Shameless Hoodwives: A Bentley Manor Tale

by Meesha Mink; De'nesha Diamond

  “No, you know what? I’m not standing here like a chump while you decide what it is you want.” Reggie is so angry at me as he turns and stalks away. Suddenly he turns back to look at me as he points his finger accusingly. “You cheated. You disrespected our vows and home and the life we were building. You don’t get to decide.”

  I see Hassan run up and rear back to swing on Reggie while he’s not looking. “No!” I scream, but it’s too late. The blow lands in Reggie’s chest and instinctively he swings back, landing a crushing blow to Hassan’s jaw that sounds like wood splintering.

  I wince and cover my mouth with both my hands. I ache to know that I am the cause of this. I turn to run to Hassan, but Reggie storms past me to snatch him up from the ground by the collar. “No, Reggie, that’s a woman,” I holler, grabbing his arm.

  “What?” he asks as he looks over his shoulder at me, more confused than ever.

  “Don’t hit her,” I yell out to him.

  He looks down at Hassan, who is still stunned from the blow. “You have got to be kidding me,” he says as he releases Hassan and looks at me again. “You’re gay?”

  Tell him. Tell him. But I can’t. I don’t want to hurt him. The pain I see in his eyes hurts me deeply. I just want to go to him and hold him close and tell him it’s all a lie. Not because I want the marriage—I don’t—but because I don’t want to hurt him this way.

  It isn’t a lie. It’s a truth I wasn’t ready to face.

  Hassan shakes his head as he jumps to his feet. “Nobody puts their fucking hands on me,” he says coldly.

  I feel relief flood me. Hassan’s okay.

  Reggie laughs as he jiggles his keys in his hands.

  “What the fuck is so funny?” Hassan yells as his mouth thins until it’s almost white.

  “You,” Reggie fires back. “You just some little confused girl playing dress-up.”

  “And you some whack-ass Oreo tryin’ to be white,” Hassan spits back.

  This isn’t right. Reggie deserves better than this. I can handle Hassan later—we have forever—but for now I just want to get Reggie away from this crazy-ass scene. He deserves that much respect.

  I run to him and clutch at his chest. “Reggie, let’s just go home,” I tell him as tears fill my eyes.

  “What!” Hassan exclaims behind me.

  “You must be crazy,” Reggie tells me as he looks down at me and shakes my hands from his body. The look in his eyes makes me feel so cold inside. So lost. So fucked up.

  “I just wanna go home, Reggie, please.”

  Hassan walks up and grabs a fistful of my braids to jerk my head around. “Bitch, you been fucking me around for two years with your wishy-washy shit.”

  That light in Hassan’s eyes scares the shit out of me. That uncontrollable rage that boils deep inside of him is glistening like fire in the green depths.

  “I ought to kill your motherfucking ass,” he whispers in my face.

  “Hassan, please,” I whisper back. Why couldn’t he just let me handle this my way?

  Reggie grabs Hassan by the throat. “I don’t beat women but I swear to God you better let her go or I will snap your damn neck!”

  Hassan snatches my hair harder. I cry out in sharp pain.

  Reggie tightens his hold on Hassan’s slender neck.

  In one fluid motion that moves slowly, Hassan releases me and then reaches in his coat for his gun and quickly cocks it as he points it at Reggie. Even as my head is pounding, I step to Hassan to reach for the gun.

  POW!

  It fires. I feel something hot pierce my shoulder.

  Someone in the parking lot hollers out at the sound of the gunfire just as I drop to my knees on the ground. My coat sleeve is red from my blood.

  He shot me.

  I look from my bloody hand to Hassan just as his arm drops to his side with the smoking gun still in his hand. “Hassan, how could you…”

  My words fade into nothing as I follow his line of vision behind me. Reggie’s body is surrounded by a pool of blood. “Oh my God. Oh My God. Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod,” I mumble, like if I say it enough it will make him move. Like it will make him be all right.

  “I didn’t mean to shoot him…” Hassan mumbles behind me.

  “Shut up!” I scream as I crawl to Reggie on my knees. I gasp at the gunshot wound in his side. He is lying still. Deathly still. “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod.”

