The Coldest Love She's Ever Known

by Leo Sullivan

  Before I could stop myself, I threw the mirror on the floor, smashing it.

  “Now why did you do that? You’re wrong. You’re still very beautiful and Caesar loves you. We spoke; he is just going through a lot, he is young and stressed out, too. At first, they said he could run the chance of being paralyzed but, recently with therapy, he has been making great progress. You gon’ to have to work with him and be patient,” my mama said.

  “Mama, I don’t wanna live like that... walking on eggshells. He don’t love me.”

  The right side of my face was grotesquely disfigured badly and enlarged. The first image that came to mind when I looked at my reflection was of Emmitt Till’s terribly beaten body. Caesar’s words were still fresh in my head.

  “Don’t say that. Plus, now you just broke that mirror. You’re trying your luck,” Kelly said, nodding her head, animated. Her eyes were red and slanted. She had been smoking weed and was high as usual.

  My mama grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Never say such bad things like that. You’re still a beautiful girl. Never judge your value by the exterior, it’s the interior that counts the most. Never forget that,” she said, causing a smile to tug at the corners of her mouth. However, her eyes were sad.

  All I could do was just stare at her and watch the bundle of her pent-up love and devotion for me, her only child, as tears streamed down my face.

  “I have to talk to you about something, Sunday.”

  The medication was strong; I was fighting sleep. Whatever the nurse had been placing in the I.V. bottle for pain was doing its job. I actually nodded twice, falling asleep and woke up drooling with my mouth wide open.

  “They’re going to have to perform surgery on the baby. One of the valves in her heart is not working properly and she is having issues with her kidneys and liver. It’s basically a host of things.”

  My spirits sunk farther; the baby was the only bright spot in my life at that point. She was in the NICU in critical condition and, needless to say, we were all extremely concerned. I needed to take my baby home with me.

  Kelly got up, walked over and held my hand; she smelled just like loud and perfume. We had been friend for years. She moved to Atlanta from Baltimore with her alcoholic druggy mother along with three younger sisters and a baby brother around seven. Men found her strikingly gorgeous in that urban hood type of way. She had a caramel complexion with long wavy natural back hair that cascaded down to her butt and made you want to question her ethnicity. She had large perky breasts and a very curvy figure with a big butt and dazzling smile that she used to her advantage to seduce guys with the wiles of her charm. She resembled a young version of Lisa Raye in her best days.

  “I’m going to go check on the baby. Caesar has been up there all morning,” my mama said. She kissed me on my wet cheek and exited the room just as I was going off into another drug induced nod.

  As soon as she was gone, Kelly walked closer. Suddenly, she was filled with jubilance as she caressed my hair affectionally before standing back to fully get my attention.

  “I need to talk you about something that could possibly cheer you up,” Kelly said and pushed a tuft of hair off her forehead.

  For the first time in my life, I felt a twinge of jealousy for another woman’s beauty. I was always one of the most attractive women in a room, but things were about to change drastically.

  “There is nothing you could tell me that would possibly cheer me up. My baby is fighting for her life!” I said, steeped in misery and allowing anger to consume me capriciously.

  “The baby is going to be well and you too. You just can’t give up hope. It’s that medication kicking your ass—got you thinking Caesar hatin’ on you. I was just kiddin’ ‘bout what I said earlier, that nigga loves your dirty drawers. You wanna smoke something? It will make you feel better.” Kelly had a sparkling of mischief in her eyes as she dipped her hand in her knock-off Versace purse.

  “No,” I responded flatly and then turned my head away from her as another tear slid down my check. “I wanna go upstairs to be with my baby.” I mournfully pulled the sheets up to my chin as more tears slid down my face. I couldn’t help it.

  “I know, but the doctor said you would be in no condition to be moved or else I would have placed you in a wheelchair and took you up there. As it is now, you can hardly keep your eyes open. Besides, you just pushed out a whole big ass baby.” She chuckled before reaching out to take my hand.

  “I know… but… I hate… this so much!” I complained, nearly drifting off to sleep.

  “Hold on though, peep this: I was talking to this guy named Shawn. He is like the weed man and he’s big time. He drives a brand-new BMW, wears designer clothes with a lot of drip and his jewelry game is tight as fuck! Anyways, he likes me,” she said, all hype and all I could do was roll my eyes at her. I already knew that if he liked her and he was the weed man and he was paid, that he had definitely contributed to her habit of smoking weed all day, every day.

  “So, what are you saying?” I was groggy as I raised my voice and my hand absentmindedly grasped the sheet to squeeze it tight. I was doing my best not to fall back asleep and I was growing angrier by the second as turned and looked at her.

  “So, anyways, Shawn is related to these guys who sell major weight: coke, mollies, loud, syrup and all that. Daze and his crew associates with them—”

  “Daze!” I perked up as my heart began to pound in my chest.

  “Yep.” She gave me a devious grin.

  “I told you what he did… he was the one who raped me. He was part of the group who tried to kill of all us,” I said with a shudder.

