Still Candy Shopping

by Swinson, Kiki

  “I don’t know,” she said in a whisper to keep Tacora and Sabrina from hearing her. They were in the bedroom listening to a rap mixed CD Slim bought from some guy in the neighborhood. The music was fairly loud, so they wouldn’t be able to hear us unless we wanted them to.

  When I opened the refrigerator I immediately looked inside the butter compartment, but it was empty. Then I searched everything that wasn’t nailed down. I went to the extent to search underneath every egg in the egg carton and I dug inside the flour bag. I was beginning to believe that the medicine bottle of meth pills weren’t there after all. I closed the refrigerator and stood there puzzled.

  Jennifer looked at me and hunched her shoulders. “If it’s not in the refrigerator, then it has to be in the closet,” she said. “And it maybe in the shorts he had on yesterday too.” she continued.

  I sighed heavily and tried to figure remember what color shorts he had on yesterday. “Which shorts did he have on yesterday?” I asked.

  “The blue jeans ones that had the yellow stitching around the back pockets. They should be in his dirty clothes hamper,” she said as she pointed to the only closet next to the living room.

  I rushed over to the closet and opened the door. The smell of dirty clothes hit me dead in the face. The stench was horrible, so I held my breath as I looked for the jean shorts he wore yesterday.

  “You better hurry up before he comes back in the house.”

  “Well go and look out the window and let me know when he’s coming,” I said.

  “All right. But you better hurry up. Because I don’t want to be a part of this shit if he busts you.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take all the blame,” I assured her.

  I searched his dirty clothes and could not find his jean shorts anywhere. I was getting frustrated as hell. I knew that I only had a few minutes to find the medicine bottle if it was in this apartment, so I went into detective mode.

  “Faith, you better hurry up,” Jennifer warned me.

  “Is he coming?” I asked.

  “No. Not yet. But you gotta also watch out for Sabrina. You can’t let her catch you going through his shit.”

  I didn’t respond to Jennifer’s warning. My mission was to hurry up and find my cure pill, so that was what I concentrated on. Unfortunately my search came up dry. I searched Slim’s entire dirty clothes hamper and came up with absolutely nothing. I was frustrated and sick to my stomach all at the same time.

  “Did you find it yet?” she asked me.

  “No, and I searched the entire hamper.”

  “Well it’s got to be there,” she whispered.

  I started looking through the items he had on the built in shelves. When I moved his deodorant to the side and saw a vitamin bottle, my heart dropped. I picked up the bottle and opened it, and, bam, there were two meth pills wrapped up in a clear plastic sandwich bag. I was excited as hell.

  “I found it,” I told Jennifer.

  “Well hurry and get one before he comes in the fucking house,” she replied sarcastically.

  I grabbed one pill of meth from the bottle, closed the closet door, and rushed into the kitchen with it in my hand.

  Jennifer turned around and looked at me like I had lost my mind. “What the fuck are you doing? Just put it in your mouth and swallow it.”

  My heart was racing at the speed of lighting. I knew that if Slim caught me stealing a pill of his methadone, I’d be in a world of trouble. Before Jennifer could say another word I tossed the pill into my mouth and swallowed it.

  Jennifer turned around and looked back out the kitchen window. “Oh, shit! I don’t see him,” she said.

  Hearing those words almost made me want to keel over and die, because that could only mean that he was on his way back into the apartment. Without hesitating, Jennifer left me in the kitchen all by myself and rushed back to the living room sofa. I couldn’t blame her, though, because I was treading on some very thin ice. But at this point, it really didn’t matter. I had swallowed the pill. What could he do to me now? The damage was already done. And my sickness will be gone in a matter of fifteen to twenty minutes.

  Slim walked into the apartment. My heart fell to the pit of my stomach. I had my back turned to him, so I turned on the faucet water and made it seem like I was washing my hands.

  “I hope ain’t nobody in the bathroom because I gotta piss real bad,” he said and walked through the living room area and straight into the bathroom.

