A Hood Chick's Story pt. 2

by LaShonda DeVaughn

  Tony ended up having to fork over three hundred dollars to his boy Cat who happened to be from New York. Cat bet Tony that the Giants would bring it to the Patriots and unfortunately he was right. Cat gracefully took his winnings from Tony and cracked himself another Heineken. That was another thing that pissed me off about Tony, he knew our money situation wasn’t right but would still splurge, make bets and other dumb frivolous shit with his money fronting like he was still baller of the year.

  I kept my eye on Shawn from the kitchen the entire night because he appeared real strange to me. It was as if he was wearing how he felt on the inside, on the outside. He was frowning for no reason and was completely unfriendly and I wanted his ass out of my house.

  All of the noise and commotion from Tony and his friends eventually woke up Shayonna. I heard her small footsteps coming down the stairs and I walked over to the bottom of the staircase. She was rubbing her eyes while walking down and once she saw Shawn, she dashed into the living room and didn’t even acknowledge me at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Hey Uncle Shawn!” She plopped on his lap and gave him a hug.

  “Alright Shayonna get off his lap,” I said. I didn’t play my daughter sitting on no man’s lap and she hopped right off. She took Shawn’s hand and tugged on it.

  “Come upstairs Uncle Shawn, let me show you what my daddy bought me.”

  Tony smashed the blizz into the ashtray pretending to be jealous, or maybe he was. “Shayonna, you came straight to Shawn and you didn’t come and give daddy a kiss.”

  “Daddy, I already seen you today, I haven’t seen Uncle Shawn in a long time.” She said extra cheery.

  Shawn cracked the first smile since he had been there and Shayonna led him upstairs to show off her new toys.

  A half hour passed by and I was in the kitchen cleaning like a slave. I washed the dishes, wiped the countertops and trashed all of the empty bottles that Tony's friends left laying around and needless to say I was tired as shit. Most of his boys had left but a few of them were still in the living room watching the highlights on ESPN and being as loud as they wanted to be.

  "Roll up," Tony’s cocky ass demanded.

  Cat sat up off the couch and picked the Dutch master pack off of the coffee table, he cracked it open and prepared it to roll. While doing so Cat glanced up at the ceiling.

  "Fuck that nigga Shawn doing playing dress up or some shit?" he asked.

  Tony took his foot off the couch and looked up at the ceiling too. "I don't know what the fuck that nigga is up there doing."

  He stood to walk to the bottom of the stairs and yelled Shawn's name. "Shawn! What the fuck you up there doing nigga?"

  Shawn came walking down the stairs. His face was expressionless.

  “Damn nigga, what the fuck was you up there doing, playing dress up, getting your nails painted or some shit?” Tony asked.

  “Whatever dog. Yo I’m out.”

  He walked past Tony and went out the door. Tony watched him as he walked out and went back into the living room with the rest of his boys.

  “Yo, this is the last time I’m fuckin with that nigga. He been acting real funny ever since this deal we had went bad. He act like he can’t just charge shit to the game and take a loss like a real nigga would. He’s fucking lame, that niggas cut.” Tony said.

  “I feel you dog, the nigga was acting real grimy all night.” Cat said lighting up the blunt.

  “Fuck that nigga,” Tony said laying back on the couch.

  After cleaning up as much as I could for the night, I decided to go upstairs to run me some bath water. I was exhausted, the balls of my feet were killing me from playing hostess all night and I just wanted to soak my feet and relax. I went into Shayonna’s room to check on her when I noticed her lights out, I figured she went back to sleep and proceeded to give her a good night kiss. I placed a peck on her chubby cheek when I noticed that it was moist. As I went to turn on the lights I could hear her whimpering and I quickly flicked on the switch.

  “Baby are you crying?”

  I sat beside her on her bed, she was balled up lying on her side facing the opposite wall.

  “Baby, what’s the matter, tell mommy why you’re crying?” I asked tugging on her shoulder. When Shayonna didn’t answer I pulled her body toward me and I noticed in between her legs were soaked with blood.

  I yelled at the top of my lungs for Tony. “Tonyyyyyyy!!!!!!”

  Tony zoomed up the stairs when he heard me screaming. He entered the room and then looked at the blood on Shayonna’s bed and pajamas.

  “What the fuck happened?” he screamed out.

  “That muthafucka raped our daughter Tony!” I screamed.

  Cat ran up the stairs and called the ambulance for us once he saw the blood. We tried to comfort Shayonna, she appeared to be in a lot of pain and we made all of Tony's friends leave the house.

  “I’m gonna kill that nigga! I’ma fuckin’ murder that bitch ass nigga!” Tony screamed out punching the walls. I sat clutching my daughter and crying. I couldn’t even think straight, I just wanted to get her to the hospital.

  One good thing about living in the suburbs was that the ambulance arrived about five minutes after Cat called.

