“I’m your God!” He barked. “Now say it!”
“God-Master!” I was so confused; I didn’t know what he wanted. I was on the verge of passing out when he bit me again. I screamed at the top of my lungs and then everything went black.
Chapter 6
I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of the telephone ringing in the hotel room. I was no longer handcuffed and the maniac was gone. Blood soaked sheets lay around my legs. The phone continued to ring. I laid there dazed and afraid to move, thinking the maniac would emerge from the bathroom with blade in hand. The phone stop ringing, then started again. I finally got the nerves to get up and answer it, and it was the front desk telling me my time was up. I jumped up to try and find my purse and the pounding inside my head caused me to stumble. My back was sore in three different places from the biting, and I could feel open wounds on my neck. I found my purse and as I rummaged through it, I could see that all of my money was still there. At that moment, I realized how lucky I was to still be alive and tears began to fall without warning. I’ve never felt so helpless in my entire life. I tried to gather myself as I went into the bathroom and check for the damage. When I arrived at the bathroom door, I came to a sudden halt. There were four words written in lipstick smeared across the mirror. WELCOME TO AIDS, BITCH! I had to be dreaming.
I read it again and again, and again, hoping it would read differently. Terrified, I began talking myself down as I started to get dressed. I told myself that there was no way, but as the memory of the night came floating back, I knew there was a way. The maniac had not used protection and he had bitten me repeatedly. I didn’t know much about the virus, but at that moment I thought about everything I’d ever heard about AIDS.
I broke down into a wailing fit before I could finish getting dressed. My life was over, but I wasn’t ready to die. I never cared about my life until that moment and now it was too late. I fell back onto the bed and continued to cry, mixing tears with blood on the pillow. The crazy thing is I had mentally prepared myself for rape a long time ago. It happened to all of us sooner or later, but I wasn’t prepared for this. My heart fell somewhere between my knees and my stomach.
After I stopped crying, I just laid there curled up staring at the walls and sniffling ever so often. The front desk called again but I didn’t answer. I remembered I had AJ’s phone number in my purse. Without thinking it over, I grabbed the phone and called AJ to come and pick me up. He was there in twenty-five minutes and as we drove back to his place, I told him what had happened.
“See, didn’t I tell you—”
“Look, if you really think I wanna hear I told you so right now, you can drop me off at the next corner or take me back to the fucking hotel.”
“Aye, listen here; I’m getting tired of your little funky ass attitude. Now, I ain’t been nothing but nice to you since I met you. You called me, I didn’t call you. I got up out my bed to come get yo’ ass.”
“Okay, And?”
“You wanna go back to the fucking hotel, I’ll take you back.”
I hesitated before I spoke. I see now that AJ wasn’t about to let me take my anger and frustration out on him. I really didn’t want to go back to that hotel and be alone with my thoughts.
“You want me to take you back?”
“No,” I finally said. “I just wanna get some crack, some weed, some liquor and some Vicodin and pass the fuck out.”
I didn’t drink much back then and I’d never taken pills, but I just knew I needed to be numb to deal with life and the pain in my body at that moment. I told AJ I would pay for everything and we began making our rounds. I spent fifty dollars at the crack house, thirty dollars at the pill spot, twenty dollars at the weed house and fifteen dollars for a half pint of gin at the after-hours spot.
I washed the pills down with liquor as soon as I got it. I drank from the bottle and the more it burned my throat, the more I felt the load lessen and my pounding headache began to slowly subside. After a while, I wasn’t in pain at all but I still felt empty and depressed, knowing my young life was over. When we arrived at AJ’s house, I locked myself in the bathroom and loaded the biggest rock I could find into my stem.
