Shame on It All

by Zane

  “Zachary can’t play good?” Bryce asked.

  “I’ll put it this way. My baby tries hard but he’ll never be as good as Tiger Woods. Troy knows how to play?”

  “He claims he plays with some of his clients, but my baby will probably never be good enough to even be Tiger’s caddie.”

  They both laughed hysterically.

  “Damn, Sis.” Harmony plopped down beside Bryce, tucking one of her legs underneath her. “You sure are hard on a brotha.”

  “Yeah, that’s my baby though.” Bryce blushed.

  “You really love the man, don’t you? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you glow as much as you do now.”

  “I love his ass to death, but I would never admit it. He and I always tell each other we hate each other when we’re getting busy.”

  “Silly ass.” Harmony slapped Bryce on the hand. “Are you taking him to the family reunion in North Carolina this year? Momma’s been ringing my phone off the hook, making sure we’re all coming.”

  “Yeah, she’s been working my phone lines, too. I’m taking Troy. I want Daddy to go ahead and meet him so I can get all the objections out of the way. Daddy can’t stand the men any of us date.”

  “That’s because they’re men, Bryce. Daddy doesn’t like the idea of us having sex no matter how old we get.”

  “Ain’t that the truth! Yet, he and Momma spit us out like they were breeding rabbits.” Bryce giggled. “You taking Zachary?”

  “Gurl, please, you know Zachary goes every year. He’s afraid I might go down there, get me some countrified dick, and never come back.”

  “I wonder if Lucky’s taking Robbie. I still haven’t had a chance to meet him, but he sounds like he has it going on.”

  “I haven’t met him either. They’re getting real tight so I suspect she will take him.” Harmony reached for the kettle. “Let me pour us some tea while you tell me about the wild adventure you and Colette had last night.”

  “Well, you remember when we were little and still living in Cali and you used to talk trash about all the boys because they were so much shorter than us before puberty settled in? Before they shot up like trees?”

  “I remember it well. I always called them limp-dick leprechaun midgets. I used to have nightmares.”

  “Well, Colette and I lived out your nightmares last night because we fell up into a house full of them bad boys!”

  “Oh, shit!” Harmony exclaimed as they both guffawed. “I’m all ears. I wish Lucky was here to hear it.”

  “Me, too.” Bryce nodded, starting to relate her tale of the limp-dick leprechaun midgets.

  Across town at that very moment, Lucky was banging on Robbie’s door and begging him to let her in. “Robbie, please just let me come in and explain!”

  “There’s nothing to explain!” he screamed from the other side of the door. “I saw you with him with my own two eyes!”

  “Please!” Lucky scratched at his door like a kitten trying to get in. “If you just let me talk to you, I’ll tell you everything!”

  “Get away from my door, you fucking whore!” Lucky started wailing when he called her that. It was like being stabbed through the heart with a knife. “You’re nothing but a fucking tramp! I can’t believe I wasted my time on you!”

  Lucky backed away from the door until the small of her back touched the railing. She turned around and looked down into the courtyard. For a brief second, she contemplated jumping. That’s when she heard Robbie’s door swing open.

  Lucky turned around and smiled, thinking he was finally willing to listen to her. Instead, he started throwing the little bit of clothing she kept at his place at her. “Take all of your shit and get the hell away from me!”

  He slammed the door. She was sniffling and picking up her clothes when he swung the door open again and gently set the puppy down outside. He glared at her. “And take the damn dog, too!”

  She got into her car, wrapped her arms around the steering wheel, laid her forehead on the top edge of it, and started screaming. The frightened puppy sitting in the passenger seat beside her wanted to scream, too, but all she could do was yap.

  “Gurl, we pulled up to this house party last night and it looked like a scene from Boyz N the Hood!” Bryce exclaimed. “Except it was the Tom Thumb version!”

  Harmony started laughing so hard, some of her tea flew out her mouth onto her white T-shirt. “Get out of town!”

  “Shit, I ain’t lying. We stuffed the cash we had on us in our bras and our purses under the seat. You know the routine?”

  “Yeah, I definitely know the routine.” Harmony nodded. “Whose party was it?”

