by Imani Black
“Eeeelll!” Kelsi screamed as one fell from some place high and landed on her arm. She started jumping and moving and swiping at her arms to make sure it was off her.
“Bitch, you ain’t ever seen a roach before?” Carlene hissed.
“Not this many, and not on me,” Kelsi commented, disgusted.
“Too bad! You better get used to living here, because you sure won’t be going back to live with that lady,” Carlene snapped in response.
“And my name is Kelsi,” she mumbled sassily. Carlene had taken to calling her the B-word, and she was getting tired of it.
“I call you what I want to call you . . . Bitch,” Carlene retorted, getting so close to Kelsi’s face that Kelsi could smell the Royal Crown grease in her scalp.
Kelsi finally moved far enough into the apartment to really assess everything she was going to have to contend with. She tried to find at least one thing she might’ve been able to live with there, but it wasn’t easy. The apartment had no furniture in the so-called living room. Sheets covered the windows, instead of the nice lace curtains Kelsi was used to at Nana’s house.
A small, raggedy plastic folding table with one chair and one milk crate that served as a chair sat to the side of the small kitchen. The kitchen sink had dishes piled in it and to both sides of it. The dishes had food on them so old that black, green, blue, and gray mold grew in tall piles on some of the plates. The stove was caked with old brown and yellow grease. So was the wall behind it. Kelsi was scared to open the refrigerator because there were so many roaches around it.
The kitchen had two ways to get in and out, so Kelsi exited on the side closest to the apartment door. She thought about making a run for it, but where would she go? Being in Brooklyn was like being in a foreign country for her. She would’ve never figured out how to get back to the Bronx. Nana had kept her too sheltered for that.
As Kelsi stepped out of the kitchen, she had a clear view straight down a small hallway that led to the back of the apartment. She noticed that there was only one bedroom.
Where will I sleep? she thought sadly. She usually slept with Nana every night.
Carlene emerged from a darkened room at the back of the apartment. “You gonna sleep right here,” she huffed, dragging a dirty foam mattress into the empty living room. “And listen, bitch. There are rules to staying here,” Carlene continued as she lit the end of a cigarette.
Kelsi’s jaw rocked as she bit down so hard her temples throbbed.
I told you my name is Kelsi! she screamed in her head.
“First, don’t touch the refrigerator and nothing in it unless you ask me or Took. You don’t buy shit, so you don’t eat shit unless we tell you to. Especially if you see a Pepsi in there. Don’t you ever, ever touch my Pepsi. Drink water! Kids drink water. If I decide to give you something else to drink, you will. If not, drink fucking water. Period. Don’t touch the TV or stereo in my room. Matter-a-fact, don’t touch shit in my room or go in there unless I send you in there or call you in there. Don’t leave out this house without my permission, or if me or Took take you out. You can’t go outside unless I say you can go. There will be no fucking company in my house. These fucking kids around here are no good, and I don’t want them in my fucking crib. You got chores around here, so you ain’t gonna be bored at all. You gotta do the dishes and clean the bathroom, kitchen, and where you sleep at. Last of all, I see you growing up now, getting a little bit of buds for tits and rounding out to get a li’l bit of ass, so don’t even think about looking cross-eyed at my man. That will get your ass thrown right outta here! Too many of y’all young bitches fuckin’ people old man and then yelling ’bout somebody touched y’all or molested y’all. That shit don’t fly around here, so you better keep that li’l body to yaself,” Carlene shot off, contaminating Kelsi’s breathing air with a cloud of smoke as she finished up.
Kelsi bit into the side of her jaw until she tasted the salty, metallic flavor of her own blood. Her hands were locked into fists, and her vision clouded over in shades of burgundy and red. Even as young as she was, what the hell made Carlene think anyone wanted her albino man? Kelsi wasn’t even old enough to think about boys her own age, much less a nasty-looking man like Took.
Her first night there, Kelsi tossed and turned. She had never slept alone. She missed the scent of Nana’s butterscotch that comforted her every night because she and Nana shared a pillow. Carlene hadn’t even given Kelsi a blanket, much less a pillow.
