by T. Styles
I dart up the stairs on a mission to find her. I call her name throughout the house. When I finally reach her room, my heart trembles the vessels in my body. I’m rocked with complete fear. I can feel Passion and Olive right behind me so that gives me the confidence to go inside. I touch the doorknob and slowly open my mother’s bedroom door. She’s lying on the floor, naked; a half empty bottle of vodka is in the palm of her hand.
Worried, I rush to her, drop on my knees and rub her back. If I lose my mother too, I’m not sure how I will react. She’s the only family I had in the world since I’d written my sister off. “Ma,” I say softly hoping she’ll come around like she normally does whenever she has too much. “Are you okay?”
It takes a minute but eventually she rolls over, looks into my eyes and throws up right where she lay. It splashes on my hair, shirt and jeans. I hate when she does that shit. I jump back in anger and fall into Olive’s legs. I’m frustrated with everything.
“Jayden, you want me to call the hospital?” Olive asks with concern all in her voice.
I watch my mother roll over and grab her head, not letting go of the liquor bottle once. “No, she’ll be alright.” I stand up and then I remember the little money I had saved is in my room. I rush toward my bedroom, knocking Olive into Passion in the process. Unlike my mother’s room, my door is wide open. I didn’t even have to step in fully to realize everything worth money was gone. My TV, my clothes, my purses, and my jewelry, everything I worked hard for and bought in our short time here in Maryland was taken. I fall to my knees and cry again. I’m so tired of crying but I don’t know what to do.
“Jayden, please don’t cry!” Olive runs to the bathroom and comes out with a damp cloth. It’s the one I use to wipe my pussy real quick when I play with myself. She would pick up that one. She wipes my mother’s vomit out of my hair and does her best to do the same to my clothes. “It’ll be okay. You can get everything you lost back plus some.”
“But how?” I ask seriously. She doesn’t answer.
“I’m going to get you something to drink.” Passion says. She seems rattled by all of this.
“Why is all of this shit happening to me? First my father dies and now we’ve been robbed.” I rub my temples to relieve some of the pressure on my head. It doesn’t work. “I don’t know what to do anymore, Olive. I’m handling all of this alone.”
“What’s up with your mother? Is she always like this?”
For the first time ever, I’m honest with one of my friends. “All the time.”
She rubs my back and sighs. “I’m so sorry, Jayden. I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now. It’s no wonder you’re not in a crazy home.” I think of Madjesty. “You’re stronger than I would be if this was me.”
“You know I watched a TV show some time back that says if Black Widow Spider handlers are bitten a lot, they develop a tolerance against the venom. I think that may be what’s happening to me now. I’m so sick of this shit, Olive. I’m starting not to care anymore.”
Before she can respond, Passion is backing into my doorway. At first I think some niggas are still in the house, about to finish us off. It only takes me seconds to figure out its much worse. Mrs. Sheers, my social worker, walks into the doorway and a look of shock covers her face. “Jayden, what is going on around here? The house is a disaster.” She doesn’t walk all the way inside of my room, I guess to keep her distance.
I stand up and dust off my wet jeans, damp with my mother’s vomit. “I…we…”
“Where is your mother?” She interrupts. She’s a bully. “Is she okay?” Her question sounds more like a statement. If ever I needed my mother to stay where she was, now is it. If Mrs. Sheers sees the condition she’s in right now, she’ll probably throw me in a foster home in a hurry.
“She’s fine. She’s just…”
It’s too late, my mother comes yelling out of her room and into the hallway. I can’t see her yet, but I can only imagine what she looks like because Mrs. Sheers covers her mouth with her wrinkled pink hand. Now she joins me and my friends in my room as I wait for my mother to appear in the doorway. I shake my head when I finally see her. This is the final straw I know it. Mrs. Sheers will remove me now. And where will I go? My father is dead and I don’t have his financial support anymore.
My mother obviously doesn’t understand the severity of the problem. Why else would she come out of her room holding a man’s sock between her legs to cover her stank box? She doesn’t bother to protect her breasts, which swing like they own the place. The scars from all of the wars on her body stand out like constant reminders that she shouldn’t have children. And most of all, she shouldn’t have me.
“Ms. Phillips!” Mrs. Sheers yells observing her bareness. “What is going on around here? What kind of home are you running?”
My mother lifts the bottle to her lips and drinks what’s left. Some of the vodka rolls down the sides of her cheek and it appears like everyone including me, stands by for her drunken response. “I’m in my house, bitch,” she slurs, “what the fuck are you doing here?”
My eyes pop open and Mrs. Sheers looks back at me and then at her. “Its obvious things are worse here, more than I thought.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” My mother asks.
“It’s clear you have an alcohol problem and your home situation must be reevaluated.” She looks at her again. “And I also went to the children’s school, Ms. Phillips and I didn’t like what I heard. Because although Jayden is doing better now, Madjesty seems to be missing in action. To make matters worse, I came into your home to see the door kicked in and things all over the place. Not to mention I almost slipped on this envelope.” She’s holding a piece of paper.
“That’s a paper.” I say, wondering where the envelope is.
