B-Careful

by Shannon Holmes

  Sonya stood in the doorway, still cursing at him as he drove off. Tone didn’t leave anything of value behind. He knew once he was gone, whatever he left behind, Sonya would destroy. He knew she was probably inside the house pouring bleach on his clothes right now. He knew she was vindictive like that.

  It was a nasty break up with Sonya. As he drove, Tone replayed in his mind all the spiteful things that she had said. There was so much malice in her words that Tone felt like he could never recover from. He still couldn’t believe that she wished death on him. At the moment she wasn’t fighting fair. Anything she could say that was disrespectful, she said. Anything she could say to get a rise out of him, she said that too. Tone knew Sonya was in an extremely volatile state, but that didn’t excuse her from saying those crazy things. If the shoe was on the other foot, he would have never gone that far. Sure, he deserved to be cursed out and maybe disrespected, but death? There was no coming back from that. Now Tone was in his feelings too. Yet he remained respectful, never calling Sonya out of her name. He could never forgive her for this. Not that she cared.

  For Sonya, things didn’t work out like she thought. So she was bitter. She had envisioned marrying Tone, but now it looked like that day wouldn’t come. In her mind she refused to accept the fact that it was over. No matter how bright her future was, Sonya had a hard time imagining it without Tone in the picture.

  Walking away from this relationship unscathed was virtually impossible now. Sonya had taken things too far, to a dark place were they didn’t need to go. He had hoped that they could at least be civil.

  The couple used to say, “If anything was to ever happen to their relationship, albeit a fallout or break up, that they would always be cool.” Needless to say, that was just talk, that wasn’t the case now. Sonya would never honor such an agreement.

  Tone just hoped his choice to leave didn’t cost him someday. He thought he left a good thing for an even more promising one.

  14

  “....Please take your ass out to that damn hospital to see about Netta,” Ms. Tina yelled into the phone. “Don’t you do that girl like that....”

  As Mimi drove through the streets of East Baltimore, she thought the world was ganging up on her, she was hearing about herself on both ends, all because she hadn’t gone to see Netta in the hospital. The Pussy Pound wasn’t talking to her and her mother had verbally chastised her on several different occasions. Well, today would not be the day that she paid Netta a visit either. She had better things to do, like get high. She had no excuse for her failure to appear at her friend’s bedside, but she made up every excuse in the book not to.

  In her mind her and Netta weren’t friends. They were merely friendly. There was a difference, a big difference. Netta didn’t give a fuck about anyone but herself. She had proven that time and time again by what she said and how she treated her so-called friends. So why should she care about Netta’s ignorant ass. To Mimi, they had been more like rivals than friends. Vying for the same hustlers, the same money, the same street fame had indirectly put them in direct competition with each other. Oftentimes Mimi got the short end of the stick. Which made her envious and jealous of Netta. Netta was always one tough act to follow, she had more personality, more swagger, and was more intelligence. Too bad Mimi never saw it that way. All she knew was she despised being relegated to her shadows.

  Her jealousy stopped just short of seeing her friend dead. She was glad Black had whipped her ass for stealing his money, that someone finally knocked Netta off her high horse.

  Mimi wasn’t in her right mind, her thoughts and opinions were too clouded by her drug use to understand that her issues with Netta were one-sided. Netta didn’t express those same sentiments toward her.

  Fuck Netta, she thought, as she drove to a new dope shop she had heard about earlier in the day, somewhere her credit might be good but her body might be better.

  Mimi turned on 21st Street and Barclay. She slowly drove down the block. She was anxious to find the right dope boy to talk to. Someone who was authorized to play let’s make a deal with her. Someone who would willingly exchange some dope for some sex.

  Every day Mimi’s habit was getting worst. Her drug consumption had grown to a bundle a day. Ms. Tina, her mother, had tried to hide it the best she could, checking her daughter into drug rehabilitation centers, which Mimi promptly walked away from after a day or two. Now there was no hiding it, Mimi was a full-blown junkie. She exposed herself to the world for friends and family to see. Reports filtered in to her parents and friends alike, about how they had seen her here and there, on notorious drug blocks across the city and how bad she looked.

