A Deeper Love Inside

by Sister Souljah

  My driveway was gated up and locked. We walked past to the smaller gate that led to the walkway to my house. A metal plate lodged into the bricks had some words engraved on it. We stepped in closer: mario and maria schettini residences.

  “Mario and Maria Schettini?” Riot read aloud. “Are you sure this is the right address?” she asked, turning to me. That’s when she saw my tears and my face, which was the face of a girl who was 100 percent certain.

  “C’mon, we can’t just stand around like this,” Riot warned.

  But I couldn’t move.

  “C’mon, Porsche. We’ll put together a plan B,” Riot said.

  I walked to the mailbox and reached in the mail hole.

  “Don’t put your fingerprints on nothing,” Riot warned.

  I pulled out a flyer from a pizza delivery place. All it said was “Resident” and it had the right address on it, my Long Island address that was engraved in my memory. The same address I had recited out loud a hundred times to Ms. Griswaldi, the kidnapper caseworker. I walked to the closed gates that stretched across our driveway. I looked up the driveway for Momma’s red Mercedes Benz or any fly ass whip I would recognize as Momma’s, or maybe Winter had her own ride by now. Either no one was home, or the cars were parked round back.

  “Where are you going now?” Riot asked.

  “To the other side where my money tree is at,” I told her. She followed me.

  Soon as I rounded the corner to the other side I could hear the thunder, then the rumble of a pack of high-speed dogs charging in our direction. At the same time, a bright spotlight came on, piercing through the night darkness.

  “Let’s be out,” Riot said. I didn’t move. I wasn’t afraid of dogs, and I knew Riot wasn’t either.

  “Those are motion lights. They’ll know someone is near their yard!”

  They were stuffing their faces between the iron bars barking hatred, flashing fangs and spilling spit. Riot grabbed my little hand and yanked me. “Four German Shepherds, they might even be police dogs,” she said as she pulled me away. After we got off my block, we ran a block before we slowed down to walking like nothing happened.

  Inside the Volvo, rolling in reverse, I yelled, “We gotta get my money tree!”

  “Porsche, take a deep breath. Slow it down some,” Riot said. “We gotta get moving. In neighborhoods like these you never know who’s watching.”

  She was almost on the Long Island Expressway.

  “Please, take me to Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn,” I said.

  “I don’t know the way there,” Riot said.

  “Use the map!” I yelled. I was hurting.

  Chapter 25

  Could I read faces four years later? That’s how long it had been since I stepped foot in Brooklyn. I knew the exact location and addresses of every one of my relatives, especially Momma’s sisters. I even still knew some of their phone numbers by heart. They were the same numbers on my emergency contact list at school. I knew my sister’s friends and definitely where Natalie’s apartment was at, although she used to be all up in our place.

  Crazy, soon as I got on my block, it looked unfamiliar, smaller, dirtier but still busy and noisy. Me and Riot stood still for some seconds as people passed by us this way and that.

  “Can you still trust whoever’s apartment you think you’re going to?” Riot asked, still looking calm although she was the only white girl on the streets of Bed-Sty at 10:30 p.m.

  “You said you didn’t want me to call ahead to nobody. So, I gotta trust it this way.” I started walking towards my old building. Riot followed close behind me. Then I stopped, and began walking in the opposite direction.

  “Smart decision, you know how many famous hustlers, gangsters, and revolutionaries were turned in by their own families?” she said.

  I was standing still in the same spot all over again. I was remembering how I had called all of the phone numbers I ever memorized to my aunts, cousins, and uncles. I had snuck and called collect from the group home and from the homes of each of the foster-care fakers. None of my aunts, cousins, and uncles ever accepted any of my collect calls. I had told myself that they must’ve changed their numbers. I believed that it was strangers declining my calls, not family. If it was family, of course they would’ve of accepted my call because they knew it was me, Porsche.

  “What now?” Riot asked.

  “I got a better idea.” I started walking towards the corner store.

  I went in looking around, same old guy behind the counter.

  “You buying, investigating, or moving in?” he asked me.

