Carmen

by Nako

  No one could encourage her like Nia Hudson. She was thankful that she belonged to a group of women that could inspire, motivate, and encourage. She embraced her peoples.

  Carmen was grateful for every gem that was dropped on her tonight.

  Their monthly girl’s night ins were growing, and it had been a while since it was the “regulars.”

  She soaked it all in as she nodded her head, “What was your motivation when you first started?”

  Nia took a sip of her gin before placing the rose gold goblet down.

  “I was broke as hell. Not a dime to my name and I refused to sell my ass or work a pole.”

  She added out of respect to Mahogany, “No offense.”

  Mahogany wasn’t tripping.

  “Hey, I learned a lot. My husband enjoys my part-time gig,” she winked her eye.

  Carmen couldn’t wait until the day where she danced for whomever God intended her to be with. Because truth be told, she was thicker than a snicker and knew how to shake what her momma had gave her.

  “It kept you motivated throughout your entire career?” Teka questioned.

  “No, of course not. Once you make your first mill, it’s like okay I need more of these… but starting off I had simple goals. Don’t be broke again. Pay my bills on time. Get a nice car. Stuff like that.”

  Carmen pondered over what her “motivation” would be.

  Of course, it was her kid and then she wanted one more thing to have her at tunnel vision.

  “I want to buy my momma a house.”

  Unfortunately, when her father passed. Her mother didn’t receive a thing and it was disheartening but the fact was she was never his wife.

  Only the mother of his kid.

  She was rarely acknowledged at the funeral and that’s what caused Carmen to show her ass.

  “That’s a real goal, sis. Make it happen.”

  The chance never presented itself. Carmen would never be able to put her momma in her own house. She closed her eyes and asked Narie and the private investigator, “Please get out.”

  She needed some time to herself.

  A moment to process what had happened and why.

  The investigator did his best to explain what he believed had happened to Ms. Sheila Traylor. She’d died of a broken heart, if you asked him. Carmen wanted more than that and he concluded that she indeed moved. He was able to track down a signed lease to a home. Sheila had finally decided to leave the basement, yet, sadly she never made it to her destination. Her debit card had been used at several gas stations, hotels and a Target along her journey. He asked Carmen was her mother on any type of medicine, but she told him no. Sheila took a holistic approach to everything.

  There were so still many unanswered questions surrounding her mother’s death.

  She needed God right now, more than the comfort and sympathy of any human being.

  On the other side of the map, in Brooklyn, New York, Neezy felt like someone was clenching his balls with a monkey wrench. These pigs were looking for anything to pin to him and the shit was pissing him off.

  The door opened and he thought it was his lawyer and his heart finally stopped beating erratically.

  “Did they read you your Miranda rights?”

  Porter Bavay entered the small room and Neezy asked, “What the fuck you doing here?”

  He wasn’t happy to see him.

  This nigga wasn’t God. Who told him he was here? Where was his lawyer?

  “Juice called me when you didn’t show. Said he had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, and I looked into it. They saying they found you with a pistol. Is it clean?”

  They’d been looking for him since yesterday and finally found him….in a jail cell. Neezy didn’t even bother to make that one phone call because he didn’t have no one that cared about him enough other than a paid lawyer.

  Neezy looked up at the camera that he knew for sure was recording any and everything that took place in this room.

  He shook his head, giving P a dumbfounded look that clearly read, Nigga, what the fuck you think?

  Porter took a deep breath, “I’m going to call my dude. He can handle this.”

  He didn’t need his help, “I got lawyers on standby. I’m good.”

  Why were these people trying to help him so much?

  Inviting him to shit…he didn’t even know them.

  “What is wrong with you? You wanna sit in here? Ain’t you on your third strike?”

  Neezy tossed his head back and cackled loudly as tears of fury ran down his face.

  “What’s wrong with me?”

  If he wasn’t cuffed to the table he would’ve flipped the mother fucker over.

  “NIGGA WHAT AIN’T WRONG WITH ME?”

  He was out here alone.

  “Never had a daddy. My ma dukes is out of her fucking mind. My brother dead. They shot him in the head. Who I got, P?”

  Tears ran down his troubled face.

  The audacity of this man.

  What was wrong with him?

  He was depressed.

  He was struggling internally.

  It seemed like every time he found comfort in the simple things…something had happened.

  Cloud nine clearly wasn’t real because he always fell off that shit.

  Neezy wasn’t an emotional person but what more could a nigga deal with?

  He kept failing at life.

  Something had to give.

  “You can change your life.”

  Porter was pushing his buttons and he already had shit going on right now.

  “Dawg, they pulled me over while I was on the way to the studio. You don’t think a nigga was trying to change? Be for real.”

  He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself down.

  “I don’t know if you’ll be leaving out of here tonight or even tomorrow. But I will do all I can to get you the best deal.”

  Neezy smacked his lips.

  “This some bullshit,” he mumbled under his breath.

