Kiss the Ring

by Meesha Mink

  “You knew Brandon?” she asked, her eyes stopping at different points on Naeema’s body.

  Her face.

  Her body in the strapless peach sundress she wore.

  Her nails.

  Even the sandals showcasing the French pedicure on her feet.

  Naeema knew she looked much younger than her twenty-nine years. She’d heard every age from twenty to twenty-four but never a number close to thirty, and she definitely looked young enough for Brianna to get jealous that she was one of Brandon’s chicks.

  If only you knew, little girl . . .

  Knowing the ring would piss her off, Naeema slid it back into her bag and stood up to step closer to her. “I’m a friend of Ms. JuJu and I was at her house and she wondered how you was dealing with everything.”

  “Ms. JuJu? Who dat?” Brianna asked, her thin face showing every bit of her confusion.

  Shit. Naeema was confused as shit herself. Maybe her and Brandon wasn’t that close?

  “That’s the lady that raised Brandon,” she explained. “He must’ve been so caught up in you because he told her all about you.”

  Lies was slipping from her lips like breaths of air. Just easy. Too easy.

  But very necessary.

  Brianna’s face softened as her dimples reappeared with a smile. “I really liked him,” she said, sitting her bag on a table before she slid into one of the booth seats.

  Prayers up that her grandmother too busy on that grill to stroll her ass over here and sit down . . .

  “I didn’t get to meet him but Ms. JuJu talks about him a lot,” Naeema lied. She hadn’t seen or spoken to the woman since she’d learned of Brandon’s death. Naeema couldn’t face the one person who knew she turned her back on her own son.

  “He was real cool. Real laid back . . . but not no punk,” she said, twisting one of her tight curls around her slender index finger. “I was a junior and he was just a freshman but he was cocky enough to holler at me in front of all my friends one day in the caf. Plus he was too cute.”

  Was.

  “I was talking to this other kid named Rico and he felt like Brandon dissed him and all of that drama.” Brianna reached across the table and lightly touched Naeema’s hand like they were hangout partners. “Brandon whupped that ass. In front of the whole school too.”

  Naeema’s heart skipped a beat. Maybe two.

  Rico? Another damn lead the police missed?

  “Rico Lopez? I think I know his mother,” she lied.

  Brianna shook her head. “Oh no, this Rico is black. Rico Anderson.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “And then somebody put that shit online. YouTube. WorldStar. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. Umph-umph-umph. Whoo, that ish was wild.” Brianna shook her head. “For a hot second I felt bad for Rico but yo, if you start sum’n there gon’ be sum’n so be ready or don’t even start it, you know?”

  “Shit, I woulda dropped out after that,” Naeema said.

  “Me too. But he didn’t. Matter fact . . . Brandon the one that dropped out,” she said.

  Naeema’s heart pounded hard as another new fact was dropped in her lap. Something else for her to feel guilty about. She knew more about her son in death than she had when he was alive. “Maybe Rico scared him or something.”

  Brianna shook her head. “Nah, that was because of his guidance counselor.”

  Naeema stayed quiet.

  Brianna played with one of her curls again. “He didn’t like how Mr. Warren stepped to him one day after school in detention. He really liked Mr. Warren too. He trusted him. That’s why it fucked with him. I told him to report his perverted ass but . . .”

  Naeema couldn’t hide her frown. Another blow. Another missed opportunity to protect her son.

  Brianna just shrugged her shoulders as her face filled with sadness again. “I’m glad you told me he talked about me to the lady because we had just really started talking,” she said, her voice soft as her big eyes filled with tears. “It’s fucked up. He was so cool and funny and smart. It’s just fucked up. Right?”

  “It’s real fucked up,” Naeema said, blinking to keep from joining her in showing her sorrow. “You think Rico had something to do with it?”

  “Nah. He got locked up for a stolen car in March. I don’t even know if he out yet.”

  Another dead end?

  Brianna stood up and grabbed her bag, using her free hand to swipe away her tears. “Tell that lady I’m sorry I missed the funeral. I just couldn’t see him like that. You know?”

