by Tracy Brown
Together, they went to the coat check and retrieved their garments, boarded the elevator and left the party in search of some welcome distraction.
* * *
Sunny and Malcolm returned to her place after the engagement party, both of them tipsy from a fantastically romantic night. Raul had picked them up from The Loft and dropped them off in front of Sunny’s building. He had been glad to get rid of them, after they all but fucked in the backseat of Sunny’s Aston Martin. They had gone at each other as if they forgot for a while that he was there. He had tried not to be distracted by the sounds of their moans and kisses as he drove them home. Once they arrived at her apartment building, the two of them had stumbled out of the car, giggling and clearly drunk. Raul loved Sunny, but on nights like this he felt like charging her double.
They were now home alone, as Mercedes was spending the night with Sunny’s parents. She had left Malcolm alone in her bedroom while she searched her walk-in closet for the tools she wanted for tonight’s performance. Finding the props she needed, she ducked into the bathroom, yelling to Malcolm that he should get all the cash he had in his wallet and put on some music. Sunny decided that tonight either he was gonna think she was crazy, or he would fall to his knees and beg her to marry him. She giggled at the thought.
She put on her red wig, did her makeup so that she looked like a sexy temptress, and took a good, long snort of coke. Then she emerged from the bathroom as “Pussy.”
Malcolm’s jaw dropped when he saw her. He stood by the window with his boxer shorts on and nothing else. He had gotten a haircut that day, so his face looked extra handsome with his sideburns and his goatee trimmed neatly. He was holding the remote to the stereo system and he froze when she stepped out of her bathroom.
Sunny wore not a stitch of clothes, only a pair of four-inch, black patent leather stilettos. The wig she wore complemented her face and was accentuated by dramatic eye makeup and big oversized hoop earrings. Malcolm was speechless.
Sunny walked boldly to the center of the room and stood with her arms at her side, twirling slowly so that he could see every single inch of her.
“My name is Pussy,” she said, her face sincere as she sold her character. “And I’ll be your entertainment this evening. It’s five stacks for a dance, ten if you wanna go all the way, and fifteen will take you around the world.”
Malcolm’s smile was wide and his heart raced in his chest.
Sunny cupped her breasts in her hands, twirled her nipples around until they stood hard and firm.
“So what’s it gonna be tonight?” she asked, winking at him with a sly smile.
Malcolm finally found his voice. “So you said your name is Pussy? Did I hear that right?”
Sunny nodded. “Yes, Your Highness.”
Malcolm couldn’t stop smiling. “Your Highness?”
Sunny was fully into her role now. “My agency only deals with royalty, sovereign heads of state, sultans and all that. So you must be one of those.”
He nodded, salivated at the sight of her nakedness and cleared his throat. “Let’s start with a dance. Five stacks, you said, right?”
Sunny smiled. “You listen well, Mr.… what did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t say,” he corrected her. “My name ain’t important, Miss Pussy.”
Sunny tried not to laugh.
“For tonight, you can just keep calling me Your Highness.” He picked up his wallet and counted out the money he had on him. He had gone to the bank earlier in the day so he had more than usual. Still, he didn’t have enough. Twelve hundred and fifty-two dollars. He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t think I can afford you, Pussy.”
Sunny smiled. “I’ll take what you have tonight,” she said, meaning that in more ways than one. “And in the morning, you can take me to the bank and give me the balance.”
Malcolm nodded. He walked over to Sunny, handed her some of the money, and kept the rest in his hand. He squeezed her right nipple. “This better be a good dance.”
Sunny smiled. “Pussy’s gonna make you happy.”
Malcolm hit play on the stereo remote. Biggie’s “Fuck You Tonight” filled the speakers, and Sunny noticed that Malcolm’s iPod was the source of the music. She smiled, surprised that Mr. Jazz liked rap music, too.
Malcolm sat on the bench at the foot of her bed and she stood in front of him. She started swaying to the music, high as a kite, and so seductive and uninhibited in her movements. She rocked to the beat, swaying her hips, rubbing her hands across her body.