  This shamed both her mother and father. Dollar would prefer his daughter have a life threatening illness than her to be stricken down by the same poison he sold. He thought he had taught her better than that.

  “....You need to leave that shit alone so you can stick around and see your future grandbabies,” he once told her. “Don’t you wanna do that?”

  There was nothing malicious about her father’s words. They came from a good place, deep in his heart. Dealing dope was the life that he had chosen to make a better way for his family. Dollar had profited handsomely off of other people’s afflictions. He was one of the biggest heroin distributors in Baltimore City. It was ironic how the same drug that had gotten him rich, had ensnared his three children.

  Still, it seemed like his involvement in drugs was coming back to haunt him in the form of his children. First his twin boys Tommy and Timmy. One was violently murdered and the other was sentenced to life in the Baltimore penitentiary for killing the man who murdered his brother. Now his baby girl, his only daughter, was strung out on heroin. Dollar had lost three lives all while maintaining his stranglehold of the heroin trade in Baltimore.

  Dollar had yet to figure out that heroin claimed the lives of the rich and the poor, the guilty and the innocent, the educated and the ignorant. His children weren’t exempt from that.

  As Mimi pulled closer to the action, she felt a wave of nausea. She knew the exact cause of her unsettled stomach. Whatever she was feeling was due to her lack of heroin, she was dope sick. She couldn’t stay in the bed all day, unable to move, fighting her physical cravings for the drug. Kicking her habit was a scary proposition, one she wasn’t ready to make.

  It was the dawn of another day, yet it didn’t change her reality. She was an addict. Mimi wished she could wake up from this nightmare of addiction, but she couldn’t. Going cold turkey for her wasn’t an option. There was no way she was going to put herself through that kind of sickness again. She was going to get herself some dope, some way, somehow.

  The only thing she knew for sure was she needed her daily blast of heroin and she needed it fast. But with no money to purchase her drug of choice, her only option was to exchange a sexual favor for the drug.

  Despite her dope habit, Mimi knew she was still attractive to drug dealers. She kept her appearance up, somewhat, enough to the point that dope boys still made unwanted sexual advances toward her. She was light skin complexioned, long black hair, average height, shapely, a soft beautiful face with straight white teeth. To everyone that just met her, she was a dime. But those that knew her, she had seen better days.

  “C’mere, yo,” she said, rolling down her car window calling over a kid she knew. “Let me holla at you.”

  Hope this lil muthafucka horny, she thought.

  “What’s up yo?” the kid answered.

  “You remember me?” she asked, smiling seductively as she replayed a sexual act she performed on him.

  “How could I forget you, yo,” he shot back, mentally recalling the same incident. “As hard as you go.”

  Mimi’s sexual exploits were practically legendary amongst the younger boys around there. If they knew she was out here they would literally be lining up to get a crack at her. If Mimi were your average dick sucker, he would have given her the cold shoulder and let someone else fall victim to her charms. Howeve
r, as it stood, she was above average. So he openly flirted with her and entertained her.

  “So what’s up? You tryin’ to go or what,” she demanded to know.

  “Hell yeah, yo,” he said excitedly.

  “You got some place for us to go? Or we gone do it in the car,” Mimi inquired.

  The kid commented, “I gotta place we can go. Park ya car, yo.”

  “Same deal as last time right?” she reminded him.

  “Yeah, I got you, yo. You know I don’t even play those type of games,” he replied. “Don’t I always take care of you?”

  “Yeah, you do,” she admitted. “You one of the realest ones out here.”

  “Ain’t nuttin’ changed,” he bragged.

  A few minutes of work for Mimi quickly turned into a few days of being held captive by her own drug habit, in a drug house, bartering her body for drugs. The neighborhood boys ran in and out the house for days. For some of them, it would be their first sexual experience. She was blinded to the faces of the males she serviced. Some were young, some were old, some were handsome and some were ugly. Some paid her with dope, and some gamed her and got a sexual favor for free. The one thing that was consistent was the high potency of heroin in her system.

