Shameless Hoodwives: A Bentley Manor Tale

by Meesha Mink; De'nesha Diamond

  I bob my head in agreement, but I can’t make myself believe it. Someone was in here.

  “I better go,” I say, racing back to the room for my clothes. This time, Shakespeare doesn’t stop me, even though I can feel he wants to.

  Dressed, I walk back into the living room and retrieve my purse and the alibi gifts.

  Shakespeare is sitting before the television; a news reporter rehashes the Pastor Meyer story and adds that the police have arrested thirty-two-year-old Kameron Ray, husband to Takiah, for the two deaths.

  “Domestic violence,” I whisper. “Story of my life.”

  Shakespeare stands.

  “I don’t blame you for wanting to leave,” he says softly. “But you know he loves you, right?”

  My tears gave me no warning, but here they are, streaming down my face while I look up to the man I wished my husband could be. “Yeah. He loves me to death.”

  “C’mon. You know it’s not like that. Smokey would never…I mean, he loves you too much to…”

  I laugh, even though there’s not a damn thing funny.

  “Keesh—”

  “I better go.” I sidestep his grasp and walk right past the best thing that ever happened to me.

  Princess

  Bentley Manor.

  I don’t know why I thought it would look any different or why I thought shit would change.

  It seems like more than three months since I left here in handcuffs. I feel like years done been added to my life because of all the shit I been through.

  But its time for moving on. Doing better. Being better.

  Just before the police cruiser turns through the front gates, I hear one of the lookouts holla a signal to the hood boys. I know once we pull into the parking lot that there won’t be a dope dealer, dope user, or anybody on the run from a warrant hanging around. Shit, them fools hit the bricks as soon as they know the police were rolling through the hood.

  “Which building?” the young dark-skinned police officer asks.

  “Second one on the right.”

  He pulls right into a spot in front of the building.

  When I was locked up I dreamt of the day I would return to Bentley Manor in a stretch limo, dressed from head to toe in Gucci or some shit, with enough diamonds to make the sun look dull while I fanned myself with a wad of hundred dollar bills (big faces). Everybody would be shouting my name. Princess! Princess! Prin—

  “Right this way, ma’am.”

  I come up out of my dream with a quickness and look at the white heavyset female officer waiting to escort me inside. Climbing out the back of a police cruiser wearing a dusty and crusty Waffle House uniform with some ten-dollar black Air Faker 1 sneakers is a helluva way from that dream.

  It’s cold out, so the usual hoopla of the parking lot is not poppin’ off today as I follow the po-po into the building and up the stairs. I am so nervous abut seeing Queen for the first time since that day I flipped out on her ass. I am determined to knuckle up and not show that it bothers me.

  The female officer knocks, and I hold my breath as the door to my past opens. Queen is standing there with this look on her face like she ain’t in the mood for me, the police, or anything else. Except some damn man, I think, hating the disappointment I feel because Queen know I been in jail and doesn’t know if I’m sleeping in the streets. She doesn’t care.

  The male officer removes his hat. “We called about your daughter asking us to escort her here for her personal items.”

  “Come on in,” Queen says, not even looking at me before she turns and walks to my old bedroom. “I ain’t gots all day.”

  The female officer reaches back to squeeze my hand. Just that quick she done pick up on my story with this Queen. I know she feels sorry for me.

  Everything about the apartment looks the same to me except for the tall skinny man lying on the fake leather couch flipping through the channels with his shoes off looking comfortable as a bitch. Obviously Cash is out and this one is in. Another one bites the dust. As I walk into my bedroom, I wonder what his problem is. I done figured out my momma has issues and that all the men she fucks with has issues of they own. Like they bullshit-ass lives draws them together or some shit.

  I work quick to fill the garbage bags I brought with my clothes from the scratched dressers and tiny closet that ain’t big enough for a rat to spin in. I try not to shake when I put my hands inside the lining of that old pleather coat. The envelope holding my half of the prize money and the couple of hundred bucks I made working for Danger is gone. I look over my shoulder at Queen and when she gives me a look like “Prove I took it,” I just turn away from her and shove the coat in the bag. I blink away my tears as I grab the two or three pairs of old, curved shoes at the bottom of the closet.

