by Miasha
That was it. I was through with the bullshit. I felt myself giving up. I wanted a way out so bad. All I ever wanted was a way out. Why did shit have to always be so hard on me? I felt tears coming, but I fought them back. I didn’t want Butter to see me cry.
“This world ain’t no pretty place. You have to do what you have to do out here. And shit, it ain’t no different than what you was doin’ at Shake’s. Pop you a E-pill if you have to. Go fuck for ten minutes, make your money, and be done with it.”
A E-pill sounded good. I could use one of them. Either that or a blunt.
“You got one?” I asked Butter.
“E?”
“Yeah.”
“Not on me, but I can get you some.”
“What about some weed?” I asked, desperately wanting to numb the pain I was feeling.
“Oh, I got some weed. That’s probably what you need, too,” Butter said, getting up from the couch. “Come on.”
I walked up the flight of stairs behind Butter. She led me into a back room. It was small but very neat. It had a twin bed in it that was made with fresh-looking sheets. It had a TV in it, too. It was perfect for me. I knew I could get comfortable there. As far as escorting, or whatever, fuck it. I chose not to think about it at that time. I really just wanted to clear my head and get some rest.
Butter handed me a bag of weed and a blunt.
“Calm ya nerves,” she said as she left the room and closed the door behind her.
And that was all she wrote.
Long Ways from Home
Yo! Angel! Yo! Get up!” I heard Butter call out.
I pulled the blanket from over my eyes. The sun shone bright through the small window in the room. I had to squint to see Butter.
“Huh?” I asked.
“You pregnant?” Butter asked abruptly.
“Huh?” All I could think was what is she trippin’ about today.
Every day it was something different with Butter. If I ain’t know better I would have thought she was bipolar. You never knew what to expect from her. But I learned that no matter how green the grass grew it was always horseshit that grew it.
“Are…you…pregnant?” Butter said slowly, as if she was spelling something out for me.
“No! Why?”
“’Cause for the past three days all you’ve done was eat and sleep.”
Butter was right. I had only been eating and sleeping. But for some reason my body felt very exhausted. I guessed it was from stress.
“Butter, I just been tired, that’s all. I been through a lot. I guess my body needed a rest,” I told her.
“Well, I let you rest long enough. Tonight I’m takin’ you out.”
“You heard from Shake?” I asked her, avoiding her comment.
“Yeah. But Shake isn’t your concern. Angel is.”
“Did he hear from Antione?”
Butter rolled her eyes. “Neither Shake nor Antione can get you out of working tonight. Both of them is locked up, and both of them lookin’ at some time. It’s no secret that they deal, and the feds been watchin’ them for a while. They knew it. I knew it. We all knew it. Now, I know Ant is like a brother to you, but he ain’t here to save you. Now, I ran down the rules the night you stepped foot through my door, and just because I ain’t enforced ’em since you got here, don’t mean that they changed. I called myself being nice. And you can try to take my kindness for weakness if you want to.”
“Butter, I asked about Antione ’cause I just wanted to know. I’m not tryna to argue with you.”
“Good,” Butter said. “Get up. I wanna introduce you to the other girls. They can show you the ropes.”
Butter walked out the room, practically slamming the door.
Drama mama, I thought. Got damn, she was a hell-raiser. I forced myself out the bed. I felt so sluggish. I wondered even, was it more to my sleepiness than stress. I’ve been stressed out before and never felt like that. I slipped on the only pair of jeans I had with me and walked out into the hall. Butter was standing at the doorway of the room next to mine. She used her finger to tell me to come to her.
“Angel, this is Mary. Mary, this is Angel.”
Mary was a skinny white woman, and if she wasn’t in her late forties something had definitely taken its toll on her. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was Butter.
“Hey,” she said softly with a half smile.
“Hi,” I spoke back shyly. I felt so uncomfortable. It seemed like I was surrounded by a bunch of psychos. The woman, who I assumed was Butter’s girlfriend, with the showgirl getup, Mary, and especially Butter—they all seemed so sneaky and shady. I felt like I had to watch my back and not in a minor way either, but in a way like I didn’t want to eat anything they cooked and I definitely wasn’t about to smoke nothing Butter gave me ever again. And when I thought about it, that was probably why I was feeling so lazy. Butter probably fucked around and gave me some laced weed.