  Naeema knew all too well. She hadn’t been at the service either. “I’ll tell her.”

  “Poor thing stayed in bed crying, her eyes puffy and red for a week after,” her grandmother said, walking up to hand Naeema a bag with grease already seeping through at the corner.

  Standing up, Naeema pressed a ten-dollar bill into her hand. “I better get going,” she said, feeling far too many emotions swirling around her like a hurricane.

  She needed a fucking moment. Or two.

  “What’s your name?” Brianna called behind her.

  Naeema had just opened the door and sounded the bell. She turned.

  I’m Naeema, Brandon’s mother.

  She opened her mouth wanting to speak the truth but instead she said, “Monifa. I’m Monifa.”

  She was just about to leave the restaurant when she turned and came back in. Brianna looked up in surprise. “I’m glad Brandon had you in his life. Even if for a little while, Brianna,” Naeema said truthfully before she turned and hauled ass again, hurrying to climb into the back of the cab.

  “Where to now?” Crabby Cabbie asked.

  “Just drive off,” she said, closing her eyes as she let her head fall back against the headrest.

  “I need somewhere to drive off to.”

  She was ready to straight cuss him out until he sat down and had a long talk with himself to reevaluate every bit of his life. “Broad and Market,” she snapped.

  Just in case a trail led back to her coming to that diner, Naeema didn’t want them to be able to call the cab company and trace the cab back to her and where she lived. These days her life was all about “just in case” and trying to think three steps ahead of every fucking decision. On guard. Making moves. Telling lies. Playing fucking I Spy With My Little Eye and shit.

  I don’t have a choice.

  Naeema refused to turn her back on her son again.

  • • •

  The next night Naeema sat in the glass shelter of a bus stop across from O’Malleys Bar in Hoboken. Her eyes were trained on the large wooden front door with its black metal latches. The number 40 bus came and went. The door opened and two white men with medium-length brown hair exited. She squinted her eyes as she peered at their faces and then swiped her thumb across her touch screen to double check the photo she saved to her phone.

  Not him.

  The door opened three more times and each time she did her check.

  Squint. Swipe.

  She would go inside if she didn’t think she would stick out like she wore a sign that stated the obvious: Lone Negro in the Building. Hoboken was miles away from Newark, and in terms of differences between the two, the distance might as well have been a million miles.

  The door opened again.

  Squint. Swipe.

  She sat up straighter.

  Bingo, motherfucker. B-I-N-G-O.

  Naeema kept her eyes locked on the man as he walked down the street and turned the corner. She was already up on her sneaker-covered feet and crossing the street on his heels. She was nervous. She was unsure. She even thought she was going slightly crazy. But more than that, she was pissed the fuck off. Pissed always trumped every other emotion.

  He removed keys from his pocket and unlocked the doors to a bright blue smart car.

  Fucking figures. The perfect car for this clown-ass fool.

  “Mr. Warren,” she called out.

  He turned and his face became puzzled.

  The wi
de-leg stride that brought her so close to him paused at a vision of him standing over Brandon in a small office with his hand reaching down between her son’s thighs.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, his keys readied in his hand.

  “No, but you can stop helping yourself to little boys at the school where you work,” she said.

  Blue eyes shifted to the left and right real quick. “Excuse me,” he said, sounding offended.

  Like I give a fuck.

  Naeema came to stand before him. They were the same height and she was able to look him directly in the eye beneath the glow of the streetlamp. “You wanna play with dicks and balls, bitch, find you a grown-ass man. West Side High ain’t your motherfuckin’ playground.”

  “Get the fuck out of my face,” he snapped, pushing her shoulder.

  Naeema stumbled back. She couldn’t front. He surprised her. What if he flips on me? Can I beat his ass?

  He was at least twenty pounds heavier.

  But fuck that. This white dude just put hands on me. Fuck, this look like the 1860s in this bitch?

  Naeema slapped him across the face twice.