“Damn, you look fine … let me hit that from behind…”
Sunny turned slowly at that part and bent forward, her ass and her clean-shaven pussy in his face. He started throwing twenties. Sunny came alive.
She dropped to the floor and spread her legs wide, toyed with her pussy, stroking it and fingering herself to the beat.
Malcolm was making it rain now. Twenties and fifties cascaded across the room and showered Sunny. She looked so beautiful to him. He wanted her to be his forever.
The song went off and Sunny switched it up as “Sensual Seduction” came on. She got up on her knees and rocked to the beat, her titties bouncing as she did. She was smiling, happy and carefree and so sexy to Malcolm.
She crawled toward him slowly, like a cat, stopping every few steps to stroke her pussy as she arched her back. He watched her slink across the room toward him, her hair the color of flames, her eyes alight as well. Sunny had full control, and he relinquished it willingly. When she was right in front of him, she stood up and rubbed her breasts in his face. She smelled so good, and looked delectable. Malcolm had enough. He scooped her up in his arms and tossed her roughly on the bed.
Sunny was laughing, but managed to stay in character. “This is not part of the dance. If you want to have sex—”
“Nah, fuck that!” Malcolm said. He grabbed the rest of the cash that he had set down on the bench and tossed it in the air, raining bills all over them. “We’re going around the world, Pussy!”
Both of them fell out on the bed laughing, until Malcolm composed himself and kissed her. Sunny bit his lip.
“Pussy likes it rough,” she said, softly.
He tore her apart that night and she loved every minute of it.
* * *
Born and Jada were awakened the next morning by the sound of his BlackBerry ringing. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was only 7:26 in the morning. He wondered why his mother would be calling so early, knowing that he and Jada had been partying all night.
“Hello?”
“Marquis!” Miss Ingrid’s voice was dripping with pure panic. “I need you two to get over here now!”
Born bolted upright in bed, startling Jada. “What’s wrong, Ma?” He was already out of bed and had one leg in his jeans. Whenever his mother sounded this rattled, it wasn’t good. Miss Ingrid was no drama queen, so he anxiously dressed as he waited for her response.
“It’s Sheldon,” Ingrid replied, breathlessly. It sounded like she was having a heart attack, an asthma attack, or both.
“What’s wrong?” Jada asked Born as he gripped the phone tightly. She climbed out of bed naked, and scrambled to find her clothes. She, too, hurriedly dressed as Born asked his mother again what had happened.
“Sheldon…” Ingrid sounded like she was coming undone. “He done drowned the fucking dog, Marquis!”
“What?” Born stopped in his tracks, praying that he had heard his mother wrong.
“He drowned the fucking puppy in my bathtub, Marquis!” Ingrid yelled so loudly that Born held the phone away from his face. “I walked in the bathroom and found it floating.… Please. I need you to get over here.”
Born looked at Jada, knowing that this would be another crushing blow for the woman he loved so much. “Okay. We’re on our way right now.”
He hung up and grabbed his car keys. “Come on,” he said to Jada. “I’ll explain in the car.”
She followed closely as Born nearly ran
to his car. His poor mother, he thought. He wondered if she still believed that love conquers all.
2010
15
SURRENDER
Jada walked into the large church on Fort Place in Staten Island and felt swallowed up by its emptiness. Stillness and calm permeated the sanctuary as she walked down the center aisle and took a seat on one of the pews covered in burgundy fabric. The sign outside had said that the church was open for quiet prayer and meditation from 11 A.M. until 1 P.M. She had checked her watch, noted that it was barely noon, and stepped inside. Jada had gone walking—wandering, really—after her meeting with Sheldon’s Family Court counselor. She’d been searching her mind for answers to one impossible question: What was she going to do about her son?
Nine days had passed since Miss Ingrid had called in a frenzy, having found the dead dog floating in her bathtub; nine days since Jada and Born had arrived to find her on the verge of a breakdown, Ethan crying quietly in the corner; nine days since Sheldon had smiled that wicked smile at Jada—the one that resembled his daddy’s twisted smirk—unapologetic and proud of what he’d done.
