Hell's Diva

by Anna J.

  Mecca told Ruby about the incident with Tamika.

  “You should have cut her face again. What kind of nigga doesn’t do anything to somebody who snitched on them? He a sucker-ass nigga! Leave his punk ass!” Ruby said sternly.

  “I’m about done with this nigga.” Mecca snorted.

  After four hours, the visit ended with Mecca promising Ruby that she would see her next month and find the witness who didn’t want to cooperate, and Ruby sending her love to Shamel. Before Ruby hugged Mecca she left her with a last piece of advice. Ruby held her face between her palms like Mecca was still a little girl. Mecca felt a little embarrassed but she just listened.

  “Leave that clown, Tah. He going to fuck around and be your downfall.”

  On her flight home, Mecca thought about everything she and Ruby had talked about. Before she got to the airport she called Shamel and told him to pick her up in two hours at JFK. Mecca smiled at the thought of Ruby finally giving her a blessing when it came to Mecca dealing with boys. She had to admit to herself that she was falling in love with Shamel. She didn’t have the heart to tell him because she didn’t know if he felt the same way. He showed signs that he was in love, but with guys you never know. Some of them just want steady pussy; a chick they could always run to when other chicks front on them. A chick who would do things sexually with them that another chick wouldn’t, and Mecca and Shamel’s sexual rendezvous had no limits.

  When Mecca got to JFK Shamel was there waiting in his Land Cruiser. When she got in the Jeep, Shamel gave her a kiss on the lips and handed her a rose with a card. The card was a Hallmark card with a brown teddy bear on the front that had a red letter “I” on a white T-shirt. When Mecca opened it, the inside said “Love You.” Mecca had butterflies in her stomach and she felt the blood rush to her face. She hugged Shamel tightly and replied, “I love you too, Shamel. No lie.” She smiled from ear to ear and playfully slapped Shamel on his shoulder.

  “You act like I was gone for a long time, surprising me like this.”

  Shamel drove, looking at the road ahead. “Five minutes away from you is like a lifetime.”

  Mecca knew right then and there that she had to leave Tah and commit herself to Shamel. During the ride to Brooklyn, Mecca told him about her visit with Ruby. Shamel smiled when she said that Ruby gave her blessing with dealing with him.

  “Next time you go see her, I’m going,” Shamel said.

  “She’ll be feeling that,” Mecca replied. When Mecca relayed to him what Ruby had said about her appeal and the witness from Harlem, Shamel became angry at the witness and promised Mecca that he was gonna make sure this nigga do the right thing. Even if they had to pay him whatever.

  “Matter of fact, we gonna make that a priority,” Shamel said, already putting a plan into action. Mecca nodded in agreement.

  Two nights later, as Shamel was exiting his Land Cruiser at a weed spot on Pitkin and Miller Avenue, two cars screeched to a halt and eight men jumped out. Shamel didn’t have his gun on him this night and he cursed himself for it when he realized the masked men were not cops. Before he could run or try to fight, he felt something heavy and hard hit him on the back of his head, and everything went black.

  When he came to, his vision was blurred for a few seconds and his head hurt like hell. When he was able to focus, he saw that the room he was in looked like hell. He could tell he was in an abandoned tenement by the smell of rotted wood mixed with human waste and whatever animals used the place as shelter. The windows were boarded up and the walls were covered with graffiti, chipped paint, and once-plastered holes. The wooden floor that also had holes was littered with syringes, empty crack vials, and garbage. The two men who stood in front of him had the black ski masks still covering their faces. Shamel looked around for the other men who had kidnapped him, but he couldn’t see or hear the presence of any other people in the building.

  “What’s the deal, son, you all right?” one of the masked men chuckled.

  “Fuck y’all niggas want? I ain’t got no money like that,” Shamel said wearily. Both men started laughing.

  “And we’re Spiderman and Superman, mu’fucka. We know you got money and the bitch you deal with got mad paper. We gonna see how loyal y’all li’l team is,” the other masked man barked.

  “Leave her outta this, son. How much you want?” Shamel said, angry.

