by Shan
"Shit!" I cursed. I turned around to go back and was halted by a punch to my face that knocked me flat on my back. I brought my hands up to stop the blood that was spraying out like a hose. My vision was blurred, so I couldn't see who was standing over me.
I could hear my keys dangling and heard the door to my car open. I rolled over from my back to my stomach. Then, I got on all fours and slowly tried to get up to my feet. A forceful kick to my stomach sent me flying back over and eventually led me to black out.
129
18 Honey
18
Honey
Ding-Dong-Ding-Dong!
"Just a minute!" I yelled. I put out my cigarette and ran for the front door. "Who is it?"
"Bitch, open the door!"
BAM! BAM! BAM!
I put my hand up to the knob and coiled back like it had been on fire. I knew who was waiting on the other side and wished I had known they were coming. I would've preferred to have my .38 in hand for this type of visit.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Against my better judgment, I unlocked the door and slightly pulled it open.
"What are you doing at my house? You got your money," I said, placing my hands on me hips.
"We want more money. I knew it had to be a reason why Imran got rid of your ass, you grimy bitch!" one of the guys yelled. He was the taller of the two. They were both dressed in all black.
"I'm not paying you anymore money. We agreed on a stack a piece, and that's what you got!"
"That was before we knew it was Imran's girl! If he finds out we did this shit, we're dead, hoe! We want more money, or we’re letting him know what's up."
I sighed, "Okay! Okay! Come in."
As I walked away from the door, I cursed them under my breath. Each of them had to weigh, at least, two hundred pounds, which meant together they were a whopping four hundred pounds. How in the hell are they gonna be scared of Imran's scrawny ass? I wondered.
"Have a seat, and I'll be right back." I turned to them and smiled at the awesome thought that crossed through my mind.
"Bitch, hurry the fuck up!" the shorter one bellowed.
I went into my bedroom and grabbed my purse from the nightstand. I, also, grabbed my .38. I placed my hand over the trigger and stuffed it down in my purse, trying my best to conceal it. I'd already given them two grand and wasn't about to give them any more money. Since I wasn't allowed to work at the spot anymore, I didn't have any more income coming in. I had to be real careful about how I spent money if I wanted to maintain this lifestyle I'd quickly become accustomed to. The two grand that I'd given to them was more than I wanted to give. I just couldn't afford to give them more.
I walked back into my living area where both of the guys were seated comfortably on my leather sofa. I pretended as if I was searching for the cash in my bag as I got closer to the two of them.
"Don't come out with no bull—"
POW! POW!
I shot the shorter one first. One bullet penetrated his side, and the other one hit him in the jaw. The taller one, after watching the shorter fall, got up from the couch and ran towards the door to make his exit. I aimed at the him and fired.
POW! POW! POW!
The first two bullets whizzed past him, going through the walls, but the last one hit him right in the back. I watched as he went crashing to the floor. I, immediately, raised my eyebrows in surprise. I didn't have the best aim, which was why I had missed everyone when I shot at Imran and Cedric previously.
I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and dialed up DeMarcus. The line trilled in my ear three times before he answered.
"Hello," he said.
"I need you to come over! Imran sent these guys here, and… oh, my god!" I squealed. "Hurry!"
I hung up the phone and tossed it back into my purse. I rushed into the bathroom and prepared myself, once again, to look as if I'd been attacked.
Shit! Now, how the hell are we gonna get their asses out of here without being seen? I wondered as I took my right fist, balled it up, and, as hard as possible, punched myself in the jaw. I repeated the same routine over and over again on different parts of my body. By time DeMarcus arrived, he would see my bruised and battered body, feel guilty, and want to do whatever he could to help.
133
19 Tomeka
19
Tomeka
I'd finally settled things with the court and was sentenced to seven years probation, one hundred fifty hours of community service, and counseling with a therapist on a weekly basis. My lawyer was able to convince a judge that I was temporarily insane when I stabbed DeMarcus and, therefore, got me out of doing any jail time for the rest of my life. I definitely had to clean myself up because I would be reporting to a probation officer on a regular basis. One little fuck up could send my ass to jail.