While Born drained the bathtub, disposed of the dead puppy and did his best to calm Ethan and Miss Ingrid down, Jada had fought the urge to wring Sheldon’s neck. The smirk on his face only enraged her even more.
“Why did you do this?” Jada glared down at her son, her lips pressed together tightly.
Sheldon had shrugged his shoulders, staring down at his feet.
Jada snatched his arm and Sheldon yanked it back, defiantly. “I hate you,” he said, looking her dead in the eyes, meaning every word. He hated her past as a crackhead, hated not having a father of his own, hated seeing Jada happy at all because he blamed her for his misery. Sheldon was too young to understand what he was feeling and too immature to express that he suffered from unexplained fits of rage. All he knew for certain was that he blamed his mother for all of his troubles. Jada had stood there and cried, feeling more helpless than she ever had before.
Meanwhile, Born had dried Ethan’s tears, sat him down on his mother’s sofa and put his arm around his shoulder. He asked Ethan to tell him what happened.
“After we ate dinner, we were playing with the Xbox in the living room.” Ethan was still sniffling, although his tears had dried. “Skippy kept coming over to me and I kept petting him. But whenever he went near Sheldon, he would hit him—hard! Skippy was scared of him, but I was nice to him so he wasn’t scared of me.” Ethan sniffled some more. Miss Ingrid handed her grandson a tissue and he blew his nose before continuing. “I knew he was gonna kill him.”
Born looked surprised. “What do you mean you knew it?”
“He kept hitting him so hard. And the only time he would stop is if Grandma came in the room. I knew that if he was alone with Skippy for a long time … he was gonna kill him.” Ethan shook his head, and Born saw the look of concern on his face. Ethan looked like a stressed-out old man rather than the innocent nine-year-old that he was. “Every time I petted him, Sheldon threw something at me—a toy car, a book from the shelf in your old room, and even a shoe. He told me that it wasn’t my dog and I better stop touching him. So I did. But Skippy kept whimpering every time Sheldon hit him, and it was making me sad hearing the dog crying like that. So I told him that I was gonna tell. Sheldon said he wouldn’t hit him no more. But he said, ‘After tonight, Skippy won’t never be whimpering no more.’”
Ethan started crying again, and Miss Ingrid hugged her grandson to her bosom. She looked at Born and tried to keep her voice down so that Sheldon and Jada wouldn’t hear her. “That boy is sick. You gotta be real cruel to hold a living creature under water while it’s kicking and fighting to survive.” She took a deep breath. “You gotta get him some help or the next time he might hurt somebody else.” She nodded toward Ethan, whose face was pressed close to her so that he couldn’t see the gesture.
Born had stared back at his mother, speechlessly. He was seldom at a loss for words, and his silence now said so much. Things seemed more hopeless than ever before.
Jada shook her head at the memory as she sat inside the empty church sanctuary. She looked around at all the images of Jesus etched on the gorgeous stained glass windows: Jesus smiling at a group of children, turning water into wine, and as a child educating the scholars about the Word of God. Her eyes welled up with unexpected tears and she didn’t fight them as they spilled down her face. What was she going to do about her son?
She looked at the altar, her view obstructed by fat teardrops. She realized in that moment that she missed coming to church. When her mother was alive, and they had reconciled after Jada finally cleaned up her act and got off of drugs, Jada had spent a lot of time accompanying her to church. She could almost here Edna’s voice in her ears.
“God is the only reason I’m still standing. He is the only one you need to get through. Trust Him. Even as messed up as we are, He still loves us. He is my strength, and He will be yours, too. All you have to do is let Him.”
Jada shut her eyes, the thought of all she had put her mother through causing her instant heartache. Now that Sheldon’s rebellion had taken its most sinister turn yet, she knew how it felt to have a child break your heart, seemingly on purpose. Jada stared at the altar. Then, leaving her bag on the pew beside her, she got up and walked slowly toward it. Jada knelt in front of the altar, her forehead touching it, and cried her eyes out.