  I rush out of my coat and check my arm to find nothing but a deep bloody gash. The bullet must’ve skimmed my shoulder before it continued on to lodge in Reggie’s body.

  I feel his blood soaking through my pants as I wrap my hand around his. It’s warm and sticky in complete contrast to the coldness of his touch. I reach in my coat pocket for my cell phone. I’m so frantic that it drops into his blood. There’s no time to care as I pick it up to dial 911.

  I turn and look at Hassan, standing there in shock even as I report the shooting.

  “Do you really think he deserves to die?” I ask him with soft words filled with my anger.

  The smell of Reggie’s blood sends everything in my stomach in reverse. I want to hold him, but I’m scared to move him. I bend over to press my face against his as I drape my coat over his body. “I’m so sorry, Reggie. I swear…I swear I’m sorry. Please.”

  I press kisses to his face.

  The sirens echo around us as I lay there in my husband’s blood as chills begin to rack his body. Even as the paramedics lift my body from his, I reach for him. I struggle against them to just touch him. Be with him. Near him.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  I catch sight of the police putting Hassan in the backseat of a cruiser. I run to them. “Now what, Hassan?” I ask, my heart breaking. “Why couldn’t you let me do this…my way?”

  Tears glisten his long lashes. “I love you, WooWoo.”

  My eyes lock with his until the cruiser pulls off and the face that I love is gone from my sight.

  I turn in time to see the paramedics pull the sheet up over Reggie’s head.

  My husband is dead.

  My lover is his murderer.

  This is all my fault.

  Princess

  I wake up Christmas morning early as hell, and I lay on my thin mattress listening to the rats trying to tear up shit in the walls while I pretend like it ain’t a holiday. Trying to pretend like my life is normal. That’s the biggest bunch of bullshit ever.

  Most eighteen-year-olds are going to school and getting ready for college. I dropped out of school to work full time just to pay the rent so I won’t have to share a park bench with a stranger. There ain’t a damn thing normal about that.

  I grab my newest journal and bite the tip of my pen before I start to write:

  I’m officially a high school dropout shacking with rats and roaches big enough to actually chitchat with my ass without a soul to spend Christmas with because my mother is a man-hungry bitch and my best friend is dead. Merry fucking Christmas to me.

  When I can’t take no more of Mickey and Minnie I jump up and throw on my Barney sweatsuit and walk across the street to the liquor store. I probably shoulda been headed to the church instead, but whateva. I’m in the store reaching for a bottle of water when I see this head name Lay-Low motioning for me to be quiet while he pulls on a ski mask and takes a gun out the waistband of his pants.

  I give him a look like I don’t see you and bitch you don’t see me before I put that water right on back and get the fuck out that store. I ain’t even trying to get caught up in that shit.

  I head back to the boardinghouse, pausing just for a second when I realize how much it looks more like a haunted house than a home. Fuck it. Right now it is all I got and beggars can’t be choosy. I’m glad the rest of the boardinghouse is still sleeping as I jog up the rickety stairs to my room. With nothing else to do, I start flipping through some earlier entries in my new journal. It’s the first one I’ve written in since the day Lucky died. It feels good to write my thought
s, doodles, or play around with poems and song lyrics again. It feels damn good.

  Just yesterday I wrote:

  Miz Osceola invited me to spend Christmas with her. She even offered to pay for me to get there and back home. I lied and said I had to go to work but I’m working the night shift. I have plenty of time to chill with her. I even want to go. I just don’t want to see my mother. The best thing for me is to just stay away from Bentley Manor as long as Queen lives there. It’s easier to pretend she doesn’t exist if I don’t see her.

  I close the journal and bite the top of my pen at the sound of the commotion outside. I dash to the window. The wife of the store owner is on the phone and looking up the street. My head turns to see what she sees. I shake my damn head. Lay-Low’s pedaling away on a damn bike while the store owner is running behind him, cussing his ass out in Spanish. Lay-Low is dead wrong for that shit.

  It’s early Christmas morning. Most people are just getting up to open the presents under the tree with their kids or start their Christmas dinner for their families, and his ass out robbing. Where his kids? Where his family?