I walked out of the Crowley Courthouse and headed towards the street where I'd parked my car on a meter. I promised myself, the whole time in court, that today would be my last day of getting high. That night I spent in jail was enough to scare me into not ever wanting to go back again. I planned to show up at the trap, steal enough to get me through today, and then find myself another job. There was no way I could continue to work around the stuff and expect to get clean. It would be too tempting if I had to look at it every day. Weigh it, cook it, but don't use it? That wouldn't even make sense since it had been my life for the past few months.
"Meka?"
I looked over my shoulder and spotted DeMarcus walking in my direction. I nervously looked around to see if he was bringing the laws with him, and, when I didn't see anyone, I slightly calmed down. I grabbed my keys from my purse that held a container of mace and gripped it tightly in my hand.
"DeMarcus…umm… you know I'm not allowed to be within fifty feet of you, right?" I asked confusedly.
"Yeah, I know that, but I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes. Is that okay?" he asked, raising a brow.
"Umm, yeah. Sure. What up? You’re looking well," I said, noticing he looked a lot better from the last time I saw him considering he was covered in blood. He was dressed in a nice black suit with nice, shiny shoes.
"Thank you. I just wanna apologize for the way I treated you when we were together, for hitting on you, disrespecting you by being with other women, for the verbal disrespect, the whole nine. I'm sorry and you wasn't deserving of that," DeMarcus sincerely stated. He placed his hand over his heart and looked as if he was about to cry. "I truly hate that I fucked things up with you. I wish I could take it back and start all over."
I smiled, "Thanks, DeMarcus. I would like to say that I'm sorry for what I did to you and that I'm glad the outcome wasn't worse than it was."
"I'm glad that it wasn't either. It gave me a chance to clean up my life. Part of the reason I was so abusive towards you was because I had a pretty bad coke habit. Was using before I met you. It’s a terrible addiction, and it made me do some pretty fucked up things."
I swallowed pretty hard. I was shocked to hear that DeMarcus had been doing the same thing that I was doing now. I wanted to confide in him and tell him that I now I had that same problem, but thought better of it. I didn't want him to judge me or, even worse, inform someone, and it get back to my probation officer.
"Just a minute, DeMarcus," I said, pulling my cell phone out of my purse. "Hello."
"Tomeka! Hey! Damn! I've been trying to reach you for the longest," Jahzara said. I frowned and wondered what number she was calling me from.
"Girl, busy. What's up?" I asked nonchalantly.
"I'm in the hospital. I've been trying to reach you and Honey. I could really use y'all by my side right now. Things are so bad—"
"Hold on, Jahzara. That's Honey on the other line," I said, clicking over to answer it. "What's up, Honey?"
"Hey! I need you, mami. Imran sent these guys over here last night, and I'm fucked up. They did me in, Meka."
"Oh, my god! Honey, what the fuck is the deal with you and Imran? It wasn't enough he tried to
rape you, now he sends guys after you? Look, I'm on my way."
"Okay! Get here quick! I'm so scared, Meka! He's trying to kill me!"
"On my way," I said, hanging up.
"Look, DeMarcus. I'm sorry, but I need to go. Honey was attacked last night. Imran, Jahzara's little boyfriend, sent some guys after her, and she's saying she's all fucked up."
The look on DeMarcus’ face was one of utter disgust. He shook his head, and I could tell that he was feeling the same way I was about what I had just heard.
"Meka, be careful, okay? Just watch out for Honey," DeMarcus said wearily.
