“Don’t play with me, Mack. You better not fuck around while I’m gone.”

  “Can we eat? The food is getting cold.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SADE

  It’d been a while since I’d been here. Home. VA, baby. There’s a lot of bad memories here for me. And not just the thing with my mother’s man, Glen. Early on in my life I’d made some bad decisions, just as every young woman will do at some point in her lifetime. And only a fool or a liar will say they haven’t. My mother Vivian worked hard her entire life to make a better one for me. My father? Well, I wouldn’t even know what that word was if it wasn’t in the dictionary. But I didn’t give a shit. You learn to cope without.

  It did hurt seeing all my other girlfriends hanging out with their fathers when I was a kid, but when I turned eleven I had something better than a father. An older friend. At the time he was thirty-eight. I won’t say his name, but around that time he was my best friend. He worked in the same supermarket as my mother and claimed to have been watching me. He said he liked what he saw and that I was mature for my age. To an eleven-year-old that didn’t mean too much, until he started buying me things. Sneakers, clothes, food. He taught me how to kiss and make love. In the beginning I was scared of that thing poking out from in between his legs. But once he assured me that everything would be okay, I took a grip of it and learned how to suck my first dick, and swallowed my first nut. I gagged and threw up all on it, and he loved it. He absolutely freaking loved it. It made him happy, and that got me even more open for this man.

  Then when he laid me on my back and spread my legs, I peed on him out of nervousness, and he licked his lips. It was so nasty but freaky at the same time. I could only chalk it up to being bored, playing house, or even doctor. And the surgery he performed on me with his tongue that day did something to me. I remember crying and shaking out of control and even momentarily losing focus on where I was at. He later explained to me that it was called an orgasm, a convulsive release of explicit love in the form of a fluid. I didn’t understand what that meant at the time.

  I knew I wanted some more of that explicitness. Then he introduced me to the act of penetration. Pokemon, before the cartoon ever existed.

  We continued that open relationship for years, with my mother’s knowledge and approval. She’d say, “You might as well start now with an older man. He’ll take care of you in the end. Long as you keep that pussy tight, fresh, and clean. Momma ain’t gonna be around forever to care of you.”

  As I got older, so did he. By the time I was sixteen, my attraction toward him began swinging in other directions. When I broke it off, he actually cried and said I was like his daughter and lover at the same time. He harassed me for the next two years until we finally called the police on him. I hadn’t seen him since. It was weight off my shoulders, and I could now freely venture out and find new love.

  But, no matter how many dicks I sucked and fucked, I always got played in the end. All the girls called me ho, slut, and dirty bitch, because I got the guys they all wanted, and the ones they did have all wanted me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SADE

  I must’ve had the taxi driver go around the block about six times before I finally got up the nerve to stop. The house looked terrible. There was trash all over the lawn. The paint on the garage was peeling. The hose coming from the backyard was laid out on the sidewalk, still running. I pulled it toward the yard, turned the water off, and rolled it up. A sound from the shed startled me. Glen walked out wearing a stained, sweaty wife-beater. He looked to have gained a few pounds and looked a little on the sickly side. He walked toward me through the overgrown, sun-burnt grass, and sucked the remnants of last night’s dinner out of his corner tooth.

  “Fuck is you doing here? Thought you was gone for good?”

  “Surprise. I’m back. Where’s my mother?”

  “You think just because you all grown-up now and moved on, you can come back here and talk to me any ol’ way you want? I damn near raised you.” Glen pulled out a cigarette.

  “You mean damn near raped me. You don’t got shit else to say to me, Glen. I’m not a little girl no more. You don’t scare me, so back off before you regret it.”

  I walked through the back door and entered through the kitchen. The summer heat attracted flies to the dirty dishes piled in the sink. Food stuck to the plates and stunk up the place. Rolls of flypaper hanging from the ceiling over the sink and entrance to the bathroom collected just as many flies as the ones annoyingly buzzing on their backs in the mouse glue traps on the floor. I could’ve thrown up. I opened all the windows downstairs and took my bags up to my old room.

