by T. Styles
Madjesty peered at the worn out cream slip Harmony donned, which exposed the darkness of her full breasts and extra hairy pussy. Then he observed the loaded frown lines on her forehead, which resembled the bark of an old oak tree. Oh how he hated that bitch. His twin was different. Jayden chose to focus on the way the candlelight touched her eyes, turning them into caramel candies. And the way her head tilted to the left, causing her cascading black hair to dangle over her shoulder, just above her breasts. He saw beauty in the beast. He saw a mother he adored. Despite the burning hate she had for him inside.
“You think its funny don’t you?” Madjesty raged. “That we don’t have lights in the house? Or no food?”
“I do what I can. If you can do better than me I won’t stop you. You’ll be old enough to get a job soon anyway.”
“You don’t do shit but drink, fuck and sleep!”
“Watch your mouth, nigga. Before I crash your teeth into your tongue.”
Fed up with Harmony’s raunchiness, Madjesty leaped up and trekked toward the door. “Jayden, I’m going to Mrs. Brookes house. I think Promise coming home today. Meet me there when you finish with this zombie.”
Before he could depart, Harmony’s legs flung around in front of her, planting her feet to the floor. It was becoming harder to control him. So she planned to murder him and be done with it for good, until the contents of her stomach swirled, causing a putrid cream liquid to splash out of her mouth. The meat soaked mess slapped the floor and Jayden’s permission slip on the table. After a few more gags she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and said, “Aren’t you gonna ask me if you can go out?” She breathed heavily due to the pain in her gut. “I am your mother, Madjesty. One day you will realize you love me and it will be when you least expect it.”
“The day you die will be the day I dance on your head.” He stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
“I hate that bitch!” Harmony yelled. Her attention moved to Jayden, who always seemed to be there when no one else was. “Clean this shit…!” Her speech was broken. Jayden tugged his ear. “It stinks! And stop fucking with your ear all the time. You look stupid.”
He sprung up, grabbed the candle along with his permission slip and moved to the kitchen. He wiped the paper off before returning to the living room with a rack of newspapers to clean the vomit.
“How did I get home, Jayden?” She laid back down, face up. “And why aren’t ya’ll at school? I don’t want them people calling me about you fucking up again. If they do I’ma hurt you.”
He sat the candle on the table. “We had a half day.” He lied, sitting the permission slip next to the candle. “And that man who’s house you were at drove you home in the back of his pickup truck. We sat back there with you.” He paused his next statement because Harmony hated people in her business, even if she put them there. “And he helped us bring you in the house.”
“You let somebody in my fucking house? I told you not to let nobody in here, Jayden!”
He refused to roll call the twenty men who’d already been in their home that week. It wouldn’t matter anyway. Harmony was far from reasonable. “Ma, you wouldn’t wake up. And we couldn’t carry you. Madjesty and me tried, but you were too heavy. We needed his help.”
“Humph, well, I’m surprised he bothered to do anything. He’s a selfish bastard.” She reached for the vodka bottle on the table, sat up and poured it into her mouth. Most humans needed oxygen, her slutty ass needed liquor.
“He was gonna shoot us until we told him you were our mother.” He wiped up the muck as best he could from the floor, but the skanky smell still ruled the air. Since they didn’t have any cleaning products, the scent would have to die with time. “But I think some boys raped you. I didn’t want to do nothing until you got up but you want me to call the police?” Jayden walked into the kitchen and threw the soiled newspaper in the trash.
Harmony laughed at his statement. “I can’t believe you actually that stupid.” She looked at him as if he were a pathetic dog with two legs. “Ain’t nobody rape me and don’t go making up lies, Jayden.” She drank more vodka. “People get killed for less.”
He sat directly across from her in the chair. “So you let them do stuff to you?”
“What stuff you talking about, little boy?” She closed her eyes. “What you know about what happened to me? You wouldn’t even know what to do with a pussy if one rubbed against your nose.”