I nodded my head and rushed to my car to hurry up and get to Honey. Ever since the night we made love, I’d felt like it was my responsibility to watch over her and protect her, which was why I was completely done with Jahzara. She was letting her damn boyfriend do all this stuff to Honey and wasn’t doing anything to try to stop it. We were all supposed to be sisters, and she was letting some fling come in between that, and that I couldn’t respect. I didn’t care that she was laid up in the hospital in pain or whatever the hell she was trying to tell me on the phone before Honey called. I was sure that, whatever the reason, she was there was because of something that fool Imran had done to her. If you asked me, she deserved everything she was getting right now and whatever was to come. I still couldn’t believe her ass had lied about bailing me out and had the nerve to take my money like she had done so. It was all good, though. She was about to learn what happened when you put a nigga and money before your friends.
141
20 Jahzara
20
Jahzara
Did she just say that Imran sent some dudes to Honey’s house, and now she’s all fucked up? I wondered as I sat up in the hospital bed. They were keeping me overnight for observation since I’d just gotten an abortion and was brutally kicked in the same place that I once held a baby. I shook my head to get rid of the baby thoughts because, every time I even thought about it, it caused me to burst into tears. At that point, I didn’t have time to cry. Someone was really doing some hating, and that shit was starting to fuck with my livelihood. I was starting to wonder if everything was like this because I decided to enter a man’s game— a game where a woman was supposed to be the wife of a hustler and not running through streets making drops and toting pistols. I had never really had any of these problems when I was with Quin because whatever went down in the streets stayed in the streets, and he never brought that shit back home. I guess that was why it was so important to Imran that I left it all alone and let him handle things. Now that I really think about it, he was well aware of how crazy things could get out there and was only trying to protect me. I smiled at the thought of Imran— his sweet face, that goofy smile of his. And I wish that we had met at a different time.
“What’s up? How are you?” I looked up and spotted Imran coming through the door with a dozen roses in his hand and a Get Well Soon balloon. So thoughtful he was.
“I was just about to call you. Took you long enough to get here,” I said with a huge smile on my face.
“I’ve been here for a little while, just trying to collect my thoughts before I came in here.”
“Yeah, shit has been crazy. It’s all gonna come together real soon, so I ain’t even worried about it.”
“Yeah. Well, I hope so, Jahzara.”
“You sure have been calling me Jahzara a lot lately. What’s up with that?”
“That’s your name, isn’t it?” Imran asked with a touch of sarcasm in his voice.
“Are you upset because I haven’t made time to talk to you?”
“When I couldn’t get in contact with you last night, I decided to check your voicemail and—”
“What? Why the fuck would you do that?” I yelled.
“Because I’d been calling you for two straight hours and your shit was going straight to voicemail. I was worried about you!” Imran bellowed. He walked and sat the roses on the space next to the sink and walked towards the edge of the bed.
“It’s not like I have anything to hide, but your ass still shouldn’t have been checking my voicemail. I don’t go through your shit, so why in the hell would you go through mine?” I folded my arms, pissed that this nigga pulled such a hoe move and went through my damn phone. And how the hell did he even figure out my pass code? Was I that damn obvious? I wondered.
“Oh, you don’t have anything to hide? What about the message from the clinic asking you how you aftercare was going? They wanted to remind you to check the pamphlet for all the support groups that are offered for women who choose abortion,” Imran scoffed. “A fuckin’ abortion? You killed my seed, Jahzara? Or did it belong to another nigga? I can’t think of anything that I would’ve done to you that was so bad that you would go and kill my seed and don’t even talk to me about it.”
“You robbed me! You tried to fuck my best friend!” I cried, partially knowing that none of it was true. He was making what I did sound so fucking bad that I had to throw that shit in his face and let him know that I had every right and reason to do what I did.
“Robbed you? Are you fuckin’ serious? Robbed you, Jahzara? I,” he pointed into his chest, “robbed you? Me? You must have me confused with the next nigga. I have no reason to rob anybody, and, if I did, it damn sure wouldn’t have been you. Your paper isn’t even long enough for me to even consider it.”