She clears her throat and says, “I meant paper.” I know the bitch opened our shit. She wiggles it at my mother but she prefers to suck the air out of the bottle than to take the paper.
I look at what she’s holding and snatch it from her. On the top were the words, District Court Of Maryland. Although they used a few large words throughout the document, it doesn’t take me long to get the gist of what’s going on. I throw my weight on the edge of the bed and look at it again. Then I stare at my mother with disgust. Apparently there was a court date regarding who was the rightful owner of this house. And since my mother failed to show up and state her case, the judge made a decision in her absence. Basically he said that she had to put the house up for sale and split the profits with my aunts Ramona and Laura or buy them out for $250,000. I figured my aunts were out of jail now and fighting with vengeance. I guess her lies about them stabbing her came back to bite. I don’t know who stabbed her, but it definitely wasn’t them.
My mother had six months to come up with that amount of money. With this news I finally know what I have to do. And there was no wasting time in the process. Either I get money now, or lose the life I was starting to love in the process. But first I had to make a few stops.
SHAGGY
GLORY, GLORY, GLORY
“How much is the cover tonight?” Shaggy asks the man at the door. The rundown club smells so bad inside, he contemplates leaving.
The big-legged bouncer looks him over. “Are you buying or drinking?”
“Both?” Shaggy says.
“Then it’s five dollars.” He gives him the money and moves toward the bathroom. There’s a line around the corner and he figures the main attraction is performing tonight. When he’s next, his heart is in his chest. He came to this place at least three times a week to satisfy his sick thirsts. Ever since he raped Madjesty and Jayden was acting weird, the only thing he could do was bust a nut to clear his mind. He could get bad bitches but he enjoyed freaked out shit. He loved it so much that he did it regularly. When the dude before him comes out of the bathroom stall excitement stirs through his veins.
He steps inside and locks the door. He looks at the toilet and frowns
at the shit, piss and toilet paper circling around inside of it. He gets his mind right when he sees the hole on the side of the stall’s door. The wall has graffiti everywhere but he could care less. He pays his fifty bucks, unzippens his pants and sticks his dick through the dark hole. After a few seconds he feels a warm mouth on his stiffness. He can’t see who is putting in work because that was the power of glory holes. It could be a man or woman. You could get your dick sucked by a bitch you didn’t know. If your imagination was proper, the person blowing you off could be anybody you want. From Beyoncé to Janet Jackson, the choice was yours. But in the case of Shaggy, he imagined it being Madjesty Phillips.
“Keep that shit right there.” He encourages pushing his lower body into the wall. He places his hands on the tops of the stall’s walls for leverage and pushes his waist deeper into the hole. Whoever is on duty means business because in less than a minute, he busts his juice everywhere. He doesn’t stop gripping the top of the stall until he’s empty and when he’s done, he pulls his pants up and exits the bathroom without a thank you.
He’s almost to his car until he sees his distant cousin. He fucked her one night at a club when he didn’t know they were related. These days they acted like it didn’t happen but both of them knew the truth and would take it to their graves. “Hey, cuzo.” She says, wiping her finger through her treated red hair. “What’s good with you?”
“Everything. How ‘bout you?” He says, trying not to remember how soft her titties were.
“Some bitch name Jayden been asking around for you. She been telling everybody in the family that you not trying to see her in person. That you scared and shit like that. I was going to tell your mother but since she’s been in the hospital, I left it alone.” She looks around. “Well, let me get to work.” When he thinks about her possibly working in the Glory Hole he shakes his head. Had he patronized her before? He’d been in there so much that it was possible. “I just wanted you to know.”
Shaggy felt his blood pressure rise thinking about Jayden and decided to see that bitch on her own turf.
****
Jayden was in the driveway, looking at her social worker leave when Shaggy pulls up. He parks his car and steps so closely too her, they kiss. Literally. “Listen bitch,” he says in her ear so that the white lady eying them doesn’t hear what he has to say. “If you want me, I’m here.” He pushes her with his chest. “Ain’t no need in going to my folks house asking about me. I’m right here beside you…right now. What you want to do?” He looks at her but she doesn’t move, yet he sees the danger in her eyes. Still, the last thing she wants to do was alert Mrs. Sheers about their scenario. “That’s what the fuck I thought. Stay out of my lane before I run you over, and that’s on everything.”
He leaves her to her thoughts before pulling off.
JAYDEN
MAJOR HANDOUTS
I wanted to kill Shaggy so I had to get away. He got that one but he’ll see me again. Now I’m sitting in my father’s old house in DC. I can feel his presence everywhere. Pictures of him are all over the walls and it’s evident that his aunt Karen loves him very much. I stand up from the table where we just finished eating dinner and walk toward a picture in a gold frame on the fireplace. I’ve been looking at it all night. It’s of my mother, my father and the man I saw in the wheel chair at the funeral. The eerie part is, my mother looks just like me. Like we could be identical twins. I guess I see why she hates me so much.
“You look just like her,” Karen confirms as she walks up behind me. Luckily I hid my hearing aids under my long hair, so I can hear everything they’re saying. “This was the last time Antonio had a clear mind. He looks so happy.” Her expressions alternates from love to hate as she eyes the photo. It doesn’t take me long to see that when she looks at my mother, the love goes away.