  “Damn, kid. That hit a nerve, huh? This nigga must be in love or something, son,” one of the men said to the other.

  The other one didn’t laugh or join in with the other about Shamel loving Mecca. “I thought you ain’t have money like that. Soon as we bring the bitch up you ready to peel, huh? Too late, we called her and told her fifty thousand or your ass is out.”

  The masked man who didn’t laugh at the love joke leaned closer to Shamel. “She got a half hour to drop the money off where we told her or you a body, son.”

  Shamel recognized the voice. He knew if he let him know that he knew who he was he would definitely leave the building in a bag. There was a time and place for everything, especially revenge.

  The other masked man took a cigarette out of a pack of Newports he pulled out of his black fatigue pants, and lifted his mask over his mouth, revealing his mouth. Shamel saw the gold teeth the guy had on his bottom teeth. The word ‘Born’ was engraved on them.

  When Mecca received the call she immediately went to her safe she had hidden in an apartment she rented in Bushwick. No one knew about this apartment except her. She rented it just in case she needed to hide out and no one would be able to tell cops or her enemies where she was. The caller told her, “We got Shamel. If you think we lying, go pick his truck up on Pitkin and Miller where we picked him up from. If you want to see him alive, we need fifty thousand. Drop it off in the garbage bin on the corner of New Lots in a half hour.” The phone clicked off.

  Mecca drove to Pitkin and Miller with one of Shamel’s soldiers and tears welled up in her eyes when she saw his truck. She knew something was wrong when he never returned from the weed spot. She told Shamel’s soldier to take the truck back to Sutter Gardens and “get ready for war.”

  Mecca dropped the fifty thousand where she was told, then drove off. Back in the tenement, a third man wearing a mask appeared in the room and whispered in the other masked man’s ear. The man whose voice Shamel recognized nodded his head, then bent over, putting his face close to Shamel. Shamel could smell the alcohol on the guy’s breath through the wool mask.

  “I guess that bitch love you or something ’cause she paid for your freedom and life’ nigga. Next time, have your heat on you, stupid!”

  All the while, Shamel was trying to get his hands loose from the duct tape around his wrist and ankles. His hands were taped behind his back and he was sitting on a crate with his back against the dirty wall. One of the masked men pulled out an orange box cutter and it made a clicking noise as the blade was pushed out.

  “Let’s see if she’ll be attracted to you or pay for your plastic surgery after this.”

  Shamel started struggling to get his hands loose. He knew what was next. Unfortunately, the tape was too strong and thick for him to break loose. The masked man without the box cutter began punching Shamel in his face and body with fast punches. He felt his eye begin to swell and blood flowed out of his nose. He could taste the blood in his mouth as the guy kept punching.

  Fortunately, he was in shape, so the body punches didn’t affect him, but the blows to the face were making him dizzy and the pain was excruciating. Then the worst happened.

  “Hold his face, son, I’ma eat this nigga food!” the one with the box cutter yelled.

  One of them held his face as Shamel tried to turn away. He felt a pinch, then a burning sensation. The masked men then put duct tape around his eyes. They picked him up under his arms and dragged him off the crate, down some stairs, which seemed like they went on forever, banging against his butt and legs.

  “Open the door, son!”

  The cold night ai
r rushed in as the door opened. Shamel felt the air cooling the blood on his face, which was numb. In the distance, he heard cars driving by and police sirens. Then the men let him go, and his head hit the ground. Lying still, he wondered what the men were doing until he heard them open a car door.

  “Cut the tape from his wrist, son!” one of them yelled. Hearing the sound of the box cutter open made his body tense.

  “Turn around, mu’fucka!” someone said, tugging on his arm. With the strength he had, Shamel turned over on his side and let the guy cut the duct tape off his wrist. When his hand was freed, he pulled the tape off of his face at the same time he heard a car door slam and tires screeching.

  By the time he got the tape off his eyes and pulled it from his ankles, his kidnappers were gone. Shamel looked around the neighborhood to see where he was. The block was filled with tenements; some abandoned, some not. The sidewalk was filled with piles of black industrial garbage bags and littered with garbage, baby diapers, and drug paraphernalia. He touched his face and felt the deep gash and the swelling. He looked at his hands and saw that they were covered in blood.

