by Erica Hilton
“Look, this shit is serious,” Bacardi said to Charlie and Claire.
“We know that,” Charlie said.
“The cops are going to keep fuckin’ wit’ us because of that dead cop. So from now on, no more ounces of weed on us, or in this apartment. We smoke that shit and keep it moving. And Charlie, don’t ride wit’ God when he’s dirty.”
While they were talking in the bedroom about what to do, Chanel knocked on the door. She wanted to let them know that she’d made some food for them, thinking that they might be hungry after such a horrendous ordeal. But instead of a “Thank you,” Chanel was instantly met with hostility. Bacardi cursed her out for interrupting them and shouted, “Bitch, don’t knock on my fuckin’ door again.”
Chanel sulked and walked away, but Bacardi quickly called her back. Did she have a change of heart? Chanel wondered. Instead, Bacardi barked at her daughter, “In fact, bring us all a plate of food. And bring me a cup of Bacardi. I need a drink. And hurry the fuck up! I need to calm my fuckin’ nerves.”
Chanel complied.
Chapter Seven
The alarm shattered the stillness of the early morning. Bacardi grumbled and dragged herself from bed. A deep sigh spewed from her mouth. She felt like it was going to be a long day. All the shit that had gone down since late last year was going to have an effect on her future.
She zombie-walked into the bathroom and started to prepare herself for work. She took a shower and did her hair and makeup. She took her time to ready herself. She wanted to look professional and not like a ghetto mess. She decided to dress in a gray pantsuit that fit modestly and some shoes that she could actually walk in. For a while, Bacardi stared at her image in the bedroom mirror. She looked somewhat decent—a professional woman for once. There was no mink coat or red bottoms. It was a New Year, and that meant a new life and new things—better things, she hoped. While everyone was either in school or sleeping, Bacardi trotted off to work.
The train ride was uncomfortable. It was packed with people and she couldn’t find a seat, so she had to stand for nearly forty minutes on the local C train. The morning was a cold 29 degrees, and she had to walk three blocks to her job. It was a life she hated—up early, living paycheck to paycheck, and dealing with coworkers she despised, but it was how she provided for her family and herself. It didn’t stop her from bragging to all her non-working neighbors about her position with the city, though.
Bacardi walked into work and it felt like a bad dream. It was like she’d arrived to work naked and everyone was staring at her. The looks she received were discouraging and judgmental. She took it that her coworkers had heard about the big fight with Keisha and a cop being killed in her building. They stared at her with contempt and disappointment. Bacardi wanted to shout, “What the fuck y’all looking at?” But she didn’t. She kept her cool and continued walking to her cubicle. Bacardi found herself the black sheep at her place of employment. No one wanted to talk to her. There were no “good mornings” uttered to her—just silence and foul looks.
She took a seat at her station, sighed heavily, and sat there for a moment. There was no sign of Keisha around, which was a good thing for Bacardi. She couldn’t be within 100 feet of Keisha. She looked around the office, and the tension she sensed almost felt like she was going to be attacked herself. Bacardi was bracing herself for something. She had no idea what, but it was coming sooner than later. Bacardi wasn’t at her workstation for five minutes before Barron approached her. She looked up at him with a quizzical stare.
He said, “Mr. Richards wants to see you right away.”
“What’s this about, Barron?”
“I don’t know. But he wants to see you now,” said Barron.
Bacardi nodded. This wasn’t good. She picked herself up from her chair and headed toward the supervisor’s office. It was a dreadful walk. It felt like she was marching toward the gas chambers—to her own death. She knew it wasn’t going to be anything good. In the past month she had been overloaded with cases and there were some complaints filed against her. She stood at the door to Mr. Richards’ office and lingered for a moment, trying to delay the inevitable. Finally, she knocked and stepped into her supervisor’s office. He sat behind his cluttered desk looking egotistical, and the look he gave Bacardi was nerve-wracking.
“Close the door and have a seat, Bernice,” Mr. Richards said coolly.