  “That’s what I’m tryin’ to explain to you. Let me finish!” Kelly shot her arms up in the air and rolled her eyes like I was getting on her nerves. “Shawn works with them, smuggling drugs for some organization. There is a stash at this club they all go to party at and he said it has more than twenty-five million dollars in it. Daze is part of the crew, him and all his friends hang out there. They are all in some type of gang with rappers and entertainers in it. They fuck with the Future also; I saw it all on their Instagram.”

  “So what are you telling me for? I just want them all dead.”

  “Bitch, right! That’s why I’m telling you. This is our chance to get revenge, to get their ass. You couldn’t ask for a better situation.”

  “Not really, because I don’t do stuff like that,” I said, annoyed and disgusted that Kelly would even try me like that.

  As it was, I was catching hell with my baby not doing well and fiancé possibly being paralyzed. If I had of had it my way, I would have just snitched to the police and told them all about Daze but in the hood where I’m from, that would have only got us killed.

  “This is the perfect situation, and this is a blessing in disguise because karma gon’ get them niggas. They gon’ end up dead or in jail and you ain’t goin’ to get shit out of it but more media. In the news, all they talking about is how you was raped, shot and left for dead while pregnant. People have been keepin’ up with this story like a soap opera.”

  “Umm, please! I don’t want to talk about it no more,” I said drowsier than ever.

  I remember Kelly sending words at me in rapid fire, nonstop talking. I dosed off twice, fighting sleep. Annoyed about it all, I slid down in bed, discouraged. She had a point; the media had been in a frenzy and yet it made national news, I had not received one dime. People were asking me for statements, interviews and all but, at the end of the day, I was still broke, my face was fucked up and my child was fighting for her life.

  “Just trust me Sunday. You don’t have to do shit. I’ll show you how to rock these niggas to sleep, B-More style. They won’t even know what hit ‘em,” she said and reached into her purse. When she pulled out a baby Glock .9 mm and placed her hand on her curvy hip, I watched as she leaned forward with an expression on her face that I knew all too well.

  “Wh—where you get that gun from?” I asked, feeling slightly afr
aid. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been around guns before but after being shot and almost killed, that was the last thing I wanted to see. Maybe I was suffering from a mild case of PTSD.

  “I stay strapped, especially after the shit that you went through. I ain’t playin’ around, and if somebody come up in here to finish off what they started with you, I’ma have something waiting for them,” she replied, sucking her teeth as she fingered the barrel of the gun.

  Being from Baltimore, Kelly moved a lot faster than chicks in Atlanta. She grew up in Cherry Hill in Bean Town. The city had a high crime rate and either you got killed or learned how not to at an early age. She once told me about how she shot two boys when she was fifteen years old for messing with her little sister. Neither of them died, but that was a lot for me.

  “Shawn is lame as fuck so I know I can spin him how I wants. He doesn’t even know who I am and been bragging to me about the club and how him and Daze’s crew be hanging out, drinking and counting money. I ain’t even given him any pussy yet with his musky-Moose-breath-having ass.”

  She stopped and giggled at her own corny joke.

  “I don’t want nothing to do with that and you need to stay out of it, too,” I told her.

  “Do you think that King had something to do with it?” Kelly suddenly asked. “The word on the streets is that he never forgave you for leaving him when he was down. You moved on with Caesar, got pregnant, and left Makita’s hoe-ass to hold him down.”

  The second she mentioned King, my heart ached. I didn’t want to believe that he was behind the attack on my life, but I also couldn’t deny that I’d betrayed him. Though I never meant to fall for Caesar, definitely didn’t plan on having a baby with him, the fact still remained that when he needed me most, I wasn’t around. When all of the mounting evidence came out, I knew in my heart that he wasn’t guilty, however, rumors began to circulate that he’d moved on with Makita while he was locked up.

  One day, I went to the prison to visit him and that was the day he broke my heart. Due to me being initially charged with the murders because of the police finding me with the dead bodies, King asked me to visit him under his roomie’s name instead of his so the record wouldn’t show me coming to see him and I wouldn’t get inadvertently mixed up in his case. He had an agreement with his bunkmate so that when he knew I was coming, he would take the visit on his roommate’s behalf.

  On this particular day, I didn’t get a chance to tell him I was coming prior to my visit because it wasn’t planned. I’d just been evicted from our apartment and, in an act of desperation, I was going to see King to ask for some kind of help or advice on what to do next. When I arrived, what I didn’t know is that he was already on a visit. I walked into the visitation room and was greeted with the sight of him tongue-kissing Makita like she was his new bride. That day, I left and never returned. It was also the day that I decided to move on with my life.

  “Please, put that gun up,” I spoke in a small voice, feeling weak as my medication began to take hold. “I don’t want to see it anymore.”

  “Oh,” she looked at the gun in her hand with a sheepish expression on her face before looking back up at me. “Yeah, I guess I should’ve thought better about bringin’ this in here after everything you went through.”

  I nodded and then closed my eyes just as she finished her sentence. Before I knew it, I was dosing off to sleep again. It was the end for me; the drugs were too powerful. What they had me on was as powerful as a horse tranquilizer and knocked me out cold. Vaguely, I could hear Kelly calling my name, but I was too far gone. I was in a utopia, a dream type state, at peace with the world.

