Chardonnay: A Novel

by Jacquilynn Martine

  “Cause why?” asked Konsuelo.

  “Just, the things our men do. Konstance sat up and let me fuck Denim so she could go off and—”

  “Shut up Fianna!” said Konstance.

  Silence.

  “Didn’t we have a pact that we would never have sex with or date each other’s man or exes?” said Zasmyth cutting her eyes at Konstance.

  “Oh I know you not talking. Ms. I slang my shit in your man face though!” I said.

  “Girl please. If Slim wanted this, he couldn’t have it.”

  “We’re getting somewhere. So why did you do it Zasmyth?”

  My head was floating as I tried to listen to the conversation.

  “I did my shit to—”

  “To make extra money off me. Konnie was right. You are a stank hoe!” I said cutting Zasmyth off.

  She sucked her teeth and bit her lip. Fianna giggled a little and said,

  “Maybe if we all fucked each other man we would be even!”

  “Will you shut the fuck up?!” said Katura. It shocked us all. She barely spoke up, but not tonight.

  “Daisy, you’ve been out of the circle the longest, tell why you did what you did.”

  “I did it because I was trying to fit in. Even if it meant going too far.” said Daisy.

  Zasmyth busted out laughing and said, “Dere ain’t a faker bitch in this world than you.”

  Daisy cried harder. Katura let out a groan and Fianna raised the bar.

  “Zasmyth, you’re a fucking prostitute so why you busting up on Daisy?”

  “Same reason I’ll kick yaur ass.”

  “Damn, thought we were sisters.” Fianna said, hurt.

  “Oh really, what color is your skin, then look at mine. Shit is easier for you white girl!” Zasmyth spat out.

  She was going crazy.

  “Zasmyth—”

  “And you Katura, you act all quiet and shit but your ass is just as dirty. Fuck Mystro and his groupies don’t you?”

  “Zasmyth!” yelled Konsuelo.

  “And you,” she pointed to Daisy again.

  “Tell Konstance about Denim and how he’s still fucking Kimmei.”

  “Shut the fuck up Zasmyth! Gehvoni engaged to another woman and you fucking him. He don’t want you. At least my man wants me!” yelled Konstance, who was crying uncontrollably.

  Zasmyth laughed at her. Her red hair was wild. She zeroed in on Konstance.

  “Oh really? Yaur man still wants you? Is that what you believe? Is that what you tell yaurself er’ time you do one of Nay’s moves? Is that what you tell yaurself every time you get rejected by two men who love another girl stronger than you. Yaur nothing, you’ll never be nothing, yaur sloppy seconds!”

  Konsuelo slapped Zasmyth. Fianna screamed. Knew shit was about to hit the fan now.

  “Don’t you talk to my sister like that! Who the hell do you think you are?!”

  “Zasmyth-muthafucken-Hiroshima-Ijahmeen, Bitch!”

  I stood up and Zasmyth snapped her neck over at me.

  “And you. I heard about your little rich boy that think his shit ain’t out—everybody know Myron and Jase got the same daddy, well now of course thanks to your pussy popping ass!”

  I winced my eyes at her as everyone’s mouths dropped. My body was shaking uncontrollably knowing the extent of harm that could be done from that rumor getting out. Konstance walked up to me and said,

  “Nay...is that true?”

  I stood there itching for Zasmyth’s ass to be kicked, but I knew how she fought. Dirty.

  “So what ya gon’ do ‘bout it...huh. I blew yaur shit wide o-pen?” she said getting in my face.

  Konstance pushed her head back out my face and Zasmyth spit in hers. Konsuelo came in to break it up and looked disgustedly at Zasmyth.

  “Are you trying to resolve this or get your ass beat?!” she hosted at Zasmyth.

  “You a stank ass hoe!” yelled Konstance.

  Zasmyth inhaled and then exhaled. She reached for Konstance but Konsuelo was blocking her. Zasmyth gave up. Took another breath. Laughed. Looked at everyone.