I felt so ridiculously stupid as I flicked the lighter and pulled on the very drug that had destroyed my life and got me to this point. But getting high was all that mattered at that moment; high as humanly possible. Not worrying about the rape or AIDS or anyone or anything; just floating on that euphoric cloud. I just… just want it all to go away. Just for a little while. As the bathroom filled with smoke, the Vicodin kicked in full force. The mixture of uppers and downers made for a momentary feeling of bliss. Every time my mind would drift back to what happened, I’d grab the lighter, flick and take a pull. I pulled until the last hit was gone, then reloaded my stem. AJ didn’t bother me while I was locked in the bathroom. He must have somehow known there was no consoling me. I drank almost all the gin and smoked three rocks back-to-back before I came out of my cage.
“Where’s the weed at?” I slurred, as soon as I ran into AJ. He had done me the honors of rolling me a blunt. I flicked the lighter to the blunt and burned half of the cigar because my lighter was turned too high from smoking rocks. I puffed the weed long and hard, until I began to choke. The liquor and crack had my forehead dripping beads of sweat. I told AJ I needed some air and he led me to the front porch. I sat on the front porch and smoked the entire blunt, without saying a word or offering to share it with AJ.
“You gon’ be alright?” he said.
“No.”
“You wanna go to the police station and file a report?”
“No.”
I just wanted to sit there and be numb. WELCOME TO AIDS, BITCH! The words kept flashing in my head like flashcards. I just wanted to be numb.
****
By five in the morning, I was finally numb enough to not care about any of it. I staggered into the bathroom and tried for a second to look at my wounds. My neck was red and swollen around the area where the small gashes were. I turned my back to the mirror and could see the bite marks on my shoulder blade. They were so deep. The mirror sat too high for me to see the third set of teeth marks on my lower back, but I could sure as hell feel them.
“Fucking coward,” I vented. “I’ll bet he wouldn’t beat a man like that.”
I sat down on the toilet and reached for my pipe. I continued to smoke until the sun came up, and eventually fell asleep with the pipe in my hand on the bathroom floor. AJ only woke me up to tell me I could go sleep in his bed while he went out to do a job. I slept the whole day away and by the time I finally got up, it was getting dark again. The first thing I did was puke everywhere, which reminded me of my possible pregnancy. If a baby could have survived all of that shit from last night, it had to be a man or woman made of steel. Now that the pills had worn off, my back was sore and my head was pounding again.
I lay in the bed thinking of how high I was, and ashamed of myself for abusing my body like that, right after someone else had just abused me in the worst way. When I gathered the strength to move again, I took one more Vicodin and flushed the rest down the toilet to ensure I wouldn’t repeat the night before. I had just enough dope in my stem to get the day started. I smoked the remainder of it, then rolled some weed. The weed gave me the munchies, so I raided AJ’s fridge. After I ate, I began to feel better and even my back pains slowly began to hurt less. By ten o’clock that night, AJ still wasn’t home and my tank was starting to run very low on crack.
I got all fidgety and more irritated ever minute that passed. The weed wasn’t helping any at that point. By eleven o’clock, I was completely outraged and ready to kill AJ for leaving me there all day with no drugs. I knew there had to be a crack house somewhere in the area. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was having a crack attack in the worse way, and I didn’t have a key to lock the door, so I climbed out of the bedroom window and went looking for drugs.
I roamed the streets aimlessly for blocks and
blocks, not knowing who I could approach without getting robbed or sold chopped up pieces of soap. I wound up in the middle of the Cass Corridors, where all the druggies agreed that Snake was the man to see for the best cocaine at the time. I was led to an apartment building, where I had the displeasure of meeting this slime ball for the first time. I was let in by a doorman and seconds later, Snake slithered out from a back room, piercing me with his beady eyes. Snake was light-skinned and short, with a thin goatee and mustache. He sported too many gray hairs for a man that looked to be in his mid-twenties.
“Fuck is this bitch?” Snake asked.
“She straight, Snake, she straight,” my newfound friend vouched, even though I could’ve been the head of narcotics division for all he knew.
“I’ll smoke right in front of you if you want,” I offered.
“I don’t care about you smoking in front of me. When a bitch like you pop up from out of nowhere they usually been chased from somewhere else. And you look like you just got your ass beat.”
