by T. Styles
Rasim’s heart rate increased as he looked back at the pretty girl with the light brown hair, rosy cheeks and glassy eyes.
Since Donald proceeded as if all was right with the world, although fearful, Rasim could no longer hold his tongue. He wiped his clammy hands on his jeans and asked, “Who dat, man?”
“My personal bitch,” he responded flatly, as he eased onto the highway.
Rasim looked back at the girl to check her mental temperature once more. He wasn’t sure but something told him that the girl was anything but in a relationship with his friend the lunatic. Maybe it was the rainstorm that rolled down her face or the fact that she was trembling so hard Brooklyn’s leg was shaking that gave it away. At any rate, something was off.
“I don’t think she want to be here,” Rasim said softly. “Maybe you should let her go.”
Donald’s neck popped in Rasim’s direction although his foot was still firmly on the gas pedal and he was pushing sixty miles per hour. “She’ll go when I want her to. Now chill out before I lose my patience in this bitch.”
****
Rasim was sitting on the side of the bed looking over at Donald and the girl he practically kidnapped, who he now knew as Sheila. Her entire nature changed. She was giggling like a newborn having its feet tickled, courtesy of the cheap Strawberry MD 20/20 she was quaffing down her throat.
Rasim eyed the entire situation with confusion. What the fuck was going on?
One minute she was terrified and the next she couldn’t keep her palms off of Donald’s dick.
Later, Rasim learned that Donald booked her last week in front of the Shrimp Boat off Benning Road in Southeast Washington, DC. Despite a kiss on his cheek and a promise to stay in contact since he bought her basket of fried shrimp with a large Coke, she failed. So out of revenge, Donald felt warranted in taking her into a semi hostage situation.
Chance and Brooklyn were at the store getting food and would be coming back later. So at the moment Rasim was alone with them.
Suddenly Donald swallowed the rest of the liquor, stood up, gripped Sheila by the forearm and shepherded her toward the bathroom.
When the door was closed Rasim could hear some bumping around before a slight scream rang out on Sheila’s part. But the sound was quickly muffled before growing louder again.
Rasim hopped off of the bed and rushed toward the door. He ran his hand from the front to the back of his head as he considered how to approach the matter.
In Rasim’s humble opinion, it sounded like the girl was getting raped but he couldn’t be sure. He knew his boy could be rough but never heard rape being associated with his brand.
Rasim felt that if he said something wrong, Donald would come thundering out of the bathroom with Rasim in his sights. But, and this was more important, the man in him could not allow what was happening to occur. Not on his watch.
So he not only knocked on the door but he banged on it with authority. Just as he thought, Donald pulled the door open halfway and glared at him. “Be gone, nigga,” he said with fire in his eyes. “I’m not in the mood right now.” Rasim’s eyes trailed from his floating eyeballs down to his dick, which was red and dripping with blood. Donald slammed the door in Rasim’s face before he had a chance to hold the memory.
Worried, Rasim dropped to his knees and lowered his head. The dry, gray carpet brushed against his face as he peered through the slat under the door. Now he could see Sheila bent over the toilet throwing up while Donald raped her from behind.
What part of the game is this? Rasim thought.
He leaped up and exploded on the door with heavy fists so hard that his knuckles burned. Through it all Donald did not come out.
Rasim didn’t realize until the next morning that he dosed off on the floor from exhaustion. When he finally did, it was far too late.
****
The cool handcuffs around Rasim’s wrists were uncomfortable as he rode in the back of a police car. It had been a long two days since Donald raped Sheila and his life would be changed forever.
For starters, a swift boot to the gut from an angry DC police officer awakened Rasim. Before he could determine what was happening, his arms were seized from the back and he feared his shoulders would pop out of the sockets.
Rasim wasn’t alone. His friends Chance and Brooklyn were also arrested and led to the police car as if they all partook in the crime. The only light at the end of the tunnel was that three cars up, he could hear Donald clearly yelling, “Leave my friends alone! They didn’t have shit to do with this! I fucked the bitch not them!”
Rasim respected the clarification and he still loved him too. But he wished he hadn’t gone so far. He figured it was because of his parents that he was the monster he was.
It wouldn’t stop the officers from stuffing the teenagers in their cars and chauffeuring them to the station, only to bombard them with a thousand questions.
In a bitch move, Sheila claimed they all were involved even though her statement couldn’t be further from the truth.
The investigation was mental torture on Rasim and his homies. And although spit flew out of the officers’ mouths and slapped against their faces as they yelled at Rasim, Brooklyn and Chance, they didn’t say a mumbling word.
In the end, Donald would be transported to prison. And Rasim Nami, along with his other homies, were transported to Strawberry Meadows, a group home for troubled youth, thereby breaking his parents’ hearts in the process.
CHAPTER 2
SNOW BRADSHAW
WASHINGTON, DC
April 10, 1995
Please don’t ask me anything. Please don’t ask me anything, Snow chanted repeatedly to herself as she sat across from her parents, Lamont and Maureen Bradshaw, at a huge black lacquer dining room table.
She was awful at mingling and always said the wrong thing.
