“Yo, Brick. I’m sorry, man. I wasn’t never tryin’ to play you. It’s just…”
“It’s cool, dawg,” Brick said. “Real rap—it’s cool,” he insisted. “You know how we do.”
Shane shook his head regretfully and gave Brick a hug.
Misty glared at the pair. “Why don’t y’all tell me how we do, because I’m confused,” Misty said and petulantly folded her arms across her chest. “I thought the three of us had a commitment, but it looks like this muthafucker can vanish at the drop of a hat and he don’t think he owes nobody no kind of explanation.”
“I had personal issues with my brother,” Shane explained. “Y’all can’t understand me and Tariq—so don’t try.” His expression quickly changed from apologetic to dark and brooding.
Misty and Brick both knew better than to argue with Shane when it came to his brother. An uncomfortable silence ensued.
“Come on, y’all; fuck this shit. Let’s go get high,” Brick recommended. “Y’all can kiss and make up later.”
“He can kiss my ass later,” Misty said, rushing ahead of the two men.
“Me and Misty got a room while you was gone.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah, man. We was sick of having to follow her mother’s rules. Our crib’s right around the corner, on Washington Avenue. It’s costing us a bean a week. So, you know that money from Paula is coming in handy. The landlady tried to hook us up with a queen-sized bed, but knowing how much room your lanky ass takes up, we told her we needed a king-size.”
Later, in the tidy rented room, a blunt was passed from Misty to Shane and then to Brick. The tobacco leaf-covered marijuana served as a peace pipe. With each puff all the tension washed away and Misty was soon perched contentedly on Shane’s lap, kissing him and laughing at everything he and Brick said.
Then she got serious. With one hand she stroked the side of Shane’s face. The other hand rubbed Brick’s crotch. “Shane, we’re family, right?”
“Right,” he said inhaling the pungent smoke.
“I mean, I know you don’t think of us as family like Tariq and all. But me and Brick love you, man. We both really love you.”
“I dig the hell out of y’all, too.” Shane blew out a cloud of smoke. “Y’all my niggas—real rap.” He passed the blunt to Brick.
“Well, stop treating us like we don’t count for shit,” Misty said, sulkily.
“I feel you,” Shane said. “The next time I go spend some time with my bro, I’ll let y’all know how long I’ll be gone. Aiight?”
Choking from inhaling too much smoke, Brick could only nod.
Misty gave a reluctant nod, and then she smiled devilishly. “So how you feel?”
Shane shrugged. “About what?”
“You know…how you feel knowing Brick knew about us all this time?”
Shane shifted uncomfortably. “Cut that shit, Misty. You fuckin’ with the vibe.”
“Now that everything’s out in the open, it’s time to get real.”
“What’s on your mind?” he asked her, skeptically. He really didn’t want to know.
“I want both of y’all to do me.”
Shane looked at her like she was crazy.
“Brick already said it was okay, didn’t you, baby?”
“It’s up to Shane,” Brick mumbled and looked away in embarrassment.
“That ain’t how you put it when I brought up the subject,” Misty said, her nostrils flared in anger. “Don’t be frontin’ for Shane. You know you said you wanted to get into something with all three of us.”
“I ain’t feeling that shit, but ya’ll go ’head. Knock yourselves out. I’m not into no three-way action.” Shane puffed hard on the blunt, annoyed that Misty’s proposition had totally blown his high. Feeling disgusted, he suddenly wanted to go home. He took another puff, passed it to Brick, and stood up. It was one thing to get with Misty on the low, but having Brick join in…well, Brick was his man and everything but that bullshit they were talking was real fucked up. What the hell was up with Brick? Letting Misty run the show was cute sometimes, but Brick was letting his girl take it to a whole other level. Oh well, Shane decided, live and let live.
“I’m out,” Shane announced. He gathered his lighter and an unopened Dutch. “I’ll get with y’all tomorrow.”
“Why you leavin’?” Misty screeched.
“I gotta see my brother. Is that aiight with you?” Shane gave her a flaming look, daring her to make one sarcastic remark about his relationship with his twin.