  Damn shame. After living on this earth for eighteen years I can fit everything I own in one fucking garbage bag. On top of that the few dollars I earned on my own is gone. I want that money more than these too-small clothes.

  I drop the bag to bend over and flip the flimsy top mattress off the box spring.

  “Y’all just gone sit by and let her tear up my house?” Queen screams. She steps toward me, but the male officer steps in front of her with his hand on his nightstick.

  I reach my hand inside the mattress, and one by one, I pull out my precious journals.

  “What the hell is she taking out of there? Those are my property,” Queen yells as she twists and turns to the left and right to look past the officer.

  “Hey, what’s going on in here?”

  I look up to see the man off the couch standing in the doorway.

  “Lisco Wallace, I think you got enough troubles of your own with your recent arrest for whupping this same woman without you jumping into somebody else’s business,” the female officer tells him with her hand lightly resting on the gun in her holster. “And we got a call about you threatening an old woman who lives out here ’cause she wouldn’t let you smoke dope in her building. You’re lucky to be out on bond. Why don’t you go on back on that couch and mind your business? Thank you.”

  He turns his humbled ass right around and walks on out of the room and our business. So Momma got another woman beater. If she like it, I love it, I think as I start dropping the journals into the bag atop my clothes.

  “Those are mine!” Queen screams again.

  “Hold on one sec,” the female officer says to me, moving over to take one of the journals out of my hand.

  I lock my eyes with Queen as the officer flips through the pages. Her flips become slower as she begins to actually read what I wrote. I see the tears fill the woman’s eyes. She hands me the journal as she looks at Queen with angry eyes.

  Queen shifts her eyes away from her.

  “Those are hers,” the woman says with a hard voice. “Her nightmares. Her stories. Her pain. Her words. I ought to arrest your ass for endangering the welfare of your child.”

  Queen looks like she wants to faint. “What are you talkin’ ’bout? I don’t know what you’re talkin’ ’bout!”

  She’s pathetic.

  “She didn’t know,” I lie. “I never said nothing to her about it.”

  The officer’s face softens as she looks at me. “You should tell her—“

  I shake my head. “Ain’t nothing to talk about. I just want to leave.”

  The officer nods, but I don’t miss the long look she gives her partner. I follow them out of the room and the apartment.

  I nod and pretend to listen as she tells me about counseling and getting help. Maybe one day, but for now I just want out of Bentley Manor and all the hell I been through here.

  “Hold on, Princess. Hold on.”

  We just reached the bottom of the stairwell. I look up at my mother coming down the stairs. She stops on the second level and roughly pushes a wad of money at me. “That’s all that’s left. I had some bills. Huh, take it,” she says.

  As soon as I close my fingers around the money she turns and jogs back up the st
airs.

  The cops look at me as I count the money. Fifty lousy dollars. I know I had close to five hundred dollars stashed away.

  I stick the money in my bra. Fuck it. At this point it beat a blank.

  As soon as I walk out the building, Miz Osceola walks up to me bundled in her wool coat and cap. She pulls me close to her for a hug.

  I smile and let myself enjoy being touched with love.

  She fires questions at me fast as she rubs my cold bare hands.

  “You got somewhere to stay?”

  “When did you get out?”

  “Are you in more trouble?”

  “You got some way I can call you?”

  I hardly had time to answer her before she talks right on.

  “That man your momma got now is worse than all the rest,” Miz Osceola says with a mournful shake of her head. “That fool threatened to shoot me and Cleo but let him try and he’ll meet our friend Louise 1 and Louise 2—our Louisville Sluggers.”

  I just laugh.

  “Baby, I see you’re working. That’s good. Real good.”

  I smile at her face filled with lines and wrinkles but sweet as pie. “Yeah, I like it.”

  “You welcome to stay with me, baby,” she offers.