  Shit, who am I to talk?

  “It’s Christmas tomorrow. You come and spend the day with me if you feeling lonely…”

  “I bet Miz Osceola has a tree, and turkey, and pies,” I say aloud to myself as my stomach grumbles. Sure would beat eating another patty melt at work. I can just stay in Miz Oscela’s house. I probably won’t see Queen. “Hopefully.”

  I jump up out of bed and grab my uniform before I can change my mind. Okay, just today and only today I’m going back to Bentley Manor, and then after that I will stay away from that place. Everybody deserves some kind of Christmas. Even me.

  I miss the 9:15 a.m. bus and have to walk. It’s quicker than waiting on a bus during the jacked-up limited holiday schedule. I don’t even mind the cold. The walk wouldn’t be so bad if the soles of these cheap shoes didn’t feel like walking barefoot on concrete. Still, I remind myself to be grateful for those shoes ’cause they are plenty of folks who ain’t got none—period.

  So I keep on walking. By the time I turn onto the block leading to Bentley Manor, I’m sweating everywhere. I know my ass lost a few pounds my skinny butt can’t afford to lose.

  A few kids are already outside, riding their bikes or skateboards in this biting-ass cold. A couple of heads are out like the walking dead waiting for their pushers to rise so they can celebrate Jesus with gettin’ high. Some of them waved at me as I walk straight up the middle of the parking walk to Miz Osceola’s building. I don’t even cut my eyes toward the building where I used to live.

  As soon as I walk in the stairwell, the smell and sounds of Christmas come at me so strong. Food being cooked. Kids loud as hell as they tear through their presents. All of it echoes to me. Mocking me. Reminding me what I don’t have. A family. Now, maybe it’s my imagination or what I want so deep down in my soul, but as soon as Miz Osceola opens her door, still dressed in her nightclothes, and pulls me into her tight embrace, it feels like Christmas for me. At least a little bit.

  “I had fun today, Miz Osceola,” I tell her from the window as I watch the kids enjoying their toys outside.

  “I did, too,” she calls from her small kitchenette as she fixes me a plate of food stacked high enough that I either have to eat it at work before I go home or wake up in the morning to a shitload of rats and roaches using that motherfucker like a Shoney’s buffet.

  I didn’t admit to her that I live in a shabby-ass boardinghouse ’cause I don’t want her to worry. Okay, truth? I don’t want her to feel sorry for me. Anyway, it feel good for somebody to give a fuck.

  “I know Cleo enjoyed us visiting her and the baby,” Miz Osceola says as she waddles out with this huge aluminum contraption that looks more like a damn boulder than a takeaway plate.

  “Yeah, I had fun playing with the baby,” I tell her as I take the plate. My hands dip a bit from the first feel of the weight of it.

  “Come on. I’ll walk you out to the front to get the taxi. You don’t want to miss it.” She opens her front door.

  “No, Miz Osceola, I’ll be all right,” I tell her as I walk to the door. “You can watch me from the window. That way you don’t have to walk all the way to the front and back.”

  “I am tired,” she admits.

  We hug. We say the right the things: Good-bye. Call me. Take care.

  I hate to leave the warmth and comfort of her house, but I do. As I jog down the stairs, I have to remind myself—or fool myself—that my life isn’t that bad. I walk out the building and right into someone. I look up into Queen’s face. I step back from her.

  “Merry Christmas, Princess,” she says, her eyes all soft and her voice all nice.

  “Merry Christmas,” I say, walking past her with my free hand tucked deep into the pocket of a jacket that used to fit two years ago.

  “Princess.”

  I keep walking and ignore her.

  “Princess…I didn’t know,” she calls out to me.

  I stop and turn to look at her. “That’s not good enough.”

  “You never said anything—”

  “Liar,” I scream before I turn and walk away.

  “Princess—”

  “Queen, get your ass upstairs and fix my food!”

  I look over my shoulder as Queen looks up at the building. I follow her line of vision to see her new boyfriend in the window yelling down at her.

  “I’m coming,” she calls to him.

  Just once I wish she’d stand up for herself. Stand up for us. “Ma—”

  “Now, Queen!”