  “I’m buying.” I grabbed some grape Now and Laters and a pack of Bazooka’s Bubble Gum.

  “Mr. B, did my mother come in here?” I asked him.

  “Who’s your mother?” He was looking down over his counter.

  “Santiaga,” I said. “You know her. Has she been around here?” I asked.

  “Oh, she’s around here all right, but I can’t tell you where. This is her time of night,” he said strangely. I wanted to press him but the rest of my questions were locked in my jaw and wouldn’t come out.

  I paid and left.

  I walked over to Earline’s where Momma and all of us Santiaga girls got our hair done. She stayed opened late for the weekend going-out crowd, and styling for special events. She would definitely know. Maybe Momma was there right now.

  “Ms. Earline, Ms. Earline,” I called out over the noise of the blow-dryers and videos playing on the new flat screen that was on the wall. It wasn’t like that four years back, I thought. When I stepped up to her occupied chair, she switched her blow-dryer off.

  “Yes, honey, how can I help you? We’re not taking even one more head tonight. Come back in the morning. We open at eight.” Earline said all those words and asked all those questions without even listening to me or taking a good look at me.

  Typical, I thought.

  “Have you seen Lana Santiaga?” I asked.

  She stared at me for a second, then busted out laughing.

  “Who wants to know?” she asked.

  “Me, I’m asking,” I said.

  Earline looked around like she was searching for Momma with her eyes.

  “She ain’t here,” she said and turned her blow-dryer back on. I cut my eyes at her. I had watched her kissing Momma’s ass for as long as I could remember. She would even push a customer out of her chair in the middle of perming their hair, just for my momma, Lana Santiaga, well-known queen and wife of Ricky Santiaga.

  As I was leaving the shop, a lady who had her hands beneath the fingernail dryer called me over with her eyes.

  “Why you looking for her? Does she owe your people money?” she asked me with a straight face.

  “No, nothing like that,” I said. “But she been around here right? You seen her recently?”

  “Check the park,” she said after glancing at her watch.

  “The park?” I repeated.

  “Yeah, the round caves in the old park,” she said.

  We left Earline’s.

  “Maybe we should try in the morning,” Riot said.

  “Why should we? If Momma’s in the park, we don’t have to worry about you going in anybody’s apartment who you think I shouldn’t trust, even if we related,” I said sarcastically.

  We were stepping back down the same block, walking on the right side of the curb, both of us out of habit. In juvy we had to walk to the right side of the line.

  • • •

  I was going one way. She was going the other. She gave me a stare, then the ghetto girl up and down. I gave her the same. When I noticed my bite mark on her face, I knew it was my cousin Tammy. I was about to get excited. Her expression shifted swiftly. I knew that she recognized me now, but she wasn’t acting like she was cool with it.

  “Porsche,” she said, like it was a curse word.

  “I know you not still mad cause we fought once when we were little. We blood related, remember?” I said to her with enough heat in my word
s for her to take me seriously.

  “Your father murdered my father,” she said with more heat in her words. “What you doing round here?” she asked me like a threat. I didn’t feel threatened. I was still tossing the info she just gave up around in my mind.

  Poppa murdered Uncle Steve? I was thinking.

  “Don’t look all shocked. You knew,” she said. I pushed off. Riot followed me. There wasn’t no way for me talking to her now to end up right. I pushed my hand in my side pouch. Juvy taught me well. I’m not no fucking late responder.

  “You looking for your stinking dirty-ass momma? Aunt Lana, that cock-sucking, low-life bitch?” she yelled behind me.

  I was on her smashing her face with my fist and smearing her eyes with my tiny pouch of Back the Fuck Up cayenne concoction. Whatever hate she had, I had double. She already had my tattoo on her face, a warning she obviously never learned from. She was wilding, coughing sneezing, throwing punches in the air that weren’t landing on me cause the bitch couldn’t see. They pulled me off her right after I punched her eye further back into its socket. My eyes dashed to see who was pulling me. It was everybody! But only Riot was familiar.

  “We gotta move,” Riot said.

