Halleigh couldn’t help but crack a smile as she looked into his eyes. “Is this better?” she asked with a corny grin.
He laughed and replied, “Yeah, that’s better.” He slipped his shirt over his head, keeping his eyes glued on her the entire time. He then reached out his arm and stated, “Go ahead, I’m following you.”
Maury put his hand on the small of Halleigh’s back as she walked in front of him. It was a slight gesture of affection that Halleigh didn’t even really make notice of, but Mimi saw it as soon as they came into clear view.
What the fuck? Mimi’s insides began to boil, she was so angry. She was the one who had just given up the goodies to Maury, been on her knees, pleasing this fool, and now he wanted to spit in her face by toting Halleigh into the room like she was Beyoncé and Mimi was Kelly or, even worse, Michelle.
She looked over at Tasha to see if she noticed it, but Tasha didn’t seem to be fazed. Mimi straightened her shoulders with confidence, checked herself out, and refocused on the task at hand.
When Maury noticed his table filled with cocaine, he stopped dead in his tracks. “Fuck you get this from?” he asked, looking directly at Tasha.
“Manolo,” Tasha replied.
“Manolo?” It was the same name he’d heard Halleigh say earlier when she panicked in his room. His brow creased in disapproval. He had a feeling that his sister had not come by the product on good terms with the original owner. “Who the fuck is Manolo, and what do his bricks got to do with me?”
“They’re not his bricks anymore,” Tasha answered. “They’re ours.” Tasha looked to Mimi and Halleigh.
“Yeah,” Mimi said, “and we need you to get these off for us.”
Maury looked at Mimi as if she were crazy, but Tasha quickly cut in. “Of course, we’ll give you a cut, Maury. I know better than to ask you to work for free.”
Maury looked at Halleigh, who was still standing by his side, and shook his head. He would never have guessed she was in the dope game. Her looks were deceiving, and he made a mental note of that.
“How’d you get ’em, Tash?” Maury asked, ready to get to the bottom of things. Whenever someone wanted to come out on top, there had to be a bottom somewhere. He was determined to find out just what it was, before getting himself involved.
Tasha didn’t want to inform her brother of all the details surrounding how she’d come to gain possession of the bricks. She definitely didn’t want him to know that she’d snitched on Manolo, but she knew that she couldn’t lie to him. If he was going to be a part of their hustle, she didn’t want him going in blind, setting himself up for the okey-doke.
Tasha took a deep breath and then started. “I set the nigga up to get caught with the dope and then cut a deal with the arresting officer.”
“You did what?” Maury asked, enraged. “You know the game, baby! Fuck is you doing?” He shook his head from side to side. “Fuck was you thinking? You out in the Midwest by yourself, but you want to stick a nigga for his bricks? If the nigga would have come back at you, what was gon’ happen then?”
“I’m not even trying to hear all that you talking,” Tasha said, folding her arms like a pretzel, poking out her lips, and then looking away. She didn’t want to hear what baby bro had to say because she knew it wasn’t going to be anything other than what she already knew to be the truth. “Look, I didn’t have a choice, Maury!” Tasha said in her own defense, hoping to get her brother to understand.
Maury just stood there shaking his head at his sister’s stupidity.
“Don’t look at me like that, nigga,” Tasha spat. “By hook or by crook is what you always taught me, so don’t be frowning your shits up at me now! And Manolo ain’t coming back at me, ’cause his ass is sitting in somebody’s jail cell right now!” Tasha yelled.
“I don’t even know you right now, Tash. I know you know better. I know you know. And then you pull Charlie’s Angels into your mess with you,” he said, referring to Mimi and Halleigh.
The girls all just stood there in silence, waiting for Maury to finish up his rant so that they could hear his final word—was he going to help them unload the bricks or not?
Maury sighed and covered his face with his hands. He thought for a moment and then slid his hands down his face. “Look, sis, let me clear my head before I say some shit that I might regret,” he said as he turned and left the room.
“Maury!” she called, but her voice was matched by the sound of a slamming door.
