by Imani Black
“I was always thinking about the point he was making after I heard that argument. I never knew Ms. Desi got a ride to work from a man. I could see how Big K could take that the wrong way. After all, we did live in the projects. Doctors coming to the projects in nice whips were taking a risk. A man who took a risk like that on a woman wasn’t just trying to be helpful, if you ask me.
“You have to understand. Big K was a man with a lot of pride. He was used to being treated like a king, but when he came home... that didn’t happen with anyone except me,” Kelsi said.
“A doctor, you say? A doctor with a BMW?” Brice repeated, scribbling wildly on his pad.
“Yeah, maybe that’s who you should be looking for—someone at the hospital that drives a BMW,” Kelsi said, flattening her hands on the table. “So, can I go now?” she asked.
“Not just yet. I want to circle back to Ms. Desi being like a mother to you. I want to go over how you got so close with the family and what that was like,” Brice said, not letting her off the hook so easily.
Kelsi sighed loudly. “Can I use the bathroom first? I need a little break,” she said.
“Sure. I could use one too. Let’s take ten minutes and pick this back up,” Brice said, smiling. Right then, he knew Kelsi might know more than she was letting on.
Chapter 7
Kelsi
Kelsi rushed into the precinct bathroom, busted into a stall, and vomited violently. She just made it to the toilet and avoided throwing up all over the floor and her shoes. When she was done, she leaned her back against the cold steel wall of the bathroom stall, letting her chest rise and fall until she was calmer. Kelsi had to pull herself together. This was a lot on her. She knew what she had to do for her own sake and the sake of the baby she was carrying that no one else knew about.
The ten minutes were almost up. On shaky legs, Kelsi walked out of the stall and over to the bay of sinks. She splashed cold water on her face and looked up into the mirror.
“Fuck, you look a mess,” she grumbled to herself. She’d practiced and practiced, but nothing could prepare her for speaking with Detective Simpson. Telling him the whole story was out of the question, and Kelsi knew that.
She inhaled deeply and exhaled loudly, wondering how she’d gotten herself to this place. Years and years of shit she’d endured, and now this.
Kelsi met the female police officer who’d escorted her to the bathroom right outside of the door. They didn’t say a word to one another as they walked through the precinct to get back to the room she’d been in with Detective Simpson.
He was standing outside of the room, smiling when Kelsi returned. Again, her stomach swirled with nausea, and she wanted to throw up.
Back inside, Kelsi took the same hard metal seat. She noticed the soda and half a hero sandwich on the table. Now, her stomach growled. Kelsi couldn’t chance it. Someone had warned her about the cops being overly nice, feeding you, or giving you a cigarette when they wanted to trap you into saying something that might get you hemmed up. She wasn’t falling for it. Besides, if she took one bite of that sandwich, with the morning sickness, she might throw up on the table.
“I got you something to eat,” Detective Simpson said, nodding toward the sandwich and soda. “I am starving. I hope you don’t mind if I have mine while we continue talking,” he said.
Kelsi shook her head. “I’m good. Not hungry. And be my guest,” she replied.
Detective Simpson pushed his food to the side. Kelsi noticed, but neither one of them commented.
“Okay, so, getting back into this, Kelsi. We spoke about the argument between Big K and Ms. Desi,” Detective Simpson said, using the names Kelsi called them. “But earlier, we also talked about how you got so close to the family. We kind of moved on from that, but I want to get back to it,” he continued.
Kelsi swallowed hard. She knew he was going to ask that again. Hashing up the past wasn’t something she wanted to do, but what choice did she have? In order to get this detective off her back, she had to get it all out. That much she knew.
“I guess the best way to start this is from the beginning of my fucked-up life,” Kelsi said.
Detective Simpson’s eyebrows went up and came back down quickly. Kelsi noticed.
“I never knew my father, and I never really had a mother, if that’s even possible. A kid with no father or mother. That was me. As the story goes, the day I was born, my mother, Carlene Jones, who was fifteen years old at the time, was in the mirror, shaking her pregnant ass to Eric B. and Rakim’s ‘Paid In Full,’ doing the whop when the labor pains hit her like a thunderbolt. I was making my entrance into the world, whether she liked it or not. After spending seventeen hours giving birth to me, Carlene never held me. She never looked at me. She refused to acknowledge that I was her child. My Nana said Carlene didn’t name me either. Carlene referred to me as it. ‘You take it and feed it. You hold it,’ Carlene had told my Nana.
