by N'Tyse
Whoever the perpetrator was, they knew Jasmine, because there were no signs of a forced entry prior to my intrusion. I thought about someone following her to her apartment and knocking her out cold. After that maybe they raped her before murdering her, and then they tried to set the place on fire so there would be no evidence. I thought about all types of shit that could have possibly happened to her before she died. The scary scenarios just fucked with me more than seeing Jasmine like that.
* * *
It was a little after nine in the morning. I had been up for the past few nights, unable to sleep from all the nightmares and images that were stuck in my head. I was getting ready to bounce to get my hair done. Nessa had been able to squeeze me into her morning slot. As depressing as Jasmine’s death was, I still had to move on. After all, Jasmine had become a problem for me and a big-ass headache to get rid of. She would have gotten dealt with one way or the other. That was what I had to keep telling myself. That was what I was thinking before a call came through on Rene’s cell phone. The voice on the other end belonged to a man.
“Rene, honey, where are you?”
“Honey? Man, who the fuck is this?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who are you, and how do you know Rene?”
The man cleared his throat. “This is her fian—”
Click.
“Hello? Hello!” I looked at the screen and saw that I had lost the signal.
I hadn’t been able to make out what he was trying to say. I redialed the number. This time a polite female voice answered.
“Thanks for calling First United Bank. Have you heard about our new CD rates?”
“Um, I’m just trying to find out who called me a while ago on my cell,” I said.
“Okay, ma’am. May I get your name?”
I quickly shouted out Rene’s name.
“Rene Brown,” she repeated as she pecked away at her computer. “Okay, Miss Brown. I don’t show any messages left for you from your banking officer, Vincent, so I’m sure it was just a routine customer courtesy call.”
“All right,” I said, pretending that I knew exactly what she was talking about.
“Was there anything else I could help you with, Miss Brown?”
“Yeah, sure. Can you tell me how much I have in my account?”
“Let’s see here. I just need you to verify your most recent deposit.”
I had no earthly idea. “I can’t remember. I left my checkbook at home,” I lied.
“Oh, I see. Well, if you can just verify your street address and the last four digits of your Social Security number, please.”
I told her.
“Yes, ma’am, I do show that your balance as of today is ten thousand two hundred fifty-six dollars.”
My jaw dropped, and all I could think was, Oh shit. I hung up from talking to the customer service rep, who had just given me some valuable information. Rene had plenty of money, and she was hiding it from me. Why was she being so secretive? We definitely needed to talk. I had to find Rene.
I didn’t even have a chance to sit down good before my cell started ringing off the hook again. The message that appeared said unavailable.
Here we go again.
Rene
“Rene, are you all right? How you feelin’?”
My vision was blurred, and Shun looked like she had two heads and a swollen nose.
“Is she all right, Doc?”
“Yes, ma’am. She did fine back there. She’s still under the anesthesia, but she’s doing great,” my doctor said to Shun as he reached for my hand.
“Okay, Mrs. Montgomery. I’m gonna let you get your rest now. I’ll be back in a little while to check on you. If you need anything, let the nurses know.” He turned to face Shun. “It’s a good thing you brought her in when you did.”
Dr. Isaga had on blue scrubs and a matching hair cover. He also looked much bigger to me than ever before. He patted me on my hand and walked out the door. I hated hospitals. I had never been admitted to one until now, but I knew already that I hated them. The smell, the colors, and most of all the newborn babies, whom I could hear crying down the hall. It was all depressing. I was clearly out of it because of the medicines they had drugged me with, but I could still recall the reason I was here.
“Shun,” I called out in a raspy whisper.
“I’m here, baby. Just get some rest. Don’t worry. I’m right here.”
Everything in the room was still turning. I was dizzy, and the bright lights above my bed were blinding me and making my head hurt. I closed my eyes and hoped I wouldn’t wake up. I wanted to be with Mariah, Mama’s baby.
When I woke the next morning, I spotted Shun asleep in a chair, in an uncomfortable position. She was wearing the same thing from the night before. She had stayed overnight with me. That was a friend indeed. She was right there by my side, snoring. I looked around the small dimly lit room, noticing things that made tears pour out all over again. Someone had brought in a pink and yellow box and had placed it on the side table, next to a small lamp. I opened the box, and inside was a pink and blue baby blanket, a small brown teddy bear, and two Precious Moments sympathy cards. Each one started off with, “We are sorry for your loss. . . .” I couldn’t read anymore. Tears were streaming down the sides of my face, and I felt like my heart was bleeding internally. I didn’t realized that I was weeping so loudly. Shun woke up.
“What’s wrong, baby?” She was wiping away the dried saliva that had formed around the corners of her mouth and down her chin.
“I’m okay,” I lied. She could tell I wasn’t.
She stood up and reached down to hug me. I cried; she cried; we cried together. She attempted to console me the best way she knew how. An hour later and I had finally gotten ahold of myself. Shun wanted to know what had happened. I spilled everything about the fight I had had and how we had been right all along about Sand cheating on me.