Misty fidgeted in agitation but didn’t open her mouth. She puffed and passed to Shane. Satisfied, Shane puffed on the blunt. He knew how to shut Misty up.
He passed the blunt to Brick and then walked toward the door. “Hollah back,” Shane announced with a hint of defiance in his tone.
CHAPTER 33
Hopping in a cab, Shane was anxious to get home. He felt edgy. Misty and Brick were trying to draw him into some freak shit. He needed a break from his two friends; it was time to handle his hustle solo for a while. He’d hollah at them in a month or so—or however long it took for them to come back to their senses. Shane preferred creepin’ with Misty. Brick had to be out of his mind to even think Shane would participate in a three-some with another man. Shane and Misty could pick things up where they left off when Brick decided to once again look the other way and pretend that Misty and Shane weren’t knockin’ boots right under his nose. Shane would be ghost until then.
“Mom!” Shane yelled when he walked into the quiet apartment. Surprisingly, the TV wasn’t blaring. He figured she was probably in bed reading the Bible. He felt depressed and dispirited. He felt bad enough to let her read him a few Bible passages before he went to sleep. Yeah, she’d like that, Shane mused.
“Mom!” Still no answer. He stopped in the hallway and peeked in the bedroom. She was sound asleep. He stood outside the bedroom door trying to decide if he should wake her up so she could comfort him or just get in bed and try to fall asleep on his own.
He’d let her sleep, he decided, and went to the bathroom to take a shower.
After his shower, Shane made it as far as the doorway of the bedroom when he noticed the room was frigid and ominously quiet. With baited breath, Shane slid a glance at Dolores Holmes’s chest, waiting to see the rise and fall of her breathing. She was still. A wave of panic thrust him inside the room. Trembling, he knelt at the side of the bed. “Mom!” he yelled, his voice filled with terror. “Mom!”
Dolores Holmes’s open eyes stared at nothing. Engulfed by fear, Shane called her again. He shook her urgently. “Please, Mom, wake up!” But Dolores Holmes didn’t move. She lay stock-still.
“Wake up,” he continued to plead, shaking his foster mother’s lifeless body. “Please,” he begged. “Wake up!” Crying bitterly, Shane collapsed upon the dead woman’s chest. After nearly twenty minutes of sobbing, he finally pulled himself together enough to pick up the phone and call for an ambulance.
“No point in taking your mother to the hospital, sir,” said the emergency technician after examining Ms. Holmes. “We’re going to take her straight to the city morgue. After you make funeral arrangements, the mortuary can pick her up from there.”
Shane openly shed tears as the attendants lifted Dolores Holmes onto a stretcher. Shane touched her face tenderly before the men carried his foster mother’s body to the waiting ambulance.
For over an hour, he wept bitterly. Shane saw flashing images of his birth mother as well as his foster mother as he cried out, “Mommy” in child-like repetition. In his mind’s eye, the images of his biological mother were faded, but he recalled sharp, clearly focused images of his foster mother.
It wasn’t fair. No one should lose two mothers in their lifetime. Filled with fury, Shane smashed an ashtray, flipped over the coffee table, and kicked the wide-screen TV. Drained, he picked up the phone and called Tariq.
“Put my brother on the phone,” he said to Janelle in a choked voice.
“Where is he?”
“Tariq’s working for that moving company now. He’s out of town until tomorrow.”
Shane realized Janelle could hear the tears in his voice and was being uncharacteristically helpful.
“He should be calling me later on tonight. Do you want him to give you a call?”
“Yeah, tell him I need to talk to him,” Shane said, his voice breaking like a child’s. Shane didn’t have any knowledge of how to handle funeral arrange-ments; he needed Tariq. He’d tell his brother as much of the truth as he felt Tariq could handle.
After a couple hours had elapsed without hearing from Tariq, Shane gave up and called Felicia Bradley’s cell phone. Being a preacher’s wife, he figured she’d have plenty of experience with death and funerals.
He got a recorded message; apparently Felicia’s cell was turned off. Taking a chance, Shane called her home phone. Felicia answered sleepily, but became alert when Shane, still pretending that Ms. Holmes was his mother, told her what had happened.
