by Brick
Chapter 2
Angel
I recognized his face as soon as I saw him walk onto the field for practice. I didn’t want to remember him. Shit, I didn’t want him to remember me either. In fact, a bitch had wanted to run as far away from her old life as she could. But life didn’t always work the way you wanted it to. I could tell by the way his eyes had lingered on me for just a second too long that the recognition was there for both of us.
“Best keep your eyes off the players,” a feminine voice echoed in my ear.
I looked to the right of me and saw another dancer, only this one was male and he was a Bounce Girl too. I mean, you may as well have called him a girl. He was just as feminine as I was. Tino was a light-skinned slim dude who you could tell had been fucked in the ass most of his life.
I shrugged. “Was only looking.”
He stood and switched over to grab some water then switched back. “Rule number one, baby girl, the players are off-limits.”
“Oh, I don’t want not one of those niggas. You know where my head is.”
“Bitch, you better not let Micah find out you robbing these niggas dry like you do,” he said then laughed.
I smirked. “The only way he’ll know is if you tell him,” I said then smiled.
Although I was smiling, I could tell that Tino could see the predatory look in my eyes. I could tell by the way he tilted his head and raised his brows at me. It warned him that if I even suspected he snitched me out, I would find a way to take his life.
Tino put his hands on his hips. “You know, bitch, I see that sneaky side of the game in you. You’re pretty as fuck, but you got some secrets under this bad-ass body and pretty face. What’s your story?” he asked.
I glanced back at the field to the player who had just happened to be glancing at me, then back to Tino and shrugged. “We all got a past, right? Do you want me to go asking why a man as fine as you is gayer than Elton John at a gay pride parade?”
A darkness overtook Tino’s features for a nanosecond until he caught himself. He gave a tight-lipped smile and said, “You got that.”
“I know.”
“Oh, if you really wanna make bank, it’s best you get your ass to that party Micah invited you to tonight.”
I rolled my eyes. “The only reason Micah invited me is because he keeps trying to get me to sell my pussy.”
Tino gave a girlish chuckle. “You should be used to it.”
That was all he said as he smirked and walked off. I kept his smart comment in the back of my mind. Although it had made me nervous, it also told me to stay on my toes around him. Since practice was over, I started grabbing my towels and water bottle so we could head back to the locker room. Sometimes it was a hassle for me to keep my past a secret. The only way Tino found out was because he and I had been out to lunch when the manager of Magic had come through the place we had been dining. I couldn’t deny that I used to be a dancer when the manager stood at our table for at least thirty minutes trying to get me to come back and shake my ass for him. The life I had led for the past four years was not one I had planned for myself.
As I walked toward the double doors, I felt someone behind me. I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. Although each of us played it off as if we were headed in different directions, we both knew what was up. There were still dancers and other people milling about and none of them knew that the two people mingling amid them had a grimy past: one of us a well-seasoned whore at eighteen and another a killer ex-drug dealer. When he passed me, he was close enough to brush against my shoulder. He was sweaty and looked tired as he took deep breaths. He had been out there running drills like he was in a real game, all so the sponsors could see what a hot commodity he was to the team. I looked up at the man who had once protected me and, in both of our eyes, a night we would never forget flashed.
It was easy to remember the face of the last man I’d seen from Dame’s camp on the night his reign of terror ended. I didn’t know his name right off the bat then. Dame had so many niggas running in and out the Trap you never knew if you would see the same one twice unless they were in his inner circle. The only reason this one stood out was because he had a bull nose piercing with a small horseshoe-type ring. He had a patch of hair growing on his chin. The hair on his head sat in a cut with tight, thick, silky curls; and although his square jaw line rocked a light five o’clock shadow it was his long, thick eyebrows and brown eyes that gave him a baby face look.
“Time for your set, Angel,” was all he said to me.
Gina and I were the only two in the club who came with our own bodyguards, and while I missed having the security knowing Jake was protecting me, since the dude came recommended by Jake I was okay. I nodded at him and told him I’d be out in a minute. He turned to leave. The rest of the girls and I all sat talking about all the craziness that had been going on since the new girl, Ray-Ray, had been brought in. Shorty was a fighter, and until Dame had damn near beat her to death in his room, she had countered every measure he had set against her to break her in.
Most of us were still laughing when the words, “Dame’s dead,” echoed around the room.
Those words played over and over in my head. I’ll never forget that night at the City. I wasn’t even supposed to work the pole that night, but something in the air just told me to make it my business to get the hell out of that house. That, along with Jake telling a couple of the girls and me that it was imperative we head to work that night.
I had been snatched off the street on my way to church when I was fourteen. Dame was ruthless in his pursuit of me. Every time I’d seen him, he was trying to get me in his ride with him or to talk to him or something. I wasn’t like those other girls entranced by his good looks or by the cars, the lifestyle he was into. I was simply a fourteen -year-old girl keeping her head in books and school like my grams told me to. I guess what they say is true: eventually most little black girls become a product of their environment.
