“Because she’s a slave. Just like you. And that’s what you do to slaves. You torture them, beat them, rape them, do whatever the fuck you want to them, because in the end they don’t really matter. They are less than three fifths of a person. They are property.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about, Natty? We ain’t no slaves.”
“We ain’t no? Is that supposed to be English? You’ve lived in America all your life and you speak English worse than I do. You ain’t no slave, huh? Bullshit! You’re a victim just like all the other niggers in this country. You let the White man kick you in your ass every day of your lives. You scrub his floors, serve his meals, and eat his leftovers. You take whatever bullshit job he’ll give you and then you cry about it and beg him to make your lives better instead of getting up and taking what you want. You drop out of school and then blame him for not handing you an education. You get drunk and use drugs and commit all kinds of crimes against one another and then hold your little marches when the cops kick your nappy heads in. Oh, you’ll take from each other. It’s easy to rob and kill and rape and sell drugs to another nigger. But you won’t stand up to the White man. You won’t do shit to really improve your position in society. You’d rather kill each other over drug turf.”
Rachael’s eyes grew angry. Natsinet held the gun steady.
“Well, she stood up! She stood up to the White man. She stood up for all of us!”
Natsinet looked back at the old woman slumped over in the bed behind her.
“She didn’t do shit but get her dumb ass arrested and wind up right back in the shithole that spawned her. She fought for you alright, but what good did it do? You have the right to vote, to get an education, to own property, to do any job White people can but what do you do? You rob from each other, sell drugs, work for minimum wage or else get on welfare and sit around making more illegitimate crackbabies. So what good did she do?”
Adelle moaned and slumped over on her side. A trickle of blood dripped from a cut on her lip and dribbled down her chin.
Rachael was looking into the master bedroom in anguish. “Oh Lord! What did you do to her?”
“Nothing White folks haven’t been doing to you ignorant bastards for centuries.”
Rachael turned to Natsinet. She looked scared and confused. “What are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t really matter now does it? Pull your stockings down.”
“What?”
“I said pull your fucking stockings down or I’ll blow your nappy ass head all over the room!”
Rachael hesitated only a second before doing as she was told and pulling her stocking down to her knees.
“Now lie on your belly.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to stick this gun up your fat ass and pull the trigger! Now lie on your belly!”
Rachael again complied.
“Put your hands behind your head. I’m pretty sure you know the position.”
Rachael laced her fingers behind her head.
Natsinet pulled a couple rolls of surgical tape from the drawer in the nightstand and began taping Rachael’s wrists together. She sat on the woman’s back as she wrapped her wrists and was satisfied to hear the wind burst out of Rachael’s lungs as her weight came down on her. After she was done with the wrists she spun around, still seated on the woman’s back, and wrapped her ankles.
“Now just lie there while I figure out what to do with you.”
She knew she had to kill the woman. She had no other choice. She just had to figure out how she would get rid of the body. The woman was far too heavy for her to carry down the steps herself. And there was nowhere in the tiny apartment to hide a body. At the very least she’d have to chop it up and carry it out piece by piece.
“I need a hacksaw.” She said out loud and Rachael began to squirm, trying hard to get her hands and legs free.
“Don’t kill me! I ain’t done nuthin’ to you! I don’t even know you! Please, don’t cut me up!”
“You ain’t done nothin’ to me huh?”
“No, I ain’t done nuthin’ to you. What have I ever done to hurt you?”
“Well, it was a Black bitch like you that took my daddy away! That’s right, a fat, stinking, nappy-headed Black bitch just like you who sweet talked him, seduced him, and then got him killed.”
“But it wasn’t me! I didn’t do it! I didn’t even know your daddy!”
Natsinet stood up and kicked Rachael hard in the gut. She kicked her over and over again relishing the feel of her shoe sinking into the nurse’s soft flesh. Then she began to stomp on her, jumping up and down on her face and chest, smashing her nose into a bloody smear across her cheeks. Rachael moaned and screamed as Natsinet struck her over and over again.
