To think, I left all that good sex just to walk straight into some bullshit.
“What’s wrong with you?” As I walked into Vince’s bedroom, I noticed his solemn mood. He was sitting on the edge of the bed letting the television watch him.
Initially, I thought that he was upset with me because it took me so long between leaving work and arriving at his place. However, when he lovingly kissed my forehead as I sat next to him, I knew that I wasn’t in any trouble.
Yet, he looked at me like he didn’t want to say what he obviously felt like he had to say.
“What’s going on, babe?”
“Kita is moving to Chicago.”
My skin crawled.
I definitely should have just stayed up under Derrick.
Kita is his “baby’s mama”, and that bitch was playing every card to get close to Vince.
“When?”
“In two weeks.”
As if she wasn’t getting on my every nerve from Las Vegas, now she was moving to Chicago to really fuck with me and get in the middle of my relationship.
I knew Vince and Kita’s position. Though I knew that he loved me, Vince and Kita had way more depth and history. After our initial split in 2008, he moved to Las Vegas to play arena football. He spent nearly two and half years in Vegas and with Kita. Two and half years compared to our month long fuck-affair prior to his move and nearly yearlong relationship now, both times filled with me putting him through hell with my fucked up attitude, is nothing in comparison to history and a child.
This, I knew.
“Why is she moving?” I tried to sound less irritated and more interested in my man’s issues.
With a sigh, he answered, “She wants me to be around. She wants me to be involved.”
“Can’t blame her for that.”
Honestly, I couldn’t. I mean, I basically grew up with no parents. I know how it is growing up without, so I would never want a child to grow up the same way just because its daddy is my man and its mother is trying every slick move to get him back.
Again, Vince sighed. Then he put his head in his hands.
I knew what was wrong. He was torn. I could look in his face and tell that he loved me very much, but he wasn’t happy and would rather be with his family. Although I knew that Vince loved me, I also knew that he was in love with fixing me and in love with my potential.
He wasn’t in love with who was sitting next to him.
He didn’t like the woman that I was, but loved the woman that he wanted me to be.
I knew that, so I tried to be what he wanted. Hell, I spent so much of my time high because I was that woman when I was doped up. But Vince wanted an emotional, sensitive, and overtly sweet woman that life had not allowed me to be.
Yet, his love for me was so overwhelming that he would put up with the distant and emotionless woman that I have grown into.
“I just don’t want her persistence to cause any drama in our relationship,” he told me.
Vince was for me. Even though I was fucked up and a problem child, he loved me unconditionally, and that’s why Kita couldn’t have him.
TRICEY
I got so excited when I walked in the front door and saw shopping bags all over the living room. Before I knew it, I was letting Ariana’s hand go and heading towards the bags like it was Christmas in July.
Every time Blood went shopping, whatever he spent on himself, he spent on me and Ariana, so I was geeked to see what was in the bags.
It sounded like the condo was empty, as if he’d come home, dropped the bags in the living room and left, so I was able to pry without being noticeably nosy.
Obviously he’d done summertime shopping. There was Gucci, Citizens of Humanity, and True Religion shorts and t-shirts for him. There was even a few pair of Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Christian Louboutin sneakers.
Yet, as I searched and searched the bags for anything feminine, I saw nothing. Absolutely nothing! This was a first and I was hurt. Blood had done so much for me that I was never so ungrateful that I felt as if he had to do anything. But he always did! He never came into this house with something for him, but nothing for me, or Ariana, or both of us. I couldn’t believe that he was being so petty that he wouldn’t even get Ariana anything.
I left Ariana in front of the television and stormed into the bedroom like a little kid who hadn’t gotten her way.
Surprisingly, Blood was lying across the bed in darkness and silence.
I flipped the light on and he stirred with squinted eyes. He looked very tired. I guess not buying me anything wore him out!
“So you that mad at me?!” I knew I sounded like a spoiled brat, but Blood was doing this shit on purpose; barely talking to me, not fucking me, and now not buying me anything. He was punishing me, but didn’t even have the balls to confront me with what I had done.
I felt like a kid. I’d rather have taken the whooping than be on such punishment!
As Blood fought to wake up, I took advantage of his vulnerable state to let him have it.
“This is so petty, Blood! Why don’t you just talk to me about this, rather than acting like I ain’t here, or like I’m in your way, or going shopping and not getting me or my baby anything?! That is so petty!”
Blood laughed sarcastically. “Oh, that’s why you’re mad.”
“Don’t patronize me. You know why I’m mad!”
His cocky ass just laid there; like what I was talking about didn’t bit more bother him, which only frustrated me more.
“Why don’t you just leave if you that mad?!”
“Is that what you want me to do?”
“No, but I want you to stop walking around here ignoring me and treating me different! Damn, ok, I know I wasn’t honest about Amiel…”
“I don’t wanna talk about that nigga.”
“But we need to!”
“No, we don’t.”
“Then leave!!”
I didn’t really want him to. I swear I didn’t, but living in this tension was killing me. It had been two weeks; two long weeks of him barely talking to me, of me trying to persuade him with head only for him to buss and roll over, of him bringing me along with him as if I was his woman only to ignore me once we got where we were going.