  “I’m all right,” I tell her, letting myself have one more hug. I think of my granny and hug her a little closer as I smell her neck.

  “I’m so sorry how things turned out ’tween you and your momma.”

  “I heard on the news ’bout Miz Cleo’s granddaughter,” I say, changing the subject. “Please tell her how sorry I am.”

  “I will.” Her eyes sadden. “She taking it pretty bad but in time she’ll be just fine.”

  “I’m sorry, ladies, but we have to go,” the male officer says.

  Miz Osceola holds on to my hands with enough strength to surprise my young-buck ass. “It’s Christmas tomorrow. You come and spend the day with me if you feeling lonely. I’ll pay for the taxi to get you here and back home.”

  “I would but I have to work tomorrow, Miz Osceola,” I tell her. “But I’ll come and visit you. Okay?”

  “You promise?” she asks as she reaches in her coat pocket and slips me a twenty-dollar bill.

  “I promise.” I press the twenty back into her hand before I pick up my bag and climb into the backseat of the cruiser.

  As it pulls away, I let myself have one last look at Bentley Manor, because I feel like it will be a long time before I see that fucked-up, tore-down motherfucker again.

  “Home sweet home.” I stand back and look at the small room that is barely bigger than a damn bathroom. It makes Bentley Manor look like a damn mansion or some shit. The thin walls, flat paint, lone twin bed that’s as lumpy as a bag of lima beans, and a chair that rocks but ain’t a rocking chair.

  I use twenty dollars out the money Queen gave back to me to buy a colorful bedspread, lamp, and picture frame from the dollar store. In the frame is a picture of me and Lucky—I sat that on my bed.

  I have to share the one bathroom with eight other women—most who just got out jail like me. And living across the street from a liquor store next door to a church is crazy as hell, but for now this room is mine. And the word “mine” ain’t never sound so sweet.

  After the last two weeks of rushing from work to try and make it to one of the shelters in time to get a bed, I knew I had to find something a little more permanent. Sometimes I would make it and get a bed. Other times me and forty other women would sit up all night in the lobby of another shelter that was out of beds but didn’t have the heart to turn us out onto the street. I hated the nights I had to sleep in the park or buy coffee all night in a doughnut shop so that they would let me sit in one of the booths. Washing my few clothes in a sink if I couldn’t afford the Laundromat. Eating nothing but old Waffle House food. Sometimes going days with washing up in the sink and dying for a shower.

  I’m thankful for this spot.

  Thankful as hell.

  WooWoo

  I’m going to leave my husband for Hassan.

  I will wait until after the holidays and tell him it just isn’t working because I like to think I’m not that heartless a bitch. Still, I’ve made up my mind, and it wasn’t easy. But if being with Hassan is equal to being true to me, then it’s time for me to step up and be a woman about mine.

  It’s time for the truth.

  Hassan knows that I am ready to come back to Bentley Manor and be with him. We will be together. All I asked for was to give me until after the holidays.

  It’s sad because my husband doesn’t know a thing.

  Phipps Plaza is packed with last-minute shoppers as Reggie and I weave our way through the crowds hand in hand. There are many, many good things about my husband, but he is a compulsive procrastinator. Why else would he wait until Christmas Eve to buy his mother a present?

  I think he just wants to prove that he doesn’t mind that my new microbraids are back in full effect. I compromised on the nails, though. They’re back to the full two inches, but I have them painted clear with a white airbush design on the whole nail.

  We laugh like old times as he buys his mother a pair of diamond and gold earrings from Ross-Simmons. “I think she will like them,” I tell him as I run my hand down his strong lower back.

  He looks down at me and smiles. “But you don’t, right?”

  I start to lie and say of course. I start to deny me and say you’re right, but his words ring out to me:

  If you feel like you weren’t true to yourself then blame yourself, baby…not me.

  “No, it’s not me,” I admit.