“But it was you!” Natsinet yelled. “It was all of you! It was your whole twisted fucked-up culture. You killed him! All of you!”
Natsinet calmed herself, realizing that she was making too much noise. The walls in this place were paper thin and there were still those hooligans hanging out across the street. She walked over to the window and peeked through the blinds. They had rap music blaring and there were now a few young girls mingling amongst them. They were all preoccupied. All except one, the big one, the one who seemed to be in charge. He was staring directly at the house, right up at the window, right at Natsinet. She quickly backed away from the window and rushed back over to Rachael who was still lying on the floor moaning. Her lip and nose were busted and she was bleeding onto the carpet. Natsinet tore off another piece of surgical tape and slapped it over her mouth.
“You really want to know what you people did to him? How you killed him? Why I hate you worthless motherfuckers so much? When my father came to America with my mom they wouldn’t accept his medical license, wouldn’t let him practice medicine without an American degree. They made him go back to medical school at almost forty years old. My mother’s family didn’t like the fact that she was with this African anyway and then when they found out that he wasn’t even a doctor anymore, that he was unemployed, they started making life really hard for him. See, in their minds he was one of you. They looked at him and saw your people. They didn’t see an Eritrean. They saw an African American.” Natsinet slurred the word as she spoke as if it were something distasteful she was trying to wipe from her tongue. “They threatened to disown my mother if she didn’t get rid of him. See, in their minds he was less than a nigger. He was African. For her to have married him was a disgrace to them. Oh, they talked real liberal around their friends, but they were secretly ashamed. My mother stayed with him until the money ran out. Then she took me, packed up all her things and left him. She moved back to Chestnut Hill with her family and he moved to Mount Airy.
“Mount Airy wasn’t a bad neighborhood. Not like this warzone. It was middle-class, decent. My father worked as a security guard at night and went to school during the day, trying to get his license to practice medicine. I went to see him on holidays and during the summer. He used to talk about my mother a lot, talk about winning her back and us being a family again. Then he started dating this Black social worker named Lisa who lived down the street and it was like he forgot all about my mother.”
“Just let me go and I won’t say nothing. You don’t have to kill me. Just let me go. Please, let me go.” The tape had fallen away from Rachael’s mouth.
Natsinet squatted down next to Rachael and tapped her on the head lightly with the butt of the pistol. “You asked me a question. I suggest you let me finish my answer. Because when I’m done talking, I’m probably going to kill you. At least as long as I’m talking, you’re still breathing.” She smoothed the tape back over Rachael’s mouth.
Rachael began to weep. She looked around the room just as Adelle had been doing for the past two weeks, looking for anything that she might use to save her life, and just as Adelle had before, she came up empty. She turned back to look at Natsinet who was still kneeling beside her with the gun. N
atsinet’s eyes were no longer hard and cold; now they looked wild as emotions from her childhood flooded back in like reopened wounds bleeding once again. Rachael sobbed louder, realizing that she was at the mercy of a madwoman, a madwoman with a gun.
“Now, where was I? Oh, yeah…Lisa had two daughters about my age. They hated me because I was half-White and I spoke with an accent. They teased me constantly. They’d even beat me up when no one was looking and threatened to beat me up worse if I told anyone. I never understood why they hated me so much. My father kept going to medical school and was just about to graduate when he was murdered. I kept thinking that momma would take him back once he was a doctor again and he’d leave that Black bitch and her little hellions and we’d be a family again. Then Lisa’s drug-dealin’ ex-boyfriend got out of prison and started coming around. He would come by to see his daughters and then he’d try to talk Lisa into leavin’ my daddy and coming back to live with him. One day he was in the house when my father got home from school. He’d beaten up Lisa and was trying to take the kids. Daddy confronted him, told him to get out, and that bastard shot him. He shot my father right in the chest, killed him instantly.”