“Fuck is his problem?” Mimi asked. “He shouldn’t be worried about how we got ’em. The point is, they sitting on his living room table. Is he gon’ help us get this cash or not?”
“I don’t know what he’s going to do.” Tasha threw her arms up in the air and allowed them to collapse to her side in defeat. “I can’t even talk to him right now. I don’t know what I was thinking. He never listens to me anyway. For some reason he’s always thought that he was the oldest and could tell me what the fuck to do and how to do it.”
Tasha thought back to their childhood and how people used to just assume he was the oldest because of the way he always had his stuff together. Tasha was just the opposite. When an idea came into her mind, she just did it and hoped for the best. It was pretty much the same reasoning she used in setting up Manolo. As far as she was concerned, her instincts had not failed her yet, so she was going to keep sticking to them, no matter how foolish her brother thought they were.
“Well, time is money,” Mimi spat. “Either your brother is in, or he ain’t. And if he ain’t, time is wasting. We need to move on to someone who will help us. Or like the old saying goes, if we want the shit done right, maybe we need to do it our damn selves.”
“You’re right, Mimi. Time is money, and time is a-wasting, but I can’t talk to him right now. He’s fired up, so I know some slick shit is going to come out of his mouth, and in turn, something slick is going to come out of my mouth. That’s the story of me and my brother’s life.” Tasha then had a sudden thought. “Halleigh, you go talk to him.”
“Me? Why the hell I got to talk to him? He’s your brother.” The last thing Halleigh wanted was to have to get close to Maury again. Besides, she didn’t know what to say.
“Exactly. He ain’t gon’ do nothing but yell at me and tell me how disappointed he is for me snitching. But, hell, he likes you. He brought you breakfast in bed, didn’t he? So, who knows? He might actually listen to you. And if you ain’t learned nothing else in these last couple of years, it’s the power of your pussy.”
“Oh, hell no!” Halleigh started. “If you think I’m gonna—”
“That’s not what I’m trying to say, Hal,” Tasha told her. “Come on, you know me better than that. I’m not telling you to sleep with him just to get him to help us. I’m just saying that he likes you, and because he likes you, he’ll probably listen to you. Okay?”
Halleigh thought for a minute and then nodded her head. “All right. You’ve had my back on more than one occasion,” Halleigh told Tasha. “This is the least I can do.”
“Thanks, Hal,” Tasha said.
Halleigh headed back to Maury’s room.
She knocked, but didn’t wait for him to invite her in before she opened the door and stepped into the room. “Can we talk?” Halleigh asked Maury, who was lying on his bed, his hands behind his head.
He nodded, giving her the okay.
Halleigh closed the door behind her, walked over, and sat down on his bed.
“What up?” he asked.
“I need to tell you something.”
“Look, I don’t want to hear all the details of this bullshit y’all done let my sister talk y’all into.”
“No, wait. It’s not about that,” Halleigh told him.
“Then what’s it about?”
“It’s about, it’s about me. Well, really about all of us,” Halleigh told him. “I know you don’t know everything there is to know about the life the three of us were living in Flint. I know because it’s so
mething that Tasha was too ashamed to tell you herself.” Halleigh couldn’t believe that she was getting ready to share her troubles with Maury, whom she’d known less than forty-eight hours. She paused and took a deep breath.
“I’m listening,” he said, urging her to continue.
“Have you ever heard of Malek Johnson?”
Without even having to think about it, Maury replied, “Yeah, I heard of dude. That nigga should have been the next LeBron James, but then he turned around and got on some stupid shit.” Maury shook his head. “What a waste. He was supposed to be the number one draft pick, what was it, about two years ago, right?”
Halleigh closed her eyes and nodded. She couldn’t help but be reminded of what could have been for Malek if she hadn’t been in his life. He had everything going for him, and in a matter of a few hours and a stupid decision, it was all snatched away. And all because of me, she reminded herself.
“Well, he is my ex-boyfriend. We were supposed to get married right after the draft, but we never made it that far.”