“Actually, I was raped,” I said.
He stood back with his brow raised in surprise.
“So what you looking for, some sympathy or something up in here?
“Uh no, I’m looking for some dope. If you’re not gonna sell me any, let me out.”
He leaned back, folded his arms and raised that eyebrow again.
“How much money you got with your smart-mouth ass?”
I pulled out two fifties and four twenties.
“I got more than I plan to spend here,” I assured him. I hated to spend my money and get treated like shit at the same time. I learned later that Snake treated everybody like shit.
“Get this bitch some dope,” he said to a worker standing nearby, as he slithered back to wherever he had come from. I snorted and handed over fifty dollars, realizing how my habit was increasing. I found a crackhead that was also a cab driver to give me a ride back to AJ’s house for a few hits. When I arrived at AJ’s, I spotted his car in the driveway. I knew he would be upset about me climbing out the window and leaving, but I was upset as well about being left in that house alone all day.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, leaving my window open?” he greeted me.
“What the fuck is wrong with you leaving me in the fucking house all day? You don’t have a cellphone for me to call you. You know I got a habit, what the fuck was I supposed to do?”
“Wait ‘til I get here, that’s what.”
“Well, I’m sorry, patience is not one of the stronger qualities of an addict. You should have a cell phone. I’ll buy you one,” I offered.
At first, he refused, but AJ had really been there for me up to this point and I wanted to show my appreciation.
I spent the night with him again and the next day while we were out and about, I stopped and purchased two cellphones for a hundred dollars. One for me and one for him. I noticed the swelling in my breasts earlier that morning, so I also stopped and got a pregnancy test to confirm what I already knew. I was pregnant. I didn’t tell AJ because for some reason, I thought he might tell me to leave his house if he knew. On top of that, I knew it wasn’t his, so it was none of his business. So, days and days went by and AJ didn’t ask me to leave, but he didn’t ask me to stay.
It felt like a probationary period and he was testing me to see if I was worthy of keeping around. I wasn’t a thief or a liar, so far as I was concerned, what more could he ask for? I sat around recovering from my experience with the maniac wondering if I really did have AIDS. I continued to use protection every single time I had sex with AJ to make sure he wasn’t infected with the virus. Before long, the dreaded turning a hoe into a housewife speech came, and AJ asked me to stop selling my body and be his girl.
I only agreed to it because I was still traumatized by the rape, and feared I should probably stop hooking before I got myself killed. About a week later, I told AJ I was pregnant to see if he would pay for my abortions, but this idiot thought I was pregnant by him so he refused. I tried to tell him I was already pregnant when I came from Toledo, but he was stubborn in his belief. Fucking dummy.
I knew a way to get the money in a matter of hours and so I devised a plan. I’d go back to the strip just for one day. I could get my abortion money and probably some extra cash to support my habit. AJ supported my habit, but not like I really needed him to. He only gave me about twenty dollars a day when in reality, I had a fifty dollar a day habit. I think he was trying to wean me off the drug, but I too far gone for that. I kept telling myself I was going to get an AIDS test, but it wasn’t high on my priority list.
Part of me was afraid and the other part just didn’t give a fuck. Now that I had my own key and a cell phone, I could come and go as I pleased. I hit Woodward on a Friday night in red heels and a red mini skirt. Honestly, at that moment, it felt good to be back on the streets doing what I did best. I felt back in control of what was going to happen next, or so I thought. That’s what the maniac had taken from me—control. I found Sunshine and she gave me a hit to get me going.
We got caught up with each other, and I told her about the maniac and she told me I needed to start carrying some form of protection. She flashed her blade and I nodded. I went hard for the next few hours. One trick, two tricks, three tricks. AJ began to call my cell phone like I figured he would. I didn’t answer because I knew he was only gonna try and get me to come home. Four tricks, then five and I knew I had enough money for my abortion and some. My last trick was a ménage with Sunshine and that was our first threesome. By now, AJ had called my cell phone over thirty times. I know he was pissed, but I really didn’t care. I didn’t want to argue or be told to come home. I just wanted to be free to roam the streets for a long as I wanted. I had been cooped up in his house for days and now I was like an animal out of its cage.