Yuck! Harmony was correct. Jayden knew nothing about a woman’s body or what to do if he ever decided to sleep with a girl. He certainly didn’t want their lady parts on his nostrils.
“Ma…I don’t understand…you said he was mean. So why…”
She shook her head and interrupted his statement. “Jayden, it’s a lot about life you don’t understand.” Her eyelids lowered again. “And I don’t have enough time to teach you.”
He looked at the dying candle. He thought about the milk and eggs in the refrigerator, which would be foul before long, since the electricity wasn’t on. He thought about the dirty clothes piled mountain high in his room. He had so many questions but didn’t know how to articulate them. If he was going to shoot the short version, he didn’t understand how she could give her body to so many men, yet didn’t have money for food or the bills. He reasoned if she was clean, she could get a job and all their problems would go away.
“Ma, I want you to get some help. Old Lady Cray down the street drank a lot but now she clean.” Hope was heavy in his voice. “Maybe I can ask her how she did it and we can be happy and you can get a job and stuff like that.”
“Jayden, don’t be an idiot your whole life.” She paused. “Old Lady Cray a dyke. If I gotta eat pussy to get better, I’d rather roll over twice with six dicks in my mouth.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I want you to live, mommy. I want you to get better. So we can be together forever.”
“My life…my life is so hard.”
“I know, mommy but we love you. Very much.”
“I don’t deserve love! I deserve death.”
“You don’t. You deserve to live and be happy. With us!”
Jayden was relentless with his expression of love and then suddenly, something happened. He witnessed a tear materialize in the corner of Harmony’s eye. After all this time, he finally got through to her. It wasn’t until the water rolled down her cheek, leaving a slick trail in its wake that he was sure it was real. He wished Madjesty could be present to share the moment…he’d never believe him. His body trembled because it was a sign that Harmony’s soul was somewhere in that decrepit body. It was a sign that she wanted to change and be free.
“You don’t have to cry, mommy.” He dropped to his knees. “I’ll help you get better.” He rubbed her bare leg and salty tears oozed into his mouth. “You just have to try. Maybe not drink so much. I love you.”
Harmony sat up and stood over him. For a moment, silence stood between them. “But I don’t love you. Never have. Never will.”
Jayden’s stomach felt as if he’d swallowed a bowling ball. He knew what was coming next. Boldly he proclaimed, “That doesn’t change how I feel.”
Jayden’s love was too strong. Too much for her to bear. Why did he insist on making her feel? Why did he insist on caring about her? So she reacted the only way she knew how, with extreme violence. No longer feeling the hangover, Harmony rose and slapped him in the face. Possessed with the demons of the past, she slapped him again. Jayden went through this before, so he remained in his seat and turned the other cheek, until a closed fist struck his eye, causing blood to rush to the surface. On hands and knees now, he curled up into a ball while Harmony beat him unmercifully. She beat him for not being the son she always wanted. She beat him for living. She beat him for his unconditional love.
When she was tired she stood over top of him, breathing heavily. Sweat weighed on her eyelids and popped up on her nose in puddles. “You don’t know shit about my life, Jayden!” Spit escaped her lips
and sprinkled on his messy cornrows. “If love could’ve saved me, my father would be alive today! So don’t tell me shit about love!”
When he was certain the abuse subsided he rose slowly and sat back in the chair. Trembling he asked carefully, “Mommy, if you really don’t want to be here,” soft sobs accompanied his words, “are you gonna make us watch you die?”
She thought his question strange but she went a different way. “Do you really love me?”
Jayden’s words seemed to pour from his gut. “More than you know, mommy. More than you know.”
Harmony wiped the tears from her eyes and leaned closer to him. “When I’ve made your world a living hell, where you don’t want to see another day, express your love for me then. Maybe I’ll believe you. Now get the fuck out of my face. I want to be left alone.” Defeated, Jayden stood up and slogged toward the front door. He was almost there until she said, “And unless you can come up with some damn money, you not going to no field trip. Get the fuck out of my face.”