Natsinet stood up and walked over to Adelle’s bed. She checked Adelle’s pulse to make sure the old woman was still alive and then removed a syringe from her pocket and shot her up with Demerol to make sure she’d stay unconscious. Then she walked into the next room to get a pillow for the gun. Rachael’s eyes followed her as she came back with the pillow and then walked over and closed the curtains. Rachael began to thrash and scream until the tape came off her mouth again.
“Heeeelp! Heeeelp!”
Natsinet was looking out the window again at the big Black thug across the street when Rachael started screaming. His head snapped back up to the window and he started walking across the street. Natsinet quickly leaned down and smacked the woman with the gun much harder than she’d hit Adelle. The woman stopped screaming. Natsinet struck her again anyway, then again and again and again. Each impact harder than the last. Rachael’s head began to crack and bleed as Natsinet bludgeoned her skull into a misshapen blob. The dull crack of the gun impacting with Rachael’s skull was soon replaced by a sound like a meat tenderizer striking raw steak. Blood splattered the walls and floor as the butt of the pistol continued to rise and fall, occasionally getting stuck as it lodged in Rachael’s ruptured skull, requiring Natsinet to muscle it free so that she could bring it down again. Perspiration beaded on Natsinet’s brow as she put all her weight behind each blow.
Rachael’s ragged breathing continued even after bits of skull and brain matter began to mingle with the blood splattering the walls. Natsinet hammered the woman’s brain into a bloody pudding until Rachael’s lungs finally ceased their wheezing inhalations and her body’s corybantic convulsions came to an end. Rachael let out one last long ragged breath before falling silent forever.
Then the doorbell rang.
Natsinet was covered in Rachael’s blood. Sweat was pouring down her face and she was breathing hard from the exertion. There was no way she was going to answer the door looking like that. She ripped off her shirt and wrapped Rachael’s pulverized skull in it to absorb some of the blood. There were bits of blood and brain matter on her skirt as well. She removed that too.
The doorbell rang again.
Natsinet ran to the bathroom and washed the blood from her hands, arms, and face. She was shrugging into a new skirt when someone began pounding on the door. Natsinet grabbed her shirt and hurried to the door. When she looked out the peephole she saw the big drug dealer from across the street standing outside the door. He was enormous. His body completely filled the doorframe and the peephole only came to his shoulders. He had to bend down so she could see his face.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Mike. I’m here to check on Mrs. Smith. She awight? I heard someone scream in there.”
“She’s fine. She just has nightmares because of the medication.”
“Then let me come in to check on her.”
“I can’t let you in. I don’t know you and Mrs. Smith’s daughter left me strict instructions not to open the door for anyone.”
“Tonya knows me. She told me to keep an eye on the place. It’s okay if I come in.”
“I’ll have to check.”
“Fuck that! Let me the fuck in! Something’s wrong with Mrs. Smith.”
He began pounding on the door again.
“She’s fine and I’m not letting you in, now go away before I call the police!”
Mike hesitated.
“All right, but I’ll be back. And nothing had better be wrong with Mrs. Smith.”
Natsinet continued looking out the peephole as Big Mike turned and walked away. There was no way she could leave the apartment now to get a hacksaw. She was sure that big Black guy and his crew would break into the house while she was gone and find Adelle doped up and Rachael beaten to death on the floor. Then they’d call the police and she’d wind up in the gas chamber. She couldn’t let that happen.
Removing her clothes once again so as not to get them dirty as well, Natsinet went into the kitchen to look for a knife. She walked back into the living room carrying a butcher knife, a serrated carving knife, and a cleaver. Between the three implements she was fairly confident she could chop Rachael up into small enough pieces to dispose of easily. She rounded up some heavy duty trashbags and some duct tape and began dragging Rachael’s lifeless body over to the bathtub, leaving long streaks of blood on the carpet.
“Those are going to be a bitch to clean. I didn’t sign up to be a cleaning lady.”