She slapped at her legs a hundred times through the night. She felt needle-like pricks over and over again. Scratching them seemed to make it worse. Kelsi finally realized that bugs were biting her on the dirty mattress. She got up and sat in the lone chair outside of the kitchen. She used the milk crate to prop her feet up and told herself she would sleep sitting up.
It seemed like as soon as she finally fell into a fitful sleep, slouched to the side in the chair with her head on the dirty plastic table, Carlene was standing over her.
“Get up, bitch! We got a appointment today!” Carlene screamed, shaking Kelsi hard.
Dazed, Kelsi looked up. The smell hit her first. It was like the nastiest underarm funk she had ever smelled in her life. She blinked her eyes a few times to get them to focus. They went wide. Carlene was damn near butt-ass naked, wearing just a small camisole. Kelsi crinkled her face and wanted to hide her eyes. Nana had never, ever let Kelsi see her naked. That was the first time Kelsi had ever seen a hairy pussy. She immediately closed her eyes.
“Bitch, I said get up! Now! I ain’t gonna tell you again! I gotta be at a face to face in a few minutes, and you gotta be there too!” Carlene rasped, sounding like a monster.
Kelsi had no idea what Carlene was talking about. Nonetheless, she dragged herself up out of the chair. Her neck ached, and she could hardly turn it left or right. Kelsi had slept in her clothes because, of course, Carlene hadn’t bothered to give her a pair of pajamas.
“I need a wash rag and towel,” Kelsi mumbled to Carlene.
“Just wash your face with the one that’s hanging in there. I gotta do laundry when we come back—if you hurry the fuck up and these people give me my check,” Carlene grumbled in response.
The bathroom was worse than the rest of the house. Kelsi lifted her shirt over her nose as she surveyed how she would maneuver in that nasty-ass bathroom. The toilet seat was supposed to be light blue, but it was stained with yellow specks and brown streaks at the back. Behind the seat, on the white part, was hair, dirt, piss, and doo-doo stains.
Kelsi pulled her pants down and squatted over the toilet, trying to be careful not to have her skin come into contact with the toilet. She already knew from the day before that she wasn’t so great at it. Again, some of the pee drizzled down her right leg and onto the back of her panties. To make matters worse, there was no toilet tissue. Carlene and Took had obviously been using newspaper and brown paper bags to wipe their asses. Kelsi wasn’t doing that. She bounced a few times, hoping she could drip dry. She felt disgusting and wanted to take a shower badly. Nana had just let her start taking showers instead of sit-down baths when she turned seven.
That idea quickly faded when Kelsi looked over at the bathtub. “Yuck!” she whispered, frowning until her cheeks hurt. The tub was black in the bottom, with rings and rings of body dirt. It looked like it had not been washed in years. The edges had old, caked-up soap stains that would probably need a metal scraper to remove. The wall tiles were black in between, and the faucets were caked with green and gray stuff.
Kelsi turned back toward the sink and looked in the stained mirror. Her hair was a mess, and her face had red splotches on it. Bed bug bites. Her eyes were crusty from the tears she had cried in her sleep.
She reached up for the lone face rag that hung stiffly on the silver pole over the tub. She couldn’t reach it, so she had to step onto the tub for a boost. When she snatched the rag down from the pole, she could tell if it was dirty. It was so stiff it stayed bent in half like it was still hanging
on the pole even after she had it in her hand. She swallowed hard, on the verge of hysterical tears. She turned on the hot water and stuck the rag under the stream. The water even seemed to repel from that face rag.
Finally, she got it soft enough to wring it out. Kelsi reluctantly put it up against her face to wipe away the crust and sleep. She gagged. That rag stank like somebody’s ass. She threw it into the sink like it was a poisonous snake.
Kelsi cupped her hands and splashed some water on her face. She looked around and realized she had no toothbrush. There was no toothpaste in sight, but a box of baking soda on the back of the sink. Kelsi remembered that sometimes she would watch Nana brush her teeth with baking soda after using toothpaste.
“That makes your teeth whiter,” Nana told her once.