  As the salesgirl moves away from us to wrap the earrings, he reaches into the jacket of his black leather coat. He pulls out a gold cardboard jewelry box. “I think these are more your style,” Reggie says as he hands me the box with hesitant eyes. “At least I hope so.”

  “It’s not Christmas,” I complain weakly.

  “The moment seems right and it’s just one of your gifts. Santa has plenty under the tree for you still.”

  He wants to please me, I think as I reach up to stroke the side of his face before I open the box. I smile as tears I can’t even explain fill my eyes. I swallow over a lump in my throat as I pick up the pair of very big, very ghetto, door-knocker bamboo earrings. I laugh as I look at this man. This good and honest man who loves me. Who adores me. Who deserves better than me. Better than my sorry-ass love.

  “You like ’em?” Reggie asks as he uses his thumb to wipe a tear from my eye.

  “This…this is definitely WooWoo,” I tell him softly. “Thank you. I love ’em.”

  Reggie bends down to press his mouth to mine. “I love you just the way you are,” he whispers against my lips.

  I force a smile.

  The salesgirl hands him the receipt and a small gift bag with the package inside. “We better hit the road. Christmas Eve dinner at my mom’s is a big deal.”

  He offers me his hand. I take it. Our fingers entwine. We walk together out of the mall. We are just walking up to Reggie’s black Camry when I catch sight of Hassan and his crew walking toward the mall.

  Our eyes lock before those green eyes shift down to take in my hands entwined with my husband’s. Oh God, this bitch better not trip.

  “You’re going to love my Aunt Dalia,” Reggie is saying as my heart pounds like a drum until it deafens me to the rest of his words.

  Hassan’s face twists in anger as his steps falter behind his friends. I see their eyes on me. Some snicker. Some wiggle their tongues at me through the letter V they make with their fingers. I hear their insults without words being spoken. Dyke. Pussy licker. Dildo lover.

  That I don’t care about. I’m prepared to handle all that with Hassan at my side. Just not today. Not in front of Reggie. He hasn’t done a damn thing but love and accept me. He doesn’t deserve this.

  Please, Has. Please, I try to beg with my eyes.

  Hassan walks past us and I release a breath thinking some crazy-ass
scene has been averted. Thank God.

  “Man, you know what? Fuck that.”

  I turn at Hassan’s words to see his friends walking into the mall as he jogs back behind us. His face is so filled with rage.

  “WooWoo, you just gone walk by me and act like we ain’t been fucking around for the last two damn years ’cause you with your whack-ass husband.”

  I’m cheating on my husband. I’m a week from walking into a full-blown lesbian relationship. I’m headed back to living in the hood to be with this nigga and he can’t do this for me? I ain’t shit for all the bullshit I put Reggie through, but in that moment I am so disappointed in Has that I dislike him.

  Reggie turns. I look up. His face is confused as he looks at Hassan and frowns before he looks down at me. “What the fuck is he talking about?”

  Okay, Reggie hardly ever curses so this is bad. This is big-time bad.

  Shit.

  “Tell him, WooWoo. Tell him how you love me. How you want me. Tell him. Tell him you would come to me late at night and beg me to eat your pussy. Tell him how you called me last night from y’all’s house and told me you’re leaving his ass for me. Tell him.”

  “If you have something to say to my wife you can say it to me,” Reggie says, releasing my hand to take two steps toward Hassan.

  “Your wife?” Hassan laughs, all sarcastic-like. “Man, fuck your corny ass. You better raise up out of my face.”

  I stand there, and it’s like watching a really bad movie as this woman living life as a man is only five foot seven and stepping to a six-foot man as if she really can beat him. Is Hassan crazy?

  Reggie takes his hands and pushes Hassan roughly out his face before he looks over his shoulder at me. “You been cheating on me with this fool?” he asks, his eyes so filled with pain and disbelief and just a bit of hope that this whole thing is not true. “You’re leaving me for this clown? Is this who you want?”

  I look from the woman I love to the man I married. The words won’t come. It isn’t supposed to go down like this. This isn’t the plan. I never wanted to hurt Reggie. I just want to be happy.