  “You said, ‘He told me he loved me’. Can I remind you of that? Now, I’m a stank? Your right Konnie. Your right Fianna. I’m a prostitute, I’m a stank hoe. So while we’re at it let’s talk about some more stank hoe’s. Some of us got demons in our closet that are dying to get out.” said Zasmyth.

  “What do you mean?” said Konsuelo.

  “Oh, you want to know now? Well, Daisy and Fianna not the only ones in this room that fucked someone’s man.” said Zasmyth.

  The room got quite. Not even Konsuelo looked like she wanted to put whatever it was out on the table. I looked around at everybody and hoped it didn’t involve me.

  “Who?” said Konsuelo.

  “Only she and I know. Well, a few other people. Funny how a man can make you look so dumb! So dumb in front of all your people. But I’ll let her explain herself.” said Zasmyth smirking.

  “Why are you bringing this out now?” said Fianna slowly. She knew what Zasmyth was talking about. I looked around the room again. Daisy was crying still, Katura was shaking like it was zero degree weather, and Konstance’s head was down. Anyone was fair game.

  “I only think it’s fair. We’re clearing the bullshit aren’t we?”

  Konstance started to cry. She mugged Zasmyth hard. Everyone mugged Zasmyth. Katura looked at Zasmyth as if she knew too, and said,

  “Zasmyth, you do know what you about to do is fucked up right?”

  “What?! What the fuck is going on?” I said pissed.

  Konsuelo sat down and said,

  “Somebody speak up.”

  “So many hints have been said. She’s stupid.” said Fianna.

  “I um, I...Nay, I’m sorry.” said Konstance as she ran out the room.

  I snapped my neck in her direction as she ran out the door and tried to understand her words through hard cries.

  “About what?!” I hollered as I ran after her. Everyone followed. I pulled my cell phone out my pocket and started to dial her cell number. What the hell was going on? I hollered her name and couldn’t hear anything. Then I stopped and it hit me. I looked at my cell and closed my eyes. When I opened them I dialed a number I had been calling for the last month. As I walked slowly down the hall I could hear a ring tone going off. It was either that or someone’s radio was horribly distorted. The song that played was LeToya’s She Don’t. I followed the sound and it leads me and everyone else to a wash room that sat adjacent to our room on the floor. I opened the door and there was Konstance.

  Tears fell down my eyes, and just to confirm my fears, I hung up the phone and dialed it again. The phone she had in her lap started from the last line of the first verse singing, “Hear you say you got a girlfriend, but I know. She don’t even touch you like this. She don’t even kiss you like this. She don’t even treat you like this...Boy you know that,”

  I walked slowly to her as Konsuelo tried to grab my arm and asked,

  “What’s going on y’all?” and the song finished.

  “Ooh, I see us makin’ plans. Me and you, forget your circumstance. Don’t be actin’ like me and you don’t go way back. Late night dippin’ in yo’ Cadillac.” And the ring stopped. I stood right in front of her as she stood in a corner and said,

  “I...I...I love you so much. But he said he loved me.”

  “That what Zasmyth was referring to?”

  “Yes. Me. And I believed him. I believed him and I slept with him.”

  “With who, Konnie?” I said having to hear the words from her mouth.

  “Myron and I been creepin’.” said Konstance.

  The words rang through my ears like a deaf stiffness. You see things. Hear things. You ignore things. They are your signs. Every single sign I passed up on the highway to love. Never ever thought he would deceive me like this. That C on his heart didn’t mean anything. When things are torn apart or torn away from you, stripped bare naked, you realize what you re
ally have. That’s why we got those tattoos. God could tear through the Heavens and the Earth, but those two things would remain. But now I knew being stripped of everything meant nothing. All you ever had was yourself. Yourself to love. If that than no one else. For now on that M on my pussy would stand for MEMORY because that’s all he was. I felt faint and dizzy.

  “Chardonnay? You okay?” said Konsuelo

  “Nay...Nay!” was all I heard before everything went blank.

  25

  Stripped

  I awoke to a beaming light. For a minute, I thought I was in heaven but then a man with a stethoscope leaned over me.