Irritated, Jayden pulled open the door. When he did, Todd Craig, who belonged to a woman by marriage next door, was there. He would only visit on the days his wife worked at the soup kitchen or the nights she prayed at the church for their souls.
Holding a vodka bottle dressed in a brown paper bag, he said, “What happened to your face?”
Jayden was beyond angry. He was there to fuck his mother and all he brought was liquor. Nothing for her kids, ever. He was nothing like Mr. Nice Guy. “Why you worried about it? You don’t care anyway.”
He laughed. “You right, kid. Now where’s your mother?” He looked past him. “I ain’t got all day. I gotta talk to her about something.”
Jayden wiped the tears off of his face and said, “I wonder what your wife would say, if I walked down the street to that church she be at and told her you were here.” The man was frightened. “I bet she wouldn’t like it at all…would she?”
He removed his yellow glasses and tucked one of the temples into the neck of his shirt. “What you just say to me, kid?”
Jayden’s heart rate kicked up, but he was angry. He was hungry, dirty and tired of not having enough. Yet these men, the ones who crept into his apartment like roaches, had it all. They brought her bottles of liquor, kept her drunk and in the end stole her attention.
“You heard what I said. Let me go see how your wife feels with you being over here,” Jayden walked around him when he was suddenly yanked by his braids and pulled back into the apartment.
NIGHTMARE ON EAST 40TH STREET
SOME NIGHTS LATER
Jayden hustled through the rain on the way to Mrs. Brookes house with a ball of gum that tasted like wax in his mouth. The drops dampened his hair and brought with it the smell of sour milk. The sky was lavender and the darkest part of night was threatening to greet him. He wanted to be as far away from the dangerous Houston streets before it happened. Usually Madjesty would walk with him but he was already at Mrs. Brookes, not wanting to spend more time than he had to at his house.
Since Madjesty took a liking to girls, they didn’t share the same pleasures anymore. Madjesty preferred to hang with tough neighborhood kids who had cute sisters with big titties, while Jayden preferred to sit on the porch of his building, daydreaming about one day having the good life.
Jayden was almost at Mrs. Brookes when he saw a green Honda Accord stop abruptly a few feet in front of him. The smoke from the exhaust pipe pumped out a thick gray fog and the passenger door flung open. A short woman wearing a gold sequin dress flew out in a panic. Even under the darkening skies, the streetlights lit up her outfit as if she were performing on stage. Since an idle mind is the devil’s workshop Jayden was drawn to her immediately.
A shorter man standing five-foot-five if he stood on the curb, grabbed the woman by the brown bun on top of her head and drug her a half a block. When he finally stopped, she fell face first and curled up in a fetal position like she was born again. A few pieces of her natural mane, which were snatched from the roots, grazed the streets before flying into the wind.
“Where’s the money, Armanii?” he grabbed her hair so that her eyes were peering into his. “You been ducking and dodging me all day and I’m tired of fucking around with you.”
“Daddy, its like I told you, I spent some of it.” Her smile was as stiff as a dick. “I just needed a little hit because I wasn’t feeling too well and you know how hard I work.” She gripped at his pants leg and begged for mercy. “Please, let me get my purse out the car and I’ll give you all I got.”
“All you got already belongs to me, bitch.”
The woman tried to rise but his brown dress shoe added weight to her chest keeping her where she belonged…down. “Daddy, today was rough and I didn’t make much. But I promise, if you let me work on my day off tomorrow, I can make you the money plus double.”
He simpered and pulled her to her feet; her ankles scraped the pavement, wiping some of her brown skin with it. “Armanii, I don’t want to hurt you.” He looked down at her legs. Blood traced from her thighs to her knees. “Look at what you made me do. Every time I see you beat up I feel pain. Why you make me do this?”
“Because I was wrong. I deserve it; daddy and I don’t want you to suffer for my mistakes. That’s why I work so hard for you.”