“Nana said the white nurses at the hospital helped her come up with the name Kelsi. Nana didn’t want me to be one of the Shenquauqas of the world. ‘Kelsi is a universal name,’ Nana always preached. ‘You can go anywhere with that name, and people won’t judge you before they meet you.’ Nana always had high hopes for me from day one,” Kelsi relayed. She reached across the table and took Detective Simpson up on his earlier offer of tissue.
Detective Simpson stared at her, hanging on her every word. He already felt sorry for her, Kelsi could tell, as he looked at her with sympathy. She picked up on it.
“But don’t feel sorry for me. I had my Nana for a while,” Kelsi said this sentence, and the thought made her smile more than she had since sitting down in front of the detective.
Detective Simpson nodded, agreeing not to feel sorry for her.
“My Nana said I was the prettiest baby she had ever seen. ‘Girl, you ain’t have one piece of birth trauma, unh-uh. No egg-shaped head, no swollen eyes, no pale skin... nothing. You came out just as pretty as you wanted to be. Smooth skin, eyes perfect, and a head full of pretty hair,’ Nana told me when I was five. Nana said she stayed at the hospital, held me, fed me, and changed my diapers, which continued after we went home.
“By the time I was two years old, I thought Nana was my mother, and Carlene—well, I didn’t think about her at all. I hardly ever saw her. She was like a distant cousin or a relative who popped in after a long car ride to New York from down south. Most of the time, when she came to the house, she slept the entire time and ate ravenously when she woke up. Carlene ran the streets, partying and having a ball.
“Nana says Carlene was always a hottie. She got her cherry popped at ten, and it was downhill from there. From what I remember, at that time, Carlene was a shade lighter than the blacktop of the street. She had thick, dark brown hair that was cut in a Salt-n-Pepa hi-low with the back shaved, and she always wore the biggest gold doorknocker earrings. She also wore rings on all of her brightly painted fingers like that man Mr. T from the A-Team. Carlene had a regular face, nothing exceptionally beautiful about it. Nana says Carlene’s voluptuous body was what got her all of the attention. Those double-D cup breasts, that reindeer ass, and her ability to use them to get what she wanted.
“I was the complete opposite of Carlene. My skin was what Nana’s old lady friends called creamy caramel, almost yella, My hair was spongy, thick but soft, and would curl nicely with just a little bit of water and grease. It wasn’t real long, but it was a good grade, according to Nana. My eyes, Nana said, ‘… is the only thing you got from that damn Carlene.’ Our eyes are beady and kind of close together, the one thing that linked me to Carlene, and also the one thing about my face I always hated.
“The trouble started on my eighth birthday. I had been flitting around the apartment Nana and I shared, waiting for my party guests to arrive. I had peeked at my Cinderella cake four times already. ‘Kelsi, by the time the people get here, that cake is gonna be poked full of holes,’ Nana had laughed. I still don’t know how Nana always knew
everything. Maybe parents do have eyes in the back of their heads. Real parents anyway, not the kind like Carlene.
“Everyone began arriving at the party around three o’clock. Why I remember that time, I don’t know. I got so many compliments on the pink lace dress Nana had gotten me. I whirled around and around like I was Cinderella.
“Nana announced it was time to sing happy birthday about two hours into the party. Everyone crowded around as I kneeled on one of the kitchen chairs with the cake in front of me. Nana shuffled toward her bedroom to get the matches she always hid from me. ‘Just for your safety,’ she used to explain.
“As Nana looked for the matches, there was a loud knock on the door. Nana’s friend Ms. Bessie answered it. When she pulled back the door, Carlene waltzed into our apartment like it was her birthright to be there. I remember it as clear as today how she came in like a gust of cold air. The kind that took your breath away in the winter and made tears drain from the corners of your eyes.