Kelsi decided to use the baking soda and her finger to brush her teeth. She pulled back the top on the baking soda.
“Ah!” she jumped and dropped the entire box on the floor. It was filled with so many roaches there was hardly any baking soda left. Tears immediately sprang to her eyes.
She jumped at the sound of Carlene banging on the door. Her heart thundered.
“C’mon, bitch! This ain’t no fucking beauty pageant. Wash your face and let’s go! If I miss this appointment, I gotta wait another four weeks for one,” Carlene screamed from the other side of the door.
Kelsi felt hot all over. She cupped her hand again and got a little bit of water in her mouth. She swished it around and spit it out. She took some of Carlene’s Royal Crown hair grease that sat on the back of the toilet and spread it on her face. That worked to get rid of the crusty streaks.
Kelsi came out of the bathroom, and Carlene was dressed and ready to go. She didn’t even wash up.
Nasty, stink ass, Kelsi said to herself. She would soon learn that Carlene was dirty in more ways than one.
Kelsi and Carlene took two trains to get to Carlene’s appointment. Kelsi fell asleep since she hadn’t slept the night before. It was crazy how soothing the train was to Kelsi, even with all the strangers on it. The noise, the slight swaying motion, was comforting. Kelsi would take to the trains for comfort as she got older, too.
Kelsi was so hungry by the time they got to Carlene’s appointment that she had a pounding headache. Her mouth had gone desert-sand dry, and her lips were cracked.
Carlene was bouncy and jittery like she had eaten a bag of sugar. “When we get inside, don’t ask me for shit out that vending machine or nothing like that. Don’t speak to nobody unless I tell you to, and I’ll answer all the questions. You understand me, bitch?” Carlene told her, pointing a jittery finger in Kelsi’s face like she had done something wrong.
Kelsi rolled her eyes. She’d become so ugly to Kelsi.
AID FOR DEPENDENT CHILDREN
Kelsi read the sign in her head. That was the line she and Carlene got on. They were far back on the line, too. There were so many people there. Kelsi counted at least eighteen pregnant ladies, and all of them had more kids with them, aside from the ones in their bellies. Some of them had little babies and were pregnant again, too. The line moved really slow as one name at a time was called.
Kelsi’s legs and the bottom of her feet throbbed, on top of the drumbeat of pain pounding between her ears. She was dying to go sit on one of the dirty orange, yellow, or light blue chairs that were situated around the walls. There were no empty ones anyway.
It seemed like a lifetime before Carlene got to the lady behind the scratched-up Plexi-glass window.
“Yes, I have a face to face with my worker, Ms. Shelton, today. She needed to see my child in person to give me the food stamp and check increase,” Carlene said, using the most proper English Kelsi had ever heard her speak in the few times she had gotten to see her in her life. “Jones is my name. Carlene. And this is my child, Kelsi.”
The lady swirled her chair around, checked something, and turned back to the window. “Have a seat. Shelton got six before you. Your appointment was for nine o’clock. You late, you go to the bottom,” the lady snarled like she had said the same line one hundred times that day.
Carlene let out a windstorm of breath. “Fuck!” Carlene grabbed Kelsi’s arm roughly and pulled her into a corner. She flung Kelsi into the wall and turned into her. She was covering Kelsi from the crowd so no one could see the fear dancing in her widened eyes.
Kelsi couldn’t understand what she had done wrong.
“Bitch, you see what the fuck you did taking all long? Now we gotta wait in here all fucking day. I was gonna buy you something to eat. Now you ain’t gettin’ shit,” Carlene hissed, her breath smelling like a swirl of shit and cigarettes.
That was the first time Kelsi felt a ball of fire in her chest get a little bigger. She would come to learn as she got older that it was anger inside of her that was growing like a well-watered plant. With hunger pangs tearing her insides up and that fire in her chest, Kelsi pictured a thousand ways she could kill Carlene that day. She was eight at that time, but those thousand ways would multiply into millions as the years went by.
* * *
Now, Kelsi was pulled out of her miserable memories by someone pushing on the bedroom door. The door hit up against her back and snapped her back to reality. She slowly pulled herself up from the floor, her face covered in tears and her temples throbbing.