  “Fuck you, Porsche Santiaga. You and your momma,” my cousin yelled, feeling false confidence now that she was being restrained and cleaned up by the crowd.

  “We gotta bounce,” Riot said. But I was headed to the old park down the block, and I definitely wasn’t running.

  At the park I dipped in the kids’ area where I used to go diving and crawling through the painted, round cement caves and swinging on the swings.

  There was someone sitting in the last cave. I leaned in, smelled piss and the stench blew me back out.

  “You got something for me?” a woman’s voice asked, calling me back. Riot shined the flashlight. I looked again. It was a broken, filthy, finished Momma. My tears spilled like raindrops. I crawled into the cement cave and hugged her. I couldn’t stop hugging her, and I couldn’t believe. We both kept crying and our voices echoed around and bounced off of the cave walls. Or maybe it was just me crying and my voice echoing. Many minutes passed, or maybe it was only seconds that felt like minutes. Riot was in the cave now, seated on the other side of Momma.

  “We gotta move before that one girl comes back with ten more girls. I don’t have a burner, a bat, or a blade. We gotta go,” Riot said forcefully.

  “What girl? Who? Oh child, please I gotta stay here. Somebody got something for me. They coming. He coming, in a little while,” Momma said, fast talking.

  “Whatever he got for you, I got for you. Whatever you got coming, I can get it,” Riot said to Momma swiftly as she pulled open her side pouch and pulled out the rolled-up jeans and T-shirt she had been wearing before she changed in the McDonald’s bathroom.

  “What you gonna get for Momma, Riot!” I yelled. “You gonna feed her coke like she’s Honey?” I screamed. “You tryna train her like your fucking puppy?” Riot ignored me, pulled off Momma’s top and started putting her old T-shirt over Momma’s head. Somewhere between seeing Momma’s ashy skin, skinny bones, drooping titties and feeling hurt, shame, and betrayal, I began beating Riot. Momma began fighting her, too. Riot pushed and tried blocking our attack. She took our blows and punches but wasn’t swinging back. We three tussled in the round cave barely big enough for the three of us to sit quietly and designed as a crawl space for kids.

  Riot jerked off Momma’s stinky shorts while Momma was kicking and screaming. The stench was stronger than bleach and fouler than the backed-up toilets on lockdown when the plumbing system once failed. I stopped fighting and resisting when I seen Riot desperately trying to get her jeans onto Momma’s tiny legs. Momma kept kicking and squirming so I held her arms and shoulders down until Riot got the pants up.

  “C’mon, let’s be out,” Riot said. Me and Riot were both standing at opposite sides of the caves now and Momma was still laying there in the middle with her ripped up old clothes tossed beside her.

  “Who is she?” Momma said, pointing at Riot with her eyes. “Whose side is she on?” Momma made a stank face.

  “Come out, I told you I got you,” Riot yelled at Momma, pulled out her short money stack and shoved it inside the cave as bait for Momma to move. As Momma began moving, Riot pulled her money fist back slowly and stuffed her money in her side pouch. Riot then ran over to the trashcan and started rifling through the trash. She pulled out a empty forty-ounce bottle, slammed it on the ground, and kept the top part with the jagged edges. She concealed it in her side pouch, keeping one hand on it like it was a gun.

  “Let’s get a cab,” Riot said. Momma laughed.

  “One might stop for you,” Momma said. As Riot ran into the street to hail a cab, I looked down at Momma’s feet. She wasn’t wearing any shoes. “Damn!” I screamed. I took off my new Air Max, dusted off the shit on the soles of Momma’s feet. I stuffed Momma’s toes into my kicks. They wouldn’t fit.

  “Walk on the back of ’em, Momma. Fold ’em like flip flops,” I said. She did.

  Me and Momma walked down the sidewalk on my Brooklyn block while Riot walked in the streets facing the traffic searching for a taxi. Me, in my tennis socks ignoring the rocks and pieces of glass I was stepping on, and Momma dragging my new kicks. I saw people watching. I didn’t give a fuck about them or me. I was destroyed and distraught over Momma. I cared for her above anyone and anything.

