Nikki saw Wayne’s street coming up, feeling somewhat thankful that her captors had at least taken her to a place she knew something about. Every so often, as she passed the sides of houses and crossed dirty, trash-filled alleys, she’d look down at her right hand. It shook uncontrollably because, of course, she’d never killed anyone—if killing the guy was what she’d done in the basement. It was all so unnerving and she was determined to make sure that Breon felt at least a fraction of the pain and fear she felt by being kidnapped. All she could think about was how he’d left her there for dead by refusing to get out of bed to come get her. She was not only feeling down about herself, but also about how she’d given it up so easily to Breon only to find out that she was, in his eyes, no better than a throw-away pair of plastic gloves.
When Nikki came to Wayne’s street, she turned right. Now, his house was just up the block. As she passed the spot where she’d gone down on Breon, she looked at where his SUV had been parked, remembering how fascinated she’d been with his manhood when he’d pulled it out of his pants. In retrospect, she felt so silly now that she saw the price she paid for such an interaction.
The wind blew down the street, almost as if it were a tunnel. In the distance was downtown Chicago. It looked so morbid from a distance. Clouds had rolled over the Chicago area, blocking some of the sun with their gray masses. Cars would slow down ever so slightly to get a good look at Nikki as she rushed up the street. Her body was so cold that she practically shook; her nipples were so hard that they very obviously poked out of her shirt. She prayed to God that Wayne would be home. If he wasn’t, she still hadn’t thought of what she would do. Wayne was the only person she knew who lived anywhere close to where she was now.
Nikki turned into Wayne’s yard and zipped up the walkway. Once she stepped up onto the porch, it all felt familiar from when she’d been over at the coming home party for Jayron on Friday night. She thought of how this would be the first time she’d show her face to Wayne after getting into the fight in the dining room at the party. However, she had to be real about it. All of that didn’t matter at this point. She was doing this for survival. And the quicker she could get off of the street, the better. There was definitely a fear deep down that Dante would come riding by any moment and she would be swept away all over again.
Nikki banged on the front door. “Wayne?” she said, trying to not yell too loudly. The last thing she wanted was to draw even more attention to herself. She knocked again. “Wayne.”
Nikki stepped in front of the front window and looked between the slit of the opened curtains. From what she could see, it certainly looked as if nobody was there. “Jayron!” she yelled, hoping that maybe he hadn’t found a job yet and would be in the house. However, Nikki soon found that this was not the case.
After desperately knocking on Wayne’s door for a few more minutes, Nikki turned around. With her arms folded, she stomped her feet up and down. As if the world was not already cold enough, it felt even colder. Her one saving grace, which was Wayne’s house, had now fallen out of her hands.
“What am I gonna do now?” Nikki asked herself.
Nikki stood on the porch for a moment, thinking that maybe she could go to one of Wayne’s neighbors. She then remembered what kind of neighborhood this was and decided against it. With her luck, she would wind up at the one house on the block with thugs and goons who had no respect for women. She’d had enough of that and would rather take her chances.
Before stepping off of the front porch, Nikki knocked once more. And once more, there was no answer. Feeling the bitter wind whip up onto the porch, causing her to turn her back to break it, Nikki rushed off of the porch. Cold, heavy tears rolled down the sides of her face. However, these were not tears of sorrow but rather tears of fatigue – tears that were only exaggerated by the fact that it could not have been any warmer than 10 degrees. The only thing that would make this ordeal even worse would be if it were to start snowing or, even worse, sleeting.
Nikki knew that on the nearby busy street – Halstead – there were a couple of bus lines. She didn’t know where the lines went, because she was always too good for riding the bus in Chicago unless she really had to do so. However, desperate times did indeed call for desperate measures. Praying to God that there would be a bus rolling down the street when she got to Halstead, so that she wouldn’t die in the hood of pneumonia, Nikki walked as quickly as she could down the block. Once again, she felt the eyes of cars rolling by. They looked at her, probably wondering what in the hell this woman was doing. To make matters even worse, Nikki felt the bruises on her body from being knocked out and hitting her head on the bed frame at the house and from being slammed into the fence when she’d tried to escape in the alley. Not to mention, the tumble she’d taken down the stairs had certainly done something to her limbs.
Nikki turned the corner and walked the block over to Halstead. There, she was greeted with traffic rushing down the street. The barren sidewalks made her feel all the more alone as she looked in both directions – north and south – trying to see where the nearest bus stop was. As luck would have it, a bus was coming from the south, no doubt on its way into downtown Chicago. Getting on a bus like that would be perfect, as she’d be able to get help downtown. And even if she couldn’t, there were bus and train stations downtown that were indoors, which meant she could at least get to somewhere where she’d have some heat while she figured out what she was going to do. No matter what she did, her overall objective was to hurry up and get herself off of the streets. Each and every car that passed caused Nikki to feel anxious, as she feared that it could be Dante coming back from wherever he’d gone.
Nikki quickly ran to the nearest bus stop, struggling to move her frigid body. Each step seemed to be more difficult than the previous step. However, Nikki managed to make it to the bus stop. She waited, watching the bus come to a stop at the stoplight before pulling up. The doors opened and she looked into the eyes of an older white man – a white man whose face looked as if he were not one to play games.