“What about the niggas you sent after Honey? I just got off the phone with Tomeka, and she said she’s all fucked up!” I said, acting as if I personally got that information from Tomeka and hadn’t just overheard it before she hung up in my face.
“What niggas? Sending niggas after Honey isn’t making me no damn money. That bitch is an afterthought to me, even after she shot at me and my boy Ced. She wanted what you had, Jahzara, and, because she couldn’t get it, she’s making up all this shit to come between us, and, obviously, it worked. All I wanted to do was be a part of your fuckin’ life, share my life with you, treat you the way you’re supposed to be treated! Half the shit you’re throwing at me you know isn’t true. I’mma let you have that, though, Jahzara. All those lies that you keep believing, keep them. I’m out, a’ight?”
“Imran, wait—”
Imran tossed his hands up in the air and walked out of the room, leaving me sitting there with a lot of regret. The secret of the abortion was supposed to be something that I held onto for the rest of my life. I knew that it would hurt Imran because it hurt me to do it, but he would never understand my reasons behind it.
“Imran! Imran, come back here!” I cried out.
*****
The next afternoon, I was released from the hospital. I caught a cab back to my home. The police didn’t have any leads on where my car was or my other personal belongings like my wallet and purse, and I was quite sure that I would never see any of them again. Thank God for the cash that I had in my pockets, or I would’ve been outside of Parkland Hospital with the rest of the bums begging for change to get home. It was sad that I couldn’t get in contact with either of my girls when I really needed them the most. Neither Tomeka nor Honey was unavailable for me to lean on, and that shit really hurt. If I hadn’t been in the hospital when Tomeka found out that Honey was hurt, I would’ve been right by her side. No doubt. All of this was just showing me that them hoes was really up to something and couldn’t face me because of it.
I walked into the house and looked around, sickened at the sight of the mess the police had made while looking for huge amounts of drugs and some big ass guns that I never had. Stepping over the trash, I walked into my bedroom and began to search in the many of places I’d stashed weed to see if maybe I had some sitting around that the DEA didn’t confiscate. My nerves were so bad right then, and a blunt and some good sleep were all I really needed to settle down.
“Yes! Yes!” I cheered upon finding a half-smoked blunt in my panty drawer. I grabbed a lighter that was sitting on the floor, quickly fired it up, and made my way into the dining are
a where I took a seat at the table. There was a notepad and a pen sitting out from the times I used to write weekly letters to Quin. As I took a toke on the blunt, I sat back in the seat and contemplated sending Quin a letter just to see how he was doing and to see if he was ready for the big day. His release date was just around the corner, which meant I only had so much time to get my shit together and find myself somewhere else to live.
I picked up the pen, and, when I slid the notepad in my direction, a piece of paper fell into my lap. I grabbed the paper and saw that it was the same note from the night that someone broke into my house.
Lay down or get laid out. Bitch
I stared at the note for what seemed like forever, studying every single word down to every single letter. The way it was written out so neatly and perfectly made it seem like whoever did it knew that they had all the time in the world. Like they knew that I wouldn’t be home until a certain time and could pace themselves, crossing every T and dotting every damn I. Taking another deep toke from the blunt, I jumped up from the table and went on a hunt to find anything that I had in my house that Honey may have written on. All I needed was a couple of fuckin’ words, so I could compare the handwriting and prove to myself what my gut had been telling me all along.
I went through damn near every piece of paper that I could find in the house, every piece that was strewn over the floor, and every piece that was put in different places around the house and couldn’t find anything. I knew for a fact that she’d written something at one time or another. I decided to give up, get some rest, and look around again the next morning when I had all of my energy.
“Shit! I just know this bitch had something to do with it. I just know it,” I said as I walked into the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of water from the fridge. I closed the refrigerator and leaned against the cabinet, gathering my thoughts. After taking a few sips of water, I went to place the bottle back inside when the writing on my refrigerator magnet caught my eye.