  He prayed and everything.

  How did the ancestors not warn him?

  Should he have gotten a reading? Or made a sacrifice?

  So many things crossed his mind.

  Had he made a mistake, and this was the result of his actions?

  But, Nehemiah didn’t do shit. He hustled and came back in the house.

  Nothing more. Nothing less.

  Porter took a seat and crossed his arms across his chest.

  “Listen, keep your head up. Stay out of trouble and write. Write all that shit out. Juice believes in you, when you come home we gon’ make you a star.”

  It sounded good but he still had to ask.

  “How I know you not gon’ forget about me?”

  Porter promised, “You have an undeniable sound. You’re considered raw talent and that’s worth waiting on.”

  “In the meantime, we’re going to get a buzz started on the four songs you recorded and make you some money while you in here. Don’t worry about nothing. We got you.”

  It sounded good, really it did but Neezy was a hood nigga and was raised to believed that everything came with a price tag.

  “What’s in it for y’all?” he questioned.

  Porter was wealthy.

  If he never left the house again, he was well-established.

  Juice was greater than good.

  The nigga was on top of the world.

  They gained nothing by helping him other than being responsible for cleaning up a dusty diamond.

  “Nothing,” he told him the truth.

  Porter then thought about it and added, “Taking another black man off the streets and putting him in the studio. You’re doing this for your brother and I’m doing it for you.”

  His word was bond.

  In due time, Neezy would see that he was protected.

  He exhaled, “Alright man.”

  His hands were tied and as P suggested, writing while incarcerated would keep his mind busy and him out
of trouble.

  With a goal in mind, hopefully, it’ll help the time fly by.

  Porter’s attorney was able to get the gun thrown out, but for a probation violation of riding with marijuana, the judge sentenced him to eighteen months.

  His new “team” reassured him that he would be home in no time. Neezy went in with one goal in mind. Success.

  He was going to be successful. With nothing else to his name but his brother’s legacy and his niece that he needed to prove himself to…he toughed it out and wrote every chance he got.

  Six

  Apparently, you believe in me – J. Cole

  One Year Later.

  Carmen settled into a boring routine.

  It was a new lifestyle that she didn’t care to explain. She sold The Showroom for ten million dollars and moved to Arizona.

  What was in Phoenix? Peace.

  Her sanity had been found in a new state and she wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

  She stopped begging her son to love her and gave his grandparents full custody of Kniko. Some judged her for the decision that she made but she didn’t care. No one knew how she felt. It was a struggle to get out of bed and be a mother. Kniko was being neglected in every aspect.

  To lose a parent, let alone two was hard. One that you never loved and the other you depended on for everything. Carmen couldn’t deal with life.

  She clocked out.

  Her giving up didn’t mean her son had to suffer in the process. She sat him down and did her best to explain what was taking place and he didn’t seem concerned. His face lit up when she said, “Return to New York.”

  The only thing he asked was, “Does this mean I get to see my dad all the time now?”

  Carmen was on the verge of reminding him that he fucking shot her, but she let it go.

  He was a kid.

  He didn’t understand.

  Her anger couldn’t and shouldn’t be directed towards him.

  Kniko didn’t deserve it.

  On top of giving up on her dreams and her child, her brother, who had always been there for her, reached out for help and she told him that she couldn’t do anything for him. She was grieving her mother’s death.

  Carmen didn’t have the energy to be his encourager. She was barely keeping herself together.

  Fast forward seven months and it was a decision that she regretted every day on top of a heap of other shit that she was battling with.

  Her brother finally admitted that he had a problem with drinking. After two failed relationships and nothing to show for his life other than accounts full of money and a successful career. Casey found himself drinking to go to sleep and drinking even more to get his day started. It wasn’t until he was the sole reason for a family of four spinning across the highway on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.

  His friends posed an intervention and he went to rehab that same day.

  Carmen wasn’t there for that either.

  She knew she needed to figure out some things and every single day when she rose, she told herself, “Today, is a new opportunity to do something different,” and then she somehow found herself doing the same shit she always did; which was nothing.

  Her saving grace had been the serenity prayer.

  God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change…

  The first sentence of the prayer is what did it for her every single time. She spoke each word with confidence.

  Carmen said it twice a day. In fact, she had the prayer plastered all over her ranch-styled home. It was on the refrigerator, her bathroom mirror, in her closet, on the headboard and even on the door that she had to stare at every time she took a shit.

  She was trying to drill the words into her brain. Hoping that one day it would click, and she would begin to believe what she recited constantly.

  It was nearing eleven o’clock which meant her favorite talk show was coming on.

  Carmen dropped a sesame bagel in the toaster and cut up a watermelon for breakfast.

  She’d gotten so thick since moving to the East coast and she now had a love-hate relationship with her new figure.

  Her social media accounts were deactivated. She didn’t want to keep up with anyone. All her friends were styling and profiling. Living their best lives and doing the damn thing.

