by Warren, Mike
“Okay, Mom, I have to go. I’ll give you a call later,” I said, jumping up from the table.
Mom grabbed me by the arm. “What in the world is wrong with you? Now, you sit your little tail back down in this chair and tell me what you were about to say.”
“Yeah, Cameron, tell me and your mom what’s going on with you?” My stepdad took a seat at the kitchen table and stared at me as though he wanted to hurt me.
And I remembered that look all too well. It was the same look he had when I’d caught him that night with Junior and he threatened me. Suddenly, there was a ring at the front door. It almost scared the shit out of me.
“Oh Lawd. Who could that be? Sweetie, let me get the door, and I’ll be right back, okay.” My mom got up and answered the door.
No sooner had she left the kitchen, my stepfather shot up from his chair and grabbed me by shirt. He penned me up against the wall, saying, “I know you hadn’t forgotten what I told you. You wanna have a big mouth? Go right ahead and tell your momma and see what happens.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” I replied fearfully.
“You punk-ass bitch, just make sure you don’t!” he stated, anger in his eyes.
At that moment, I heard Momma closing the front door. My stepfather must have heard it too because he released his grip on me.
“Lawd, if it’s not one thing, it’s another,” Mom stated, as she came back into the kitchen.
“Well, Mom, I gotta go. I’ll call you later, okay.”
“Sweetie, you were about to tell me something. Now, what is it?”
“Oh, Gerdy, let the boy go. We talked, and it’s a man thing, so everything is all right.” My stepdad put his arm around my neck and gave me a fake hug. “Isn’t it, Cameron?”
“Yeah, everything is fine,” I spat, removing his arm from around my neck and heading to the front door.
*
I jumped in the car and got the hell out of there as quickly as I could. He got some nerve, calling me a punk-ass bitch. Chile boo, he the one getting fucked on the kitchen table, not me, black bastard. You know, I wasn’t a hateful person, but I wanted my stepfather and Junior to be dead. Now!
The feeling was so strong that on the way home, I was hoping that Mr. Jamison was there. I didn’t know all of what he did for a living, other than teach, but I knew he had something to do with drugs. And everybody knows that in dealing with drugs, sometimes people get killed, so maybe Mr. Jamison could get someone to kill my stepfather and Junior for me.
I pulled up at the gate, put in the security code, and the gate opened. As I drove up the brick road to the house, there was a small black car exiting. I couldn’t make out who it was because the windows were tinted so dark.
I parked the car in the garage and entered the house. I stood in the kitchen with my mouth hung open. Whoever just left here had destroyed almost everything. The kitchen table was turned upside down, and cabinets hung open with broken plates and glasses scattered on the floor.
I walked into the living room, and that was in a worse condition than the kitchen. The couch was cut up, paintings on the wall were sliced up, and someone had pulled the plasma TV off the wall and thrown it on the floor, busting the screen wide open. The pedestals with busts lay shattered on the floor, along with the piano being chopped up.
Chile, I was so scared, I didn’t know whether to go upstairs and check to see if Mr. Jamison was up there hurt and needed my help, or get in the car and just leave.
I took out my cell phone and called Mr. Jamison.
He picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Ah, Mr. Jamison, where are you?”
“Taking care of business, shawty. What’s up?”
“Ah, I just got back from visiting my mom, and the house seems to have been broken into.”
“Say what?” he yelled into the phone.
“Ah, look like someone broke into the house,” I stated once again.
“Stay there. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Chapter 15
“Yo, shawty, where you at?” I heard Mr. Jamison yell.
“I’m upstairs,” I yelled back.
Mr. Jamison climbed the stairs, and I met him in the hallway. The strange thing was, even though I could see the anger in his eyes as we went from room to room checking out all the damage that had been done, he’d never raised his voice. I would have had a hissy fit.
The bedrooms were in complete disarray, with shit thrown everywhere, and even the mattresses were thrown off the beds. It looked as though someone was trying to find something.