Sunshine and I had gotten dropped off at the liquor store. We were there to get some strawberry blunt wraps to roll the weed up. I spotted Ducky and ran over to his car. I wanted him to know how much I missed doing business with him because he treated me right. I had been dealing with Snakes punk ass for weeks and I truly appreciated a decent drug dealer now. Ducky said he missed my business as well and it made me feel good because I knew he did. I flashed my money trying to impress him, while peeking around for potential predators. I spotted a dark colored Bonneville pulling into the lot so I cut my bragging short and dashed into the liquor store.
I told Sunshine, who was at the counter talking shit to the Arabs, to go outside and see if it was AJ.
“Un-un bitch, don’t get me mixed up in your dirt,” she replied.
“Just go,” I said, with a shove in the right direction. I went to hide out in the back of the store in case it was him and he came looking. I glanced at my cellphone, waiting for it to ring again. I searched my brain for excuses why I was out on the strip, but I found none. Sunshine came back inside and told me that the car looked like AJ’s, but there was nobody inside.
“Where’d he go?”
“I don’t know, bitch, he wasn’t outside.”
“Shit!”
“Tell that muthafucka you lost your phone and you been at my house the whole time.”
“Mmph,” I said, as I contemplated.
“Come on, give me your phone so I can hide it,” Sunshine suggested, but I refused pulling away.
“Fuck that, don’t no muthafucker own me! My pimp been dead a long time ago.”
I suddenly realized I was a grown woman, hiding in a liquor store from a man I’d barely known over a month. I gathered my courage and headed for the front exit. “Don’t no muthafucker run me I don’t care if he is six foot four and two hundred plus pounds.”
I continued to rant as Sunshine followed me outside, trying her best to keep up with my angry pace. Outside, I spotted what I knew for sure to be AJ’s car sitting quietly. Empty. My heart rate increased as I finally slowed my pace and peeked around outside in the night. It was night, almost all the street lights were out, and they
were all out on the residential streets off Woodward.
As we made our way down the side of the building, I grew apprehensive about traveling farther into the darkness with all the money I had on me.
“Fuck that, I’m not going that way,” I decided.
“We gotta go this way, or else we probably gonna run right into AJ back that way.”
I knew Sunshine was right.
“Fuck it, come on.”
I quick-stepped forward, listening to the sounds of our four footsteps clumping on the sidewalk. Four footsteps turned to six and as I turned to see what or who was behind us, I felt a hand pulling on my hair. The next thing I knew, my head was being rammed into the brick foundation of the liquor store. Everything went black as the pain took over everything from my forehead to my chin. I dropped to the ground and passed out. I woke up to the crack of a leather belt, whacking me across my legs and ass.
“Get your stupid ass up! Didn’t I tell you not to bring your ass down here? Get up!” he barked, as he kicked me in my butt and the pain in my ass took my mind off the pain in my head. I somehow managed to rise to my feet and he guided me down Woodward, still beating me with the leather belt. The only thing I could think of is what I had done to make this sweet man turn into a monster. I screamed I’m sorry over and over, for believing I had free will to go wherever I pleased in this free country we live in. Before he let me in the car, he whacked me about five more good times across my legs. I grabbed the belt on the last swing and that’s when I noticed his hand was bleeding. He smacked me and tossed me in the car. My legs were stinging, welted up, and bleeding. My head was banging out of control and I could feel the huge knot that had formed on the side thumping like a drum roll. When I rubbed the lump, I drew back red fingertips.
“You could have killed me,” I spat.
“That bitch Sunshine cut me. I gonna kill that bitch when I catch her funky ass,” he replied.
Roxanne: From Addict to Hustler Page 6