She looked over at Adelle. She didn’t know why she hated the woman so much. Rachael had been right about one thing, neither of them was directly responsible for her father’s death, or her getting beaten up as a kid, or her mother’s family rejecting her father, or the kids at school calling her a nigger, or her own family treating her differently than they treated all the other grandkids who weren’t half-Black. Now she’d tortured an innocent woman and committed murder, and for what? She didn’t know. All she knew was that the more pain she caused this woman, the better she felt about herself and her family. The more days had gone by, the more she’d wanted to hurt the old lady. It had become like an obsession. Now she had to find a way to end it.
She knew she had to kill the old lady. If Adelle spoke to anyone they’d figure out what she’d done. But she had to make the old woman’s death look like an accident. If only she could get her to have a heart attack or another stroke. But the old woman’s heart had resisted the shock treatments, the beating and the burns. It was unlikely that anything else she did to her would cause a heart attack. But there were medications. She just needed to find something that wouldn’t be traceable.
Natsinet looked down at Rachael’s lifeless corpse. “And as for you, well, bad things happen to women who walk alone through neighborhoods like this. I doubt anyone will even miss you.” She smacked Rachael on her rotund buttocks, picked up the carving knife and began sawing through the layers of fat and meat at her hip joint. When she hit bone she picked up the cleaver and began hacking away at it, working up a sweat again.
“Shit! This is going to take forever.”
A few more whacks and Rachael’s right leg fell away from her torso and tumbled down into the tub.
“That’s one down.”
She turned to the other leg and picked up the carving knife again.
Chapter Fifteen
Big Mike stood across the street from Adelle’s apartment complex staring up at her window. He remembered when Tonya used to lean out that window and call down to him whenever he would ring the doorbell for her to come out and play. Most of the time, she couldn’t come out. Mrs. Smith had her studying all the time. But sometimes she’d come trotting out dragging that rusted old red bike with the yellow banana seat behind her. Then they’d go riding together through the neighborhood, not coming home until the streetlights came on. He’d been in l
ove with Tonya even then.
He was debating whether or not he should call her. The nurse had said Adelle was all right and Tonya might get pissed at him for scaring her. He hadn’t meant to lose his temper and curse at her, but something about her tone of voice rubbed him the wrong way. That other nurse was in there too, so he guessed that if there was anything wrong the two of them could probably handle it and he hadn’t seen anyone else enter the house. He was probably just over-reacting. He looked down at his cell phone. Tonya’s number was still cued up. Then he looked back up at the apartment. Something just felt wrong.
“What’s goin’ on, Big Mike?” That was his right hand man, Tracy. Tracy had retreated from the impromptu gathering on the street and was reclining against one of the cars parked at the curb. “You look like you seen a ghost or somethin’.”
“No ghosts here. But I heard some screamin’. You hear anything?”
“’Zat why you went up to Mrs. Smith’s place?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure she didn’t just have the TV on too loud?”
“Fuck if I know. That didn’t sound like no TV though.”
“So what was it?”
Mike told him quickly, leaving nothing out. Tracy’s features turned grim. Now he was looking up at the apartment window, which had suddenly gone dark.
“So what time is it, like nine o’clock or something?”
Mike checked the time on his cell phone.
“Nine forty-seven.”
“I remember seeing that other nurse show up,” Tracy said. “She hasn’t left, either.”
“I know.”
“You think it takes two nurses to take care of Mrs. Smith? That don’t sound right to me.”
“No shit.”
“And it took awhile for the one nurse to show up at the door?”
“Yeah. And during the time I was knockin’ I didn’t hear shit until she asked who it was.”
“Well shit, maybe she was asleep or somethin’.”
“Yo, Mike, maybe that other nurse is that other one’s girlfriend or somethin’.” This came from Reggie White, one of the other crew members who was now joining in on the conversation. Reggie was the joker of the group, but Mike wasn’t in the mood for jokes this evening.
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