  I looked back at Jennifer the moment he closed the bathroom door. When Slim’s retarded ass came out of the bathroom, I was sitting on the sofa next to Jennifer. We were both acting like we were watching TV on Slim’s old, rundown thirty-two inch. The Maury show was on, and he was doing his famous paternity segment.

  Slim looked at both of us and said, “Y’all stupid ass hoes would probably be up there too if it wasn’t for me taking control of your lives.”

  “You got that right!” Jennifer commented sarcastically. “My life would’ve been fucked up if you would not have come along.”

  Slim must have thought what Jennifer said was funny, because he burst into laughter. I looked at her like she was crazy. She and I both knew that this fool looked for anything to give him a reason to go upside our heads. And I was not in the mood to see any more drama for the day. I was becoming extremely ill and I wanted him to carry his ass wherever he was heading so I could feed my addiction.

  Luckily for Jennifer, Slim had to go back outside and brushed off her comment. “I’ma take that little comment as a joke and let you slide this time, since I’m in a rush to go back outside. But you better watch your mouth from now on,” he warned her and exited the apartment.

  I looked at Jennifer and asked her what her problem was.

  “Faith, you just don’t know how tired I am of that nigga. If you’d been here as long as I had, then you’d probably try to kill his sorry ass!”

  “Look, Jen, I know he’s an asshole and you wanna fuck him up, but making trouble for yourself ain’t gonna make the situation any better. Right now he has the upper hand. So just deal with it until you’re ready to bounce on him.”

  “How the fuck am I going to do that? Slim got all the niggas in this whole apartment building watching us.”

  “You bullshitting me!”

  “Hell, nah, I’m not bullshitting! Try to leave out of here and see what happens.”

  “Has somebody already tried to leave?” I wanted to know.

  “You damn right. And Slim’s friend Bino stopped her ass before she could get around the building.”

  “What, he got those guys working for him?”

  “You damn right! He pays them to keep watch on us every day.”

  I was stunned when Jennifer told me about Slim’s watchdogs. I always wondered how he kept the girls here for as long as he did and no one got away. Now my question was answered.

  The Candy Shop part 2 Kiki Swinson

  An Unpleasant Reminder

  Since I had ten-milligram methadone pill around eleven am, I knew I’d be fine for the next six to seven hours. I chilled out in the bedroom so I could bask in the feeling of the drug. Plus I wanted to stay out of Slim’s way. The entire day he ran in and out of the apartment. He came in the bedroom to check on me a couple times, and when he realized that I wasn’t causing any problems, he left me alone.

  Unfortunately I couldn’t get the same courtesy from Tacora. She burst into the room about thirty minutes after Slim paid me a visit looking for a pair of her shoes she said walked out of her bedroom. Jennifer walked into the bedroom behind her.

  “I don’t know why you’re looking in here,” Jennifer said. “I told you I haven’t seen your shoes.”

  Apparently Tacora didn’t take Jennifer at her word, because she got down on the floor and searched underneath both beds. Jennifer stood there with her arms folded and watched Tacora as she searched for her belongings. When Tacora realized that her shoes weren’t underneath either of the beds, she got off her kn
ees and headed toward the bedroom closet.

  I guess Jennifer got ticked off, because she said, “Whatcha going in there for? I told you your shoes ain’t in here.”

  “I know you’re gonna let me find out for myself,” Tacora replied sarcastically and flung open the closed door. Inside the closet she started rambling around the floor of the closet in search of her shoes, and in the process making a mess of the items that belonged to Jennifer. So Jennifer walked up to Tacora and warned her that if she didn’t straighten her closet, then there would be consequences to pay. Tacora turned around and stepped up to Jennifer’s face and dared her to lay a finger on her. I sat up in the bed because I saw a brawl about to go down.

  Jennifer looked back at me and chuckled. “Do you see this little bitty ass bitch acting like she’s about to beat my ass!”

  I got up from the bed because it had become obvious that neither of them was going to back down. And even though Jennifer weighed a couple more pounds than Tacora, I believed that Tacora would have given Jennifer a run for her money. Tacora struck me as a chick with a lot of heart.