Ten minutes later, Bacardi stepped out of her supervisor’s office to find two security guards waiting to escort her to her cubicle to pack her things. She had been fired. Like she was a prisoner, the guards flanked Bacardi and shepherded her to her workstation. They were there to make sure her departure went smoothly.
She was humiliated. She wanted to act out and go berserk, but she had a case lingering and she did not want to get locked up again under any circumstances. So, she bit her tongue, kept her cool, and packed all of her belongings into one box. She left the office with dignity, her head held high with all eyes on her. God, she wanted to scream and curse so badly. She wanted to go out with a fuckin’ bang! The only good thing about the day was that Keisha wasn’t there to see her departure. That bitch was still out on sick leave after her ass-whipping.
***
Charlie heard the faint sound of a door slamming. Someone was there. It was an hour before noon, and both of her sisters were in school and Butch was in the bedroom doing whatever. Charlie figured her mom was still at work. She stopped sucking dick and sprung up from the bed.
“Someone’s here,” she said to God.
“What? What the fuck you talkin’ ’bout?”
“I just heard the door close.”
God wanted her to finish, but Charlie looked somewhat spooked. After the incident with the police, she felt the urge to be careful. She donned a robe and marched out of the bedroom. God hurriedly put his boxers back on and followed her. In the living room she saw her mother returning home from work.
“What happened?” Charlie asked her.
Bacardi looked like she was going through it. It almost looked like she had been crying.
“They fired me today,” said Bacardi.
“Oh shit. Why?”
“Why the fuck you think? Because of all the shit that happened! And Keisha ain’t make the shit better,” Bacardi snapped.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie said.
“Fuck it! It’s just a fuckin’ job, right? I ain’t like it anyway,” Bacardi said. “I need me a fuckin’ drink.”
“I’ll get you something,” God said.
Bacardi expressed a faint smile toward God. She was happy he was around, especially now that she was unemployed. Seeing Charlie in her robe and God in his boxers, Bacardi knew what they were doing before she arrived. Hey, whatever to keep God happy, because now they needed some extra income.
“I’ll be in the bedroom,” Bacardi said sadly.
She walked off down the hallway. Once she was in her bedroom, the full weight of her circumstances hit her. She was forty years old and unemployed. She didn’t have a job anymore, and she didn’t have any money saved. She had to take a seat at the foot of the bed, where Butch was still sleeping like he was dead to the world. She had a lot to think about—or worry about.
She had taken the civil servants test seven years back and scored reasonably high, but there was a hiring freeze. They’d called her four years ago, and things had turned around for the Brown household. Bacardi found herself bringing in more money weekly, and she had health insurance for herself and her family, and she kept on bragging about how much her pension would be worth by the time she retired. She figured if she worked for ACS from when she was thirty-six and retired around sixty-seven or seventy, she would have a healthy package for her retirement. She and Butch could move to Florida; her dream. But now things done changed.
Before she started working for ACS, Bacardi was a bartender at local bars, but being a
bartender in her thirties became a tiresome gig, and it was a young girl’s hustle. The young bitches with butt implants, breast implants, and beat faces squeezed out an old pro like her. Tips and jobs became scarce, and it was hard making ends meet taking care of three girls and a husband. It was Keisha who had forced her to take the test years back. Shit, Keisha even woke her up and drove her there.
Now, their relationship was estranged and she was jobless.
A few hours later, Charlie opened her mother’s bedroom door to find her passed out on the bed alongside Butch. On the floor was an empty bottle of Hennessy. The room was dark with an odor. Charlie didn’t judge her mother or say a word. She understood that Bacardi was going through a difficult time.
***
Bacardi was coming unhinged. The weeks following the killing of the cop, she sunk into a deep depression and started to drink more with her husband. Now the girls would come home and find both of their parents drunk. But the drinking wasn’t the only thing the girls had to worry about with Bacardi. Sometimes after downing half a bottle of Hennessy, Bacardi 151, E&J, or Jack Daniels, Bacardi found herself worked up and angry. She would sloppily get dressed and march toward the front door with a knife in hand. When either Charlie or Claire would confront her, she would curse them out and shout, “Get the fuck out my way, bitch! I’m gonna fuck that bitch up! She cost me my fuckin’ job, and that bitch still owes me five hundred dollars!”