“I knew it!” Shun hollered. “She don’t stay gone all day for nothing. You should have seen this coming, Rene. I told you she was no good. I just knew it.”
I held my head down because I wasn’t any better. I just hadn’t got caught.
“See, I know what’s good for you. You need a good man like Vincent.”
“You’re right. And that’s exactly why I’m not going to tell him that I lost the baby.”
“What do you mean, you’re not going to tell him?”
“I’m saying that I need more time to process everything that has happened. He’ll know in due time.”
* * *
It was Saturday morning, about 10:17 a.m., according to my watch. I waited at the bus stop in front of Baylor University Medical Center for the next bus to come. I had just walked out without being discharged. As a matter of fact, I had overheard one of the other nurses say that my doctor was going to keep me there for another couple of days to run more tests. Shit, not if I could help it. As soon as she left my room to get another nurse to put my IV in, I’d made a run for it. I’d snatched off the gown, thrown on my clothes, and shot ghost.
I looked a hot mess in the red tank top and jogging pants I was admitted in, but guys were still blowing their horns and trying to give me curbside assistance. I thought the bus would never come. Public transportation sucked. It was nothing I could get used to. At least the weather was nice. The sun was beaming, but the wind was blowing a nice little breeze. It was perfect out. On days like this Sand and I would go to White Rock Lake to picnic. I would make sandwiches, and she would whip up a fruit basket. We would sit on our blanket, eat our sandwiches, and then she would feed me the strawberries, kiwi, and grapes one by one. After that she would play in my hair and read me poetry that she had written. Boy, how I missed those days. Now the thought of us ever being together was stomach turning. I could never be with her like that again.
The long yellow and black bus pulled up alongside the curb. It stopped right in front of the long pole with a sign that read DART. I hopped up, abandoning the
comfortable Indian-style seating position I was in, and climbed on the bus. I paid my fare and walked toward the back, the same habit Sand had. Back when we were homeless, we would head to the back of the bus, and I would lean on her shoulder, fall asleep, and doze until we reached our destination. Those were again times when I had thought I knew myself, knew who I was, and what I was doing. Now I was up in church every Sunday, trying to redefine my life.
My relationship with Sand had cost me my first job. She thought that I had quit. Please, I would have never quit a job that was paying me fourteen an hour to do practically nothing. I had made good money, and the benefits had been great. The only complaint I had had was that my coworkers were backstabbing.
* * *
“May I help you with something?” That would be Rasheeka Jones. Rasheeka was a black woman in her midthirties. She was rude as hell, with no professionalism whatsoever.
“Good morning,” I said once I noticed the receptionist, who had been too caught up in her phone conversation to have heard me walk through the door five minutes ago. She had magazines and catalogs of different sorts scattered across her desk. Avon, Jet, Essence. “Are you guys hiring for—”
“No, sorry. Not at this time.”
She hadn’t even let me complete my sentence. I figured the administrative position that I had seen in the newspaper was a misprint, or maybe I had the wrong firm. But Johnson and Johnson was the only black-owned and black-operated law firm that I knew of that was downtown.
“Yes, we are hiring, Rasheeka. Give this young lady an application.” That was Theodore Wright, the company’s vice president. “I’m running an ad in the Dallas Morning News.” Theodore was sexy as hell. And that gold band around his finger meant he was also very married. He wore olive-green slacks with a black, long-sleeved, collared shirt and a matching tie and shoes. The type that preferred a bald head, manicured fingernails, and a clean-shaven face. He could have been Montel Williams’s twin, only taller.
Rasheeka stood from her comfortable sitting position, having to put her reading materials to the side. “Girl, let me call you back,” she said into the phone. She hung up the telephone and walked over to the filing cabinets behind her desk. She retrieved a manila folder. Rasheeka was a large woman, but she was pretty, with cocoa-butter skin. She had on a plum-colored dress and a black scarf. “Fill this out. And you must have a high school diploma or a GED, and we run a background and credit check before you are considered for candidacy.”
I filled out the two-page application and walked it back to Rasheeka when I was done. She sat at her desk, polishing over the chipped coat of red on her nails. She looked over my entire application, not caring that she smeared red polish on the first page.
“Theodore,” she hollered.
He came out of his office, which was right next to her little spot.
“She finished. What you want me to do with this?”
Theodore gave me an on-the-spot interview. I was hired in minutes.
It wasn’t until I returned for the first day of work that I realized I had been hired to replace Rasheeka. I sat at her desk and in her same chair. Theodore had fired her rude ass. We didn’t see each other again until she came in for her last paycheck.
Now, Mindy, a smart, young black college graduate who had the potential to become a great lawyer, was our intern. She was the one who helped train me for the job. I almost cried when Theodore told me that her boyfriend had committed suicide. She quit her job, and no one heard anything else from her after that.
