by Mink, Meesha
“So fucking me makes you want to throw up?” he barked, snatching my hair into his fist and raising my head, forcing me to look up into his face. “I’ll give you a reason to fucking throw up!”
NO MORE.
He dragged me out the bathroom and pushed me rough as hell. I fell onto the middle of the bed. But my emotions flipped like a motherfucker and I didn’t feel shit but anger.
In that moment, the weight of it all was on my shoulders.
Being lied on. Cheated on. Betrayed by my friend. Left with a pedophile by my parents. Molested. Blackmailed by this dirty cop.
I didn’t want to do shit but shake all of it off.
I hopped to my feet as the detective moved to a bag in the corner and pulled out a whip. Humph. Today was Independence Day, motherfucker. Enough was enough of this shit. All of this shit.
I picked up my foot and kicked that bastard dead in his ass, pushing him into the sink that was outside the damn bathroom. I grabbed my dress, shoes, and keys. I spotted his badge on top of his clothes and I snatched that motherfucker too before I ran out that bitch butt-naked and hopped into my car. I threw the Jag in reverse, almost running over a trick and her john trying to make it to one of the rooms.
“Hey, watch where the fuck you going?” they yelled.
Fuck ’em.
The motel room door opened and he jumped back inside when he spotted the people still bitching at me.
I pressed my foot to the gas and I didn’t stop until I finally got off of Route 22 and made the turn to take me toward Weequahic Park. I pulled over long enough to pull my dress over my head, even as my mind felt like it was completely fucked by everything that happened that night. Everything that surfaced that night.
I knew I was going to jail. I knew it. And that scared the shit out of me. But there was two things I had to do before I got locked up, and it just so happened that I was just two blocks from where it all needed to go the fuck down.
The door opened. He stood there. His face filled with surprise at seeing me. Good.
“How you doing, Mr. Alvarez?” I said, proud of myself for sounding normal. “Sophie isn’t here by any chance, is she?”
“No, no she’s at her own house,” he said, his Spanish accent hardly noticeable.
“You wouldn’t have her number? I really wanted to invite her to a party I’m having,” I lied, trying to fight the images of his hands on my six-year-old body. Nothing womanly at all about me. Nothing to draw the attention of a normal grown-ass man.
Victor Alvarez was a fucking pedophile.
“Sure, sure, come in and let me get it for you,” he said, stepping back to let me in.
I stepped inside and pressed my hands against the gun that I slipped into the pocket of my dress. I made sure that no part of my body touched his as I moved to stand in the middle of the living room. My eyes went to that teapot. It was a reminder that I lost a piece of myself that night. My eyes filled with tears and I clenched my teeth as the memories flooded me again.
“I hope you and Sophie do get back close like you used to,” Mr. Alvarez said, as he picked up a notepad from the table next to his chair.
“I bet you do,” I said sarcastically, tearing my eyes away from that broken teapot.
He looked up at me. “Of course I want that,” he said. “I must have left that notepad in the kitchen. I’ll be right back.”
I watched him walk out of the room and then I turned and picked up the cracked teapot. Does he think of what he did to me whenever he looks at this? I wondered.
Was it his trophy like those other perverted mofos on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit kept?
I gripped that teapot so tight, I thought it might crumble in my hands as I walked into the kitchen. Mr. Alvarez turned from where he was standing by the phone still hanging on the wall like it was the eighties. His eyes dropped down to the teapot in my hand.
What is he thinking about right now?
“I’ll take that, Harriet,” he said, stepping toward me.
“No, no . . . no you won’t, motherfucker,” I said, holding it high above my head before I used all my strength and anger and resentment to throw that bitch at the linoleum covered floor. It shattered.
Mr. Alvarez stared down at the pieces and then looked up at me. “Why did you do that?” he snapped, his accent coming out of him a little bit more as his eyes filled with anger.
Like I gave a fuck.