“No, you can’t go over there, Ma! You need to fuckin’ chill out!” Charlie would shout at her.
Charlie would sometimes have to wrestle her mother away from the front door. They couldn’t afford to make things worse for themselves, especially with a criminal case still pending in the courts.
With Bacardi unable to take out her anger and frustration on Keisha, she went to the next best thing. Chanel. The more depressed Bacardi got, the more she took it out on Chanel. She would burst into her youngest daughter’s room at random and throw venomous threats and insults at Chanel. But it didn’t stop with words. Sometimes she came at Chanel with a belt, a shoe, or whatever she could get her hands on and tried to beat the black off her. She would call her daughter black and ugly even though they were the same complexion.
Today was a day that Chanel decided to take Landy’s advice and defend herself against Bacardi’s unrelenting foul mouth. It all started over a Twinkie.
“Who drank the last of my Pepsi?” Bacardi asked as she stared into the almost empty refrigerator.
From the living room, Chanel rolled her eyes and said, “I did.”
Bacardi snorted and slammed the refrigerator shut before sauntering over to the cupboard looking for something sweet. She reached for the Twinkies, only to grab an empty box. She looked inside, shook it, and then turned the box over as if it was a magic trick and a Twinkie would magically drop to the floor. The rage began as a slow, simmering emotion slowly coursing through her body. Just as Chanel placed the last Twinkie bite into her mouth, she could see her mother looming over her from her peripheral vision.
“You ate my muthafuckin’ Twinkie?” Her voice was an unwavering, accusatory growl.
Wide-eyed and frightened, Chanel stopped licking the cream from her fingers. She swallowed hard and simply said, “Yes.”
Bacardi’s rage was still on pause. She knew that if she pressed play she might kill her daughter in there. She continued with, “What . . . the . . . fuck . . . I tell your greedy ass ’bout touching my personal shit?”
“You didn’t even buy the Twinkies; Charlie did. So, technically, the food belongs to my sister.”
“Oh, so you Claire now? You think you’re a smart bitch?”
“I’m only playing the game you started.”
Bacardi placed the palm of her hand to her forehead and simply breathed in and out to calm her nerves. There was always one child that gave each parent hell, and Chanel was it.
“Chanel, tread muthafuckin’ lightly. I’m tryin’ to be nice here, bitch, ’cause I’m on my menstrual. But if you ever eat my fuckin’ Twinkies I will break ya fuckin’ neck. Do your ugly li’l black ass—”
“You black and ugly too then!” Chanel hollered. “Look in the mirror, Ma! We’re twins!”
That remark stopped Bacardi dead in her tracks. Her? Ugly? In her day she had her choice of the biggest ballers in Brooklyn. Everyone lusted after Bernice. And she was hardly black. In Bacardi’s eyes she was ‘brown-skinned’—imaginary shades lighter than her daughter.
Bacardi let out an egotistical snicker. “Chanel, I’m gonna keep it one-hundred wit’ you ’cause you too stupid to see the truth wit’ your own eyes. I don’t know where you came from. I think you got switched at birth like that other li’l black child on the news. You don’t look like me, and you damn sure don’t look like your father. There’s some other family out there missing a troll ’cause my pussy only pushes out dime pieces and that, you’re not!”
“My black is beautiful, Bacardi, and if you don’t think so then your mind is still stuck on a plantation! You Uncle Tom turd!” Chanel had been doing her homework. She was ready.
When Bacardi heard “Uncle Tom,” she finally lost it. Her strong fists beat mercilessly across Chanel’s arms, head, and back. The punches were solid, quick, and unforgiving. She pulled globs of hair from her daughter’s head—just ripped out bundles of hair from the roots. Chanel refused to cry out and got some slaps and punches in too.