“It’s a shame. He could have had millions, and he jeopardized it all for some chump change he pulled from a petty robbery. I don’t care if they did find him not guilty. Everybody knows that nigga did that shit. He just happened to have the best criminal lawyer money could buy. Hell, if you ask me, they even paid for that witness he—”
“Look, that’s not where I’m trying to go with all this,” Halleigh said, putting her hand up to halt Maury’s words. “But, for the record, everything Malek might have done or might not have done was for me. See, the night he got arrested for that robbery, he had won the championship game. As a reward to him from me”—Halleigh put her head down and blushed before continuing—“I had planned on giving him my virginity.” Halleigh tried her hardest to keep from crying as she relived that awful night. “That night, after the game, he dropped me off at my house so that I could go change clothes and freshen up. I was supposed to meet him back at his house afterwards. But, unknown to me, there would be a change of plans.”
Her voice cracking, Halleigh continued, “That night, before I could make it out of the front door to get to his house, something went down between my mother and her dealer. The next thing I know, I’m being held down and raped in exchange for my mom’s drugs.”
Maury stammered, “I, uh, I’m—”
“It’s okay,” Halleigh told him. “I’m over it now, but back then I never wanted to talk to my mother again, let alone live under the same roof with her, so I ran. I ran to the only safe place I knew, and that was in Malek’s arms. He offered me a place to rest my head at his house, but when his mother came home and found us in bed together, she flipped out. We tried to explain that we hadn’t done anything, that we hadn’t disrespected her home like that, but she wasn’t trying to hear it, so she threw me out. Right there in the middle of the night in the pouring rain, she threw me out into the streets.”
“Let me guess,” Maury said. “Malek decided to go with you?”
Halleigh nodded. “Yep, he loved me so much that he chose me over his mother. The biggest mistake he ever made in his life.”
Halleigh continued to explain how Malek had robbed a store that night in an attempt to get money for a hotel for her, but he’d been caught and arrested before he could barely step foot out of the store. She also told him how she’d met Mimi and was invited back to her house to meet Mimi’s father, who ended up being Manolo, her pimp.
Maury couldn’t believe all of the things she’d been through. She told him how Manolo had starved her for days, beat her mercilessly, and degraded her often. Halleigh told Maury how she was about to kill herself, until Tasha promised her a way out.
“Tasha would’ve never snitched on Manolo if she wasn’t trying to help me,” Halleigh explained.
Maury looked into Halleigh’s eyes. Tears had begun to flow down her cheeks, and he wiped them away. Her story might have turned off most dudes, because they would view her as nothing more than a ho. But he viewed her as a survivor and immediately felt a connection to her that he’d never felt for any other chick in his life. Even though she was only nineteen and he was twenty-five, he was drawn to Halleigh. She had already lived well past her years. She had seen much and been through enough to last her a lifetime.
“So, y’all really need me to move those bricks for y’all, huh?” he asked, his tone revealing that his answer was going to be yes.
She nodded her head. “Yes, Maury, we really need you to do this for us.” Halleigh grabbed his hands and held them in hers. For the first time, she wasn’t shaking or nervous. Her future, her girls’ futures, relied on Maury turning that dope into cash so that they could start life over, a life that didn’t include having to sell their bodies.
“Please . . . I don’t ever want to live that life again, and neither does your sister.” Halleigh thought for a moment and decided to break the tension with a little joke. “Now, Mimi, on the other hand . . .”
Halleigh and Maury shared a slight chuckle.
Maury got serious again. He stared into Halleigh’s eyes. This time Halleigh saw a strong passion in his eyes. That made her nervous.
Before she could turn her head away, Maury leaned into her, and she tensed up again. He shook his head and said, “I’m not Manolo, Halleigh. I won’t hurt you.”
He kissed her lips softly, and she kissed him gently, until she realized what she was doing. Then she quickly pulled away.