I laughed and it was filled with my bitterness. “The same reason you shattered a big piece of me . . . because I wanted to. You nasty, disgusting pervert. You sick son of a bitch.”
“What are you talking about?” he roared, the veins of his neck bulging.
“Stop playing like your child-molesting ass is stuck on stupid and don’t know what this is about. Stop it!” I pulled the gun from my pocket and aimed it at a spot between his eyes. “I was just a little girl and you had no right to do that shit to me. I should blow your fucking head wide open.”
He held us his large hands, and I could tell he was nervous as hell and wondering just where this night was going for him. “Harriet—”
I looked into his eyes. “Strip,” I ordered. “Like you did that night? Remember?”
He opened his mouth and I lowered the gun to his crotch. Never taking his eyes off me, Mr. Alvarez unbuttoned his shirt and unzipped the jeans he wore before he removed everything until he stood naked before me.
I waved the gun at one of the chairs pushed under the kitchen table. “Sit your ass down,” I snapped, blinking away tears as the memories continued flooding back to me. I shook my head like I could free the images. Erase the hurt. The fear. The shame. All the feelings of a six-year-old little girl.
It felt as fresh as if I was still in that vulnerable little body.
As he folded his tall and slender frame in the chair, I seriously fought the urge to just shoot his ass. “Do you remember putting your dick in my mouth?” I asked him, moving across the kitchen to rub the barrel of my gun against his lips as I flipped my hair back out of my face.
“Touching my chest?” I asked, using my free hands to pinch his nipples hard as fuck with a curl of my lip filled with every bit of hate I had for him.
He winced.
“Touching my privates, you sick bitch?” I asked, my voice cracking with the emotions I felt as I reached down and grabbed his limp dick and balls in my hand to snatch, digging my nails into his sack and twisting everything until the skin stretched.
He cried out and sweat popped on his forehead. “You’re wrong,” he whispered, his voice hoarse as he fought the pain.
I grabbed his jank again wishing I could pull the motherfucker off and throw it outside for dogs or some shit.
“I didn’t hurt you!” Mr. Alvarez barked, his face angry.
I let his jank go and stepped back from the audacity of this motherfucker. “You didn’t hurt me,” I repeated softly, again and again and again like a chant.
“You never cried,” he said simply.
“You didn’t hurt me,” I kept repeating. In disbelief and shock and pain.
“You’re not remembering it right,” he insisted.
With my gun still leveled at his chest, I used my free hand to turn on the gas stove. The front left burner filled with blue flames.
“I’m sorry that you’re not remembering what we shared,” he said, like he felt sorry for me.
“You didn’t hurt me,” I said again with a little laugh that was bitter as hell as I pulled a knife from the dish rack and placed the blade into the flames.
He continued rambling behind me, but I didn’t give a fuck about what he was saying.
I turned and pressed the hot knife to his face. The smell of burnt skin and flesh filled the air.
He jumped to his feet, hitting a high note and covering his brand with his hand. “You crazy bitch!” he roared as the skin from the burn pulled away, exposing his pinkish flesh.
And I smiled, loving his pain and feeling in that moment th
at maybe I was crazy. Fuck it. “Sit. Down,” I ordered him, stepping up to press the barrel of the gun to his heart.
Something he saw in my face or in my eyes or in the steadiness of my hand around that gun made him ease his ass back down into the chair.
“I didn’t hurt you,” I said simply with a lift of my shoulders. “That didn’t hurt.”
“What are you going to do to me?” Mr. Alvarez asked.
“Nothing that will ever affect you the way you affected me,” I told him, shaking my head as a vision of him violating me in the ultimate way filled me. I hated my tears but I couldn’t deny them. They needed to be released. Right along with the memories of that night, they needed to be free.
I dropped the knife and the tip of the blade accidentally stuck in his thigh. He extended his legs and clenched his teeth.
With a sadistic smile and my eyes filled with many more tears to flow, I balled my free hand into a fist, raised it high and then slammed it down onto the top of the handle, sending the knife deep into his flesh until I felt it hit bone.