  When Mimi binged on drugs for days, like she was doing now, she retreated to some dark, remote space within herself and was totally uninterested in everything around her, her son, her mother or her friends. All she wanted, all that she needed, was inside a bag or a pill of heroin.

  In this state she turned into a savage, doing whatever to whomever to feed that unquenchable thirst.

  “We got this whore upstairs. Her head is the truth, yo,” Stink confessed to Black.

  “Fuck is you tellin’ me that for, yo? I could care less about these raggedy ass bitches around here,” Black cursed.

  “Stop bein’ so serious yo, just come take a look at the broad. You ain’t gotta fuck her. Just come look,” Stink pleaded.

  “What’s so special about this broad? You seen one hoe you seen them all,” Black maintained.

  “You’ll see,” his little brother promised him. “Now c’mon, yo!”

  Black relented, following his younger brother upstairs to a dark, decrepit area of the row house. Stink opened the door of a nearby bedroom, stepping to the side so Black could get a full view.

  “Bitch, arch ya back,” one boy commanded Mimi, who was in the middle of a threesome. The other boy laid back enjoying the fellatio that he was receiving. They all appeared to be oblivious to both Stink and Black’s presence.

  “You know who that is yo?” Stink whispered.

  “I don’t know that whore,” Black answered.

  “Look closer,” Stink suggested. “That’s Netta’s buddy Mimi, yo.”

  Damn, sure if it ain’t, Black thought after taking a second look.

  Seeing the sideshow that Mimi was engaged in wasn’t sexually arousing. Still, Black didn’t know why, but it made him feel good. Mimi was the missing link, she was his clue to Netta’s whereabouts. He had looked in the newspapers and on the news and there was no mention about what he did to her. But now it should be easy to find out exactly where she was.

  Black could not stop staring at Mimi. It was the first time he had seen her in five years. He looked at her and wondered what happened to the bad bitch he knew before he went to jail. The drop dead gorgeous chick that half the hustlers in Baltimore wanted. Now she was this pathetic drug addict. What happened he thought. Somehow it had all gone wrong.

  Damn, how the mighty have fallen, he mused.

  “Alright yo, y’all lil hoppers done had enough,” Black said, seizing control of the situation. “Y’all put ya clothes on and get on up outta here.”

  The show suddenly came to a halt as all the participating parties got dressed or pulled up their clothes and prepared to leave. The boys exited the room first. It took Mimi a little longer to get herself together. When she tried to leave, Black blocked the door with his body, preventing her from exiting.

  “Mimi, where you think you goin’,” he asked. “It’s me, Black. It’s been a long time yo.”

  “Black?” Mimi repeated, as she stared at his face intensely. Although Mimi was under the influence of heroin, she was under no delusions about who this man was. Black was a very dangerous and powerful man on the streets of Baltimore.

  Mimi woke up in at a hotel, the Holiday Inn on Route 40, not knowing how she had gotten there. She had been dead to the world, fast asleep for at least a few hours. In that span she had lost all track of time. Partially clothed, she stared at Black, blinking her eyes, but not saying anything.

  Black sat at the desk reading the newspaper, a habit he had picked up in prison, until he noticed movement coming from the bed.

  “Mimi, it’s about time you woke up,” he said, folding up the paper. “You sleep too hard, anything could happened to you in ya sleep.”

  “Where am I?” she wondered.

  “Route 40,” Black replied. “Don’t worry shorty, you in good hands yo. I brought you here to sober up and recover. Them lil niggas was runnin’ a train on you. You don’t remember? I saved ya ass. Who knows what would’ve happened to you up in that house.”

  Mimi was too embarrassed to speak. She was ashamed that Black had seen her at her lowest point.

  “Don’t worry Mimi, that’s our little secret. I won’t tell a soul,” he confided in her. “My lips are sealed.”

  Black knew he had to tear Mimi down before her built her back up. He had to make her feel comfortable around him. He wanted her to drop her guard so he had to be very careful how he questioned her. So quickly he formulated a plan to get her high first, then interrogate her extensively.