“Glad to hear that because I’ll be by to get my money tomorrow.” He reached into the car, grabbed her black leather purse and slapped her across the face with it. A red gash ran across her upper lip giving her a bloody mustache. The sly smile he wore during the entire process would stay etched in Jayden’s mind forever. “Don’t fuck with me again, Armanii. I don’t want to discover that you’re worth more to me dead than alive.” He jumped into his car and sped off.
“Short dick bastard!” Armanii said under her breath before wiping the blood off of her lip. When he was totally gone she really started feeling herself and flashed her ass cheeks before throwing a FUCK YOU sign in his direction.
Jayden didn’t realize he was still gawking until she said, “Now you know if somebody stares at me as hard as you, I usually charge them.” She picked up her purse, grabbed a cigarette pack and freed one along with a lighter. “You gonna help a bitch out or what?” She held out the lighter.
Jayden rushed toward her almost knocking her down in the process. She placed the cigarette between her pouty pink lips and waited. He did his best to activate the orange cream-colored lighter but it wasn’t working. This was his first time. He was humiliated, until suddenly an orange flick glowed, showcasing her angel like face. Outside of the residue from an old blackened eye, and the fresh scar running across her lip, she was stunning. Like a movie star.
“Sorry to stare at you.” He handed her the lighter. “I just ain’t never seen nobody as pretty as you before.” Harmony use to be the baddest but years of dick licking and bottle sucking had taken its toll on her features. So he was being honest.
She grinned, smoothed the tentacles of her bun, with the hand holding the cigarette. “Flattery these days will get you anywhere you want.” She sighed. “I guess that’s my problem.” As if she remembered something she asked, “You got money?” She raised the edge of her dress slightly. “Wanna have a good time? I’ll make that little dick of yours skeet in under ten seconds.”
He shook his head so quick from left to right, that he got dizzy. “No! I…I don’t want to do nothing like that.”
Her eyes narrowed into tiny oval slits. “Well the way you looking at me, I know you want something. Spit it out, kid. What is it?”
Jayden was no match for this woman of the streets. She was cunning, charming and calculating. Armanii Rhoades sold her body to her brothers at the age of twelve and to anyone with five dollars up until her eighteenth birthday. Afterwards, she left her mother’s tiny apartment and decided to take her show on the road as a free agent.
It took Carol Rhoades three days to realize her daughter was gone, and another three to alert her father who was doing life in fed
eral prison for murder. Incarceration didn’t stop him from reaching out on the streets to find his only child. He sent his best friend, Joseph Goss, a man who unbeknownst to him, had stumbled his way into the Pussy Game. The first bitch on his roster? His friend’s only daughter and the rest was pimp game history.
Jayden walked slowly beside her, careful to keep his distance. “Are you hurt?” He popped the tasteless gum. “Your leg is bleeding a lot.”
“Not more than my heart.” She looked over at him. “So are you gonna walk a bitch to safety or what?”
Jayden knew if his mother sobered up and went to Mrs. Brookes’ house, and he wasn’t there, it could possibly spawn a series of events, which might result in his lips getting snatched off his face. But Armanii was mystical, and for some reason, he wanted to be around her. He nodded and replied, “Okay.”
She looked him over, like something was off with him. Jayden figured it was his feminine mannerisms and he tried to add pep to his step but he could never master his swag like Madjesty. He compensated for his failures in other ways. Like by telling girls they were pretty, when they looked like circus monkeys. Or by opening doors to anyone with a purse, or a pair of high heels, even if they were rough around the edges and could lift small cars. He went overboard and because of it, he constantly felt fake.
“My apartment’s in there.” She pointed at a well-kept building. “All the way at the top. Where I keep most of my dreams.” She took the dead cigarette out of her mouth, and crushed it under her gold pump. She blew out her last puff and it smacked Jayden across the nose.
He rushed to open the door and when Armanii approached, limping, he offered his shoulder for support. They were about the same height so the deal worked out fine. Her wet armpit rubbed against his shoulder but he didn’t care. As they walked up to the top floor, Jayden could not keep his eyes off of her.