I was sick of it!
Yet, Blood ignored my anger and treated it like it was trivial. He stood nonchalantly, like he had no worries at all, and he walked out of the room as he told me, “If you wanna leave, I swear I’m not keeping you here.”
I couldn’t believe it, but I didn’t have time to sulk, because my cell phone rang no sooner than I slammed the bedroom door. I looked at the Caller ID reluctantly. Like clockwork, it was Amiel. Today was Thursday; the beginning of the three and half days that he felt like he should have Ariana.
But fuck that, I wasn’t goin’.
I answered, “Yes, Amiel?”
And he responded to my sarcasm with the same amount of mockery. “So what time are you dropping off Ariana?”
“I’m not.”
I sat on the loveseat and rubbed my temples as I stared out of the window. I wished to be a bird in the sky, flying and not giving a fuck about anything but what car I was going to poop on next.
“Why not?”
“I told you that I didn’t feel comfortable with my twenty-month-old daughter spending that much time away from home. When she gets a little older, maybe…”
Amiel laughed at me like I was a joke. He then talked to me like I was as silly as a ten-year-old. “Sweetie, you can’t just decide that.”
I sighed dramatically. I was so sick of my life being in shambles. In just a month full of a few fucked up decisions, I had terribly disturbed the peace in my home and my relationship.
“You’re just doing this because I don’t want to be with you.” Of course, I lowered my voice before I said that. Though the bedroom door was closed, I wasn’t about to further fuck up.
“Why do you have to whisper when you say that?” Amiel was scor
nfully laughing at me as he spoke. “You’re at home?”
The way he so openly exemplified his disgust with my relationship was scary. This was the same man that dated me while he was in a whole marriage. I couldn’t believe his audacity!
“I don’t have time for this shit,” I said with a groan. I was really just speaking to myself out loud, but Amiel took it personally.
“I don’t have time for this shit either, Tricey!”
“Then why are you acting like such an asshole?!”
“I’m acting like a father who wants more time with his child than a weekend babysitter!”
“Take me to court then!”
“Fine!”
“Just remember, you ain’t her daddy on paper.”
“Oh, we gone fix that shit too...”
I hung up on him. He was being utterly ridiculous. Simply because I didn’t want to be with him, he was trying to make my life a living hell, and now he wanted to threaten me with taking me to court?! Like I hadn’t had enough of court!
Just as I had stormed into the bedroom, I was now storming out of it. Amiel’s nerve had me in a mad trance, so much so that Blood sitting outside of the bedroom at the dining room table on his laptop shocked me, and it showed.
He tsked at me; looked me in my face and shook his head disappointedly. I didn’t know if he’d heard the whole conversation that I just had with Amiel or parts of it.
Yet, I was so outdone with the bitch-like tendencies of the men in my life that I really didn’t care.
Seven
Saturday, June 11, 2011
STAR
Being back in the County was such an eerie feeling.
I was back in Block 9 with the convicted felons and murderers. I was back in the prison issued black scrubs with v-neck top and elastic waist pants.
I was still in jail, and, though I had been denied bail, I felt some sense of home. I wasn’t physically at home, but at least I was back in Chicago.
This time in the County was a bit different though. Verses the first time, I knew what I was getting into when I got there. So, when I was assigned my cell and was approached with a roommate who wanted to treat me like a punk, I was able to easily deal with that. Though she was clearly over the age of fifty, and in normal circumstances I would have shown my elder some respect, it was obvious that this woman had been in the system so many times and for so long that she had turned into the animal that I felt like I was slowly becoming.
No sooner than I entered the cell with what little belongings I had, she barked at me with disgust. “Ah’ ight now. This is my cell. You’re just borrowing it. These two shelves are mine. Put your shit over there.” Then she pointed to a corner in the cell. “The bottom bunk is mine too, so have fun crawling to the top every night.”
I laughed at her like she was a joke. She wanted to act like some goofy jailhouse movie. I could tell by looking at her that she had done some heavy drugs and heavy drinking in her life. Her skin was dark and hard. Scars stretched across her face, looking like healed railroad tracks. I wondered where she got the scars; on the outside, in here, or both. Where there weren’t scars, there were craters of bumps and skin lesions that were obviously results of injections and disease. Many of her teeth were missing and most of the rest of them were decaying. Her hair looked so damaged and fragile.
She was a petite little woman too; skinny and short. She moved slowly, but her mouth moved quick and with a bite.
Her response to my patronizing laugh was, “What the fuck you laughin’ at?”
And I calmly told her, “You.”
“You must don’t know who the fuck I am, bitch.” Her eyes glared with fury, but I didn’t back down. I knew better. Time served taught me that the moment you look scared, those bitches will eat you alive and then pass you around so that every other bitch who thinks she’s bad can have a piece of you too.
I wasn’t on that shit.
I stood my ground as she got in my face. She was so close that as we breathed, we exchanged oxygen. Yet, I simply stayed calm as I told her, “And you obviously don’t know who the fuck I am,” and then, as I began to set my belongings on the shelf right next to hers, I told her. “I’ll give you a day or two to move your shit.”