  I got between them before either of them could throw a blow at each other. They were definitely talking trash to one another, but I made sure it didn’t get physical. While I stood between them, Sabrina walked into the room with a bath towel wrapped around her. She was in the shower when this whole thing started, so she only caught the tale end of it.

  “What’s going on?” Sabrina asked.

  “I came in here looking for my silver sling-back sandals and I can’t find them. But I know Jennifer had something to do with ’em walking out of our room.”

  “Bitch, I ain’t touched them ugly ass shoes!” Jennifer barked at Tacora while I stood between them.

  I looked back at Sabrina. “Can you please help me before they start throwing blows at each other?”

  Sabrina walked up to Tacora and grabbed her arm. “Come on, don’t go there with her. It ain’t even worth it,” Sabina said, trying to reason with Tacora.

  “Yeah, Sabrina, talk some sense into her narrow ass mind. Tell her all that shit she popping ain’t gonna be worth it after I put my foot in her ass!” Jennifer roared as she moved from side to side as if she was getting amped up.

  “Well if you think you can beat my ass, bitch, then leap like a motherfucking frog!” Tacora snapped.

  “Come on, Tacora and Jennifer, y’all gotta stop this mess,” I said. “All this arguing ain’t cool. We just lost Paris last night and you two are ’round here acting like damn children. You two need to snap out of this shit! Life is too short for this petty shit you two are arguing about.”

  “Tell her to give me my shoes and you won’t even hear my mouth!” Tacora gritted her teeth like she was at her wits’ end.

  Sabrina started pulling Tacora in her direction because she saw how angry she was becoming. Jennifer stood there and cracked a huge smile. That did it for Tacora, so she lunged back and punched Jennifer directly in her left eye. Jennifer could not have seen that blow coming, because after Tacora’s fist stung Jennifer’s left eye, Jennifer’s body staggered a bit.

  I think I was more shocked than Jennifer. And now that I was caught in the middle of all this drama, I had one of two things I could do. I could prevent Jennifer from retaliating, or I could let her return a blow. As my mind battled back and forth with the decision, I realized that Jennifer had already figured out what she was going to do. She reached over my shoulders, grabbed Tacora’s hair, and commenced to hit her repeatedly in the crown of her head. I was literally stuck in the middle.

  Sabrina and I tried every tactic to break them apart, but with Jennifer refusing to let go of Tacora’s hair, it was definitely a struggle. Tacora was screaming and Jennifer was talking shit to her while she continued to hit her in her head. I figured Sabrina got tired of Jennifer getting the best of Tacora, because when she realized that she couldn’t get Jennifer off Tacora, she started hitting Jennifer in the back of her head. It caught Jennifer completely off guard, and Jennifer started demanding that I help get Sabrina off her back.

  “Faith, that bitch is hitting me in my fucking head!” Jennifer yelled.

  At that moment I had to switch gears and help Jennifer by stopping Sabrina from attacking her. Sabrina definitely wasn’t playing fair and she knew it. So I removed myself from the middle and focused on stopping Sabrina. I immediately grabbed Sabrina in a bear hug and applied pressure to her stomach. By then her towel had fallen from her body so she was completely exposed. In the beginning I found that my efforts didn’t work, but as soon as I applied more pressure to her, she realized that I wasn’t going to let up, so she let Jennifer go.

  I was exhausted. But Sabrina was pissed off, and I knew that I was now added to her shit list. “Get the fuck off me!” she screeched.

  “I’ll let you go, but you gotta calm down, Sabrina. I can’t let you get cheap shots at Jennifer while her back is turned.”

  Meanwhile Jennifer and Tacora were still going at it. “Bitch, when you let me go, I’ma show your stinking ass something!” Tacora threatened.

  “Bitch, you ain’t show me shit witcha punk ass! Got all that mouth and look at you now,” Jennifer said.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Slim roared. I felt the heat from his mouth hit my neck the moment he opened it, and it startled the hell out of me. I let Sabrina go immediately. But Jennifer continued to wale on Tacora. By this time they were both on Jennifer’s bed, but Jennifer remained on top.