  WHAP! WHAP!

  “Hey,” he cried out, his blue eyes wide as he pressed a hand to his reddening cheeks.

  “Hey hell. Keep your fucking hands to yourself,” she said, curving her fingers into tight fists in case he tried it. “And that comes to getting physical with a female and fondling little boys.”

  His blue eyes shifted again. “I didn’t—”

  “You did,” she emphasized, feeling her anger at him rise. “Your bullshit caused one little boy to drop out of school.”

  “I—”

  “Shut up,” Naeema snapped, looking back over her shoulder at the sound of voices. “You don’t get to molest boys. You don’t get to use them for your perverted bullshit. You don’t get to front to your wife, Olive, like your ass don’t love dick. And you don’t get to work in a fucking school around kids.”

  She saw his surprise as she flung his wife’s name at him. Naeema had a picture of the pretty redhead in her phone too.

  “I got proof,” she lied. “And if I see your ass back at West Side or any other school, I’m going to your wife and then the police. Just try me.”

  Naeema turned and walked back out of the lot, brushing past the people who were headed to their cars. She crossed the street, passed the bus stop, and headed down two blocks to where she hid her motorcycle behind a pizzeria. Unlocking the helmet and the bike, she was soon racing down the street, leaving behind the man whose actions made her son drop out of school.

  “Motherfuck him,” she muttered.

  Facebook was a tattle-telling bitch.

  It had taken her less than ten minutes to search his name and pull up his public Facebook profile and a lot of his business along with it—including his plans for the night. He led her right to him.

  She didn’t think Mr. Warren had anything to do with Brandon’s death—although she wasn’t striking him off her list of suspects. Rico was another thing. Brandon stole his girl and whipped his ass in front of the school. Still, Brianna said he was locked up and couldn’t do it.

  Naeema didn’t think it could hurt to double-check that and it didn’t mean he couldn’t have gotten somebody else to handle his dirty work.

  6

  It had been a week since the bank robbery, and Naeema only felt some of her nerves about it fade since she knew the Feds were the “sit it out and wait until the evidence was real good” type of law enforcement. They would wait it out for years just to make sure their case was airtight. Still no word from Bas but she knew everything was straight through Vivica. She kept her focus on her own investigation. In the time since visiting Brianna at the diner, Naeema had discovered that Rico, the boy Brandon fought at school, had been in jail but got out a month ago. She hadn’t been able to find him—especially with school out for the summer—but his Facebook posts were all about his new boo so she had a feeling he was laid up somewhere with her. Mr. Warren’s Facebook page was now private. So was his wife’s. Didn’t matter. As soon as school was back in a couple of weeks she was going to make damn sure his ass wasn’t strolling through the halls of West Side High.

  As much as she didn’t trust the police, if she had any real proof she would turn his ass.

  Sitting on the middle of her bed in nothing but a sports bra and shorts, she read through the police file for the hundredth time and studied the crime scene photos wishing her CSI game was tight enough where something out of the ordinary would be clearer to her. That shit always seemed so easy on television.

  Closing the file, she laid back on the bed and wished her new ceiling fan produced cool air and didn’t just cut through the heat. She’d made good money at the barber shop over the last few days and she was steadily putting it into her building fund. The house needed major repairs and that would take major coinage. The robbery cash was still in her purse. She hadn’t added it to her own stash in the shoe box and she never could bring herself to spend any of it.

  She wasn’t ready to do something noble like donate it to charity or something like that either.

  Picking up her phone, she opened up her pictures and flipped through to the photos of Brandon she swiped off his Facebook page in the days after Ms. JuJu told her about his death. She smiled sadly at him sitting on a stoop with a bunch of other teenage boys, with his hands posed up in the air. Her boy was handsome. Tall and thin with a square chin, high cheekbones, and long lashes, smooth caramel skin. She could see plenty of herself and his father in him.

  What kind of future could he have when she gave him away and his father ran away before he even came into the world . . .

  • • •

  “So whatchu gon’ do, Naeema?”