  “Huh, get yaself off E,” he said, tossing Mimi a few gel caps filled with dope.

  Mimi caught the plastic bag in mid air, tore it open and began dumping the contents on the back of her hand, snorting it up. Nearby, Black watched in disgust as she vacuumed the drug into both nostrils, pill after pill.

  “Slow down Mimi, that dope ain’t goin’ nowhere,” Black laughed.

  Only when Mimi had had enough, when all the pills of dope were gone, did she finally pick up her head and look at Black. He stared at her with pity. By the way she inhaled the dope, she had passed the threshold of a recreational user a long time ago. His eyes stayed on her, watching Mimi’s every move.

  It took a few minutes for the effects of the drug to kick in. When it did, Black could see Mimi was high. She began nodding off, her chin coming to rest in her chest. Now it was time for him to move in for the kill.

  “What’s up wit’ Netta, yo? Where’s she at?” he began. Mimi remained silent in her drug-fueled stupor.

  “Bitch, you hear me talkin’ to you, yo?” Black yelled loud enough to grab her attention.

  “Nnnnneeettttaaa......” she said, slurring her speech and moving robotically. “.... Nnnneeetttaaa, in the hospital.”

  “How you know, yo,” he wondered.

  “My, my mother told me. She went to go see her,” Mimi informed him.

  There was no way of determining if Mimi was telling the truth to get back at Netta, or lying to protect her friend. However, it made sense. Which explained why he hadn’t been able to find Netta’s name in the paper. She wasn’t dead.

  “I hear you two fell out. Y’all not fuckin’ wit’ each other any more?” Black inquired.

  “Fuck that bitch! She ain’t right.....” she began.

  Black had Mimi right where he wanted her, talking. All he did was bait her into a conversation and Mimi started spilling the beans. She began telling him everything he needed to know, like which hospital she was in and what floor. She even rambled on about whom Netta was dealing with now, too.

  Mimi had given him so much information. The thought that Netta had moved on from him and was with another man, a New Yorker at that, made him hot. She knew how much Black hated New Yorkers.

  A lump of emotion suddenly formed in Black’s throat. The idea
of Netta cutting him loose to build a life with another man enraged him. He had some news for Netta. If she thought he was going to let her live happily ever after, then she’d better think again.

  Black had tried to kill Netta once. And with Mimi’s help, he would attempt it again. For some unjustifiable reason, Black wouldn’t let this thing go.

  15

  It all started with a phone call. That’s all it took to ignite Netta’s paranoia. The prank caller on the other end of the phone never said a word. They would remain silent for a few seconds before abruptly hanging up. This went on for a few days. Someone was playing on the phone, but Netta had no idea as to whom. These strange events put her on edge, as if the walls were closing in around her. She thought she was a sitting duck and Black was coming to kill her any day now.

  Suddenly, the phone rang in her room. Netta stared at the phone undecidedly before picking it up. Even before her train of thought could reach a logical conclusion, she aggressively grabbed the telephone receiver.

  “Hello!” She barked into the phone. Netta was tired of being played with.

  “Hello, can I speak to Netta?” A female spoke softly into the phone.

  “Speaking. Who is this?” Netta said defiantly. “And why is you playin’ on my phone?”

  “That wasn’t me. I don’t get down like that,” the female answered. “This is Sonya, Tone’s girlfriend. You don’t know me but I know of you.”

  “Listen, I ain’t got no time for this shit,” Netta said with a nasty attitude. “Whatever happened between you two ain’t got nothin’ to do wit’ me. You don’t know me and I don’t know you.”

  “Yes it does. It has everything to do with me and you,” Sonya said, trying to appeal to Netta’s sense of decency.

  There is nothing more resourceful than a scorned woman. In a few days Sonya had found out everything there was to know about Netta; her full name, where she was from and her affiliation with the Pussy Pound. She had done a thorough background check and found all there was to know about her. For now she wouldn’t expose her hand.