  My mother called over her music, “Glen.” She always loved Earth, Wind & Fire. She’d blast it every Saturday morning when she was house cleaning.

  Believe it or not, those are what I considered to be better days. When it was just us. When we was more like sisters than mother and daughter. We’d never be able to get that back again. I slowly opened the door and stood at the entrance. She didn’t even look like my mother any more as she swayed back and forth in her chair and looked at me.

  “What happened to us, Mommy?” I walked over to her with a hug and some tears. “What happened to you? Why didn’t you ever reach out to me?”

  She didn’t hug me back.

  I pulled away and went to turn down the music.

  “Don’t touch it. What are you doing here?” She coughed. “You still crying about the past? I’m fucked up, Sade. I’m not thinking about no past. I bet if you was never born I wouldn’t have this shit. Now I got to live with my mistake.”

  “Yeah, I’m still thinking about the past,” I said. “Shit wasn’t—excuse me—things wasn’t always like this between us. We used to have fun together. When it was just us there was so much more life in both our lives. We was like sisters.”

  “I was twelve years old when I had you, Sade. Don’t you get it? Babies raising babies. You might as well say we was sisters.” She coughed then poured herself a straight shot of Hennessy.

  “Mommy, even after all the nonsense you put me through I never once looked back and regretted it, or wished I had a different mother,” I cried.

  “Does that mean anything to you, Ma? I’m your daughter,” I screamed. “Your only child.” I knocked her glass out of her hand.

  “Yes, it means something,” she yelled back. “I’m sick, Sade. You over there feeling all bad for yourself. Look at me”—She showed me the scar from where her left breast used to be before the operation—“I’m dying.”

  “I’m feeling sorry for myself? Me? Feeling sorry for myself? I don’t even know who my mother is anymore, and you can’t even remember where it all went wrong. But I do. Yeah, that’s right. I do.”

  “Yeah? Don’t you dare start bringing up that Glen-tried-to-rape-me shit.”

  “He tried and has done it more than once. And you knew it all along. That’s when our relationship started to change—when you started looking the other way.”

  “Well, it was your fault. Who in the hell told your fast little ass to be running around the house half-naked all the time? What I always told you? Sade, put on some clothes, Sade, stop walking around in your nightgown, but you always did like them older men. But you didn’t get this one.”

  “That’s how you feel about it? That’s what you been thinking? That I wanted that ugly, fat-behind creature out there?” I nodded toward the window facing the yard. “I guess we ain’t never going to get back to where we used to be, huh, Ma?”

  “I guess we not, so you can just take your sad, crying behind on back to the city. I don’t need your support.”

  “Yeah, Ma,” I said wiping the tears coming down my face. “You going to straight sit up here and play me to my face and admit you knew Glen was molesting me? You don’t feel no fucking way about that,” I yelled, my temperature rising. “YOU DON’T FEEL NO FUCKING WAY, HUH? THEN YOU KNOW WHAT? FUCK YOU TOO, BITCH!”

  I quickly snatched the Hennessy bottle off the nightstand and swung it into the side of her face. She rolled out the chair onto the floor.

  “You don’t care,” I said whacking her head. “I don’t give a shit no more either,” I cried, swinging to her head.

  I beat her until she didn’t move anymore. I shook my head out of my frenzy, realizing what I’d just done. “Mommy,” I whispered. “Ma.” I backed away toward the door.

  I opened it, and Glen was standing there carrying a six pack of canned beer.

  “You still here? Give these beers to your mother.” He looked over my shoulder.

  I stood frozen and didn’t know whether to run or kick him in the balls.

  “What your mother doing over there laying on the floor? Viv,” he said, barging past me. “What you done did to your mother?” He kneeled beside her. “Viv.” He lifted her head up.

  He quickly made a move for the nightstand and pulled out a revolver. “Don’t you move.” He pointed it at me.

  He didn’t have to worry about that. I still couldn’t believe what I’d just done.