  The block looked familiar; he knew he was in Brooklyn, but was unsure where. He looked at a street sign as the elevated train at the corner rode by, making a screeching sound. Shamel could see the sparks of electricity from under the train as he read the sign: Hull Street and Broadway. He knew he was in Brownsville. Shamel walked to a pay phone on Broadway and dialed Mecca’s cell phone. She picked up on the first ring.

  “Hello!”

  Shamel never felt happier to hear someone’s voice. “Mecca, it’s me.”

  “Shamel, where you at?” Mecca screamed into the phone, sounding relieved.

  “Come get me. I’m on Hull and Broadway. I know who did this.”

  “Don’t move, I’ll be right there. I’m sorry, Shamel,” Mecca cried.

  “Don’t sweat it, Mecca. This ain’t your fault. These niggas going to pay. Hurry up, though. Niggas ate my food, I’m leaking.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to getting’ pussy.

  Tupac

  The image of Lou was now dressed in a Catholic archbishop’s robe. The yellow and purple robe had gold crosses on the crest and Lou held a large, black Bible in his hands. He opened the Bible and looked at Mecca.

  “Mecca, you ever heard the saying ‘vengeance is mine saith the Lord’?”

  “Yeah, I have been to church before. Damn, I wasn’t always in the street,” Mecca countered, sounding aggravated.

  “I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m not going to ask you why you’re so angry even in death, but,” Lou said loudly, “you’ve been angry all your life so you carried it with you to the other side,” Lou said, rubbing his palms together. “Now, I asked you about revenge. Don’t you think it’s rather odd that the creator says revenge is his, but he made it so humans would feel the urge to avenge themselves against their adversaries? Are you following me?”

  Mecca looked at Lou confused and shrugged her shoulders.

  “I figured you would do that,” Lou said. He began to pace back and forth. “It’s a catch-22, Mecca. It’s not fair, where is the mercy in that? You create something to be able to do as it feels, but you punish them for the choices you gave him. Is that love? No, it’s a game!”>

  “Why are you telling me this? If you have issues with God or whoever, take that up with Him, Her, Them, but leave me alone!” Mecca barked.

  Lou put his hand against his heart. “I’m not bothering you, Mecca, I’m trying to teach you something,” Lou replied.

  “What good does it do me now? What is this knowledge going to do for me? I’m dead.”

  “Mecca, knowledge is infinite. You never know what will become of you. Who knows what his greatness has in store for you?” Lou paused and smiled. “I’m just doing my job.”

  Mecca picked Shamel up in her red Lexus and took him to Kings County Hospital, where he was stitched up. He received a hundred and three stitches for his face, and was released from the hospital the same night.

  Shamel’s face was numb from the Novocain they used to put the stitches in. He could barely speak when Mecca drove back to East New York. He reclined in the passenger seat with a large gauze pad on the left side of his face. His whole face was swollen, and to anyone who knew him, he was unrecognizable.

  “Who did this shit, Shamel? It was Tah, wasn’t it?” Mecca asked with the look Shamel had seen on her face when she went after Tamika. It was a look that made her seem like a different person, like when Bruce Banner got angry and was about to transform into the Hulk.

  To Mecca’s surprise, Shamel shook his head and struggled when he replied, “It was those niggas Kaheem and Born.”

  “You can’t be serious.” Mecca’s face turned into a look of disbelief.

  “Yeah,” Shamel replied in a groggy voice.

  “Your own cousins? Why the fuck would they…” Mecca banged on the steering wheel. “Niggas is real shiesty, Shamel. You treat them niggas like your little brothers. You did everything for them niggas!” Mecca wondered why when she called Kaheem’s house, his girl said she ain’t see him in a few days. When Mecca told the soldier of Shamel’s who came with her to pick up his truck what happened, he asked when the last time was that anyone had seen Kaheem and Born.

  Mecca didn’t think anything of it at the time because she was so worried about Shamel. She thought maybe they were at some chick’s crib doing whatever. The last thing she would have thought was that they were involved in a kidnapping for ransom on their own cousin. How grimy is that? she thought.