  “She’s awake.” he said

  “Oh thank you Jesus!” said my mother.

  “Is she okay?” said another voice.

  “Nay are you okay?” said Konsuelo

  “What do you remember last?” said the doctor.

  “I’m not sure.” I said.

  “Maybe it’s good she forgot.” said the unknown voice again.

  “No, I remember something about Konstance fucking Myron.” I said

  “Nope. She remembers.” said my father.

  “She needs her rest. You can come back later.” said the doctor.

  “Who else is in the room?” I said.

  “Your brother and sister.” said my mother.

  “Hey, Kingston and Jersey.” I said to my siblings.

  He had been gone to basketball camp so long his voice had changed a bit. It sounded more mature.

  My mother pushed everyone out the room.

  “Doctor, I’ll be staying the night with my daughter.” said my mother.

  After everyone left, my mother began talking out the side of her mouth.

  “Where do you get the nerve saying something absurd as that?”

  “As what?”

  “Your flesh and blood sleeping with Myron! He wouldn’t—”

  “He’s so damn perfect to you...why? Why would you allow him to hurt me over and over again?”

  “Myron was up here and so was that Slime or Slim boy. You’re not going to gain a husband sluting the town. Maybe that’s why he did it.”

  I laughed at her assumption that he was unfaithful because of me. I didn’t know what to call her anymore because she was never a mother to me. The word even felt misplace when put in the same thought as her.

  “Get out! If you can’t shut-up and respect me, get out!”

  She looked me in the eyes and slowly stood,

  “Then I will get out, as you say. Because there’s not a day I regret raising you as my child.” she said with spite and stomped out the hospital room on the balls of her Jimmy Choo heels.

  * * * *

  The following day, a stark rainy Tuesday, a doctor by the name Jamie Koehler came in the room to go over my condition and few minor details to help my recovery. She sat beside me and took a couple vital signs first.

  “Miss Houston, I have a couple of things I want to go over with you.”

  “Yeah,” I said sitting up in my bed and leaning back on my flat and deflated pillow.

  “You fainted due to lack of oxygen and over exposed energy caused by stress. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

  I looked at her with a blank stare, as if I was going to tell some brunette haired women with perfectly completed skin, the letters P.h.d at the end of her name, and a huge diamond ring on her hand all my issues. Her life looked perfect and mine was not to be judged.

  “Not really, just ready to get out of here.”

  She looked at me puzzled and twisted her pencil thin lips.

  “You will be released to go home tomorrow after we get the results from your blood work back...something was irregular.”

  “Irregular—is that a bad thing?”

  “Try not to worry.” she said standing and giving a reassuring smile.

  I hated when doctors did that since it usually meant you were about to die—especially the ones on Grey’s Anatomy.

  * * * *

  I rested like the doctor told me to do, but it was only a matter of time before I was back in the bullshit. My phone began to ring at 3 am.

  “Hello?” I said in a raspy tone.

  “Nay it’s Konstance.”

  “Not now. I need my rest.”

  “I know but I need to talk to you. I don’t want you to hate me.”

  “Too late for that.”

  “I didn’t want it to happen, it just did.”

  She was the girl I would hunt down. Didn’t know it. But now I remember the silhouette that night looking at Myron’s room window. It was Konstance. I felt a tear go down my face.

  He said he loved her? Was she the girl he was talking about? I closed my eyes. I had to know if he had experienced with her what he did with me. Not like it matter much now, but I had to know.

  “Then how did it go down?”

  I wanted to know and at the same time I really didn’t. Too many people had betrayed me all in a matter of one year. I listened on to Konstance explanation.

  “Well, Myron had been coming over my house crying over you. He was asking me how to get you back. He would come over there talking about you the whole time and asking me if I knew what he meant. He asked me again and looked at me different, like I was you, told me he loved me, and then he kissed me. Myron wanted me to get y’all back together, but—”

  “But he used you for something else instead. He told you he loved you?” I asked believing she wasn’t hearing right.