  She and her brother were battling demons.

  Generational curses had haunted them both.

  Carmen gave up on God and lost her faith in the process. Her mother’s death came with no warning. Not one. It didn’t make sense to her and she struggled due to not having any closure. During the burial, she was in a daze. Her mind was in the clouds. True enough, one could read about stories like this in the paper and see it on the news. She’d been shot by her husband.

  She knew how random life could be, however, she lost her momma.

  It was hard to accept.

  Her pastor reached out to her for weeks straight via text, call and email.

  The last message he sent her was a scripture. Hebrews 10:36-38 along with a few choice words of sympathy.

  Whenever she thought about clocking out of life, she scrolled down to that text and read it with a heavy heart.

  It was hard for her to go to church or even watch a sermon on YouTube. She expected her route to be different. Surely, she thought that the worse was behind her. Her trauma was a trigger.

  After grabbing her favorite mink blanket and the plate that held her first meal for the day, she sat on the couch and turned the television on.

  The Nia Hudson show was her shit. Carmen was so freakin’ proud of her friend. She was an avid viewer and often ordered the products that Nia featured on The N List.

  One thing that hadn’t changed about her was her addiction to shopping. That damn Amazon Prime was the devil too. She spent hours every night buying things that she didn’t need.

  Carmen turned the television up as the producer cued Nia in. She glided across the stage looking fresh to death in denim on denim with a pink scarf tied casually around her neck and a vintage Chanel broach. Carm always told her that she loved when she wore her natural hair and lately, Nia had been rocking nothing but doobies.

  Her makeup was beat as always. She’d rarely seen Nia have an off-day.

  She recapped what was happening in the world and then asked the audience, “Are we not going to talk about #demdebates last night?”

  The crowd booed and Nia laughed.

  “I know, I know…I have a love-hate relationship with politics y’all. Well unfortunately, we need to shift to a more serious mood. Let’s keep Senator Schwartz uplifted in prayer. After #demdebates he was rushed to the hospital after what sources say is a heart attack. Many of you know his wife, Lauren Howard and yeah…I’ll leave it at that. Senator Schwartz you are in our prayers over here at NHTV.”

  Carmen hoped that he was okay.

  She was certain that the showrunners forced her to report on that girl’s husband. Out of respect for Jordyn, Nia kept her distance from Lauren.

  Carmen had met her a few times through her brother, and she was nice and pleasant.

  The show moved on to other current events and she ended up dozing off for her morning nap.

  Life was passing her by and sometimes, it seemed as if everyone had forgotten about her.

  This was what depression looked like and Carmen was not in denial.

  Missing her mother every day and not processing her death was what held her mentally captive.

  Not having an ounce of a relationship with her son was another detrimental load to her heavy plate. It was most likely the biggest one.

  She didn’t have anyone.

  A year had passed by and no one reached out and asked to come see her.

  No one tried to pull her out of the dark hole that she was in.

  Until today.

  A knock followed by the doorbell ringing brought her out of her slump.

  She jumped up and wiped the slob from the corner of her mouth.

  “Anothe
r Amazon package,” she automatically assumed. Carmen slid her feet into her UGG slippers and padded to the door to retrieve her delivery.

  When she opened the door, she didn’t expect to see Porter Bavay.

  “Wow sis,” he said, shockingly.

  Carmen didn’t look the same.

  He knew that it was her because the person he hired to track her ass down was pretty good at what she did but this woman before him was disheveled.

  She closed her robe.

  “P, what are you doing here?” she wasn’t happy to see him.

  “Let me in and I’ll tell you.”

  She noticed that he had a duffel bag in one hand and a bouquet of sunflowers in the other.

  She thought about it for a second before saying, “Come in.”

  Carmen hadn’t bought herself flowers in a while. She used to keep fresh flowers in her house and at her place of business.

  He followed her into the living room of the ranch-styled home and was impressed that it didn’t look like a junkyard. Maybe, she was doing better than he expected upon the impression at the door.

  Her heart slowly leaped when he handed them to her and she inhaled the buds, deeply.

  His eyes scanned her from head to toe but not in a seductive way. They were friends. Nah, they were family. He was worried about her.

  “Can you give me a second to fix myself up?”

  She didn’t need him judging her.

  P nodded his head, “Sure. I have some phone calls to make anyway.”

  Once he was alone, he pulled his phone out and took a seat on the couch. His mouth watered and stomach grumbled when he saw the watermelon and touched it to see if it was cold. It was room temperature which was how he preferred his fruit anyway. He devoured the few pieces that was on the plate. Nia’s show was going off and he couldn’t believe he had never watched it before. Sis looked good up there doing her thing.

  Porter wanted to let his wife know that he made it to his destination safely. She was still sleeping, as usual so he told her to text him when she woke up. He then returned any important calls and caught up on emails. Porter remembered what today was and so he decided to check in with his former assistant, mentee, turned lil’ brother.