She hadn’t felt this lost since her days of smoking crack. Sheldon’s situation seemed impossible to overcome. The court-appointed shrink was recommending medication. They wanted to turn her son into a zombie. The Family Court judge was threatening to institutionalize him, calling Sheldon a danger to himself and others. Jada felt like it was all her fault. She had chosen to be with a demented and twisted man and had gotten pregnant without planning to. The odds had been stacked against Sheldon right there. But she had taken it an ominous step further when she had gotten high while he was still inside her womb, guaranteeing that he would be born facing insurmountable odds. She laughed in the midst of her sobbing—laughed at herself. She had really thought that she might have a shot at a happy ending, when her life had always been so sad. She felt foolish for ever expecting to have that.
As her tears subsided, she looked up at the cross that graced the wall atop the altar. She thought about her mother again, how Edna had brought her to church. “Jada, you can’t do it by yourself,” Edna had said. “Only by the grace of God can you get clean.”
When Edna had been alive, Jada had prayed daily and maintained a relationship with God. But then, she’d gotten swept up in her life—Sheldon, work, Born, her writing—and she realized as she knelt at the altar that she hadn’t talked to God in years. Convicted, she clasped her hands together and shut her eyes. Jada began to pray with all her heart. She pleaded for forgiveness for the damage she had done to her son—to herself. She prayed for Sheldon, that whatever evil spirit had taken possession of his mind be cast out. She prayed with such passion that she surprised herself, how the words spilled forth from deep within her soul.
She stood up, and the moment she did a peace washed over her. She felt empowered somehow, as she turned and walked back to the pew she had vacated earlier. Jada retrieved her bag, blew her nose and wiped her eyes. Then she stopped out into the sunshine and prepared to go and take back control. Enough was enough.
* * *
Ava was exhausted. She had stayed up half the night tossing and turning. She had a deposition in the morning to prepare for, and had struggled for hours to focus on the task at hand. Instead, she had sat in her home office, replaying the events of New Year’s Eve over and over in her head.
She couldn’t believe she had slept with Zion. They had woken up together in his bed on New Year’s Day, and she had been confused at first about where she was and what had happened the night before—until she noticed that she was completely naked lying beside Olivia’s man. Her heart sank immediately, although she couldn’t remember
what had happened. The last thing she remembered was everyone hollering, “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” and all the hugs and kisses. She remembered the bitterness she tasted in her mouth at the sight of all that love. Waking up beside Zion, her mouth felt dry and pasty as her eyes scanned the bedroom of his Tribeca apartment. She was even more confused when Zion, upon waking, smiled at her and said, “Good morning.” Then he climbed out of the bed, naked as a newborn child, and strolled calmly into the bathroom to take a shower, as if waking up beside Ava was something he had done a million times before.
Ava was actually grateful to be left alone so that she could process what had happened. She searched her memory for some clue about the events of the previous night. After focusing really hard, she vaguely remembered being in Zion’s car, remembered complimenting him on his taste in automobiles as she climbed inside his white Porsche Cayenne. She squeezed her eyes shut then, cringing at the recollection of giving him head as they drove to his place. Ava felt so ashamed. Try as she might, she could recall nothing else, and she prayed that she hadn’t embarrassed herself the night before.
She walked over to his mirror and looked at her reflection. She saw her disheveled hair, saw the hickeys all over her breasts, and her neck, even one on her face! What the hell had they done last night?
Zion came out of the bathroom and started getting dressed.
“I left a washcloth and a towel in there for you,” he said, smiling. “I don’t have an extra toothbrush, though. Sorry.”
Ava was sorry, too. So sorry that she had done something as scandalous as fucking her girlfriend’s man. She had forced a smile, thanked Zion and rushed into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. She looked at her reflection in the mirror once again, and almost didn’t recognize herself. Who was this woman covered in passion marks staring back at her? She had shaken her head, flooded with disappointment in herself. Then she turned on the shower and stepped into the stream of hot water, hoping it would wash away the filthy feeling that hadn’t left her since she woke up beside Zion. She closed her eyes and felt the water on her face, wishing she could right the wrong she had done somehow. But there was no changing the events of last night. At last she had stepped out, wrapped a towel around her body and stepped back into Zion’s bedroom in search of her clothes.
