by Noire
“Don’t you look at that fuckin’ sperm donor! Nas is my damn son. Now give him to me.”
Tai fucked around and gave me the same look of disgust that Jaheim used to give me, and it burned me up from the inside out.
“What’s up, Tai?” I said, walking up on her. “You got something in your eye?”
I swung a roundhouse punch on her, capping her real square on the side of her head. That bitch almost threw Nasir at Free as she started swinging on me. She got a lucky one in, banging me in my nose. I fell back on my ass as blood dripped down my lip and slid off my chin then fell between my titties.
Free stood there holding my son as Tai screamed on me in the freezing cold. She had on a real cute red sweater and she was wearing the diamond choker I had bought her right after Uncle Swag got knocked.
“You ain’t shit, Saucy! You fucked over your mama, your baby, and your man! I don’t know how I ever thought you was my friend!”
I was trying to get up when that bitch ran over and spit on me.
Tai spit on me! That scary bitch really spit on me!
I wiped that shit off my face and laughed.
“Yeah,” I said, backing up. “You like to spit on people, huh? Well that’s why your man Jah was spitting on that he-she’s dick when he slobbed it down! Did you see the whole tape? No? Well I did! Jaheim was getting his rocks off the whole time! His dick was hard as a pipe when them nasty wannabe she-men was digging up in his ass and popping his doody-string!”
Tai’s eyes got big and she moved closer looking like she was gonna jump on me again.
“Saucy!” Free said, moving toward me. “Shut the fuck up! Tai, she’s drunk. Don’t pay her no mind. Take Nas and go back inside ’cause this bitch is dru—”
“You shut the fuck up, Freedom!” I screamed. “This is between me and this bitch right here!”
I laughed real loud at the look on Tai’s face, backing further away ’cause this ho was bound to start spitting again when she heard what I was about to say next.
“Yeah, Tai. You always been jealous of me! Bitch just admit that shit. I’m fine, and you just flabby. I’m a stunna and you just a stunt! You been hating hard on me ever since that day your nasty, booger-nosed daddy stood up there and finger-fucked me right in your living roo—”
I saw Tai’s face change from disgust to shock and alarm. I took another step backward and a low rail hit the back of my legs, sending me down. Tai reached for me, but she wasn’t fast enough to catch me. My stiletto heel slid across the ice. I grabbed at the rail and missed, and before I knew it, I was falling.
Down…down!
The last thing I saw was Free and Tai standing together at the rail. They were looking down at me and holding Nasir between them, his head snuggled against his daddy’s neck. Free reached out and put his arm around Tai’s shoulder and pulled her close, and that’s when the ocean opened its mouth and swallowed me whole.
And at the end…
THE WHOLE DAMN script had been flipped. I was falling backward and I didn’t have nobody to blame but myself. I was bobbing around in an ocean full of my own mistakes, and for a hot second all I could think was damn. Goddamn! See there. This time I’d really fucked up. I’d crossed the last damn line, and the look in their eyes said it all: trifling and greedy. Scandalous and conniving. I held my arms out as I splashed around, gulping amd gasping. I was waving, grabbing at liquid, reaching for them and praying that they would save me. The water was closing around me. Icy, just like my heart had been. Salty, just like my tongue. Grimier than my soul. Burning my eyes and choking me. Stuffing my nasty words back down my throat. Dragging me under as Free’s pretty brown eyes watched me go. Damn! I thought again, and for the first time in my life, I surrendered. There was no point in struggling. The way they stared at me, I was already a body. The love in their eyes hurt me so bad…it made my death feel good.
New York, New York—
Music mogul François “Freedom” Moore and the lovely Miss Tairene Watkins were married yesterday in a private ceremony at their posh new estate in southern New Jersey. Dozens of celebrities, friends, and family members were on hand to witness the romantic garden event, which one guest tearfully described as “the most beautiful union ever.”
The bride is an event organizer for some of the most powerful icons in the urban music industry. Dressed in a simple but elegant lace gown complete with a veil and a three-foot train, a teary-eyed Watkins carried her stepson Nasir Moore in her arms as she walked down a flower-strewn aisle in preparation for the wedding service which was performed by the Reverend James Miller, the father of her ex-fiancé.
Freedom Moore is the CEO of Ruthless Rap Records, a music company that was embroiled in a bitter scandal last year after the violent death of the label’s most promising artist, Andre “Thug-A-Licious” Williams, who was knifed by a fan during an NBA finals game. Soon after Williams’s death the label was besieged with conflict between Moore and his former business partner, Linnay Woods, who was accused by several artists of illegally diverting royalty earnings into his personal accounts.
Earlier this year, Woods was convicted of tax evasion, fraud, bribery, and embezzlement, and sentenced to ten years in federal prison. Moore, who was awarded all assets of the company, and who some believed to have taken a major financial loss as a result of his partner’s criminal activity, is reportedly a shrewd, frugal investor who seized autonomy in the company and quietly set about rebuilding his empire to the multimillion-dollar mega-producing enterprise that it is today.
Recently, Moore and Watkins experienced twin tragedies in the loss of two people who were paramount in their lives. Watkins’s fiancé, Jaheim Miller, tragically fell to his death from the window of their nineteenth-floor apartment, while her best friend, Saucy Robinson, who also happened to be Moore’s ex-girlfriend and the mother of his young son, Nasir, accidentally fell off a yacht leased by mega mogul Marshall George, and drowned in the frigid waters off of Cape May.
“It was our friendship and loss that brought us closer,” Moore says of his short but intense relationship with Watkins. “We both loved and lost the two people closest to our hearts, but through it all our new love was born and I discovered the woman I’d been waiting for my whole life.”
His new bride agrees. “We’ve both experienced a lot of pain and heartache, but look at what we’ve gained. Each other. And now,” she said, playing with the handsome baby boy she bounced in her arms, “not only do I have a new best friend and husband, I also have a beautiful son who I’ve been loving since the moment he came into this world.”
The new couple and their son plan to honeymoon on the island of Jamaica where Moore owns a villa called Soy Saucy. The luxury property sits on a private beach lot that Moore says he purchased while visiting the island with Robinson nearly two years ago. Plans for Watkins’s adoption of Nasir are already under way, and although the past was traumatic and troubled for this enterprising young family, their future looks bright and promising.
Dear Bookclub Reader:
Thong on Fire and the haunting journey of Saucy Sarita Robinson lingered on my mind long after I typed the last word. This cautionary tale of a young girl tossed into a cruel world stained with urban blight, and whose twisted, self-destructive ideals ultimately led to her downfall, is all too familiar in inner-city neighborhoods. Some of us have witnessed the trials of girls like Saucy firsthand, and the consequences are often tragic and heartbreaking.
Issues of poverty, sexual abuse, addiction, promiscuity, and compromised morals are more relevant than ever in our communities today, and as Saucy’s story has shown us, the repercussions can be deadly, both in fiction and in life.
I hope by exposing these issues in Thong on Fire dialogue will be sparked and action initiated to help rescue our youth from the grimy, biting traps that are waiting to ensnare them. Points of discussion your book club might find helpful are:
1) The media-driven images that tell our youth who and what they should as
pire to be.
2) The importance of instilling self-reliance in young girls so they learn to search inward for motivation instead of looking for a “baller” to meet their needs.
3) A positive dose of self-respect that is never up for negotiation.
4) Rejecting the media’s objectification of young women and building their self-esteem.
5) Methods of fortifying our youth and ourselves against the glittering, powerful lure of street life.
NOIRE