  We rode inside the ambulance with Shayonna. Tony and I cried like babies all the way to the hospital. It was the most horrible feeling in the world to see our baby in pain when there was nothing we could do about it, it was killing me.

  They rushed Shayonna to one of the hospital rooms.

  “Sorry, you can’t come in here right now, just wait right here, someone will be out to see you,” one of the male doctors told us.

  Tony and I stood impatiently in the waiting room crying.

  Shortly after one of the doctors came out into the hall looking around until she spotted us pacing the hall.

  "Are you Ms. James, Shayonna's mom?"

  "Yes I'm Miss James," I said.

  "Okay ma’am and is this her father?" she said pointing to Tony.

  "Yes," Tony and I said at the same time.

  "Okay, why don't you two come over here and have a seat."

  At this point I wanted to knock the doctor against the wall for stalling. I just wanted my baby's results, all the small talk was irrelevant. I needed to know NOW.

  "Ma’am just tell me what's going on with my daughter!" I said impatiently.

  "Well." She paused and then clutched the chart to her chest. "Her insides were bruised pretty badly. There is a lot of scar tissue, however she isn't in too much pain because we have her heavily sedated. Now for the bad news."

  "Excuse me? You just told us the bad news," I snapped.

  Tony stood up and walked toward me to hold my head while I sat to calm me down.

  She continued, "There’s a possibility that she may not be able to have children."

  "What? What? Hold up, hold up what do you mean!" I shouted. Tears immediately began to flow even harder. I saw tears streaming down Tony's cheeks as well but he tried to hold his composure in order to calm me down.

  “Well it looks to me that whoever had done this didn’t only force sexual intercourse but there was also some sort of object involved. Now I’m not sure what type of object was used but judging from the scarring and the amount of blood that was lost, we did conclude that a sharp object was used during this assault.”

  “Tony our baby! Tony she's only five years old!” I cried looking up at him.

  He squeezed me tighter and then couldn’t fight back his tears. Shayonna was what held us both together and now she was sitting in a hospital bed in unbearable pain. How could I explain to my daughter when she got older that she couldn’t bear children because her daddy’s friend raped her because he was mad about losing money? This just wasn’t fair!

  Tony and I both cried as the doctor explained the severity of the situation.

  “Usually when there is infertility due to rape, we categorize it as Incidental causes. This category includes damage inflicted on any part of the
reproductive system by physical trauma.”

  She looked at us both like she pitied us. She probably did. I mean we were so young and had no idea how to handle what was going on.

  “I’m so sorry, I’ll come out to get you both when it’s an appropriate time to see your daughter. Right now she’s highly sedated and I would like for her to get a good amount of undisturbed rest.”

  The doctor began to walk away and a lady with a stack of papers in her hand came out of a side room passing the doctor and pointing at us. “Are those the parents?”

  “Yes,” The doctor responded looking back in our direction before leaving the lady standing solo.

  The lady proceeded walking toward Tony and me. “Hi, my name is Tonya Lebrowski, I work for DSS,” she said.

  “DSS?”

  “Yes Ma’am, the Department of Social Services.”

  “I know what DSS stands for, why are y’all getting involved in this?” I spit back.

  Tony pat my back to calm me down because getting gully with Social Services wouldn’t help matters any.

  “Ma’am, anytime something happens to an underage child that endangers their safety while in the care of their guardian, we have to become involved.”

  “Yes she was under our care, but how were we supposed to know that someone who we let in our home would harm our daughter!” Those last words hurt like a bullet wound. My beautiful daughter was laying in a fuckin’ hospital bed drugged up because of that stupid deal with Tony, Shawn and them bitches. And now DSS would be involved in my fuckin’ life like I wasn’t a good mother, shit was so ugly at that point for me, I was falling apart. All that I could do was look at this stocky lady and try not to cuss her out. She was only doing her job.

  “So are you saying that you know who did this to your daughter?” She asked getting her pen ready to write down the suspect’s name.

  I looked up at Tony. He gave me a look to keep my mouth shut because he wanted to handle Shawn on his own terms.

  “No, we don’t know who did this, we had a lot of company tonight and we had no idea that someone had went into our daughters room and assaulted her.”

  She gave me a look as if she knew that I was lying.

  “Alright ma’am, I’m sorry for your agony and I do sympathize with you. But more importantly, I sympathize with the child. This is standard procedure, we care about the well-being of the child, she’s the real victim here so we have to investigate to see if there is any sign of obvious abuse or neglect from the parents or any other individuals living in the household.”

  Tony was pissed. Everything started to hit him even harder. The baby, DSS and Shawns ass. Tony had it in for him. He withdrew his hold from me and rushed out and I knew exactly where he was going but I didn’t care at that point. I was too numb to care. Whatever was going to happen to Shawn so be it. All the good in me that I had accumulated over the years died when he touched my daughter. I didn’t want to think of what Tony was going to do because there are always repercussions to every action but this situation to me felt different. Anyone who was evil enough to harm a child deserved every bad thing that came their way.