Now the drama didn’t really start until Theodore hired Philip. He was a temp. I knew from the moment he walked in the door that things were about to get wild. He was a shit starter. And I thought Shun gossiped. Please. She didn’t have shit on him. He would go out of his way to find the scoop on everybody and then would dish the dirt out over lunch or via email correspondence. Philip was the missing-in-action CEO’s sidekick. They were buddies. I didn’t know if that was because Philip kept a handle on what went on when the big man wasn’t in the office or what. But when I finally met Mr. Albery Johnson, I was flabbergasted. He was this short guy with a bad limp and a lazy eye. When talking to him, you weren’t sure if he was looking directly at you or if he was looking around for something. The shit was some kind of scary.
And out of all the men to have ever had a secret crush on me, Albery was the most determined at making sure I knew it. He would walk over to my desk and chat about nothing. He had a wife, but that didn’t stop him. I wanted to call her and tell her what a dog of a husband she had. He would leave tickets to games and jazz band concerts on my desk and would give me invites to dine with him at exotic restaurants that I couldn’t even pronounce the names of. I politely turned down each and every invitation. Soon after, out of nowhere, a rumor started circulating that Theodore and I had something going on. It was a blatant lie, and I knew the one person who could have started it—Philip. One morning I went to work and I spotted Theodore in his office, removing the frames and plaques from his wall.
“What’s going on, Theodore? Why are you taking your pictures down?” I asked from the doorway to his office.
He was quiet for a moment. Then he told me that Albery had asked him to resign. If he didn’t, he would be terminated. I couldn’t believe it, but I knew the reason for this.
Albery still continued to hang out around the office and make passes at me. I wanted to yell sexual harassment, but I knew Albery could arrange it so that I never stepped foot in any office again. Albery had money, and money had power. I dealt with the harassment and the uncomfortable feelings that I had all while I worked there until one day Philip spotted Sand and me. We were in the parking lot, kissing and holding each other. I was sure that no one had seen me, but later on that day at work. Philip broadcast my business, and somehow it got back to Albery. He called me into his office and told me his company didn’t need my services any longer. He told me he would get Janice, his pretty, young new assistant, to write me a letter of recommendation. I walked out but couldn’t leave the building without getting some shit off my chest. I walked into the break room, where Philip loved to hang out. There were two other employees in there with him. He had a devilish grin across his face.
“Oh, Rene, how are you?” He started snickering, and I wanted to reach over and slap the shit out of him.
“You know what, Philip? You might as well be gay your damn self, the way you ride Albery’s dick.” Seeing the look on his face made me crack a smile.
“What? Who told you that? Tyrone is my roommate,” he blurted, trying to sound convincing. Everyone was listening in, and he looked like he was about to cry.
I’d be damned. That muthafucka had the word gay written all over his damn face. I should have known.
* * *
Remembering that day and the sacrifices I had made for Sand was what I did the entire bus ride to the house. The apartment was about a block down. I pressed the button for the driver to stop at the next bus stop. He did. I hopped off and walked quickly through the apartments. When I saw Sand’s car wasn’t there, I made a run for it. I had left my purse home last night, so I had to use the spare key from underneath the rug in order to get in.
The house was a mess. Sand and her girlfriend must have been having a ball since I’d been gone, I figured. I ran in the bedroom, grabbed some clothes, and snatched up my purse. My cell phone was missing, and so was my key ring with my house and car keys. I didn’t have time to search for them. I quickly wrote a letter and left it on the table, kissed my apartment good-bye, and bounced. I locked the door using my spare and paid June Bug across the street to nigga rig my car. He took an old key he had and shaped it to fit in the ignition. He had been a locksmith and a professional car thief back in the day. I didn’t know how in the hell he had got the maintenance position for the apartments with his record.
I knew a lot about him because Shun knew someone who had been locked down with him. When she saw him come over to the apartment one day to fix my
dishwasher, she’d panicked.
“What he doing in here?” she’d whispered. “Girl, he gonna rob y’all asses blind. Watch and see. Oh, my God. Let me go before he snatch my wallet. Lord knows I only got about two dollars in it, anyway.”
“Thanks, June. I owe you one,” I said once my car’s engine started.
“You already know what I want,” he said, licking his crusty fat lips. He had had a crush on me since I moved in. He was a large dark-skinned brotha, but he was not my type. I had to hide from him sometimes, because I didn’t want to have to keep telling him that I was already seeing someone, even though he saw Sand almost every day. I mean, hell, he lived directly across the parking lot from us.
“Nah, June. I can’t help you out there. Sorry,” I said.
And then I hurriedly drove away. I was gone forever. No looking back. Did somebody say, “Sand?” Sand who? I ain’t never heard of her.
* * *
Vincent finally came to the door after I had banged on it long enough. It was late in the afternoon. He looked depressed, and more than that, he looked as if something was bothering him.
“Hey, babe,” I said cheerfully. He cracked the door just halfway, forcing me to push it all the way open to keep from having to squeeze through.
“Hey,” he shot back in a low, relaxed voice. “Why didn’t you use your key?”
“Lost it,” I said, although I was sure it was back at the house somewhere.
He walked back into the front room, where he had been stretched out on the sofa bed. I followed closely behind him.
“Where you been? I’ve been trying to call you all day on your cell phone.” He lay back across the bed.