  The thought if it brought a lump up in Shamel’s throat. He fought to hold back the tears. His mind flashed back to when his cousins Kaheem and Born, both twenty years old now, came from Brownsville to stay with Shamel and his grandmother after their house burned down, killing their mother and their little sister, who was two years old.

  Kaheem and Born were both fifteen years old when they came to stay with him. A lot of people thought they were twins, but they were really eight months apart. They were both out-of-control teens. They did everything together from crime to sharing women when it came to sex. Both of them did time in juvenile facilities for dozens of robberies around the city. Shamel introduced them to the drug game, thinking that if they made good money it would calm them down and stop them from committing petty robberies.

  “It ain’t no money in that bullshit chain-snatching, sticking-up-corner shit,” Shamel would school them.

  He eventually convinced them to join his team and he put them in charge of giving out product to the workers and collecting money. Since he knew they had a sweet tooth for violence, he gave them the positions, so if any of the workers messed up some of the money, Kaheem and Born enjoyed chastising the offender. Sometimes they would go too far and Shamel would have to intervene. When Kaheem and Born found out that Shamel was getting his product from a female, they began to think that Shamel was getting soft.

  “Yo, son, Shamel get his work from that chick Mecca,” Kaheem said to Born.

  “Word? How you know, son?”

  “He told me,” Kaheem roared.

  Born looked astonished. “That pretty-ass chick got work like that?”

  “Yeah, and Shamel in love with her. He fucking her and the bitch got a man…” Kaheem snapped his fingers and continued. “Matter of fact, she fuck with Tah Gunz from Brownsville Houses. You know she originally from the ville.”

  “I thought Shamel bust his gat? Fuck he doing working for a chick? She supposed to give everything to him and play her position,” Born said.

  Kaheem shook his head with a disappointed look on his face. “Shamel got soft on us. I know the nigga fam and he looked out for us, but niggas gonna say we all work for the bitch and think something sweet about us. Something got to give, son.”

  “So what up, son? Let’s do what we do best,” Born said with a mischievous grin on his face. Kaheem nodded in agreement with the sam
e grin.

  Shamel couldn’t believe that his own flesh and blood would do him so dirty, but the situation would definitely be handled. He was thankful that he had a ride or die chick like Mecca by his side, and knew if shit got sticky he could always turn to her for help.

  “Don’t worry, Shamel, everything gonna be all right,” Mecca said, rubbing his thigh. Mecca looked over at Shamel and could see the pain in his eyes. Well, the one eye that was open. The other was swollen shut from the punches he took to the face by his kidnappers.

  Shamel looked at Mecca for a few seconds, and then looked out the passenger window. “Word to my grandmother soul, I’m gonna kill them niggas, Mecca.”

  Mecca put what she had to do for Ruby on hold to tend to Shamel while he healed. She drove over to his building every morning to make him breakfast in bed. She helped him dress and she cleaned his face and changed his gauze pad. To put him more at ease she would suck his dick and let him cum in her mouth. His ribs were sore so she laid him on his back and rode him.

  Tah came over to her apartment twice a week and Mecca would treat him like a stranger. When he tried to have sex with her she would turn him down.

  “I don’t know what that bitch Tamika got. You ain’t gonna be fucking me after you fucked her.”

  Tah would accuse her of fucking Shamel and say that was the reason she didn’t want to have sex with him. Mecca would ignore him and Tah would leave. Eventually Mecca started seeing less and less of Tah, except when he collected money from his soldiers and copped coke off Mecca and took the consignment.

  Mecca knew eventually Tah was going to be a problem. She figured Tah would eventually feel that if she was no longer his girl, he shouldn’t do business with her or look over her other spots in Brownsville, and that’s exactly what started to happen.

  Mecca got the word that her spots in Langston Hughes and Tilden were constantly being robbed and no one knew who was doing the stick ups. When Mecca asked Tah about it, he simply said, “I can’t be in three places at one time. I’m saying you should put your boy Shamel in charge of those spots. Ain’t nobody doing it in my projects. Niggas respect who I be.”