  I sat with the stocky lady exchanging information and setting up a time where DSS could come to visit my household to investigate.

  The mortgage company was shut down so I had no current paystubs to show her to ensure our lifestyle was legit. I was just all fucked up in the game but right now my main concern was Shayonna.

  Chapter Fifteen – Crushed

  I allowed Shayonna to rest that night and rushed home to pack some clothes for my hospital stay. My body was so weak, I felt like I hadn’t eaten in days. I climbed the stairs, each step harder than the first, until I finally reached the top. My stomach was doing somersaults as I approached my daughter’s room. I stepped in and quickly backed into the hallway and stood still against the wall. The sight was too intense for me to stomach. I re-entered her room and tried my hardest not to glance at all of the blood that soaked her twin bed. Over on the floor by her dresser I saw a wire hanger that was twisted and bent. It was covered in blood and seemed to have small pieces of skin tissue hanging from the sharp end. It had to be what Shawn used to take away pieces of my daughter’s future.

  I vomited all over the floor and ran out of her room. I fell to my knees and cried because I felt violated. This was the beautiful delicate little Angel that God sent for me to protect and I failed. My innocent child was being tormented with a wire hanger and sexually assaulted and I didn’t have a clue that it was happening. She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve to feel a single bit of the strife that I endured my entire life. Why would the world inflict my bad luck on my daughter? It just wasn’t fair! I cried and begged God to allow my baby to have a speedy recovery and if any bad thing was aimed her way, I prayed that he would divert it to me instead.

  I stood and I screamed.

  “Whyyyyy!!!!!” I let out a cry that only someone who had lived a life full of unfulfilled promises and agony could scream out. The type of cries a broken hearted and an unloved soul would scream.

  “Whyyyyy!!!!” I let out another long cry as I fell in a squat and rocked my body on the floor. I sat there crying for a good while until my inner strength told me that losing myself wouldn’t help Shayonna. I needed to get up and muster some strength to be there for my baby.

  I got up and led myself into my bedroom; I stuffed some day clothes and underclothes into my duffle bag. I grabbed my tooth brush as well as a few garments for Tony. I approached my closet to grab a few outfits and sneakers when I noticed that the door to my safe was open. I looked inside and realized that my gun was missing. I searched around hoping that Tony wasn’t dumb enough to use my gun to handle Shawn but I didn’t have time to dwell on it because my daughter needed me.

  I ran out of the house and locked my front door. I noticed a letter sticking out of the mailbox from Trè and I grabbed it and stuffed it into my purse. I flew back up to the hospital and the doctor told me that I still wouldn’t be able to see Shayonna for a while. I wanted to cuss her out so badly but I had to maintain a healthy reputation for the sake of DSS.

  I didn’t know what to do with myself while I sat impatiently in the hospital’s small family waiting room alone. I beat myself up about the actions that took place so much that I wanted to harm myself. I realized that I couldn’t always depend on myself to handle my grief on my own, I had to reach out to someone, but who could I call? When I discovered that this happened to my baby, all I wanted to do was reach for my own mom to help me with this situation. I wanted to hug her and hear her tell me that everything would be alright. I wanted her to preach to me as she did when I was younger to point out my faults and lead me to the right path. I wanted my mom so badly at that moment that I cried thinking about how much her sensitivity would mean to me at that very moment.

  I shut myself into a phone booth in the hospital and searched through the yellow pages for my aunt’s phone number. If anyone knew where my mom was, she would.

  There were about a hundred listings for Brenda James and I called most of them with my cell phone each time coming up short. That’s when I spotted Brenda James with an address listed on River Street in Mattapan. I knew that it had to be my aunt because each time she moved, it was always somewhere in Mattapan because it was close to where she worked.

  I dialed the number and when the person picked up, I immediately started crying.

  It was my mom’s voice.

  The sound of her voice washed over me and it felt so good.

  “Mom.” I whispered through my cry.

  “Hello, who is this? I can’t hear you,” she said.

  “Mom,” I said crying again. I sniffed, “Mom it’s me Tiara.”

  The phone was completely silent.

  “Mom I need you right now, you just don’t understand how much I really need you right now mom.”

  I heard my mom let out a silent cry but it seemed as if she was trying to hold it back.

 
“You don’t have to say anything mom, just let me talk. I’m so sorry about Sharod mom, I really am. We all loved him and we all tried to protect him. Please understand mom, it’s not me nor Trè’s fault that he’s gone. We can’t control God’s plan. Yes I took him out of your household to come live with me in a better neighborhood but I couldn’t control what he did when he returned to the hood. I tried to protect him ma, I really did. You can’t keep blaming me for what happened because I need you. You don’t understand how much I have needed you over the years. I miss you so much mommy it burns my soul. Me and Trè both.