  Naeema pressed her hands against her belly swollen with nearly six months of pregnancy and felt the baby inside it move as she looked up at her boyfriend Chance’s mother standing over her with a fat blunt blazed. Ms. Mack—or just Mack, like she said to call her—was a stud. Long hair in cornrows. Titties taped down. Oversize white tee and sagging jeans in place. Lover of pussy.

  Naeema knew that for sure when she woke up one night while Chance was out slinging dope and Mack was in their bedroom pulling down her drawers and asking to eat her out. She made it clear to Mack that she didn’t roll that way. Thankfully she let it be and strolled her dyking ass out the room.

  From then on Naeema slept in jogging pants and wedged a shoe under the thin fake wood door whenever Chance wasn’t there. She never told him about it. She wanted to but she didn’t want Mack to throw her out on the street.

  “I don’t have nowhere to go, Mack,” she said, feeling her fear rising.

  Mack shrugged one broad shoulder and flicked the ashes from the tip of her blunt onto the grungy floor. “Not my fucking problem, bitch,” she said. “Chance said that ain’t his fucking baby, so you and your burden need to get the fuck up outta my place.”

  Naeema’s eyes got wide as she looked around the room, stalling for time, trying to think of some way to make things different. In the year since she’d moved in with Chance and his mother, the dingy little bedroom had felt more like home and stability than anything since her grandfather’s death.

  Four months ago Chance was rubbing her belly and coming up with baby names. Then the touches came less. No more names were mentioned. His attention toward her faded.

  And now this?

  “Chance wouldn’t say that,” she said, looking at a picture taped to the wall that they took months ago in New York on New Year’s Eve.

  “You calling me a liar, yo?” Mack asked, coming over to stand where Naeema sat on the edge of the thin mattress.

  Naeema, pushing the memories of happier times away, looked over at Mack.

  “Get what little shit your homeless ass got in here and get the fuck out,” Mack said, kicking a pair of Naeema’s shoes with her Timberlands.

  Naeema didn’t know what the fuck to do. Chance had left
the apartment that morning and ever since he hadn’t come back and he didn’t answer the phone whenever she called. She didn’t trust Mack not to fight her or call the police. She started pulling what little clothes she had from the two large garbage bags in the corner.

  “I ain’t got all night, Naeema,” Mack said, coming over to roughly brush her out of the way before she picked up both garbage bags and emptied them onto the middle of the bed. “You got ten minutes. Whateva shit ain’t packed by then . . . then oh the fuck well.”

  As soon as Mack left the room, Naeema reached for her prepaid phone. She called Chance’s cell number twice. No answer. She texted him: “Your moms throwing me out. Come help me.”

  After a few minutes there was still no reply.

  Does Chance know already?

  “Tick fucking tock, Naeema,” Mack called from the living room.

  What’m I supposed to do?

  Fighting back tears she grabbed one of the now empty bags and pushed as much of her stuff into it as she could. It still didn’t fill even half the bag. She reached across the bed and pulled the picture off the wall. She pushed it into the back pocket of her jeans.

  Where’m I gonna go?

  Picking up the bag, she left the room and didn’t let herself look back. It wasn’t her home no more. Chance just had to find them a new place but Mack didn’t want her there no more.

  “Yeah, her ass in there packing now. I took care of it,” Mack said, her back to the bedroom door.

  Naeema frowned a little as she paused in the doorway.

  “She ain’t pushing nobody else’s baby off on you.”

  She felt like all the breath left her body. She went weak at the revelation that Chance knew his mother was putting her out on the street. She forced herself to lock her knees to keep from falling as she walked down the short length of the hall with one hand on her belly. He was by no means her first lover, but once she got with him, he was her one and only. The baby was his.

  “Shoulda let me eat dat pussy.”

  Naeema paused with the doorknob in her hand but she didn’t look back at Mack’s snide and mocking words. She left the apartment and walked down the hall to the elevator. She wasn’t gonna let Mack see her cry, and the tears were about to flow like crazy.