“Why would someone do this?” I asked softly, to not upset him.
“I don’t know, shawty, but believe me, whoever it is gonna pay,” Mr. Jamison stated confidently. “By the way, did you see anybody in the area when you came home?”
“Oh yeah. As I entered inside the gate, there was this small black car coming out. I didn’t know who it was because the windows were tinted, and I couldn’t see inside. I just assumed it was your little brother or a friend of yours.”
“A small black car, huh?” he asked, looking me in my eyes.
“Yeah.”
As we headed down the steps, Mr. Jamison pulled out his cell phone. I don’t know who he called, but he asked the person on the phone if he knew where Kane was. Obviously, the person on the other end didn’t know because Mr. Jamison yelled and said, “Find him and call me back.”
I didn’t know who Kane was, nor had I ever heard him mention the name. But, whoever he was, Mr. Jamison had a few choice words for him.
“Come on, shawty, let’s get out of here.”
“What about your place? Shouldn’t we call the police or something?”
“Naw, it’s cool. I’ll have some friends come by and clean everything up.” He opened the front door for me.
We got into Mr. Jamison car and sped off. I didn’t know where he was taking me, but I really didn’t care, as long as we were together.
As we drove, he had one phone call after another. Seemed as though he was talking in riddles because I really didn’t understand what he was saying other than he must have found out where this Kane person was.
He responded to the other person on the phone, “Good. I know where he is now. I’ll handle it.” He then hung up the phone. “You mind if we make a brief stop?”
“No,” I replied, not knowing what to expect.
Next thing I know, Mr. Jamison started speeding down the highway and pulled off on Route 4, made a left on Cathedral Street, and then turned into this dark, seedy-looking alley and parked.
“Look, wait here. If I’m not back in five minutes, drive off as fast as you can.” He then opened the back of his Escalade and pulled out what appeared to be a few handguns.
“What’s going on?” A lump formed in my throat, making it hard for me to swallow. “Why do you have a gun?”
“Yo, shawty, chill. There is something I gotta do. Now, like I said, if I’m not back in five minutes, drive off as fast as you can, a’ight.” He walked off, a black bandanna tied around his head, wifebeater, baggy jeans, and carrying two handguns, one in each hand.
Lawd Jesus! See, I didn’t expect all this O.K. Corral bullshit. I just wanted to find someone to love me and protect me, and here I was sitting in a car, and my man was about to go and kill someone. Chile, this was way too much for me.
I took a deep breath, slid over to the driver’s side, and tried to get my bearings, just in case I had to pull off in a hurry. As I looked about the car, I realized this was not an automatic, it was a fucking stick shift, and I didn’t know how to drive a stick. Girl, you talking about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was the position I was in.
But then I began to realize that this is what they called being “down for your man.” I knew that Mr. Jamison was involved in drugs. I wasn’t that naïve. Besides, who could live that way off a teacher’s salary?
I looked at my watch and noticed that four minutes had alr
eady passed and he hadn’t come back yet. The car was still running because he’d never turned it off when he got out of it. He’d just left it idling.
Suddenly, I heard gunshots ring out. I looked around to see if I could hear which direction they were coming from. I looked through the rearview mirror and saw Mr. Jamison running his ass off.
He jumped in the passenger side of the car and yelled, “Let’s go, let’s go!”
As nervous as I was, I placed the gear shaft in second, but as soon as I did, the car turned off.
“What the hell are you doing?” he yelled.
“I don’t know.”
He yelled, “Leave your dayum foot on the clutch, start this muthafucka, and let’s get hell outta here!”
See, I don’t know about you, but I can’t understand a word of what someone is saying if they are yelling at me. Chile, my brain doesn’t work that way.
I somehow started the car back up and put it in second gear, and the next thing I knew, the car started going in reverse. I pressed the brake pedal so hard, the car jerked and shut off once again.
Mr. Jamison yelled at me, “Dayum, shawty! Can’t you drive a stick?”
“No!” I yelled back.