  He felt for her pulse, and there wasn’t one. “You killed her.” He pulled back the trigger with a smirk. “You killed her. That money is mine.”

  I could see nothing BUT insurance policy all up in his eyes. “It was an accident.” I walked over to her corpse, my hands slightly raised above my head. I knelt down and kissed her cheek. Her eyes popped open, and we both jumped back as she screamed horrifically.

  “Give me the pillow,” I yelled to Glen.

  “For what?”

  “We can split the money. Hurry up.” I covered her mouth and nose with my hand.

  “I don’t have to split anything. All I have to do is say it was a break-in—after I take your dead ass into the woods and dig a ditch.”

  “Or you can be an accessory to murder. My man know I’m here. My bus ticket is dated for today. My footprints and fingerprints is all over the place from the yard and those filthy-ass windows. So are yours. Now throw me the pillow.”

  He tossed it over to me, and I threw it over her face. I pressed down with all of my weight and watched her arms aimlessly flap like fallen angels. Her legs kicked up and down like she was swimming for her life. Her entire body exerted one last burst of ineffective energy then collapsed.

  “See, mommy, it didn’t have to be this way. All you had to do was love me. What are we going to do with her body?” I asked Glen.

  “When night comes I know a place up in the mountains of West Virginia.”

  “So what are we supposed to do until then?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MACK

  Ya know we trap all day (oh) we play all night (oh)

  Dis is the life of a go-getta (ay), go-getta (ay), go-getta

  It was Friday night and this was when Phenomenon bumped the most. Strippers slithered down poles and exercised their rights to be eaten out by paying customers—men and women alike.

  And in the club, you see a bad bitch, point her out, oh

  The crowd screamed, “Go-getta (ay), go-getta (ay), go-getta (ay), go-getta . . .”

  Red siren lights spun around the room, and the thumping music seduced the swaying hips of the go-gettas as they danced laps around the hard dicks of the men that groped and slobbered on their previously sucked titties. Expensive bottles of champagne were popped open and loud talking was the theme for tonight. Everybody was having a good time, just as always on a Friday night. I stood at the bar next to Anton while he did his usual, drink—shots of Jamaican rum.

  Ton was bugging though. He had a warrant out for his arrest for two murders, and he was just walking around like shit was funky like that. But he wanted to be that nigga. He wanted to be in the position I was in. He wanted Cocaine to respect him the way he respected me. He wanted that love that dude showed a cat with no initiation.

  “So where these bitches at, man? I need to hurry up back to the office.”

  “She said she’d be here. The bitch don’t be faking moves. She’ll be here.”

  A small commotion at the door alerted my attention toward the disturbance. Two banging-ass chicks walked in looking like they belonged up on that stage. Niggaz ran right to them trying to get a dance, or a phone number at least.

  “Kim,” Ton yelled over the music. “That’s her, son. That must be her friend she was talking about.”

  They both approached smiling. Kim was thick but in a shapely kind of way. Her skin was maple-complexioned, and she was about 5-8. Her dimples flauntingly caved in each time she smiled. Her hair was in some crazy, off-the-hook style with chopsticks sticking out her bun. Her black tee-shirt had a pink heart of rhinestones with I’m a flirt scripted in rhinestones over it, the neck of her shirt exposing the cleavage of her thirty-eight D’s.

  “Hi.” She kissed Ton’s lips. “My name’s Kim. This my girl, Joi.”

  “Told you I’d check it out.” She smiled from behind her glasses.

  “Word. We saw you at the gas station,” Ton said.

  “Yep. So what’s really good, y’all? My girl said something about making some paper.” She looked at us both.

  “That’s right,” I said. “But we going to talk upstairs. Ton, grab a bottle of—what y’all drinking?”

  “We Henny girls,” Kim said.

  We sat on the couches in the office and drank over bullshit conversation, some smoke, and a lil’ sniff-sniff, a controllable habit I’d picked up from Cocaine when I was locked up north.

  “A’ight, y’all. Everybody good now,” I said blowing my nose.