  “This gurl Colette used to work with at the warehouse. When I met her, I didn’t know whether to shake her hand or shield my eyes from the glare.”

  “What glare?”

  “The glare coming from the fifty million gold teeth in her damn mouth.”

  “Oh, shit!” Harmony managed to say through tear-drenched eyes. “Then what happened?”

  “Hold up. First, let me set the scene for you.”

  “Aiight.” Harmony jumped up and walked over to the shelf stereo system and cut the volume down. “I don’t want to miss a word.”

  “Okay, picture this.” Bryce held her hands up with her fingers spread like she was directing a movie. “Picture a row house full of pleather furniture covered up with heavy plastic.”

  “Damn, not pleather?” Harmony giggled as she sat back down.

  “Now picture it full of men shorter than the Oompa Lumpas in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”

  They both laughed hysterically.

  “This one brotha, looking like Gary Coleman with a Jheri curl, had the audacity to ask me to dance.”

  “Oh, shit, not a curl?”

  “A mofo curl! That’s why the furniture was covered with plastic. Every mofo in there had a curl.” Bryce shifted in her seat. “And check this out. The song that was playing was ‘The Breaks’ by Kurtis Blow.”

  “Get the fuck out of here!” Harmony exclaimed. “Bryce, your ass has got to be exaggerating.”

  “Sheeeeeeeeeeeeit, I ain’t lying!” Bryce slapped Harmony on the arm to emphasize the point.

  “So what did you say?”

  “I told him he better take his little midget ass on before I slapped him in the head with my knee!”

  “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Tears started gushing down Harmony’s face. “This is too fucking funny!”

  “Wait, here comes the good part.” Bryce picked up a bran muffin to nibble on. “He says to me, ‘I know what it is, gurl. You think I’m a playa ’cause I’m so damn fine.’ Then, he ran his stubs down the back of his head and some of his curl juice fell in the sistah’s drink behind him.”

  “Oh, hell naw!”

  “So I told him, ‘Yeah, you’re a playa. I can tell,’ hoping that agreeing with him would make him get the fuck on.”

  “And did he?”

  “Hell naw! He comes back with this lame-ass line. He said, ‘I’m not a playa. I just fuck a lot.’”

  “Now I know you’re shitting me, Bryce. You’ve got to be making this shit up.”

  “I’ll call Colette right now if you don’t believe me.” Bryce pointed to the phone. “It was the wildest shit I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

  “Damn, damn, damn! A house full of midgets. Why didn’t you just roll out?”

  “Oh, we did, we sure as hell did, but not before this other limp-dick leprechaun midget asked Colette if she wanted to go upstairs with him and suck his dick.”

  They started laughing hysterically again.

  “Colette set his ass straight with a quickness.”

  “I bet she did.” Harmony giggled. “What did she tell him?”

  “She told him a woman couldn’t find his dick with tweezers and a magnifying glass and that he couldn’t butt-fuck a rat.”

  “Oh, shit!”

  “Then, then,” Bryce said, laughing so hard she could barely get the words out,
“then he tells her he’ll eat her out so good, he’ll suck her ovaries out.”

  “What did she say then?”

  “Not a damn thing. She poured her Corona on his head and didn’t even have to lift her hand up past her rib cage to do it. His ass was so short.”

  Bryce and Harmony were pouncing all over the couch, laughing and holding their sides, when they heard the door slam.

  “Zachary.” Harmony chuckled. “You and Troy played eighteen holes that fast?”

  Bryce interjected, “That’s because neither one of their asses can play.”

  They gave each other a high five.

  Harmony realized there was no response and grew concerned. “Zachary?”

  They heard yapping just as a puppy came running in the living room and jumped up on the fireplace hearth.

  That’s when Harmony and Bryce knew something was wrong. That’s when they turned around and saw Lucky standing there with a sundress on that was ripped on the shoulder. That’s when they saw the hurt and disappointment in her bloodshot eyes and that’s when they forgot all about limp-dick leprechaun midgets and the smiles disappeared from their faces.