“Fuck! Move over.” He opened the passenger side and came around to the driver’s side.
As I slid back over to the passenger side, I happened to notice this guy limping and coming towards us with a gun in his hand. “Mr. Jamison, that guy has a gun!”
“Duck down! I got this.”
And as soon as we drove by the guy, he jumped up on the passenger side and aimed his gun right at me. Before I could blink, Mr. Jamison whipped his gun out and shot this man dead in the face, and blood splattered everywhere, even on me.
Honey, I screamed so loud, Mr. Jamison had to stuff my mouth with a towel he had laying on the backseat of his car. To this day, I still wake up in cold sweats remembering the look on that guy’s face that was half blown off.
Fortunately, we made it back on the highway unharmed. I took the towel out of my mouth and started crying like a little bitch, you hear me? Snot flew out my nose, and my tears mixed with that dead guy’s blood all over my face and shirt. Baby, I was too through.
“Calm down, shawty,” Mr. Jamison kept telling me while driving. “Everything is gonna be a’ight.”
Things seemed to happen so fast, I couldn’t get out what I was feeling or what I wanted to say. I had such a lump in my throat, and I couldn’t stop shaking. Nothing I was trying to say made any sense. So, I sat there in the passenger seat, crying and shaking like I was having an epileptic fit.
Mr. Jamison pulled up to an Embassy Suites Hotel off Route 4 and parked the car in the parking lot. “Look, shawty, I’m sorry you had to be a part of that, but I don’t like being fucked with, you know. The people who broke in my house work for this nigga that goes by the name Kane. We’ve been enemies for a long time, but he really fucked up when he trashed my house. So, I had to do what I had to do. You do understand that, don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I managed to say, sounding like a child.
“Shawty, I want you to understand. I’m in this shit kinda deep, a’ight, and I need to know that you gonna have my back when shit go down. You feel me?”
I whimpered, “Y-yeah.”
“Good. So, check this out. We gonna crash here for a few days or so, until I get my placed cleaned up and change the security code. Is that cool?”
I nodded my head up and down. “Uh-huh.”
“You’re okay with this, right?” he said, staring at me. “I mean, you’re sitting here shaking and crying like a little kid.”
It’s funny. As soon as Mr. Jamison said that, I realized just how much I cared for him and wanted to be with him. And the last thing I wanted him to think of me as a child. If that meant I had to suck it up, then that’s what I was going to do.
I instantly stopped crying and wiped my face, and my shakes went away. I pulled my tear- and blood-stained shirt off, pulled my hair back into a ponytail, and looked him dead in the eye. “Why are we still sitting in the car?”
“Well, dayum, shawty!” he said, surprised by my reaction. “It’s like that now?”
“Yeah, it’s like that!” I responded, moving my neck from side to side.
“Well, sit here, and I’ll go get us a room, mister I-got-it-like-that-now!” He chuckled while getting out of the car. “Oh, by the way, look in the trunk and get one of my tees out and put it on.”
Mr. Jamison had gone into the hotel to get us a room, and as instructed, I opened the trunk and found two identical dark blue Nike gym bags. I opened the first one and was shocked to see it was filled with a white powder individually wrapped in clear bags.
I quickly closed the bag and opened the second gym bag. It wasn’t filled with drugs, but stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Lawd have mercy! I’d never seen so much money in all my life.
I quickly closed it as well and noticed a stack of brand-new white T-shirts folded lying over in the corner of the trunk. I grabbed the first one and closed the trunk of the car. I looked around to see if I was being watched because I felt so paranoid. I put the XXX-size T-shirt on, and it hung on me like a dress. God! Why is it that these brothas have to wear T-shirts three or four times their size?
Mr. Jamison came out of the hotel office. “You ready, shawty?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied, walking towards the hotel entrance.
“Yo, shawty, wait up. I have to get something out of the trunk first.” Mr. Jamison went in the trunk of his car, and just as I thought, he pulled out the two Nike gym bags and carried them inside the hotel room with us.
