by Kiki Swinson
Once again I ignored him.
“You know what, I tried to convince myself that you had nothing to do with my baby getting murdered, but then I thought about everything you said to me and the police, and it just didn’t add up. Now that I’ve got you all to myself, I know you’re gonna tell me what really happened to my daughter.”
I sat there and watched my uncle while he talked to me, and he displayed no emotions whatsoever. If my eyes were closed, I wouldn’t have known who the fuck he was. He looked and sounded very sinister. I couldn’t believe he had these people holding me hostage so he could find out what had really happened to Nikki. Unfortunately, there was no way I could come clean with him. Telling him I was with Nikki when she got killed would implicate me. He could then use that information against me and have my ass put behind bars for being an accessory to murder. My life would be completely fucked up. Everything I’d built for myself back in Anguilla would be a waste. My fiancé, the house I bought, my new car, it would all go up in smoke.
“So what will it be?” he asked, his expression remaining unchanged. “Uncle Lanier,” I began, my voice barely audible, “I don’t know what happened to Nikki. She and I lost touch with each other before I left the country.”
Suddenly he wrapped his right hand around my neck and nearly choked me to death. “That’s a lie!” he roared. The veins in his temple looked like they were about to pop. I’d never seen my uncle like this before.
Gasping for air and trying to talk at the same time, I begged him to let me go. I knew he couldn’t understand what I was saying, but he saw the tears fall from my eyes, so he had to know I was in pain.
He finally released me, but I needed more relief. I wanted to massage my neck with my hands, but they were still tied behind my back, so I was left with no other choice but to sit there in excruciating pain as he plotted his next move.
“Kira, I’m only gonna say this one more time,” he said calmly. “If you don’t come clean with me about what happened to Nikki, you are really going to be sorry.”
I thought for a second more after he gave me the ultimatum. I wondered what he would do to me if I continued to act like I knew nothing about Nikki’s murder. It was unclear to me what he was capable of doing, but when I thought about how intense the pressure was when he wrapped his hand around my throat, I knew he was capable of hurting me. The other thought that popped into my mind was whether he had any intentions of killing me. He hadn’t made that clear to me at all, so that was something I needed to know.
“Uncle Lanier, what do you plan on doing to me?” I asked, tears still falling down my face.
“If you don’t tell me what happened to my daughter, I’m gonna kill you,” he replied without blinking an eye.
I heard the sincerity in his voice and knew he was as serious as cancer. But I couldn’t stop wondering how he got this way. I’d known this man my entire fucking life. He used to remind me about how he changed my fucking diapers when I was a baby, and now he was sitting in front of me threatening to take my life.
One part of me believed he was serious, but the other part of me thought he was bluffing. He was my uncle, my mother’s only brother; we had the same blood pumping through our veins, so I couldn’t imagine him killing me.
Confused about whether I still had a leg to stand on, I decided to call his bluff. Telling him that I’d witnessed Nikki’s murder, even though I didn’t pull the trigger, would be devastating to me. Not only that, but I knew he wouldn’t understand if I told him that she had turned against me and fucked my fiancé. She was his baby—the only seed he had. So in his eyes she couldn’t do anything wrong.
Whatever I decided to say, I knew it had to sound convincing. I took a deep breath and exhaled. Tears fell more rapidly from my eyes. “Uncle Lanier, I swear on my life, I don’t know who killed—”
Once again he drove his fingers into my neck, even more savagely than before. He literally sank his fingers deeper and deeper into my flesh.
I began to cough hoarsely as the breath was violently squeezed from my body. Fear overpowered me. I wanted nothing more than for him to let me go so I could coax air back into my heaving chest. I knew it would be just another second before I expired because I started blacking out.
When he realized that I was passing out, his chokehold relaxed, and he released his hand from my neck. My throat was racked with pain, and I knew it must look really raw and discolored. Able to breathe again, I gasped for more oxygen as he stood there and watched.
“You think I’m fucking playing with you? I will fucking kill you, bitch! Stop playing with me and tell me who killed my fucking daughter!” Through my watery eyes, I could still see him hovering over me.
As I began to breathe a little more easily, he lunged back and slammed his fist into the side of my right cheek, drawing blood. “Tell me now!” he yelled.
“OK. OK.”
Finally getting his attention, he took a step back and crossed his arms. “I’m listening,” he said.
I tried to collect my thoughts, but everything was all scrambled up in my mind. Words were jumbled over each other, and I couldn’t think straight. I looked down to the floor, and then I looked back at him. Something told me that he knew I knew what really happened to Nikki, and that was why he wasn’t letting up. It was like he could see right through me. I needed to say something he wanted to hear.
I looked down at the floor once again and said a silent prayer asking God for a miracle. I asked Him to deliver me from this situation, and I told Him I didn’t care how He did it, just as long as it was done. I cried out to Him through my aching heart, and was hoping He heard me.
I looked back up, and my uncle still stood there, waiting. I quickly reminded myself that I had to look at this situation from another angle. I wasn’t dealing with a rational man. He wasn’t the man I grew up with and called Uncle Lanier. This guy was cut from a different cloth, and he was out for my blood.