  17

  Time for a Beatdown

  Bryce started around the couch, but Harmony took a shortcut, jumping over the cushions and the back of the couch, and got to Lucky first. She grabbed her by the shoulders. “Listen to me, Lucky. Whatever this is, we can fix it.”

  Lucky looked at her and shook her head. “No, you can’t fix this. No one can.”

  Bryce started rubbing the small of Lucky’s back. “Wanna talk about it?”

  Harmony lifted the shredded material of the sundress off Lucky’s shoulder. “Did someone hurt you? What happened to your dress?”

  Lucky shook her head. “The only thing hurt is my pride.”

  Bryce felt something warm on the back of her ankle, looked down, and the puppy was peeing on her. “Oh, shit!”

  Lucky and Harmony giggled, but it still didn’t enhance the mood. Normally, Bryce would’ve gotten dramatic and talked shit about the puppy for a good fifteen minutes and Harmony would have had a fit and a half about her cream carpet. Instead they just turned their attention back to Lucky, wondering whether they could fix whatever was wrong.

  “Is this the puppy you bought Robbie?” Bryce asked, beginning to put two and two together.

  “Yes,” Lucky replied, still trembling. “I couldn’t take it back to my dorm. They don’t allow pets so I had to bring Lucinda here. I’m so sorry, Harmony. I’ll find a home for her on Monday.”

  Harmony directed Lucky over to the couch. “That’s the last thing I’m worried about. Besides, Zachary loves dogs and probably won’t let you take her up out of here anyway.”

  After they were seated on the couch, with Lucky on Harmony’s left and Bryce on the coffee table in front of her with her legs spread like a sailor since etiquette had gone out the window once they’d seen Lucky’s face, Bryce inquired, “You and Robbie broke up, huh?”

  “Robbie hates me!” Lucky was hysterical. She jumped up and starting running up the stairs. “Once you find out what I did, you’ll both hate me, too!”

  They heard the door of the guest bedroom slam. Harmony glanced over at Bryce and wished she would close her fucking legs but didn’t stress the point. “Well, it’s obvious this isn’t going to be easy.”

  “Quite obvious,” Bryce replied. “I wonder what happened between Lucky and Robbie.”

  “I don’t know. I never met the brotha, although he seemed on the up-and-up from what I heard.”

  “Me either. We’ve both been too caught up in our own relationships to keep an eye on Little Sis.”

  Harmony nodded. “Yeah, we’ve both been real selfish.”

  After a few moments of drowning in guilt, Harmony added, “Okay, this is what we’re going to do. I’ll go upstairs and run Lucky a hot bubble bath and wash her back just like I used to when we were kids, and you…”

  “Me what?”

  “Well, I was going to tell your ass to go in the kitchen and cook, but you can’t cook worth shit, so order a pizza to be delivered instead.” Bryce rolled her eyes. Harmony ignored it. “Her favorite. A deep dish with Italian sausage and mushrooms.”

  Harmony went upstairs while Bryce went into the kitchen to find the Ledos Pizza magnet on the fridge, muttering to herself, “I can cook. Not like you have any food up in this bitch anyway.”

  By the time the pizza arrived, Harmony had bathed Lucky. Bryce had fed the puppy and then taken a quick shower herself to get the urine off and thrown on one of Harmony’s jeans and a tee.

  No one really had an appetite so the pizza lay basically untouched on the middle of the black down comforter on Harmony’s bed. Lucky had laid her head down in Harmony’s lap while she sat propped up on a pillow and ran her fingers through Lucky’s soft, short, neatly cut Afro. Bryce gently rubbed Lucky’s back through the white terry-cloth robe.

  No one said a word for what seemed like an eternity.

  “You’re going to hate me,” Lucky whispered. “Especially Harmony. I fucked up big time.”

  “Look at me.” Harmony held Lucky’s face up so she could look into her eyes. “I could never hate you. Not in a million years.”

  “Me either.” Bryce nodded in agreement. Lucky laid her head back down in the comfort of her big sister’s lap.

  “I’ve been too hard on you, Baby Sis,” Harmony continued. “I should’ve seen this coming. Med school is pressure enough on you as it is. The last thing you needed was me pressuring you even more. Insisting you ace everything.”