“Who has the body?” she asked him.
“What?”
“Which mortuary?”
“I don’t know; they took her to the morgue.”
“Does she have an insurance policy? Did she make any burial arrangements?”
“I don’t know, I doubt it,” he said, frustration in his tone.
“Was she collecting social security?”
“Yeah, I think so. She got a little something from the government once a month.”
“Social security will pay a portion of her funeral costs, but not much. If your mother doesn’t have insurance and doesn’t belong to any church that would help with the expenses, your best bet is to have her cremated. It’s cheaper.”
“How much is cheaper?”
“Different prices; it depends on what you want.”
“My mother wouldn’t like that; she’d want a decent burial and a preacher to say some words over her,” Shane lamented, imagining Ms. Holmes’s displeasure at her body being burned to ashes without being sanctioned by a minister.
“I can hold a small memorial service for your mother in our church,” Felicia offered. “I could also get the reverend to speak at the service. Would you like me to make the arrangements for the cremation?”
“Yeah, would you, please?”
Shane hung up feeling a little better, but when he walked around the empty apartment, grief sent him out into the night. Out on the prowl.
The bar he selected catered to a much older crowd, which was fine with Shane. The patrons were quiet and laid-back. The barmaid, who told him her name was Trisha, looked to be in her late forties, maybe fifty. Obviously attracted to Shane, Trisha kept up a steady flow of free drinks, which he had no problem accepting.
Despite being grief-stricken, lost, and distraught, Shane managed to hold a conversation with the mature barmaid.
Trisha’s face was pleasant enough, with a wrinkle or two here and there, but that didn’t bother Shane; he was used to older women. She was also rather flabby around the waist, which wasn’t an issue either. It wasn’t her face or her waistline that was of interest to Shane.
It was her breasts that had him transfixed, making him want to get to know her better. Her big sagging breasts influenced him to leave the bar with her at closing time.
Trisha revved up the sputtering engine of an old, cranky Chevy. She drove toward Elmwood Avenue and pulled into the Bartrum Garden apartments where she lived.
She wore a pleased expression, which seemed to imply that she had lucked up in bringing home a fine young specimen such as Shane. Nosey neighbors sitting on the stoop drinking and shooting the breeze fell silent when Trisha and Shane approached. Trisha cast them a triumphant expression as she led Shane to her apartment. They went straight into her bedroom. She dimmed the lights and took off her clothes and quickly got under the covers to hide the bodily imperfections brought on by years of eating greasy food and leading a sedentary lifestyle.
Shane undressed and joined her, instantly fondling the flabby softness of her protruding belly. He caressed the woman’s saddlebag hips and the excess rolls of flesh around her midsection and up and down her back. His mouth sought the comfort of her big pendulous breasts. Her bosom was a lifeline.
Shane sucked hard and hungrily until Trisha gave subtle signals that it was time to move down further. Ignoring her signals, Shane kept a suction hold on her nipple.
“That’s enough, baby,” Trisha said, trying to ease Shane off her breast. “Don’t you want to get busy?” She spread her legs invitingly.
Shane stuck a finger in the moist fleshy area to appease her, but he continued sucking her nipple.
“Stop!” Trisha said in a harsh tone. “You’re hurting me.” She tried to disengage her nipple from Shane’s mouth.
“Just another minute,” he pleaded. Damn, he missed his mom. He missed the warm milk. He didn’t like Trisha’s dry-ass titties. Not wanting to give in to more tears, Shane chose anger as an emotional release. He deliberately bit Trisha’s nipple.
“Ow!” she shouted.
“Why you gotta keep complaining?”
“I know you don’t think I brought you home with me so you could bite on my boobs all night!” She rolled her eyes in indignation.
And that’s when Shane felt the pain of his loss—and the rage it brought on. Who would ever treat him the way his mom had? Nobody. Hot fury washed over him. He slapped Trisha across the face.
With her mouth opened in shock, Trisha turned her head in the direction of the telephone. No doubt, she was going to call the police. Shane balled his angry fists and sent a flurry of blows to her face and head.