Her light skin reddened as it did whenever she was in social situations. She felt this way whenever her parents forced her to Nadine’s house in the hopes of encouraging Snow to be interested in Nadine’s son.
To her right was Morris Hope, a seventeen-year-old church boy with a slight slack jaw problem, which caused his mouth to hang open longer than most. His arm hung around the back of her chair and his sweaty pit brushed against her arm, which made her so annoyed she screamed to the Gods on the inside.
“Dinner is almost ready,” Nadine announced as she floated out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a white hand towel with tiny blue doves spread throughout.
Although she was talking to everyone present, she was observing Snow. Nadine considered her hazel eyes, her naturally light brown skin, and could already see the faces of her grandchildren. In her opinion, Snow could be the answer to her prayers because Morris was as weird as they came and she feared he would never mate.
It was really embarrassing when she went to church with her son—, that the Bradshaw’s also attended—only for young women to avoid Morris as if he walked around holding his dick in one hand and a bible in the other.
Girls, who were there to build a relationship with the Lord, would laugh at his hanging jaw often to the point of hysteria.
That was until Nadine spotted Snow.
Yes, precious Snow was the only one at church more gauche than Morris.
“Well, whatever you’re cooking it smells delicious,” Maureen, said as she straightened the collar of her navy blue dress with the huge gold sailor buttons.
When a clump of her graying hair plummeted into her face, Maureen’s husband lovingly placed it behind her ear and kissed her on the cheek. Although wrinkles outlined most of the features on her face these days, Lamont still looked upon her with adoration.
Besides, when he ran numbers and sold cocaine on the cold streets of Washington, DC in the ‘70s, it was Maureen who stood by his side as he attempted to get his shit together. It was Maureen who wrote him letters and visited him in the penitentiary when he needed companionship. And it was Maureen who gave him his first and only child. Snow
.
If one were to take a look at the shiny chocolate ball that was Lamont’s head and the graying section of hair that dressed its perimeter, they would never see a gangster. But, they would be sadly mistaken.
In his heyday, Lamont was one of the most feared men in DC. Many lost their lives at his hands when they wagered on tic in the numbers, lost and failed to pay. Or took a brick of coke and got ghost. Lamont didn’t accept apologies and didn’t show mercy either, which was why in his darkest hour, mercy was almost not shown to him.
It was a snowy day when three niggas from New York placed a gun to Lamont’s head and stole five kilos of white from the trunk of his money green Mercedes. Of course this enraged the powers that be, despite their history.
His chief, Louie the Knife, had given Lamont his first break into the crime world after he asked for a number and the kid gave him 4578, which netted him fifty thousand dollars.
Under Louie’s reign, through the years, Lamont had proven to be smart, vicious and loyal and Louie realized he chose correctly. Lamont always got the money owed, even if it meant taking the lives of the debtors or their family members. He was known on the streets as Lamont of Little Mercy.
But when he was robbed and he couldn’t replace the dope or the lucre himself, Louie the Knife had him dragged by his ankles into an abandoned building. Louie loved Lamont, he truly did, but he would treat him like a nigga who raped his granddaughter if he fucked with his cash.
So Louie stood over top of him and was preparing to give the order to drop the fifty-pound cinder block dangling over his face until he yelled, “Please don’t, Louie! My wife is pregnant!”
Louie called him a liar until Lamont reminded him how hard he had been hustling to earn money lately. The requests for extra trips to New York while working way past his scheduled time in the process. And the odd jobs for other heavies in the game in search of a larger payday. Suddenly it all made sense to Louie. His dear Lamont was about to become a father.
So Louie the Knife, father of five and grandfather to fifteen, granted him mercy. On two conditions. That he work until he paid off the debt and name his only child after the coke he forfeited. Whether boy or girl, Louie insisted that the child be called Snow.
Lamont never earned a living illegally again.
“Well, I hope everything tastes as good as it smells,” Nadine said to Maureen as she played with one of the pearls around her neck. She focused on the children again. “Morris, why don’t you take Snow upstairs and show her the script you wrote for the church play next month. I’m sure she’d be interested.”
Nadine’s suggestion was actually code for, “Get up out of our faces so me and my holy friends can drink a vat of wine as Jesus did.”
And as always, the teenagers disappeared upstairs.
****
The dark closet was awfully tiny and the doorknob stabbing into Snow’s coccyx was extremely annoying. Not to mention, she could smell Morris’s smelly tennis shoes as he kissed her neck and kneaded her breasts like balls of dough.
It wasn’t rape. But it didn’t feel good either. He acted this way every time his mother suggested they go upstairs so they could be alone. This activity was one of the reasons she despised visiting.
As his slippery tongue ran along the side of her neck and dipped into her ear canal, she wanted to scream. His spit clogged up her ear and made it hard to hear on the left side.
Snow hated how he felt against her body. Against her skin. Most of all, she hated how his stiff penis poked at her belly as he accosted her with promises to fuck her so well.
She wasn’t worried about things going too far in the sexual department though. Both of them were virgins and neither was brave enough to go against God’s will. They just chose to shame him instead by humping in the darkness, hoping he couldn’t see their filthy ways.