  Slim stormed by me and Sabrina and put a serious chokehold on Jennifer, causing her to release Tacora’s hair immediately. While Slim held Jennifer in that chokehold, she started gasping for air. I saw her face change to two different colors in a matter of five seconds flat. As he pulled her off Tacora, Tacora managed to kick Jennifer in the stomach in the exact same spot where Slim had kicked her earlier.

  “Stupid bitch!” Tacora yelled. But Jennifer wasn’t fazed by Tacora’s blow. She was more focused on Slim and trying to get out of his death grip.

  “Let me go,” I heard her say, but it was barely audible. She was kicking too, but it didn’t work. Slim was adamant about getting control of this situation.

  “You just wanna keep causing me fucking problems, huh?” he asked. He gritted his teeth and applied more and more pressure to her neck.

  I could tell her body was giving out because her fight to get him to loosen his hold on her neck became less intense. I knew right then I had to step in and help her or else he was going to hurt her severely. Tacora and Sabrina just stood there watching as Slim slowly crippled Jennifer by applying pressure to her neck, so I jumped on Slim’s back and began to tear into the flesh of his shoulder with my teeth. I tried to bury my teeth into him as deep as I could, and he felt it. He belted out a scream like the head of a silver bullet had pierced his skin.

  “Owww, you fucking bitch!” he yelled and then let Jennifer go to focus on getting me off him.

  Apparently Sabrina felt the need to get in on the situation too, because she started punching me in my back. “Bitch, let him go!” she snapped.

  I released my teeth from Slim’s back and tried to shield the blows Sabrina was throwing at me. Slim attacked me as well. He pushed Sabrina away from me and immediately started throwing one punch behind the other at me. He used my face as a punching bag and beat it until the entire right side of my face swelled up. I remember landing on the floor and losing consciousness.

  I couldn’t tell you how long I was unconscious, but when I opened my eyes I could tell that it was night outside from the darkness in the room. I looked around the bedroom and realized that Jennifer was nowhere in sight. I tried to get up from the bed, but when I lifted my head, it started hurting really badly. I laid my head back down on the pillow and yelled Jennifer’s name. But I didn’t get an answer. I lay completely still and listened for any movement, but heard none.

  I was confused. I knew that I hadn’t been with Slim long enough to pinpoint his behavior, but something inside
me told me that it wasn’t normal for him to leave any of his girls alone. After three minutes passed I called Jennifer’s name again, but I still didn’t get a response. Something told me that I was alone. But then I figured that Slim wouldn’t dare leave me alone. That would be too risky. As I tried to figure out what was going on, I heard footsteps.

  “Whoever is in here, can you please come here?” I yelled, and then I fell silent and waited for a response.

  Unfortunately the person on the other side of the bedroom door would not utter one word to me. I heard the footsteps a couple more times and then they stopped altogether. I became really leery. “Who’s there?” I yelled.

  Yet again, I didn’t get a response, and that bothered me. I eased my head up from the pillow and slowly eased myself off the bed. I had to get on the other side of that door to see who was ignoring me and why.

  I felt excruciating pains coming from my battered face. There wasn’t a mirror in the bedroom, but I knew that my face had been beaten up pretty badly. From the corner of my eye I could see how badly the right side of my face was swollen. And when I tried to touch it, it hurt worse. I tried to deal with the idea that I was banged up while I headed for the door. I grabbed the doorknob and turned it, but it wouldn’t open. The fucking door was locked. I started banging on it.

  “I gotta use the bathroom!” I yelled. “Please open the door!”

  And, again, no one responded. I was now more frustrated than pissed off. But I figured that if I caused another scene, I would be on the receiving end of another beat-down. So I returned to my bed and lay down. Whoever was in the other room knew I needed some attention. But they didn’t give a fuck, so I decided to chill out and wait to see what happened next.