Right before I attempted to open my mouth, Kasey ran back into the room. She said, “Hey, L.L., Dré said hold tight for a minute because the police are in front of the house fucking with them young boys who sell them red bags.”
My uncle turned around and gave her his full attention. From my point of view, she couldn’t have come at a better time. I looked to the ceiling and thanked God. People said He looked out for babies and fools, and they were right.
“How long have they been out there fucking with them?” he asked.
“They just pulled up about three minutes ago.”
“Stay right here and watch her,” he instructed, and then he rushed off.
I heard him as he hurried down the hallway and up the staircase. I let out of sigh of relief as his footsteps grew fainter.
Knowing that the police were standing outside gave me the urge to yell out for help, but then I figured, if I opened my mouth, my uncle would punish me for it. Not only that, I was unsure of how close they were to the house. It would be just my luck that they wouldn’t hear me. I knew if I was ever going to get out of this, it wouldn’t be because the police saved me. That was shit you only saw on TV.
After Uncle Lanier left, Kasey had a smirk plastered on her face like she’d seen something amusing. I wanted so badly to ask her what the fuck was funny, but I didn’t have any strength left in me to open my mouth. I could feel blood running from my lips and my mouth like a faucet. All I could do was sit there and pray to walk out of this place alive.
“Damn, homegirl! He really fucked you up!” she commented as she stood before me, her hands pressed against her hips.
I looked at her, and then I turned my head away. She wasn’t worth any of the time I had left. My focus had to be on trying to figure out a good-ass lie to tell my uncle. The shit couldn’t be farfetched, so I went into thinking mode. But once again, this dumb bitch interrupted me. I started to tell her to get lost, but that would have been grounds for her to put her hands on me, and I wasn’t in the mood for that bullshit. I wanted to keep every ounce
of energy I had left to use when my uncle got back.
“Bitch, don’t act like you can’t hear me!” she yelled.
“Kasey, why do you keep taunting me? You see how helpless I am right now. I don’t have the energy to start a confrontation with you. If you beat me until I was black and blue, I would just sit here and pray to God that you’d have mercy on me.”
“Don’t try to make me feel sorry for you. I heard what kind of chick you were, Ms. Thang. Yeah, L.L. gave us the rundown on you and your husband Ricky, and how y’all turned y’all backs on Nikki after she got locked up for transporting y’all shit.” She frowned. “That was some foul shit, if you ask me! Niggas like that get dealt with when they do that betraying shit!”
Listening to Kasey talk me to death with all that misinformation gave me a headache to go with the pain I felt in my throat. She made matters worse when she said that I deserved to be in this situation because a lot of other people suffered at the hands of me and Ricky. She even went as far as to say that she heard how vicious Ricky was when he used to run the streets, but when it came to women, he was soft.
“I remember when my homegirl told me that he tried to get her,” she said. “She used to bartend at Blakely’s. Every time he walked up in there with his boys, she told me that he always tried to get her to call him, but she said she wouldn’t take his number.”
“I’m not surprised,” I replied nonchalantly. At this point Ricky was dead, so his past life didn’t affect me at all. I couldn’t care less about anything he used to do. All that shit I went through with him was behind me.
“Oh, so you knew your husband wasn’t shit, huh?”
I didn’t respond. To me it was somewhat rhetorical, especially if what she said was true. I really didn’t want to entertain her anymore, so I closed my eyes and laid my head against the back of the chair.
Finally I heard my uncle’s footsteps coming back toward us. An uneasy feeling crept back into my stomach, and my heart started racing. He was coming back to finish what he’d started, and I knew he was going to punish me.
My eyes grew every bit of two more inches when I saw him enter the room. His facial expression hadn’t changed one bit. He looked like he had come back to take care of business, so I knew I was about to embark on another rocky experience.
“Kasey, I want you to come ride with me and Dré uptown,” he said.
“Is the police still outside?” she asked him.
“No. They just left.”
“Whatcha gon’ do with her?” she asked him.
“Breon is gonna watch her.”
“A’ight,” she said and left the room.
As soon as Kasey walked out of the room, my uncle walked over to me. I was literally shaking on the inside and prepared for whatever he was about to say or do. I looked directly in his eyes. I wanted to burst into tears and beg him to release me, but I knew that wasn’t about to happen, so I left well enough alone. I did, however, get up the nerve to ask him what he planned to do with me.
He looked at me and said, “Get the truth.”
“Are you going to let me go?”
“Yeah. As soon as you tell me the truth.”
“But I’ve been telling you truth.”
He leaned over into my face and said in a low whisper, “You and I both know you’re holding something back, so the sooner you come clean with it, the sooner you can leave here.”
He stood straight up, but before he turned to leave the room, he encouraged me to think about what he’d said because when he got back my time would be up.
When the other guy, Breon, walked into the room, my uncle walked out and headed toward the front door. I heard him say a few words to Kasey and Dré when he got to the front door.
As soon as I heard the front door open and close, I knew they had left. What they were about to go get into was a complete mystery to me.