“Aaaaarghh!” he cried out, as blood spurted from around the knife.
I didn’t give a fuck if he bled to death. Fuck him. The devil was waiting on his ass anyway.
“I’m not done with you, Mr. Alvarez, but right now I got another battle to fight,” I told him, my gun pointed on him as I backed out of the kitchen.
He fought to work the knife from his body as he cussed in Spanish.
I didn’t turn around until I reached the front door. I slammed it behind me and took just a moment to try and get my mind settled. What a crazy fucking night.
I heard the sirens before I saw Detective Dick’s unmarked car coming up the street from a few bocks away. I moved to my car and put my gun back in its case in the trunk. I wiped the tears from my eyes before I grabbed his detective’s badge and my pocketbook from the passenger seat and then raced up the steps to my parents’ house. I laid on the bell.
His unmarked car pulled to a stop in the street in front of my parents’ house just as my mother opened the front door.
“What’s going on, Harriet?” she asked, looking past me.
I could see the lights of the siren in her eyes as I pressed my keys and the badge into her hands. “I’m about to be arrested—”
“What?!” she gasped, her face filling with alarm.
I heard his feet pounding on the steps.
“Don’t move, Harriet!” he said from behind me.
“What the fuck is going on?” my mama snapped, the hood coming from deep within her. And in the middle of all the craziness, as my hands were roughly handcuffed behind me, I laughed. A little.
My father’s tall presence filled the doorway. “What’s going on?” he said, stepping past my mother to eye the detective and then to look out at his neighbors standing on their porches or looking out their windows at the commotion.
“Your daughter is being arrested for—”
“Daddy, follow us and make sure he takes me to a police station to be booked,” I said, cutting him off as he turned me and led me down the steps. “I don’t trust him, Daddy. Follow us.”
Detective Dick jerked me by the cuffs. “You have the right to remain silent . . .”
“Please, Daddy,” I pleaded over my shoulder.
I begged because in that moment a little piece of me was that six-year-old girl who felt like, where was her daddy to protect her that night. Why wasn’t my daddy there for me?
And maybe now I understood my rebellion and resentment of them all these years came from that one question. Why wasn’t my daddy there for me?
I was so afraid that his anger and shame about me being arrested would make him step back in the house and close the door. Be there for me now.
I looked over my shoulder. “Daddy, please.”
Detective Dick laughed. “Looks like its just you and me, you cunt,” he whispered to me.
“They have your badge number, so no stops,” was all that I said.
He pushed me inside the back of the car and slammed the door. I looked through the glass at my parents still standing on that porch. Not moving to do as I begged. My heart broke into a million pieces as I dropped my head against the back of the seat as the police car pulled away.
12
I sat in that room with its desk and two empty chairs and smoked the cigarette a female detective gave me. My legs were crossed, my foot swinging, my eyes locked on the mirror across from me. I’d seen enough cop shows to know they were either watching me through a two-way mirror or via a video camera.
I drummed my nails on the table top, pretending I was in total control of being in one of the interview rooms of a New York precinct. But for real, I was trying to wrap my brain around my life. Trying to figure all this shit out. Trying not to be afraid of doing time. Trying not to ache because once again my father wasn’t there for me. Trying not to beat myself up for not at least videotaping one of the freak sessions since the man I now knew as Detective Jon Rossi was going to deny the whole thing. Of course. And to top it all, still trying to come to grips with being molested by the father of my childhood best friend/my parents’ neighbor and friend.
The one thing I did know for sure, even as I looked around at the walls and the locked door, was that tonight—for the first time in a long time—I was free. I’d rather have sat in jail than let myself be degraded and used by a dirty cop anymore. I’d rather remember my past instead of having it eat away at me and not even know why.
I released a heavy-ass breath. Thank God the sixty grand or better sitting in my bank account meant I could say a big “fuck you” to the overworked and underpaid public defender’s office. But I hadn’t even asked for an attorney yet.