  “That’s not it, Harmony,” Lucky protested. “If it weren’t for you and Bryce keeping me in line, I would’ve given up on medical school a long time ago.”

  “You’re a Whitfield and Whitfields never quit,” Bryce said out of habit more than anything else.

  “Harmony, I broke my promise to you,” Lucky blurted out while she could find the words. “I slept with Dean Mitchell again.”

  Bryce glared at Harmony, begging her with her eyes not to go off on Lucky. “And Robbie found out about it?” Bryce asked.

  Lucky nodded. “I didn’t want to sleep with him. I swear. He made me.”

  Bryce forgot all about being calm, cool, and collected, jumped up off the bed, and went off herself. “Hold the fuck up! What do you mean, he made you?”

  “Harmony, I know that look in your eyes,” Bryce said less than thirty minutes later after Lucky had told them everything before falling asleep upstairs.

  Harmony stood by the large picture window in the living room while Bryce resumed her seat on the coffee table. “He fucking abused her,” Harmony hissed. “Used his power at the med school to have his way with her.”

  “Yeah, and from what she said, she wasn’t the only one,” Bryce added. “So what now?”

  Silence.

  “Harmony?”

  “Bryce, do you remember when Momma and Daddy drove us down to Tijuana, Mexico, that time in high school, when Lucky was in about the seventh grade?” Harmony asked the question in too placid a manner for Bryce’s liking. She could always recognize the calm before the storm.

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “They went to hang out in bars and left us back in that half-ass motel with the brown water and roaches all over the walls. And after Lucky fell asleep, you and I stayed up and watched this wild-ass movie?”

  “Yeah.” Bryce chuckled, vividly remembering the movie. “It was called Biker Bitches from Mars.”

  Harmony swung around and looked Bryce square in the face, her eyes speaking everything that needed to be said. It took Bryce a moment to let it sink in.

  “Aw hell naw, Harmony! Helllllllzzzz naw! You can’t be serious?”

  “I’m dead serious!” Harmony walked toward the kitchen. “You call Colette and get my laptop out my study while I go out to the garage to get the rope and duct tape.”

  “Harmony, we can’t do no shit like that,” Bryce said excitedly. “Don’t
get me wrong. I’m pissed and I say we beat his fucking ass at the very least, but Biker Bitches from Mars? We’ll all end up in the slammer!”

  “Not if we don’t get caught and we won’t.” Harmony continued her path to the side door in the kitchen. Bryce was right on her tail.

  “Why do you want me to call Colette?” Bryce was shocked that Harmony would bring up Colette.

  “Because she’s a roughneck and we need a roughneck in on this operation.”

  “Aiight.” Bryce watched Harmony go out into the garage. “But what’s the deal with the laptop?”

  Harmony ignored the question. Bryce headed to the study to find the laptop. “Shame on it all!”

  “Bryce, what did Colette say?” Harmony asked, returning into the house with one of Zachary’s Dallas Cowboys duffel bags, filled to the brim with stuff to do their dirt.

  Bryce replaced the phone on the cradle. “Colette has beeeeeeeeeeeen on her way. She left her house in a flash. She’s pissed.”

  “Then who was that on the phone?”

  “Troy. He claims that he and Zachary are going to check out a movie this afternoon after they leave the golf course and then go out for a few drinks.”

  Harmony and Bryce looked at each other, knowing good and damn well their nuccas were lying. “In other words, they’re going to a booty club down in the District and don’t want us to know?”

  “Word up,” Bryce agreed, nodding her head.

  “Good, I didn’t feel like explaining my whereabouts tonight anyway.” Harmony picked up the phone. “Go get Lucky up and dressed. I want her to see what we do to that mofo.”

  “Who are you calling?” Bryce wondered.

  “Fatima.” Harmony dialed the digits.

  “Damn, how many biker bitches do we need?”

  “Trust me, Sis,” Harmony answered while the phone was ringing on the other end. “Fatima loves Lucky to death and she’s more scandalous than all of us put together.”

  Bryce began to doubt Harmony would go through with the whole thing. Surely, she would become rational at some point. “Harmony, are you really serious about all this?”