  “I guess so. For a minute I actually thought I was falling for him. Shit, I was stupid.”

  “What?” I said disgusted.

  “Chardonnay just hear me out.”

  “What for? You done said enough. I can’t even imagine you and Myron...my God.”

  Konstance broke down crying harder. I didn’t feel any sympathy. No sympathy at all. I had to know what was what, even though I didn’t want to hear the details.

  “When was the first time y’all had sex?”

  “The...the night of you two’s first engagement party. I felt bad for him, the love I seen in his eyes for you and for you to do him that way, Nay.”

  “It’s easy for you and everyone else to see it that way.”

  “No one knows what he’s done to me! All the crap I look over just to please everyone else’s facade of him.”

  “Well Nay love isn’t always perfect. I only wished I were in your shoes that night.”

  “So you decided to try them on...” I shook my head, giving off a smug chuckle.

  “I don’t know how it spiraled out of control. One minute we’re friends the next we’re more.”

  “This just had to of happened after I told him about Slim. He used you to get back at me while I was at the dorm with Zasmyth.” I said, letting imprisoned tears break free, and making sense to everything Konstance hadn’t thought of.

  “No I think it was about Jase...” and that’s all she said.

  “He didn’t know about—”

  “I guess, if that’s what you want to believe. We’ve been messing around for over a year now, Nay.”

  I felt my chest cave in and my heart rate speed up on the monitor. I caught my breath and forced out a distraught, “What?”

  “He broke things initially off with me in March—but they just grew back when you never showed up for the party.”

  My heart was more than ripped broken, it was shredded, however I had to know more, and most importantly how.

  “What happened when I didn’t show?”

  “He left out the front door and Denim and I followed. By that time Myron was drunk—he couldn’t drive. So Denim and I told him it would be best if he stayed at his parents’ house. He looked me over and said that it might be best. He took me to the side and said he needed to talk to me about something...I knew what he wanted.”

  “So why didn’t you say no?”

  “It’s just, like being seduced with chocolate.”

  “No, I’m allergic!” I said pissed.


  Konstance ignored my sarcasm and stated,

  “I know Myron is your man, and I’m just telling you this so you’ll understand, but I couldn’t resist him or his charm. I always thought he was so damn fine, and for once I was getting a shot. It may have been through a fucked up circumstance but...”

  How was I supposed to understand? I couldn’t stand to listen to her. I knew Myron’s charm was dangerous, but not this dangerous.

  “When we got to his room, we talked for most of the night. He kept glancing over at your bedroom window and then finally, he clicked the light out and asked me to make him forget about you. Asked me to ride his dick hard and make him fall in love with me. He promised me a house, brand new Bentley, and . . . that Cartier charm bracelet you saw on my wrist last month.”

  Out of all the girls and groupies I warned off, I over looked the most dangerous one, my own flesh and blood. Myron had only given me jewelry. I felt so sick I couldn’t move. I had to know one more thing.

  “Was he...well, intimate with you during sex?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, was he looking you in the eyes.”

  “Myron’s always made love to me with generosity. He kisses, and talks to me...”

  I tightened my eyes.

  “Did you use a condom?”

  “No...I’m... sorry.” Konstance said as she cried.”

  I slipped his ring off my finger this time for good.

  “How fucking could he?! How could you?!”

  “Naay! I’m sooo sorry. But you pushed him! For what you ran off and did with Jase—and to think you could tell Myron that shit and him not feel revengeful for it!”

  “Ran off and did what?”

  “Damn, you forgot everything. It’s like you’re another person.”

  “Forgot what?”

  Konstance sniffles stopped and she sat silent on the other end.

  “Chardonnay, you might have to ask your sweet Myron about that one. But just know this...he’s not as much of a saint as you may think he is.”

  I didn’t want to hear any more.

  “Shut-up!”

  “Nay, Myron was with me...when we were in Saint Louis.”

  I wanted to kill her. Stab her ass dead like they did in the scary movies. That thought scared me. How could I ever...how could she have ever?