When All Else Fails
Breon sat down on the sofa about seven feet away from me. He picked up the remote control and surfed through the channels. He stopped at channel 28, A&E. The First 48 was on, and his eyes were glued to the screen. I’d watched the show a few times before moving out of the country. I guess now wasn’t such a bad time to do some catching up, since I was being held there against my will.
As I sat there, my stomach started growling. I never ate my sandwich from Feather-N-Fin. If I knew Tony had intentions to leave me, I would have eaten it before I got out of the car. I didn’t know how long I’d been there, but through the thin curtains that covered the windows I noticed that the street lights were on outside, so I knew it was past my dinner time.
Breon was so engrossed in his show, I was afraid to ask him for something to eat. But my stomach persisted with the rumbling.
“Excuse me,” I said to get his attention.
He turned and looked at me. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“I know you probably think I’m crazy for asking you this, but I was hoping you could get me something to snack on, because I am starving over here.”
He hesitated for a moment. “I was told not to leave this room for nothing,” he said. “But I guess I can get you something.”
Knowing that this guy wasn’t all that bad made me happy for the moment. I gave him a half-smile. “Thanks.”
He walked out of the room and returned a minute later with a piece of chicken wrapped in a paper towel and a clear plastic cup of red juice. “I got you a piece of some KFC we had earlier, so it’s room temperature, and I got you some fruit punch to go with it.”
“Thank you so much!” I replied. I was happy as hell when he walked in the room with that shit in his hands. I knew he wouldn’t untie me so I could feed myself, so I didn’t ask. At this point, all that mattered was that I was about to put something on my stomach. Well, maybe that wasn’t all that mattered because, if he untied me and told me I could leave, I’d leave that cold piece of chicken behind in a flash. But that wasn’t happening.
Breon approached me with the chicken in his right hand and the cup of fruit punch in the other. He held the piece of chicken right in front of my mouth so I could bite it. I chewed, and then I bit into it again.
Under normal circumstances I would have felt really stupid letting some complete stranger feed me a cold piece of chicken, but unfortunately the situation I was in wasn’t normal, so I refused to complain.
Once I had devoured the entire piece of chicken, he pressed the cup of juice between my lips. I opened my mouth just enough to drink. It didn’t take me long to drink the entire cup of fruit punch, and when I was done I let out a loud belch. “Excuse me,” I said.
Breon smiled. “You ain’t got to apologize. You a’ight,” he assured me as he held the chicken bone in one hand, and the empty plastic cup in the other. Without asking me, he used the napkin he’d held the chicken with and wiped the grease and the red ring of juice off my mouth. I was speechless. But when I got back my voice I thanked him once again.
He smiled again. “I told you, you a’ight.”
“I know. But I can’t help it. The way I’ve been treated since I’ve been here is far worse than I’ve ever been treated in my life, especially by a family member.” I waited for Breon to make a comment, but he just shrugged his shoulders and gave me a blank expression.
It really didn’t surprise me that he didn’t want to respond. The entire time I’d been here he was the only one who acted like he didn’t want to be part of the decisions when it came to me. And now that I looked at him closer, he seemed like he was a little standoffish. People like him preferred not to get into situations that didn’t concern them. I was like that too, so I guess he and I had something in common.
I watched him as he strolled back into the kitchen area to dispose of the paper towel and the empty plastic cup. When he came back into the room, he sat back down on the sofa and resumed watching The First 48. I tuned back in, but I couldn’t help but think how long it would be before my uncle, Kasey, and Dré came back. The thought of them coming ba
ck to torture me some more made me uneasy. The food and drink I had just consumed was bound to come back up if I thought about it any longer. Talking to Breon would definitely take my mind off him.
“Hey, Breon,” I said.
He took his eyes off the television and gave me his undivided attention. “What’s up?”
“How do you know my uncle?”
“Me and my brother Dré met him through our cousin Tony right after his baby mama Rhonda got killed. I’m not sure how they met, but I heard it was during the time when the homicide detectives went to Nikki and started asking her questions about the murder, since Rhonda was snatched up from the hair shop. But, besides that, me and Dré copped a couple of brand-new flat-screen TVs from him a while back. He told us he was the district manager for Wal-Mart, so he could get us anything we wanted for the right price. When he called us last week and told us he had some brand-new laptops he needed to get rid of, we called our homeboy Mitch and he took ’em off L.L.’s hands with no problem.”
I got quiet for a second. I had to mull over what Breon had just said. Uncle Lanier was always a straight-laced guy. I’d never seen him associate with any thugs, so what did he and Tony have in common? I decided to put that question on the back burner for now and get as much information out of Breon as possible.
“Do you know where they just went?”
“Yeah. L.L. got a call from some nigga from the Wal-Mart warehouse, so he had to go.”
“Why did he need your brother and Kasey to go with him?
“Well, he needed Kasey to drive, and he needed my brother to help him load some shit onto his truck.”
Getting information from Breon was easier than stealing candy from a baby. Every question I asked, he answered. I had just a couple more questions for him, so I held no punches.