  When I finally drifted off, it was into a peaceful sleep. Like so many times before, especially in the days leading up to that one, I dreamed about King.

  12

  Sunday

  Three months later

  * * *

  “Surprise! Home, sweet home!”

  With a weak smile on my face, I turned away from the broad grin on Kelly’s face and fixed my eyes on the group of people standing in the room in front of me with their arms spread wide. They were waiting for me to respond with… something, I didn’t know. Excitement, most likely, but I was too overwhelmed to make it seem genuine.

  “Thank you,” I replied, dropping my head to shield my face.

  Though a few months had passed since the incident that landed me in the hospital and I was healing well from the plastic surgery I’d gotten to repair the damage to my face, I still felt self-conscious about my looks. Some of the ugly scarring remained, though it would soon fade. My eye appeared normal, but I was still partially blind, and my hair was just starting to grow back in where it had been shaved for my multiple surgeries. Kelly had given me a lace front wig to wear but it itched so bad that I didn’t have the patience to deal with it. Instead, I draped my longer hair over that side to conceal my butchered tresses, but it still looked a mess. I looked a mess. The last thing I wanted was a group of people around watching me.

  My mama picked up on my uneasy expression and broke away from the crowd of family, friends and strangers around her. She wrung her hands before taking a deep breath and turned to everyone around her who was still looking at me with expectant stares in their eyes.

  “Um… everyone help yourselves to some food. I’m going to get Sunday adjusted and then I’ll be right back.” With that said, she walked over to me and grabbed my hand. “You’re probably tired. Is this all too much? I wasn’t even thinkin’. I was just so happy to finally have you home and thought that a little bit of a celebration might—”

  I put my hand up to stop her and shook my head. “It’s okay, mama, I understand. Thank you for doing all this for me. I’m just—I didn’t want to leave Katie. I know I had to but… I just want to rest up so I can go back to the hospital to be with her.”

  Although I had been released from the hospital, my daughter Katera Kennedy, who I called ‘Katie’, was still in the NICU. There was an issue with her breathing that hadn’t yet been corrected and she still hadn’t been able to pass the auditory tests to show that she could hear.

  In fact, Katie didn’t respond to sound at all and it broke my heart to think that my baby would probably never be able to hear my voice. I thought about all the time that I’d spent talking to her while she was in my belly. It was a real possibility that she hadn’t heard me any of those times.

  Leaving the celebration behind me, I walked carefully with controlled steps, down the hall toward my room. My mama was walking behind me, giving me just enough space to not feel crowded though she was close enough to catch me if I fell. Even though I was recovering well, I was still adjusting to being partially blind in one eye and my motor skills were slightly impaired due to the trauma to my brain.

  When I stepped into my bedroom, I realized that some changes had been made. A queen-sized bed had taken the place of the twin-sized one that I’d left behind, new sheets were spread over the bed and my teenage, girlish décor had been exchanged for something more mature and appropriate for my age. Next to the bed was a crib and it brought tears to my eyes. I couldn’t wait until the moment when I could place Katie inside.

  “I tried to make sure that everything was comfortable for you once you came back home,” my mama said, speaking with her head down as I looked around my room.

  It was the same room that I’d lived in growing up until I moved in with King. The moment that he brought up the suggestion that we live together, I jumped at the opportunity and never again looked back. Now I was back at square one. When so much progress should have been made in my life, I was regressing instead.

  “Do you like it?” she asked, and I realized that she had been waiting on edge for me to respond. Turning to her, I gave her a genuine smile and nodded.

  “Yes, mama. I love it. And I want to thank you for doing this, I only wish you didn’t spend so much. How were you able to afford all this stuff?”

  The concern in my eyes only grew to another level w
hen her gaze leveled with the newly cleaned carpeted floor. She seemed afraid to look at me.

  “I—I… Well, that’s something I need to speak to you about,” she began, clearing her throat. “Take a seat.”

  Pinching my lips together, I pulled them into my mouth and held them in between my teeth as I did as she requested. Time seemed to slow as I waited on edge while she closed the door and then turned back to me. A long, protracted sigh escaped through her lips before she finally lifted her head to speak to me.

  “I—I have been keepin’ something from you Sunday…”

  My chest tightened and I felt like my breath was suddenly being constricted in my lungs. For some reason, I was expecting the worst.

  “Your hospital stay was extremely expensive… You weren’t on my policy once you went out on your own so I had to apply for you to receive Medicaid, but it wouldn’t cover some of the treatments that the doctor said you would need in order to go back to living a normal life. The plastic surgery to fix the injuries to your face… getting your eye replaced… all of that stuff had to paid for. Not to mention the tests and treatments for the baby.”

  I swallowed hard and turned to look out the window, focusing on a blue bird that was perched on a limb outside. Part of me felt like I already knew what she was about to say.

  “I received a visit from someone and… he told me that he would pay for whatever was needed. Then he came here last week and gave me the money to cover all of your and Katie’s treatments and to get this room fixed up for your return home.”