The door opened. Detective Rossi, aka Detective Dick, and a black female detective entered the room. The sight of him turned my stomach and I let my eyes drift down to his crotch. I lifted my pinkie and wiggled it at him before I laughed. His neck and face turned red beneath his spray tan.
“Something funny about being arrested for drug charges, Miss Jordan?” the female detective asked, her voice sounding like she lived on cigarettes and emphysema medication.
I didn’t say shit, but I stopped laughing. It was time for business. “Thank you for speaking with me,” I started. “The only thing I have to say is that for the last two weeks, Detective Dick—oops, I mean Detective Rossi—and I have been involved in a sexual relationship—”
He jumped to his feet and slammed his hands against the top of the table. “You liar!”
I rolled my eyes at him and shifted them to the female detective. “As I was saying. We were involved in a perverted, disgusting sexual relationship involving fetishes and foolishness that was completely of his instigation, control, and pleasure because he used his power as a detective for the New York Police Department against me.”
“You lying bitch!” The veins in his neck strained and his eyes bugged.
“He has a hairy mole in the crack of his ass,” I added, holding up my hands and making a face like “hey.”
The female detective jumped up and pressed her hand to his heaving chest. “Calm down, Jon,” she said, her voice all strong as she pushed him toward the door.
I eyed him and I let all the disgust I had for him, Mr. Alvarez, my father, Make$, and Goldie burn into him. I was sick of these fools handling me. Hurting me. I didn’t deserve this shit. None of it.
“Now, I would like to make that statement and only that statement. I have nothing else to say until my attorney arrives,” I finished, pressing my lips together and leaning back in my chair.
She pushed him out the door and I was back in that room alone. Locked in. Left with my thoughts. I finished the cigarette and dropped the butt to the floor to crush beneath the toe of my gold wedges. I ran my fingers through my hair and closed my eyes as all that shit came crashing down on me. Weighing my shoulders down. Mind-fucking me.
Would I have enough gwap to make bail and get a good attor
ney?
Would Mr. Alvarez call the police on me and then I’d be facing assault charges, too? Hell, was Mr. Alvarez’s no-good ass still alive?
What were my parents thinking?
Why wasn’t my daddy there for me?
I pressed my eyes closed with my fingertips to keep the tears from falling. That shit hurt more than anything.
A uniformed cop came into the room to take me back to the holding cell. I took a seat on the bench, not even paying attention to the two other chicks in there with me. I closed my eyes, leaned back against the wall, and crossed my legs at the ankle, wishing like a motherfucker that I was in my apartment minding my own.
I nodded off at some point and didn’t wake up until my head fell forward. I woke up with a start and for a second I was home in my bed. But then that second passed and reality struck like a motherfucker. I sat up straight, frowning at the taste of sleep in my mouth.
It was the first night I didn’t have that dream. Damn shame when you get the best night of sleep in weeks in a jail cell. Ain’t that some shit?
I stood up and tried to shake some of the wrinkles from my dress. I used my fingers to comb the few tangles from my weave before I twisted the long ends into a knot. I licked my fingertips and wiped under my eyes and around my mouth for any makeup that smudged. I hoped I was going for my bail hearing early. I wanted out of this bitch before they sent me to county.
Yes, I went to the shooting range, owned a gun, and even pulled that mug on three men in the last couple of months, but I was no type of hard-nosed gangstress. I wanted out. I didn’t have a record. To me, the charges wasn’t that serious. I had to get a low bail, right?
I wasn’t ever somebody to live in church on Sundays. Sometimes I would let the TV sit on Joel Osteen or T. D. Jakes when they came on on Sundays, but right then I knew I needed to get down on my knees and pray.
Hell, I been on them for way worse than a talk with God.
I eyed the dirty floor and sat down instead, knowing the Heavenly One could hear me just as fine on my ass as He could on my knees. I crossed my fingers and bent my head.