  “Chilling,” Joi said.

  “I know y’all already know there’s money out here. Whatever you got going now is nothing compared to what I can get you. Ain’t near one of them bitches out there complaining.” I pointed out the Plexiglas window overlooking the main floor.

  “I’m getting paper without sliding down no poles though. All I do is beat these niggaz in the head all day. Ain’t no shame in my game,” Kim said.

  “Yeah. But is you really getting it like that? How long it take to beat a nigga in the head to come up off some gwop? That shit take a minute. I’m talking about real paper, not no punk-ass, measly thousand dollars.”

  “I’m not stripping,” she said.

  “Now, I didn’t say nothing about that. I’m figuring like this though, ma. You can do way better than what you doing right now.”

  “How you figure?”

  “You’d always be protected. You wouldn’t have to wait for bum-ass niggaz to scope you out or you scope them out. There’d always be paper for you on the regular, not just here and there. If you going to be a pimptress, then you going to need a pimp. And don’t take it as the take-all-your-money-and-whup-your-ass kind of pimp, but the kind of pimp that’ll always have your back no matter what. The kind of pimp that’ll love you more than anyone’s ever loved you in your life.”

  Kim broke out laughing and pushed Joi over on the couch. “You’re not serious. You hear yourself? You ain’t talking to no little, hungry, desperate bitch. Don’t run game, hon. Say what it is you trying to say because, if you ask me, it don’t look like you can protect much of anything. You too pretty.”

  “A’ight. Let me be the manager of your pussy so we can get paid. I can tell your shit’s a money-machine. Matter of fact, whether your answer’s yes or no, here’s a lil’ something for both of your time.”

  I reached into my pocket and tossed two thousand dollars in the middle of the couch and walked over to the surrounding windows. “I know that ain’t shit, but y’all do what y’all do with that. If you want to see that triple, come and holla back at your boy, a’ight? Y’all can bounce.” I sat behind Cocaine’s desk, propped my feet up on it, and lit a Newport.

  “I’m wit’ it,” Joi said, putting the money in her Prada purse. “I got this pimp now and this nigga doing me mad dirty. You heard of Stan, right? Over there off Linden Boulevard and down Murdock? He got me holed up in some funky-ass basement apartment. He take all my money except the shit to keep me looking dip.”

  “I heard of that wack-ass punk,” Anton said. “He ain’t shit. His name ain’t striking no fear in nobody’s heart. So what, he got the block popping a lil’ something wit’ da soda trail? I’ll take that nigga’s whole shit over.”

  “Ma,” I said, “can you get away from him?”

  “Never tried. He’s taken care of me since I was fourteen, but I can’t stand his ass no more. If you can help me get away from him, I’ll ride with you.” Joi took off her shades.

  “That’s what’s up then. What’s up, Kim? You down or what?”

  “Naw, I’m good on that. I don’t need no pimp because I ain’t no ho. I’m out. Let’s bounce, Joi.”

  Ton told her, “You tripping, Kim.”

  “Take ’em on down for some drinks, man. Joi, I’m-a holla, baby. Call, boo.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SADE

  I know y’all wondering how I went from visiting my mother to straight murdering her cruel, heartless ass. You heard the shit she said to me, right? That ain’t no shit a mother is ever supposed to say to her daughter. To see her stare me right in the eyes and say, “Fuck it, it’s your fault he was feeling on your booty. Get over it.” Fuck that! The shit just made me spaz. It probably seems irrational, illogical, and unrealistic to y’all, but white kids do the same shit every day. I ain’t trying to sit here and justify the shit, but I just don’t want nobody looking down on me like shit don’t happen sometimes. It’s nothing but real life and everyday shit.

  It’d been two days, and we still hadn’t moved her body. We was too busy keeping a close eye on each other’s movements.

  “Glen, you expecting her to get up and dig her own grave? The house is beginning to stink.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s just go over this alibi one more time because if shit fuck up, I swear to God, I’ll kill you before I go to jail.”