Screaming, she protected her face with her hands. His punches now landed on her chest and arms. A powerful gut punch left Trisha breathless. As she lay gasping, Shane kicked her and then dressed hurriedly. He knew Trisha had made tips that night, so he quickly dumped out the contents of her pocketbook, seized eighty dollars in small bills, and fled the apartment.
He started running when he got outside. Running in case Trisha had called the police. Tears wet his cheeks as he recalled the violence he’d inflicted upon his foster mother years ago. Was he crazy, he wondered? His birth mother was crazy. Had she passed her insanity on to him? No, he wasn’t crazy, he told himself as he continued to run like the wind. Crazy people walked around mumbling and harassing people. He just had a bad temper. That was all. A really bad temper.
Running from his demons, Shane didn’t stop moving until his legs finally gave out.
CHAPTER 34
Dolores Holmes would have been proud of her memorial service. The choir sang two selections and Reverend Daniels preached a sermon with such passion, one would have assumed he was personally acquainted with the large woman who’d been reduced to ashes inside an urn. The urn, illuminated by light, was positioned prominently before the altar.
Tariq attended the service with his brother. Shane’s request that he accompany him to the funeral had come from out of the blue. He had no idea Shane had renewed a relationship with their ex-foster mother. Although he was more confused than bereft, Tariq was nevertheless moved to tears by the fervent words of the minister.
Shane wept unashamedly throughout the entire ceremony. Afterward, he thanked and shook hands with the pastor. He introduced Tariq to Reverend Daniels and Felicia Bradley, whom he referred to as Mrs. Bradley in public.
“Your mother’s with the Lord now, boys. She’s at peace,” Reverend Daniels said to Shane and Tariq.
Tariq nodded uncomfortably. His head was spinning in confusion as he shook hands with the parishioners who came up to shake his hand, wearing grave expressions as they offered their condolences for his “mother.”
When Tariq had a moment alone with Shane, he said, “I can’t believe you and Miz Holmes were living together. How come you never mentioned it?”
“Man, she was doing bad, living in some boarding home. I was just trying
to make up for all the bad stuff that happened to her. You know…help her out and everything.”
Tariq listened intently with an arched brow, his chin cradled between the V of his thumb and index finger. “Okay, but how come you got all these people believing she’s our real mother?”
Shane narrowed his eyes. “She’s the only mother we ever had.”
“I know. But we haven’t seen her in years.”
“You ain’t seen her. I been lookin’ out for her for a while.”
“You should have told me, Shane. You didn’t have to carry the burden by yourself.”
“You got your own family and everything; you didn’t need no extra mouth to feed. Anyway, I wanted to do it. I was the one who got her in all that trouble.”
Tariq grimaced. “You lied on Miz Holmes?”
“No, I didn’t lie on her. She was so drunk when they came to the house, she wasn’t making any sense. Somehow they got her words twisted and thought she molested me,” Shane explained.
“So, how come you didn’t tell the truth?”
“I was scared, man. I didn’t wanna testify in no courtroom.” Shane hung his head in shame. “That’s why I had to help her out. I owed her that much.”
“What about Miss Goldie?”
Shane shrugged. “I don’t know nothin’ about that. I swear, Tariq,” Shane said, lying. “I don’t know how Miss Goldie’s name got dragged in that mess.”
“You ever hear from LaDonna?”
“Naw and I ain’t trying to see her either. I know she hates my guts.” Shane was thoughtful for a moment. “Look, man, let’s leave Miss Goldie and LaDonna in the past.” He looked down in thought. “I don’t know how to explain my relationship with Miz Holmes…” Shane paused. “You have Janelle and your son. You have a family. I don’t have nothing. I needed her, man; she was more than a mother. And she needed me. You hear what I’m saying?”
Despair emanated from Shane; his tortured expression nearly broke Tariq’s heart. Tariq realized how fortunate he was to have Janelle. Janelle was more than a wife. Like a mother, she was a strict disciplinarian. He loved her so much he was able to tolerate the cruel streak she exhibited at times when she seemed to maliciously test the boundaries of his love by making unreasonable demands of him.
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