“Your titties feel so good,” Morris said breathing heavily against her clavicle. “I’m gonna fuck you so well.”
“Okay,” she said, being a teenager of few words.
“You like how it feels, Snow? You want me to fuck you so well?”
“Yes.”
He gripped both of her large breasts at the same time and squeezed as if he were preparing to pop huge pimples. “You gonna be my wife, Snow. Wait, you’ll see. We will be together for the rest of our lives.”
Stop the fucking presses!
Hearing that madness caused her heart to tap in her chest and pump into overdrive. She thought about the three days a week she went to church with her parents that didn’t include Sunday. She thought about Morris’s weird way of squeezing her that caused her stomach to swirl. Most of all, she thought about his hanging jaw that even at the moment rubbed against her clavicle and tickled. She did not want this for her life. She did not want any of it.
So she shoved him into his hanging clothes and walked out of the closet. Considering how grossed out she was, it was probably appropriate to run but everything Snow did was dry. She was so boring that even in the dramatic situation, she moved at a snail’s pace down the stairs.
When she made it to the bottom, she stopped. From where she stood, she saw her parents swallowing crystal glasses of red wine as they chuckled like beefy sailors at sea.
A vat of Merlot, almost empty, sat next to them.
Stupid mothafuckas, she thought.
If only she were brave enough to say it out loud.
She was still staring at them until Lamont turned his head, looked at Snow and covered his mouth. Immediately he rushed toward her as if she were an open quarterback with the ball on a football field.
When he was upon her, he slammed down her shirt and glared.
In her haste, Snow had forgotten to adjust her clothing after leaving the closet and her daddy had seen it all. Before the correction, her shirt and bra sat on the top of her breasts, which forced her boobies downward and to swing like pendulums on a clock.
Things were a blur for Snow after that moment. The embarrassment she felt was so heavy that although she could hear her parents’ muffled voices, she didn’t understand a word they were saying.
She witnessed Maureen grab the keys from the dining room table and yank her purse off of the chair’s arm.
That quickly, Snow was ushered out of the house by her father and pushed into the car. Despite it being the most embarrassing experience of her life, Snow was too boring to shed a tear.
****
Snow sat at a much smaller dining room table in her parents’ house and ate dry rice, no salt or butter. Unlike Nadine, who dabbled in the real estate industry, her parents were telephone operators and earned a meager pay.
Maureen wasn’t much of a cook so Snow was certain that the soggy fried chicken on her plate would be bloody red in the center. The most tragic part of the evening was that because Snow’s titties hung low at Nadine’s house, they weren’t able to have a decent meal.
After Lamont forced his food down and begged his body not to regurgitate it and hurt his wife’s feelings in the process, he focused on Snow. “Honey, what did he do to you?”
Snow raised her eyes from her plate and focused on her father. She loved him. She loved both of her parents but she wasn’t happy and she didn’t know why.
Not only that, but Snow didn’t want to talk about the situation. It was embarrassing enough as is. She preferred to fade into the walls but neither would give her the honor.
With her upper body slouched over, for the hundredth time, she said, “He didn’t do anything to me, daddy.”
“Then why were you undressed?” Maureen asked in a soft voice. She cared about Snow so much that it was etched all over her face. Her bottom lip trembled and it was clear she expected the worst. Rape.
“Because he was touching me.” She shrugged. “That’s all.”
Although relieved, Lamont didn’t like the idea one bit. He didn’t care if the kids stole a kiss or two before the age of eighteen but grabbing nipples and shit was out of the question! “Did he make you, you
know…”
“No,” she huffed.
“Did he hurt you?” Maureen asked.
“I said no, mama.”
“Then what is going on?” Lamont roared.
“I’m bored with life,” Snow admitted. “Terribly!” she yelled. It was as if she had reached an orgasm because it was the first time she used her angry voice.
Lamont and Nadine were shocked. They leaned back in their chairs and allowed their chins to swing just…like…Morris's.
“I don’t get it,” Lamont screamed, trying to regain control of his family. “How could you possibly be bored? We’re at church every other day. You have friends who you visit and with God in your life, it’s always a great day.”
“Praise be to God,” Maureen added waving both hands in the air.
He sounded so fucking stupid.
So did she.
The friends he spoke of didn’t exist because even if she did hang with the girls, they always ignored her and treated her like an outcast.
Snow’s head tilted as she tried to understand how any of what he said sounded exciting. But instead of answering she asked, “May I please be excused?”
“Yes, honey, but hurry back,” Maureen responded. “We have a lot to talk about.”
Snow scooted back in her seat and the chair’s legs made a screeching noise against the hardwood floors. She strolled toward the stairwell, which was out of her parents’ view, and crept into the basement.
In her earlier years, she danced down there but she no longer possessed the verve to move her limbs. Sadly, twirling had exited her heart long ago.
She ambled past the large mirrors on the wall and toward a huge wooden chest that sat on the floor with a hanging combination padlock attached.
Knowing the code was 4578—the number Lamont gave Louie the Knife—because he told the story a million times, she gained access. The lock popped open and with a soft tug she grabbed what she wanted from inside.