Swallowing her pride, as she was about to do something she’d never done, a humbled Nikki stepped onto the bus. After glancing to the left and looking into the eyes of people sitting on the bus who looked her up and down with judgment and contempt, Nikki boldly looked into the blue eyes of the bus driver.
“Sir, please,” she said. “I need help. I need to get downtown.”
“Okay,” the driver said. “This bus goes downtown. Just put your money in, you know the drill.”
“That’s the thing,” Nikki said hesitantly. “I don’t have it. My coat and everything has been…has been…,” she wished that she’d gotten her story together before jumping onto this bus, “stolen. They took my purse and my phone.”
“Get outta here with that shit,” the driver said, in a very matter of fact way. “You’re just another one of these crack heads or something that are looking for a free ride. I know your type. Get the hell off my bus.”
“No, sir,” Nikki said, trying to sound sweet. “That’s not what it is at all. I’m not a crack head or anything like that. I swear, my stuff was stolen from me just now. Why else do you think that I would be walking around without no coat on and it’s like zero fuckin’ degrees out here?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” the driver said. “You’re not riding on my bus without paying. And you look like you’ve been on something. I don’t have time for this bullshit.” He looked Nikki up and down, looking at her bruises. “Either put some money in here,” he tapped on the bus machine for accepting payment, “or get off and maybe try to hitchhike. Good luck with that, though. Especially around here.”
As Nikki began to plea again, not wanting to go back out into the cold, an older woman sitting in one of the bus’s front seats spoke up. “Honey, I need to get to work,” she said. “Can you stop holding this bus up so we can get to where we’re going?”
Other people on the bus spoke, saying, “Yeah,” in response.
“Fuck,” Nikki said, the word slipping out of her mouth. “What the hell I’mma do?”
Nikki noticed the Shell sign just a block and a half or so down. After contemplating whether or not she should go back to Wayne’s house and see, by some miracle of God, if he had come back home, she headed toward the gas station. For the next block and a half, once again, she could feel the eyes of people in cars. They drove past, nobody slowing down to see why this young woman was walking down a Chicago street during the winter with no coat. She was more than sure that men were looking at her, as her shapely body would be hard to miss on such barren sidewalks.
Nikki rushed into the gas station parking lot, almost looking at the small building as a safe haven. At least inside of it, she would get to have some heat. Her body was so full of cold that all she wanted to do was get to somewhere she could take a shower. The word please slipped out of her mouth repeatedly as the rubbing she’d been doing was beginning to have little effect on her body. Her arms and neck were covered in chill bumps as she could feel her throat and lungs fill with cold air.
Nikki burst through the glass door of the gas station and walked directly up to the cashier box. The box, which was cased in by thick, bulletproof glass, was manned by a man who looked to be Middle Eastern or Indian National. With eyes full of sorrow and desperation, Nikki approached the window. She was thankful – if such a thing was possible – that there were no customers in the store. The humiliation of being at the world’s mercy was enough, let alone having to do it in front of unforgiving people in a Chicago hood.
“Excuse me,” Nikki said, looking into the Middle Eastern man’s eyes. “I need help, please. Do you have a phone? I need to call someone to come get me because I’ve been robbed. Somebody took all of my stuff.”
The man, who was tight lipped to say the least, looked Nikki up and down. Normally, he might ask such a person to leave the store, as it was nothing unusual for him to have someone coming in and asking for something. However, there was just a bit of compassion in his voice.
“Okay,” he said, his accent very thick. “I let you use for five minutes, okay. My stuff no free. Life no free. But I let you use for five minutes, okay?”
Nikki nodded, folding her hands and holding them up in gratitude. “Thank you,” she said, watching the man turn around and grab a cordless phone. “I just need to call somebody to come help me. Thank you so much.”
The Middle Eastern man showed his teeth in a bit of a smile as he stepped out of the side door and handed the phone to Nikki. He pointed to the side, telling Nikki to stand away from the box to make the phone call. Obliging, Nikki did just that. However, her heart and soul sunk just a couple of inches more with her spirit as she realized what it meant to be a victim of the technology generation. She looked at the numbers on the keypad and realized that she didn’t remember anyone’s phone number by heart.
“Fuck,” Nikki said. She’d dialed what she believed to be her mother’s number, finding what sounded like an old white man. She then dialed another number. Disconnected. She then tried two more phone numbers. A bitter Asian woman answered the first, an aggravated guy sitting in traffic belonged to the second number, and the third number rang for several seconds before Nikki heard the voicemail of some sort of manager at a company that ended in L.L.C.
Nikki looked up and out at the cold streets just as the gas station attendant reached for the phone. Her mother’s number had obviously slipped her mind, as did Gracelyn’s. The few friends she had changed their phone numbers so often that there would be no way she’d even have known them to begin with. Her options limited, she soon found herself looking into the eyes of the gas station attendant. He demanded to have his phone back, saying that the five minutes was up.
“Please,” Nikki said, “I’m trying to remember the number, but I can’t.”