  We rode silently in the cab. I began feeling grateful to Riot, although I thought she already seen way too much. And the things that she had seen so far, that I never expected to see myself, could never be taken back or erased from Riot’s mind’s eye. I wanted Riot to leave. At the same time I didn’t want to see her go.

  Soon as we jumped out the cab I shot into the drugstore buying everything with Momma in mind. Momma wandered into the aisle with the toys and bought herself a bright yellow wig, part of a princess Halloween costume set.

  Chapter 26

  Room, that’s all the sign said on a piece of cardboard posted in the window in a building on the side street on the West side of Forty-second. Riot checked us in, flashing Honey’s driving license. The creepy old man didn’t even check it.

  “How many hours?” he asked, his teeth stained with coffee, tobacco, or both.

  “Overnight,” Riot said.

  “That’s twenty-eight cash, no checks, no credit cards. You girls play nice, that’s all it cost. Bring back a man, it’s double, fifty-six cash, no checks, no credit cards. Bring back two men, that’s triple, eighty-four cash, no checks, no credit cards. I’ll be setting down the door and the windows don’t open. If you’re expecting some fellas, might as well pay up now before you girls gets too busy . . .”

  “No men!” Riot said angrily. She peeled, then pushed him three ten-dollars bills. He took ’em and handed her the keys, disappearing without offering her two dollars change.

  After she opened the door, she stepped to the side and allowed me and Momma to enter first.

  “Check it out. See if it’s okay,” she said calmly, with concern for us.

  I looked around first with only my eyes. Then I walked in. Walking into the bathroom, I could see the place was better than a prison cell, larger than a closet. It had a tub, shower, and the hot water faucet that came on without delay. It had a bed, desk, mirror, and a chair. It wasn’t no type of fancy, but it functioned.

  “It’s cool,” I told Riot.

  “I’ll be back,” she said, closing the door slowly.

  “Where are you going?” I pulled the door before she could shut it completely.

  “To meet Honey,” she said.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “At the same place where we parked the car.”

  “You expect her to be there?” I asked.

  “When she runs out of whatever she used her money on, she’ll go to the place we three have in common, the parking lot where the rental car is. That’s why I parked it and left it back in that sam
e old expensive lot. No other reason.” Riot left.

  I was sitting on the bed, face-to-face with Momma. She was in an uncomfortable-looking chair, looking uncomfortable.

  “Momma, let’s switch places, or we can both sit on the bed together,” I said.

  “When do you think the girl is coming back?” Momma asked about Riot.

  “Soon, so let’s you and me talk some,” I suggested gently.

  “What’s there to discuss? You already seen everything,” Momma said.

  “Don’t be like that, Momma. We haven’t seen each other in so long. Are you comfortable? Are you hungry?”

  “I don’t have any money to get nothing. I told you I was waiting for someone to bring me something. I don’t have my handbag or my clothes. What was the sense in us leaving Brooklyn and coming all the way over here?”

  “Momma, where are your clothes? Where have you been living?” I asked her.

  “Girl, I’m a gypsy, can’t you tell?” Momma smiled, revealing one missing tooth. Luckily, it wasn’t in the front. But it was close enough to the front that a smile would show the opening.

  “A gypsy?”

  “I move around, especially cause funny people be acting funny,” she said strangely.

  “Funny people?” I asked.

  “Especially if they family. They be acting the funniest. One minute they with you, next minute they against you. Back and forth all day and night long. That’s why I move around.”

  “So who keeps your things, your clothes, shoes, handbag, family photos? Your record collection?”

  “I got a little space. Got some cleaning up to do. It’s okay, though. Hot in the summertime, cold in the winter,” she said.

  My tears welled up, and so did hers. We both knew why. I wanted to ask. But Momma seemed so fragile, like something about to break. So I focused only on her. It was crazy. If someone would describe my momma as looking like she did right now, living the way she seemed to be living, I would’ve punched ’em dead in the mouth, paralyzed ’em, maybe even killed ’em. What I was seeing was something only I had to see for myself with my own two eyes.