  She looks at me and I see the fear in her eyes. “That’s your house. It ain’t much but it’s yours. Miz Osceola says he’s on drugs. Why are you letting him order you around and beat on you?” I ask, feeling my anger at her rising again.

  “Queen!”

  “Princess, I gotta go—”

  She turns and hurries into the building without looking back.

  I wonder what kind of childhood my mother had where she always has a need, a desire, a want, to put a man first. Before her child. Before herself.

  Boom-Boom-Boom!

  The ground rattles under my feet from someone’s car system. I turn my head to see a silver chromed-out Escalade pull out of a parking spot to pass me as they head out of Bentley Manor. My eyes fall right on the license plate. DANGER1.

  Boom-Boom-Boom!

  Danger. Oh shit. Danger? I forgot he has a kid living in Bentley Manor. Fuck it. I have to see if it’s him. I have to. Fuck that.

  “Danger,” I call at the top of my lungs as I put those cheap-ass Air Faker 1s to the test and run behind that SUV.

  Boom-Boom-Boom!

  How will he hear me over the fucking music?

  “Danger,” I call and call as my heart races and my throat feels dry.

  The Escalade slows.

  “Danger…Danger!” I yell as I near that motherfucker.

  It makes the right turn out the front gate.

  Boom-Boom-Boom!

  My chest is hurting like crazy. I don’t even remember exactly when I dropped that plate. I feel like I’m going to fall the hell out, but something tells me not to stop. Don’t give up.

  He stops at the gate, awaiting oncoming traffic.

  Boom-Boom-Boom!

  I just reach the back of the SUV and bang on the rear window like I can afford to pay for that bitch if it breaks. When he turns right and speeds up the street, I collapse right there on the grimy, glass-scattered blacktop. I don’t give a shit what the hell I’m lying in as I roll over onto my back. My chest is heaving as I gulp for air.

  I ball up my fists and hit the ground in frustration.

  Last week on my day off I walked—walked—to that old beat-up studio Danger rented to do Q’s demo. I walked for two hours, hoping by a stroke of luck he was there or at least the owners knew how I could reach him. When I finally got there and saw it was closed for business, I knuckled up and said it wasn’
t meant to be, even though my disappointment was so thick I could eat it with a spoon.

  Today I just can’t even front and fool myself into a damn thing. I want out of the hood. I want a better life.

  When the fuck am I finally going to get a break?

  Boom-Boom-Boom!

  Okay, I know I shouldn’t feel so damn sorry for myself, but damn, I was corn-fed on this shit. It’s all I know.

  Boom-Boom-Boom!.

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t even Danger. I might have been hollering behind someone I don’t even know. And who says Danger still wants to work with me. Produce me. Make me famous.

  Not catching up with that Escalade doesn’t seem like a big damn deal but right now…right now it’s way more than I can take.

  The ground rumbles beneath me.

  I look up to see the SUV pull back through the gate. I jump to my feet just as it stops and the tinted driver’s-side window lowers.

  “What’s up, stranger?” Danger calls out to me with his grille damn near blinding me.

  I try to play it cool like my ass was not just laid out on the cold-ass ground as I stroll up to the car like I’m the baller.

  “Nothing. Just enjoying the holidays,” I say all cool and calm.

  “Yeah, I just dropped my son his Christmas gifts.”

  “Yeah, I was just headed to work,” I tell him, ’bout sick of the chitchat.

  His eyes take in my uniform, da-dun-da-duh (i.e., no-name) sneakers, and beat-down ponytail. “I’ve been trying to reach you. Heard you had to do a little time?”

  I swipe the glass chips off my ass. “A little something.”

  “Well, I’m glad we ran into each other.” Danger lifts up in his seat to reach into his back pocket.

  He hands me a card. Our hands touch, and the familiar warmth he used to cause in me feels nice. I look down at the card.

  “Danger Entertainment,” I read aloud before I look up at him, as the butterflies in my stomach start to flutter like crazy.

  “Q actually got signed a few weeks ago and I’m working on his debut album,” he boasts as he leans his bony elbows out the window.