“Carlene’s clear plastic platform heels clicked against the ceramic floor tiles like firecrackers popping. I can remember it like it was yesterday. Her skin gleamed with Vaseline, shining like thick, freshly poured molasses, and her newly pressed hair was pulled into a greasy ponytail with baby hair lying flat with small dips in it around the sides of her head. I was in awe of her because I didn’t know her. To me, Carlene was always like a purple, sparkly unicorn or like a rainbow with gold at the end of it. Magical, yet unreal.
“I eyed her that day in amazement. I wished I had a sparkly, tight red dress like hers. I remember running my hands down my flat chest, wishing I had a set of knockers sitting up under my chin like Carlene did. To me, she looked like a movie star. The skimpy dress showed off much more than it covered, barely coming fully under her ample behind.
“I smiled at her. I wanted her to smile back at me. She never did. Carlene’s eyes were dull. All of that sparkle in her clothes, but none showed in her eyes. I had not seen her in a year and was kind of glad she had come to my birthday party.
“Nana, on the other hand, wasn’t as happy to see Carlene. At some point, Nana had emerged from the back of the apartment with the matches. Nana’s face had folded in on itself, and her eyes hooded over. Nana’s dislike of Carlene could not be contained. Her feelings of disdain were like those trick cans filled with rubber snakes. No matter how many times you closed the lid, it popped right open, letting the snakes jump out at you.
“I remember feeling strangled by the thick rope of tension that lassoed around all of us as soon as Nana realized Carlene was there. ‘Why you coming up in here looking like a whore?’ Nana had whispered harshly in Carlene’s ear, trying to keep the partygoers from overhearing. ‘You ain’t got no better clothes than street walker clothes?’
Carlene had sucked her teeth and smirked evilly. ‘No matter what you say, you can’t blow my high t’day. It’s my child’s birthday, and I came to celebrate,’ Carlene had trumpeted, then took a long drag on her Newport. Carlene walked over to the table, flicked her lighter, and lit all eight of my candles. It was the first time I felt caught between the two of them, but it wouldn’t be the last,” Kelsi said, rolling the wadded tissue around the palm of her hand.
Detective Simpson put his hand up and said he didn’t want to interrupt her but wanted to make sure the story would be leading to how she met the Turners. Kelsi had relaxed, talking to him a bit more than she’d expected.
“You need some water? A snack?” Detective Simpson asked Kelsi. “Something other than the sandwich or soda?”
“No, thank you. I just want to get through this,” she said, her words coming out more like a croak than full words.
“Okay, finish,” Detective Simpson said, leaning back in his chair.
“The day of my eighth birthday party, after Carlene showed up, I was the only one who could see worry and fear creasing Nana’s face. Nana stood off in the background, scowling, her jaw rocking feverishly. I stood in front of my cake and with my eyes shut real tight, and I made the same wish I had made year after year since I could understand what wishes were. I would come to understand the meaning of one of Nana’s favorite sayings: Be careful what you wish for. God don’t answer wishes, and fairies who answer wishes are the devil in disguise.
“That night, when everyone left, I wondered why Carlene was still there, and so did Nana. Nana and Carlene weren’t like the mothers and daughters you saw on TV. There would be no long talks, laughter, and trips to the mall together.
“I could tell Nana was agitated. She’d smoked a half a pack of Pall Malls in a matter of a few hours. I just sat in silence, playing with my new birthday gifts and stealing glances at my biological mother, who I didn’t even really know. Carlene tried to make small talk with Nana, but it didn’t work. Nana treated Carlene worse than she treated Ms. Ollie Mae, a nosey, gossipy lady at our church. Now, that was bad, because Nana couldn’t stand Ms. Ollie Mae.
“Finally, Carlene had given up trying to make small talk with her mother. It got quiet for a little while—too quiet, if you ask me. Then, Carlene let out a long sigh, like air escaping a hole in a tire. She stood up and smoothed her dress down over her big butt. She interrupted the eerie silence by dropping a bomb on us. Carlene could’ve blown up a whole city with her announcement.