“Eat my Twinkie again, bitch!” Bacardi continued to yell as she wailed on her third-born. She needed to make this about the Twinkie, then skin color.
Chanel broke free and ran into the kitchen with Bacardi right on her heels. A butter knife was the only weapon she could grab. She missed the serrated steak knife by an inch.
Chanel wildly swung the knife at her mother as Bacardi blocked each blow with her forearms. The dull butter knife only left scratches and long welts, but the message was sent. Chanel was no longer easy prey.
A drunken Butch was able to pull the two apart. But things were growing so ugly in the Brown household, Chanel thought there were only two ways for her to escape it—run away or commit suicide.
Chapter Eight
It was late March and the weather was looking warm and breezy. The trees in the neighborhood were gradually going from a mess of unruly branches to greenery dotted with buds. It was a sunlit morning, and the sky held a soft blue glow. There were flowers blossoming, and the days were becoming longer because of daylight savings. Everyone welcomed the fresh new season—a needed change from a cold and brutal winter.
Bacardi, Charlie, and Claire were all dressed in their finest attire. It was an important day for them. They had a court date to appear in front of a judge to find out their fate. With the help of one of the best criminal attorneys in Brooklyn, all three ladies felt optimistic about the outcome. With God’s help, they were able to afford the lawyer fee, and since January, criminal attorney Wendell Gilliam put in work to either have their charges dismissed or reduced to disorderly conduct.
For once, Bacardi was sober and looked decent in her long skirt and blouse. She stood by the door and shouted, “C’mon, let’s fuckin’ go! It’s getting late and our cab is waiting outside.”
Charlie and Claire rushed from their bedrooms looking like schoolgirls. Each girl wore a pastel dress and looked like the epitome of innocent and educated. They hurried downstairs and piled into the idling cab.
All three ladies were nervous. They met their attorney at the courthouse to go over today’s proceedings. Wendell Gilliam stood in front of his clients dressed sharply in a dark blue Brooks Brothers suit. His black skin was smooth and flawless, and he had salt-and-pepper hair with a matching goatee. He was a handsome and distinguished black man in his late forties, witty and charismatic. Bacardi found him to be perfect. In fact, she wanted to fuck the man if he would have her—Claire too. But Wendell made it crystal clear that he was a happily mar
ried man and he was only about business with his clients.
The group stood at the steps of the courthouse. Before entering, Bacardi uttered to everyone, “Let us pray first.”
It took everyone by surprise. Pray? They never went to church or spoke of or practiced any religion. But now Bacardi wanted to say a small prayer before they went before the judge. Bacardi gathered everyone closer, and they held hands in a small circle and lowered their heads.
Bacardi began with, “Dear Lord, we pray to you today to help us with this case. We are good people, we’ve done no wrong, and we pray you end this injustice against my family, and I’ll owe you one, dear Lord. Amen.”
It was a tacky prayer, but Bacardi felt proud and confident about it. She was sober and ready to get this over with. Together with her daughters, she waltzed into the courtroom with her head held high and feeling like she was ready for anything.
Two hours later, Bacardi emerged from the courtroom ecstatic. The charges against Charlie and Claire were dropped. Keisha didn’t testify. Bacardi had to plead no contest and was sentenced to six months of probation. If she didn’t get into any trouble, then the case would be fully closed. Their lawyer did an exceptional job. It had been a long two months. Finally, everyone could breathe again.
Bacardi, beaming with joy, exclaimed, “I need to get high, high, and high! And thank you, God!”
Tonight, they planned on celebrating—nothing too crazy, just a few drinks and some weed. Bacardi needed to remind herself that she was on probation for six months.
***
“Chanel, wake up. Wake up,” Mecca said gently, nudging Chanel in her side and trying to wake her friend up as she slept in her comfortable bed.
Chanel was sound asleep and looked very peaceful.
“C’mon, Chanel, get up. It’s getting late,” continued Mecca.
Chanel finally opened her eyes to see Mecca looking down at her. She rose up and uttered, “Oh shit, what time is it?”