“Antonio?” I frown. “I thought the person in the picture is called Tony Wop.”
She sits the photo down on the fireplace although she keeps staring at it. “That’s his street name.” Her lips curl up. “I hate that the boys were determined to follow in Jace’s father’s footsteps. I love my brother, but Rick can be a selfish ass bastard at times. Watch him, honey. Watch him with both eyes. That’s all I’m going to tell you.”
Wow. “When was it taken?” I can’t stop looking at my father and mother together. They look so happy. They look so in love. I’m sad that I never got to see them like this.
“Somebody snapped it on your father’s eighteenth birthday.” She looks at the picture with pity again and I really want her to sit down. I want this moment alone. “The night had so much promise. Unfortunately it ended with tragedy because of the poisonings.”
I have so many questions. “I thought you didn’t like my mother?”
“That’s true. I don’t.”
“So why is her picture here in your house?”
She exhales. “As a reminder of what life was like before their lives were altered by her the night of the party.” She shakes her head. “They were young black men with so much promise. And women too. All gone because of her.” She shakes her head. “It just hurts my heart…you know?”
I just stare at her.
“You said their. Are you saying the poisoning was my mother’s fault?”
“Let’s just say that a lot of young people were killed that night.” She pauses. “Twenty to be exact because the alcohol was tainted.” I look at my mother again, she doesn’t look like she could be so vicious. Suddenly she’s more interesting than I thought. “It’s rumored that Massive, your father and grandfather’s enemy, was involved with their deaths too but it was your mother who led him there.”
“Why are you telling that girl those scary stories again?” My grandfather says entering the room. He’s short but handsome and his accent screams Spanish. “You’re going to scare her away before we even get to know her.” He grabs his jeans at the thighs to sit down comfortably at the table.
She glares and I can’t tell if they like each other or not. “Quiet, Rick. I’m just giving her a little history. She’s old enough to hear the truth anyway. I can tell her whatever I want.”
He seems frustrated. “How about you give me a little tea like you promised after the meal. I have to wash that awful beef-whatever you made for dinner down my stomach.” He laughs. “After all this time, you still can’t cook.”
I thought the food was great. “Fuck you, you always liked my cooking when we were kids and you know it.” I wonder how they’re related because I can barely see the black in him while Karen screams it with her African garb. “You need to be thanking God I even let you back in my house.”
“Karen, stop being so serious. You’re worst than a catholic priest.” He taps her on the arm. “And I still love your cooking. Now go,” he points to the kitchen real bossy like, “let me speak to my granddaughter.” She looks at me and I can tell she doesn’t want to go but she does. When she’s gone he says, “Sit, beautiful.”
I sit in front of him. “You look so much like your mother, it’s disheartening.”
“Disheartening?” My eyebrows rise. “Why?”
He sits back in the chair and crosses his legs. “Your mother is very beguiling and she’s broken a lot of hearts in her days. From what I’m told, some of the stronger men have fallen under her spell. That makes her dangerous.”
I swallow. “I get that.”
“I didn’t know about you.” He skips the subject. “Jace never told me I had a granddaughter. I wish he had, I really do.” He shakes his head. “I heard about the funeral expenses, don’t worry about it, I took care of everything with Mr. Grover.”
That’s good for the funeral director but I could care less. I’m mad he’s still alive.
“You mean we took care of everything.” Karen returns with the tea and I can tell Rick is irritated. It’s like she doesn’t want us alone. “I overheard your conversation about not knowing about you. Your grandfather was in Mexico hiding but I was always here. I can’t b
elieve Jace didn’t tell me about you.”
“Stop your lies, woman. I’ve never hidden a day in my life.”
She grins. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Rick. I know about your gambling problem, although she doesn’t.” She looks at me. “Like I was saying, I wish I knew why your father didn’t tell me about you.”
“Well after what I saw at the funeral, maybe he had his reasons.” I whisper.
Karen sighs. “I’m sorry about that, Jayden. It was so out of character for me to be that way. But I lost someone I raised as a child. You have to understand how I felt, when I learned he was dead from AIDS. He had his whole life ahead of him.”
“But he wasn’t your child, Karen. He was mine.”
“But you never treated him that way. He was constantly trying to prove how much he loved you. How tough he was. But none of it was ever good enough for you was it? Jace could’ve been anything he wanted in the world, but you stole that from him. And now he’s gone.”
He takes the teapot and pours himself a cup, no sugar. “You’re wrong for what you’re doing right now but I forgive you.” He looks back at me. “I’m sorry you have to see us like this. Let’s just say we have our disagreements on how Jace should’ve been raised.”
“No disagreements.” Karen interrupts. “Your problems became his. He was a child yet he had to deal with grown man issues.” Like me. “Had you never killed Massive’s daughter at her graduation, maybe he would not have gotten involved in the drug lifestyle.”
He slams his fist on the table. “Jace died from AIDS, not drugs! Don’t confuse the two.”
I want to get out of here. This meeting is not going how I expected. I decide its best to tell them why I’m here. “I need help.”