“Are you hungry?” he asked while placing the gym bags under the hotel bed.
I headed for the bathroom. “A little bit.”
“Cool. I’ll call for room service, a’ight,” he stated, raising his voice so I could hear him through the bathroom door.
“Okay. I’ll be out in a minute.”
I peeled my clothes off to take a quick shower, so I could wash all the grime and smell of blood off my body.
Once I was done, I looked at myself in the mirror as I dried myself off, and oddly enough, I began thinking about my mother. My real mother. I hadn’t gone to see her not once in the past four years, and I began to feel a little guilty about that.
“I need to go see her,” I said to myself.
I wrapped a towel around my waist and walked out into the room. Mr. Jamison was looking out the window and checking out the view while talking on his cell phone. I turned the TV on and lay across the king-size bed.
As I flipped through the channels, I noticed a couple of envelopes lying at the foot of the bed.
“What are these?” I asked Mr. Jamison as he finished his call and sat at the end of the bed.
“I got these a couple of weeks ago. These are our HIV test results.” He handed me an envelope with my name on it.
The envelope was still sealed so that told me that he didn’t know the results. I opened the envelope, and just as I had expected, my results indicated that I was negative. I showed Mr. Jamison mine as he showed me his, and we both were HIV-negative.
“I’m glad, shawty. Now, we can give of each other totally.” He smiled as he leaned over to kiss me, but suddenly there was a knock at the door.
I was startled. “Who could that be?”
“Chill, shawty. It’s probably room service.” He got up and went to the door.
And sure enough, it was room service bringing us the food that he’d ordered. Truth be told, I wasn’t hungry anymore, at least not for food. I was hungry for Mr. Jamison.
The room attendant had made his exit once Mr. Jamison had tipped him. I pulled the towel I had wrapped around my waist and let it fall to the floor. I approached this man I was falling in love with.
“You’re a sexy little shawty, you know that, right?” He looked deep into my eyes while grabbing me by my waist.
I wrapped my arms around his neck. “So, what
about this giving of each other totally you were talking about?”
“What about the food? You’re not hungry?” He placed soft kisses on my lips and neck.
I said in a whisper, while pulling off his wifebeater, “Not for food.”
“Hmmm, I see. Why don’t you chill for a minute while I’ll take a quick shower, and then we can see just how hungry you can get?” He slapped me on the ass before making his way towards the bathroom.
Chile, I was so excited that this moment was finally about to happen, I couldn’t keep still. I pranced my naked little body from one side of the room to the other. I even tried looking out of the window and checking out the view, but I couldn’t see a thing, other than Mr. Jamison and his chocolate, hairy, toned body lying on top of my small, smooth yella frame. I knew this wasn’t going to be just a fuck, but for the first time in my life, a man that I was in love with was going to make love to my mind and my body.
Just to set the mood, I turned the TV off and turned the radio on to one of the slow jam stations. I turned off all the lights and closed the window drapes. The room was pitch black, and I lay across the bed listening to Stephanie Mills’ old jam, “Feel The Fire.” echoing from the radio.
For the first time in my life, I was wishing I was a female, mainly because I wanted to be everything Mr. Jamison wanted me to be sexually. To be honest, I really didn’t know how he felt about females, or whether he was one of those DL brothas, but I knew most brothas who are into drugs are also into bitches. And for the sake of being able to show more public affection, I was wishing I was a female.
“Where you at, shawty?” I heard him ask.
“I’m here, waiting on you.”
“Is that right?” Mr. Jamison turned the bathroom light back on and cracked the door, to have a glimmer of light shine in the room. “There you are,” he stated as he got into bed and climbed butt naked on top of me.
As he began to grind his body against mine, his natural body scent penetrated my nostrils and drove me crazy. I grabbed a hold of his muscled ass cheeks and pressed his body down on mine as hard as I could. The feel of his manly body on top of mine was worth all the pain and drama I had been through, including the fact that he had just killed someone.