Back then I used to live off of Garden Walk Boulevard in Riverdale. That place was the hood if you ever saw one. The street was lined with apartments and duplexes on both sides. Some gave off the façade that they were upscale, while others looked as if they were falling apart. The violence there was rampant and, just like most major cities plagued by crime, there was a no-snitching policy. Dame had the whole Clay Co in a death grip. It had gotten so bad in the area with violence that at one point someone was being raped and killed daily. The thing with Garden Walk was that you didn’t know it was the hood from the outside looking in. You’d have to be living there to know the hell that lived within.
That particular night Dame had people snatch me, my grams had been sick and we were having a revival at the church that week. She couldn’t drive but told me I could go ahead and walk to the church since it was only about ten minutes away walking. I was happy about it because that night was going to be the night me and the mime team did our little routine. Being on the praise team was something that I enjoyed doing so much at the time. I was a different kind of girl back then.
“Can I go to church with you?” I heard a male’s voice ask me as I passed a set of duplexes. It was Dame’s voice, the voice that I’d come to loath every time I heard it from that moment on. Even though his voice was even and smooth as silk, it made my flesh crawl because I’d heard stories about him. I knew the voice because every day I’d get off the bus from school Dame would be riding through the neighborhood. I knew he had dudes who slung dope for him who lived in my complex. Rumor had it that he had some girls who were prostituting for him, too, but I tried to steer clear of that side of things.
“Damn, shawty, you cutting?” Dough Boy had asked me that. Asking a girl if she was cutting was just like asking her if she was fucking. I scowled at him because even when he was driving Dame around he would ask that same stupid shit to almost every girl. I guess me looking at him like he had Black Plague bruised his ego, especially when Dame laughed along with the other goons. Then
, I wouldn’t have fucked Dough Boy to save my own life. The sight of his whole face sickened me, mostly his lips. There were some dudes who had sexy, thick lips, but Dough Boy’s lips made it look as if his breath smelled like ass.
I kept walking hoping my silence would make them leave me alone. They had to know I was just a little girl. My grams hadn’t allowed me to dress beyond my age. I held my Bible clutched to my chest. The church was only a few minutes away when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Only then I had no idea how to read that as a warning sign. I was too afraid to turn around to see what all the shouting was about. It was only when Dough Boy snatched me around by my arm that I realized I was going to get either beat up or raped and killed.
Shoot, out of all the shit I would be through locked up in Dame’s mansion the next four years, being beaten, raped, and killed would have been a godsend. But I digress.
“Please, let me go,” I said as I cowered away under his gaze all the while still clutching my damn Bible like it was going to save me. Tears clouded my vision as I flinched at the pressure he had on my arm.
“You deaf or summin’, li’l bitch? You don’t hear a nigga talking to you?” he growled down at me.
I didn’t say anything because I was afraid to. I was scared that he wouldn’t let me go if I did and even more afraid of what he would do if I said what I wanted to say. So I did the only thing I could do. I pulled out my pepper spray. He took a face full and then I kicked him in the nuts before I dropped my Bible and took off running. I could still hear his homies clowning him as I ran as fast as I could in the black Mary Jane church shoes I had on. That didn’t help nothing. Two more dudes chased me down. One tripped me and I went tumbling to the ground skinning my knee.
“Ahhhh,” I screamed out before they snatched me up.
The saddest part about the whole thing was the fact that people were standing around. Most either ran into their houses and locked their doors or pretended as if they didn’t see a scared little girl kicking and screaming as those two threw me in the back of the car.
“What’s your name?” Dame had asked me after they’d gotten me into the car.
For a while all I did was back away to the other side of the car and stare him down. I knew he had to be just messing with my mental since he had called me by name a time or two before. I had learned that was Dame’s game. If he could break you mentally, he had you. I’d never been so afraid a day in my life. He sat there with butterscotch-toned skin, a tapered haircut that had been shaped to perfection, and dressed like he had been featured on the cover of GQ. His light eyes studied me as he smoked on a cigar.
“My grams going to notice when I don’t come home,” was how I answered.
He tilted his head and furrowed his brows. “Is that supposed to deter me or something?”
The Escalade was still sitting in place so I was hopeful that he would let me out. “People saw you taking me. Someone is going to tell.”
That nigga smiled quickly then it faded like it was never there. “You think so?”
I wiped the tears from my eyes with my closed fist. Even though Dame looked like he had just walked right out of heaven, I’d learned that he was the complete opposite.
“Let’s go, Jake,” I heard him say.
There was glass separating the back of the truck from the front so I didn’t even know anyone was up front. That didn’t stop fear from overtaking me. Dame just sat there and watched me as I tried to open the door and jump out the back to no avail. I was horrified so much so that I started hyperventilating the farther and farther we moved away from where me and my grandmother lived. I screamed and banged on the windows, crying for dear life, until Dame’s fist connected with my jaw and put me out of my misery. That was how my life started with Dame, his world, and his rules.