She stepped back from the door and stood in the middle of Cheyenne’s bedroom helplessly. Big K rushed in and closed the door behind him. He rushed into her, grabbed her into his arms, and squeezed her tight.
“I’ve been wanting to give you a hug for days,” he whispered directly into her ear. “I hate that I couldn’t.”
Kelsi stood stock still, her arms down at her side. She was mentally and physically exhausted by everything. She could not respond to him. She couldn’t think straight, her mind stuck in the past on things she’d tried to forget.
“What did the detective ask you?” Big K asked, finally pulling away from her so he could look into her eyes.
“About myself. About how I got caught up here,” Kelsi droned, void of emotion, although she’d clearly been crying.
“And?” Big K pressed, his voice getting a bit stern.
“And all of this thinking back got me tired. I think you should get out of here before one of them comes back here,” Kelsi said with a bit of authority in her tone.
“I’m here for you always. Remember that. We are here for each other,” Big K said before he turned and left the room.
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Kelsi whispered after he was gone.
She walked over and fell onto the bed. Big K was the whole problem. She squeezed her eyes shut. The first time Kelsi had fallen in love, she was eight years old, and it was with him. It was love. Real love. The only thing Kelsi could equate with man-and-woman love. It was different than the love she had felt for Nana. That’s how she knew that although she was a little kid, she was in man-and-woman love with her best friend’s father. Kelsi knew it because when he was around her back then, her palms would sweat, her heart would race, and she could always feel her cheeks flaming over. By the time Kelsi was nine, she could even feel something tingling between her legs around him. It was not the kind of tingling that hurt like when someone who wasn’t supposed to touch you there touched you.
Of course, he didn’t know she was in love with him. She’d never told him. To him, she was just a kid. A kid who had become his daughter’s best friend. A kid who he knew came from a fucked-up home and needed love and protection like a charity case.
Kevin “Big K” Turner had saved Kelsi’s life and was the first man to ever give a fuck about her. So, she secretly loved him in return. She loved his coffee-bean brown skin, low-cut hair, deep-set shiny eyes, and the way he dressed and walked. He was the man in the neighborhood. Back then, Big K had been the only person Kelsi ever associated with real love, aside from Nana.
Kelsi cried into the material of her pillow. It was all she could do to keep herself from losing her mind
.
Chapter 9
Brice
“I got her legs. You hold her arms,” Earl instructed as their classmate fought under his strength.
“C’mon, sissy-ass nigga. Get ya dick out and fuck this bitch!” Earl screamed.
Brice stood stock still. The three other boys were screaming at him to hurry up. He fumbled with his zipper, his hands shaking. Brice gulped the golf ball–sized lump at the back of his throat and moved toward the girl. She was flailing futilely, no match for their strength.
“Fuck her, fuck her, fuck her!” the others chanted. It was like something out of a movie.
Brice could hear Earl’s Eddie Murphy–sounding laugh. It made Brice’s ears ring. He climbed up on the bed, the girl’s legs already forcefully spread, waiting for him. He prepared to enter her against her will.
“Brice?”
The girl’s strangled voice sent chills down his back. It was a voice he recognized very well.
“Brice? Brice? Brice?”
* * *
Brice jumped up from his sleep in a huff. His chest rose and fell like someone was pumping it up and down. His head pounded, as usual. The same recurring nightmare he’d been battling for years now was back for some reason. Brice was still convinced that all his work as a homicide detective was somehow the karmic consequences of the worst thing he’d ever done in his life—participating in the rape of one of his classmates back in the day.
Every case Brice had worked since, especially the Arianna Coleman case, had drawn out this nightmare. Now, with the cold-blooded murder of an innocent woman in his hands, Brice was right back where he’d started from. He still prayed that one day God would forgive him for what he’d done and free him of reliving it over and over again.
In the dark of his bedroom, Brice squinted and felt around on his nightstand for his cell phone to check the time—3 a.m. He rubbed his hands across his face and sighed. Brice had called his therapist the day before to make an emergency appointment. Noon couldn’t come fast enough.