from whatever hole in my brain I had locked that bullshit away. But I remembered. I remembered what he did to me that night. That sick son of a bitch took away my innocence that night. He did things to me. And made me do things to him.
No, this shit right here with the dirty cop was not the first time a man made me do things I didn’t want to do. I felt like that scared little girl again.
And I know I was injured. That shit fucked me up because I pushed it so deep away that I forgot it. I didn’t want to remember. My brain protected me from this shit . . . but then it protected that motherfucker too.
I raced from my knees into the tiny bathroom and threw up into the commode. In the vomit I was purging all the years of keeping that secret. Until I couldn’t take anymore.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Detective Dick asked, standing at the door of the bathroom.
I thought of that night as a child and then the nights I suffered as an adult under the fucked-up mind of this dirty cop and I threw up some more. Because I couldn’t take anymore. NO MORE.