“Smacking her shiny, glossy lips, Carlene used her inch-long red painted thumbnail to flick something from under her equally long pointer nail and calmly said, ‘I wanted y’all to know that I’m gettin’ married, and I’m coming to get Kelsi when I do. We gon’ start living like a family. She gon’ have what I didn’t have... a mother and a father.’
“As young as I was, I remember feeling like bombs had exploded around me. My ears rang, and my stomach knotted up immediately. I clenched my butt cheeks together to keep from shitting on myself. The floor even started shaking underneath me.
“Nana jumped up to her feet, ready for battle. Nana’s face had crumpled like one of those devil masks you see in the costume store at Halloween time. She moved in on Carlene like a lion about to take down a fine, sleek gazelle.
“Nana jutted a finger toward Carlene’s face. ‘You ain’t takin’ this child nowhere! This here is my baby! You don’t even have a damn place to live. Look at you! All shiny and bright to cover up the dirt and filth that lives in your soul. You ain’t interested in being no mother to nobody. Pushing one out don’t automatically make you the mama. You ain’t interested in being a mother or decent woman period!’ Nana had accused cruelly, her pecan face turning dark as it filled with blood.
“I kind of felt bad for Carlene. She looked like Nana has slapped her in the face and kicked her in the gut with those words. I could see Carlene’s neck moving as she swallowed a few times. She inhaled until her chest swelled. Then, Carlene bounced back quick, like she was used to Nana saying stuff like that to her. She raised one side of her mouth into an evil smirk. Her eyes went into slits, and she started circling Nana as if to say she wasn’t backing down.
“Carlene’s heels clacked against the floor each time she said a word. ‘Let. Me. Tell. You. Something.’ Clack. ‘Your insults don’t work on me no more.’ Click. ‘I ain’t a young, dumb kid that cares about what you think of me no more.’ Clack. ‘Let’s not talk about who ain’t fit to be a mother!’ Click.
“Carlene stopped moving. I guess she was going in for the kill and wanted to stand her ground. ‘You always trying to put me down in front of my child! I got a place to live, I’m getting married, and I’m taking my child with me. Ain’t no courts ever gave you that baby. She’s mine, and you ain’t using her to get no second chances in life. You had your chance to be a mother, and you failed! You a failure, just like the failure you raised!’ Carlene had spat, rushing over and getting close up in Nana’s face.
“Both of them seemed to be on the brink of hysterics. They stood toe to toe, eye to eye. I was hoping no one threw a punch. The tension swirling around the apartment was so thick I could’ve sworn I saw it circling re
d over the entire place. I continued to twirl the Cinderella figurine from my cake, my little fingers shaking as I tried to act like nothing was happening. But my thundering heart and flaring nostrils probably gave me away.
“My birthday dress suddenly felt scratchy and too tight against my skin. That was the first time I remember feeling afraid. Not scary movie afraid, but deathly afraid, like something real bad was going to happen. The kind of fear that knots up your insides so bad you feel like pissing, shitting, and vomiting all at once.
“There was no more discussion about it that night. Nana and I thought nothing of it after Carlene left. Thought nothing of it until the day Carlene came back to get me.” Kelsi blew out a long, exasperated breath, like telling her story was exhausting her, draining all of her energy. She took a long pause and reared her head back so she could stare up at the ceiling as if that would help her with the pain of the memories.
“Take your time,” Detective Simpson said, seemingly locked in to her pain.
“‘No! I don’t want to go! Please!’ I had screamed through tears, holding onto my Nana’s waist as tight as my little arms could grasp. I had even locked my fingers behind Nana’s back to make my grip even better. The spot where I buried my face was wet with my tears and snot.
“‘You are my child, and you are going where I go!’ Carlene had screamed, grabbing me roughly around my ribcage, tugging me towards her. I felt like my shoulders would pop out of the sockets from me holding on so tight.
“‘Please, Carlene! I’ll do anything. Just let her stay. Ain’t no reason for you to take her now. She being raised right here with me. Don’t be hateful. Please leave this baby be, Carlene. Just leave her be,’ my Nana had sobbed, holding onto me equally as tight. She wasn’t going to let Carlene take me. I was sure of that, but I still held on as tight as I could,” Kelsi relayed through tears. Her legs bounced so hard under the table they made a sound.