My life had never been the same after that day. I tried to run away from Dame’s mansion four times before I realized that once he had you there was no escaping. It was hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that some of the older women were there because they wanted to be. After the first few weeks of beatings, starvation, and being sleep deprived, I finally started to get with the program. Dame took my virginity then introduced me to drugs and alcohol. I’d started to learn that as long as you did what he said when he said exactly how he wanted it done you could pretty much survive day to day unscathed mostly, but that was only if that nigga was in a semi decent mood. Sometimes Dame would fuck with me just because. I could either be too quiet for his liking or not paying him the attention that he thought I should have been paying him. I also found out another secret: the better I was at dancing, the more he kept me at the club bringing in money. The more I was at the club bringing in money, the less I had to worry about a nigga in the house trying to make me fuck them.
My name was Bianca, but since day one Dame had called me Angel. It was his play on the fact that he’d taken me on my way to church. I had been called Angel so much that sometimes I forgot my own name. Being under Dame’s umbrella had been hell so when the words “Dame’s dead” were spoken to me, it took me a minute to wrap my mind around who was saying it and what it meant. It had been four years since he had taken me. So all I knew was Dame, his world, and his rules.
I turned away from the vanity mirror I had been sitting at applying my makeup for my last set of the night. “What?” I asked, looking up at the girl who’d told me.
Most of us in the City were shaking our asses for Dame, but it was only me and another girl, Gina, who had brought in the most dough. She wasn’t there that night and the fact of the reason why she wasn’t there hurt me to my core. I wanted to cry thinking about her. Word was the girl had sliced her own throat after the last time Dame took her to the basement before he had died. The basement was a place in Dame’s mansion no one wanted to go. So much shit happened in that place that it would make the worst of the best serial killers cringe. From beatings to sodomy, committed against males and females, it all happened in the basement.
It had been me who had helped to get Gina cleaned up after her first trip to the basement thanks to that bitch Sasha. If Dame was dead, I hoped that bitch was killed with him. Gina had been the only cool one in the house besides Coco, Trigga, and Jake. I mean, it was a few dudes in the house who were okay and normally those were the ones hanging with Jake and Trigga. Any of those other niggas I tried to steer clear of.
Coco was a few years older than me and had a kid she hid away from Dame. She was a pretty girl who kind of took me under her wing when I got in the house. It was her who taught me how to shake my ass like I had been born to do it. It was her who helped clean me up after Dame had ripped my pussy to shreds while taking my virginity. That nigga’s dick was like nothing I’d ever experienced, even after he’d made me take other dick to make him money. No man’s dick had ever come close to ripping me from the front to back like Dame’s had done. But it was Coco who taught me how to stay on his good side as much as I could.
There had been plenty of times that nigga would come in on a rampage, but shit, me, Coco, and Gina had mastered the art of taking as few ass whoppings as possible. Gina mostly knew when he was coming home in a fucked-up mood because she was closest to Trigga and Big Jake. They would tell her some kind of way and she would tell us. Then the three of us would either steer clear or triple team that nigga in the bedroom to make sure he didn’t pop off on us. Sometimes even that was hard to do with that bitch Sasha, Dame’s supposed bottom bitch, thinking she used to run the girls in the house. Eventually Dame got tired of Coco, too, and he killed her. Coco had been doing all she could to keep her kid hidden and sometimes she went through this emotional phase were she would just dope up and zone out. That would cause her to miss work at the club or even not perform well when Dame sold her out to other people. She started costing him money and that angered him. He beat her to death in front of the whole house. I often wondered what happened to her kid, but since nobody had even seen the kid but me and Gina, that I knew of, it was a lon
g shot to find out what happened to him.
“Yeah, girl. Look,” she said, pointing the remote at the TV and turning up the volume. There was Dame’s mansion, the place we used to live, up in flames. The reporter was claiming there had been no survivors.
“I don’t believe that shit,” Niya said behind us. She was an Asian and black chick with exotic features and a ghetto booty.
“That nigga ain’t dead. Don’t let this shit fool y’all,” another girl said.
“Let me get my ass out here and make this money I lost last night before this nigga try to break my fucking arm again. Y’all stupid asses sit in here and believe this shit if you want to. When that nigga get here at closing time and y’all ain’t made his money we’ll see who’s gon’ be dead by the end of the night,” Niya said before stomping her six-inch spiked heels out the door.
Her round, tanned ass bounced and jiggled as she walked out. Part of me was wishing that nigga was really dead, but knowing who Dame was and how he rolled wouldn’t allow me to be so lucky in my thoughts. So I, too, got up and finished dressing up to work my set. Wasn’t any need for me to get all happy about shit that wasn’t true.
Bubbles looked at me one last time. “You think he dead?” she asked.
I shrugged and glanced from her to the TV. She was still holding the remote in one hand and the other hand was on her stomach. She was pregnant and scared shitless Dame was going to find out and do to her what he had done to Gina and countless other girls who’d made the mistake of getting knocked up. The only reason Coco had been able to get away with it was because she got good at lying and hid her sickness by pretending she had doped herself up one too many times, she used to tell me. When she had the baby, Dame had been somewhere in London handling some business with a shipment of girls.
“I hope he’s dead. Jesus, let him be dead,” she whispered.
I could hear the cracks in her voice because of the emotions she was feeling. We didn’t have time to talk about it though.