She spent the next fifteen minutes calling me all kinds of bitches, hoes, and any other name she could think of. She was so loud that she attracted the attention of many of the other inmates. They stood around the doorway of our cell staring as this woman lost her rabbit ass mind. I laid in my top bunk acting like I was reading a book that I brought with me from Michigan. As I listened to her threaten my life and the other inmates egg her on, memories of GiGi ran rampant through my mind.
I continuously told myself not to fall victim to this ignorant bullshit and to focus on my potential freedom that would be terribly affected if I found myself whooping somebody’s ass up in there.
Eventually, a guard showed up. When the guard looked me in my face, I recognized her as one of the guards that worked here during my previous stay. She escorted my roommate from the cell. Nearly a half hour later, my roommate returned and her demeanor was totally different. She had the nerve to introduce herself. Her name was Rider, a nickname that she earned when she was much younger, I’m sure, and that it was about time she let go of. Then she told me that she didn’t know that I was Star, the Star, the one that committed the murder in the television room a few months back.
Her shit was off that shelf by morning.
“How did court go?”
I was standing outside of Nik’s cell anxiously awaiting her answer. The first day of her trial was yesterday, and I hadn’t seen her since she left for court.
I knew Nik from when I was initially arrested and held at the County. We met in Disciplinary Segregation after my first confrontation with GiGi. After that, we ran into each other a few times here and there, but we didn’t link until I was brought here last week. It’s always good to have an ally in the joint, so I was happy as hell when I saw her in the yard last week.
After being released on drug charges in May of last year, Nik was caught with a few ounces of coke a few months ago and found herself right back in this motherfucka.
I think she preferred the safety of the bars verses the havoc in the streets.
She would deny it if ever asked though.
“It went,” was her response as she sat on her bed looking at nothing in particular on the ground.
I entered her cell without asking.
I was so drawn into every detail of her case; only because the approach of the beginning of my trial was scaring the shit out of me. I never had to endure the anxiety of a trial. I plead guilty, was given my time, and that was that. I had no idea how the process of trial went, so I was relieving my anxiousness through details that Nik would give me every time she came back from court.
“I can’t do no more time, man,” she said with a whine that came out rugged and coarse.
I laughed sarcastically. “You shoulda thought about that before you decided to go back to being a dope boy.”
Nik is a stud to her heart, so it was only right to call her a boy.
With a frustrated sigh, Nik laid her head on my shoulder. Though I had only been back in the County for little over a week, Nik was attached to me. No, we weren’t friends. I knew what she wanted, and she was slowly, yet steadily, working her way in.
I’m not gay, by any means, but my days of escorting taught me how to fake the funk to get by. I needed my stay in the County to be as sweet as possible so that nothing would interfere with my case. One fight and any days spent in the hole would negatively affect any time the judge would give me at the end of my trial. Therefore, I wasn’t trying to piss anyone off, including Nik. So, I let her flirt and think that she would eventually get the pussy because I needed the peace and unity of her friendship to keep other inmates off of me who felt froggish enough to test the Star.
LYRIC
Serena and Robin looked at me with sad faces as I
entered the restaurant with Cory.
After a lot of begging on their part, Serena and Robin were able to talk me into meeting them at House of Wok, a Chinese restaurant in China Town. Since I had also been neglecting Cory, I invited him along with me for support.
I loved Serena and Robin, but, for right now, just looking at them made my stomach hurt. They reminded me of the lifestyle, the same lifestyle that was currently ruining my happily ever after; things that I didn’t need to be reminded of while I was trying to get over this.
“Did you guys order already?”
Serena and Robin looked at me like I was crazy.
“Fuck ordering the food right now,” Serena fussed. “What the hell is going on with you and James?”
I knew that word would travel in our circle about me and James. If folks weren’t gossiping, Raven’s constant status messages about being with her “man” morning, noon, and night would raise enough suspicion in itself.
Regardless, I needed to know what the grapevines were whispering about, so I replied, “Is it that obvious that something is going on?”
Robin spoke up like she hated to, but as a friend, she was going to; regardless how much it cut me. “She was at the Meet and Greet last weekend going over and beyond to let people know that she and James supposedly live together now.”
Cory damn near fell out of his seat. I had told him bits and pieces of what happened the night that I acted a whole fool outside of Raven’s house, but he didn’t know how much Raven had been subliminally fucking with me through cyber space.
I asked Robin, “She literally told you that they were living together?”
With a smack of her lips, she answered, “Hell nah. She ain’t that crazy. But one of her girls, Bri, asked me out of curiosity. She knows that you are James’ woman, but Raven has been telling her that she and James are together and living together now.”
“And besides that…,” Serena added, “…that bitch’s status messages have been off the chain. She has no discretion. I know every time she is with James and everything they do. What the fuck is going on?”
Good Girls Ain't No Fun Boxed Set (The SIX romance and urban fiction volumes of the LOVE, SEX, LIES series) Page 74