“Okay,” he said, grabbing the phone out of Nikki’s grasp. “I give you five minutes like I said. My phone no free. Life no free. I give you five minutes. Now, I take my phone back. You buy or leave. Buy or leave.”
Furious, Nikki scolded the man with her eyes. “Fuck you, you fuckin’ terrorist!” she said. Nikki stormed out of the gas station and back into the parking lot. The skies were so gray, with the sun now hiding completely. Just as Nikki was contemplating giving in and simply calling the police, despite the fact that she’d taken part in whatever had gone down by hiding the semiautomatic guns for Breon, a guy was walking over from pump 2. Dressed in the latest red Jordan’s, baggy black jeans, and a clean white shirt under a nice black, bubble coat, he walked up onto the sidewalk. Nikki felt his eyes look her up and down as he went into the gas station. A few moments passed and he came back out, carrying a couple of Swisher Sweets packs.
“You all right?” the guy asked.
Nikki turned and looked at him. Normally, she might not give a random guy at a gas station the time of day. However, if she didn’t at this point, her time could be limited in such freezing temperatures. “I was robbed of my stuff and now I’m try’na get home,” she explained.
“Word?” the guy said, exposing his gold fronts. “What happened?”
A cold chill rocked Nikki’s body. “I was walking down the street and these chicks came up and tried to start some shit with me,” she lied, thinking as quickly as she could. “I was like oh hell no. They jumped on me. I was just staying over here with a friend and she left and stuff ‘cause she had to go to work. Anyway, they took my purse, my coat, my phone and everything. I’m so fucked and it’s so cold out here.”
The guy’s eyes were glued to Nikki, and she was well aware of it. “Shit,” he said, “I don’t know where you stay, but I can take you home if you want. That’s my car over there.” He pointed at a black Chevy Impala. “If you don’t, that’s coo too. I can let you use my phone.”
With her options limited, Nikki felt she had no other choice other than to accept the guy’s offer. Accepting such, though, only further drove the nail into the coffin for just how angry she felt at Breon. Never in her life would she just get into the car with a man she’d just met at the gas station. As she climbed into his front passenger side seat, she kept her eyes open for any tricks he could try on her. The last thing she needed was to become a victim twice, and she certainly wasn’t going to let that happen.
Nikki told the guy where she lived as he pulled out of the parking lot, only giving him a general description by telling him the nearest busy intersection. He knew where it was and headed that way.
“That’s real fucked up that happened to you,” the guy said, making conversation after turning the radio down. “I mean, these hoes out here is real cold nowadays. It’s even worse with niggas.”
“Yeah,” Nikki said. She relaxed as she felt her body thaw from the heat. Nonetheless, she remained alert in case she would need to jump out of the car at a stoplight. “I can’t believe this shit happened to me. And it was all ‘cause this nigga I know was supposed to come get me. This don’t make no fuckin’ sense.”
“Shit,” the guy said, shaking his head.
“Thank you so much for helping me,” Nikki said. “I hope I ain’t mess your day up or nothin’ like that.”
“Aw naw,” he replied, shaking his head. “Shit, I was just getting off work and about to smoke. Stopped at that gas station to buy some blunts and shit and saw you, walking without no coat. And I was like she don’t look like no crack head or prostitute or nothin’. So, why she out here walkin’ with no coat? When I got up on you and stuff, I saw the bruises and shit and knew that somethin’ happened.”
Nikki smiled, happy that
someone who was seemingly decent had taken notice. “Yeah,” she said. “I was outside for like twenty minutes or somethin’. I’m so damn cold. I swear I am. I’m so mad at that nigga I don’t know what to do.”
“Yeah,” the guy said. “I bet you is. I stay over there and stuff, who was you visitin’ with. Maybe I know’em.”
“Naw, I doubt you do,” Nikki said, not wanting to say any names. “I was stayin’ over there with a friend and she just moved in. The nigga that was supposed to get me ain’t even from around here and stuff. Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, all right then,” the guy said.
The rest of the car ride, which lasted about fifteen minutes as the afternoon was gearing up to be an ugly rush hour, was rather quiet. Nikki felt relieved with the fact that this guy wasn’t trying to get with her, as so many other men might try to do. He actually seemed respectable, not that that was saying much. Breon had seemed respectable as well, only for Nikki to find out that he was probably the worst dog she’d ever encountered in her life.
When the guy had gotten close to the nearest intersection to Nikki’s apartment complex, Nikki felt she could trust him enough to drop her off at the entrance of her complex instead of the corner. Nicely, he agreed and drove the few blocks further until he pulled into the entrance and did a quick U-turn. Nikki grabbed the handle and looked over at him. “Thank you so much,” she said, pushing the car door open. She smiled. “I can’t lie, I was so scared at first and shit that maybe you was gon’ do something, but thank you.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Naw,” he said. “You look like you been through somethin’. I thought you was gon’ ask to go to the hospital.”
Nikki thought about that for a moment, as she wondered how she looked in mirror. “Yeah, maybe I will,” she said. “But I need to get home first.”
Wrath of a Side Chick 3: A Chicago Hood Drama (Side Chick's Wrath) Page 15