“Wait, Maury,” she said as she wiped her hands across her lips. “I can’t do this with you right now. I still have mixed emotions about Malek, and I’m still trying to find out who I am as a woman. I was seventeen when my childhood was taken from me, but I never knew how to be a woman. Now I can finally control my own life, and I don’t know what direction I need to go in. I have to find myself before I can give you anything,” she said sadly.
“No, you don’t, ma. You don’t have to find yourself. You are who you are, and I’m willing to accept you for just that. And I don’t want anything from you. If anything, I want to be the one to give you whatever it is that you need,” he replied. He kissed her lips again and then said, “But I’ll respect you as a woman and wait until you’re ready.” Maury knew Halleigh was special from the moment he’d first met her, but now after hearing her story, he felt she was even more special. He had to admit that he felt sorry for her, for the life she’d been forced to endure. Something inside of him just wanted to make up for all the wrong that had been done to her.
Halleigh wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you,” she said. She stood to her feet and wiped her eyes.
“Send Tasha in here,” Maury said.
“Okay,” Halleigh replied as she turned to leave the room. Having a sudden thought, she turned back around and said, “Maury, about what I told you about how we worked for Manolo and all—”
“Don’t worry,” he said, cutting her off. “If Tasha wants to tell me, then I’ll let her, but if not”—He put his finger over his lips, letting Halleigh know that it would be their little secret.
Halleigh smiled and then exited the room. She felt that it was Tasha’s right to tell her brother the life she’d been living in Flint. When she walked back into the living room, Mimi was sitting on the living room couch and biting her nails impatiently, while Tasha was pacing back and forth.
Mimi was the first to spot Halleigh. “Well, what did he say?” she asked eagerly.
Tasha stopped pacing. “Is he going to help us or not?”
Halleigh just stood there looking at both girls, each with her own look of desperation covering her face. She sighed deeply and then stared down to the floor.
Both Tasha’s and Mimi’s shoulders slumped as they, too, sighed. Tasha threw her arms up in defeat and went to turn around, but before she could do so, Halleigh said, “He said yes!”
“What?” Tasha said, making sure she’d heard Halleigh right.
“He said yes. He’ll do it,” Halleigh replied. “Gotcha.” Halleigh pointed t
o both of the girls and laughed.
“Girl,” Tasha said, play-hitting Halleigh.
Mimi gave a sigh of relief. “Damn it, Hal, you almost made my heart stop. Don’t play like that.” Mimi put her hand over her heart and sat down on the couch.
“Sorry, girls. I couldn’t resist,” Halleigh said. She looked to Tasha. “Tash, he wants to speak with you.”
Tasha playfully rolled her eyes at Halleigh and then gave her a little nudge as she passed by her, heading to her brother’s room. Before completely exiting the room, Tasha turned to Halleigh. “What exactly did you say to him to get him to help us out?”
Halleigh looked down and began to stutter. “I–I, uh, you know, just told him some things about me, the life I was living with Manolo.” Halleigh paused and looked up at Tasha. “And, you know, how badly we need his help and all.”
Without Halleigh saying another word, Tasha figured that if Halleigh told Maury the lifestyle she was living with Manolo, then he’d probably already put two and two together and figured out that she’d been living the same lifestyle. Tasha simply gave Halleigh a look of understanding and then headed back toward Maury’s bedroom.
Chills went up her spine as she thought about what her brother would think of her now. Would he look at her the same? How would he feel now, knowing that his older sister, the one he was supposed to look up to, the one who was supposed to set an example for him, was a whore?
Now Tasha just wished she had told him a long time ago when she first got into the game, and gotten it over with. Now here she was, officially out of every aspect of the game, and yet she felt ashamed and dirty.
Up until just a few minutes ago, Tasha’s brother thought she’d been living in Flint, working for a contract cleaning company. Tasha had told him that she was in charge of the employees. Seeing that she was in charge of all of the Manolo Mamis, she didn’t feel as though she had completely lied to her brother. And, in addition to that, she knew that with her brother living in New York and her living in Flint, Michigan, he’d never find out the real deal. Nonetheless, the truth was out now, and she wasn’t even the one to tell him.
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