I wasn’t the least bit interested in meeting Mary, or any of the other girls for that matter. I didn’t know them. And I didn’t have any intentions on getting to know them. The way I was feeling there at Butter’s house I’d rather stayed back with my mom. At least then, I would be with Naja and Kindle. They needed me, and I had been feeling guilty since I left them. Butter didn’t know it, but my mind was made up. I was leaving her house and going back to Brooklyn.
Butter had went out to make a run. I was in the house with Mary and one other girl named Karryn, who hardly spoke English. I figured that was the perfect time to leave. I mean, it wasn’t like I couldn’t have left while Butter was there, but to avoid any confrontation, the best time was then. I washed up, got dressed, and rolled out.
I hadn’t been outside in a few days, and the fresh air on my face felt good. It wasn’t really cold outside so I walked to the subway instead of taking a cab. I caught the D train to Dekalb and got on the 52 bus going toward my way. As I got closer to my mom’s house I started thinking that I should have called first. I wasn’t in the mood for any surprises. I got off the bus at the corner. C&S’s was closed. Now, see, Cat would have never had that store closed on a Monday afternoon, I thought. They better bring their behinds back here to the States if they wanna stay in business
I walked down my block and it looked different, like it had been years instead of days since I been there. From the top of the block it looked like one of the houses had caught on fire. The top windows were burned out. I felt a panic come over me as I got closer. It looked like Jamal’s house. I started to walk fast to see if it was or not and hoped it wasn’t.
Oh, my God. It was my house. I ran up on the porch. The door was padlocked. The front window was boarded up and there were some burned pieces of furniture on the curb that the trash men needed to collect. Oh, my God, I thought. How did this happen? I stood there in front of my house with my hands over my mouth. I almost cried, going over all the what-ifs in my head. I knocked on Jamal’s door. I didn’t care that he was mad at me. I needed some information. Nobody answered. Aunt Jackie, I thought.
I practically ran to Aunt Jackie’s house. “Aunt Jackie, it’s me, Angel!” I yelled through the door, out of breath.
Aunt Jackie opened the door, sipping a beer. “My, my, my, look what the wind blew in.”
I went in Aunt Jackie’s house and sat down on her sofa.
“Aunt Jackie, where my mom and them at? I went around the house and it’s burned up,” I asked, fearing the worst.
“Oh, child, you ain’t heard? Your mom’s house caught on fire.”
“I know that. But what happened? Where’s Naja and Kenny?”
Aunt Jackie sipped the beer and explained, “That damn Marvin fell asleep with a cigarette lit. He got up and flames and smoke was everywhere. He made it out just in time. It was a good thing the kids weren’t there.”
I sighed in relief. “Aunt Jackie, where are they stayin’?” I asked for the hundredth time.
“Oh, they at some shelter. I got the address written
down somewhere around here,” she said as she walked over and opened the china closet in the dining room.
She sipped her beer again then set it on the dining room table. Then she started going through papers and mail. “I know I wrote it down somewhere,” she mumbled.
“When was the fire? I just seen my mom the other night.”
“Oh, yeah, that night she went and got you out of jail?”
“She told you that?”
“Yeah. You know your mom can’t keep nothin’ to herself. Yeah, that was the night it happened,” Aunt Jackie said.
“Matter fact, it was a good thing you got locked up ‘cause had your mom not had to go get you she wouldn’t have brought those kids over here and they would have all been in that house when it caught fire. Humph. Ain’t that nothin’. Oh, here it is,” Aunt Jackie muffled, holding an envelope in her hand.
I stood up and took the envelope. “Thank you, Aunt Jackie.”
“No, no, no,” Aunt Jackie said. “You better copy it down somewhere. I need that.”
“Oh,” I said, digging in my pocket for a pen.
I wrote down the information and left. It said that they were in a battered women’s shelter. I wanted to see them so bad. I was mad at myself that Naja and Kindle had to go through that without me. I was thankful, though, that they weren’t in the house. I did a lot of thinking on the bus ride to the shelter. I definitely wasn’t going back to Butter’s. I needed to get myself together and be with my sister and brother. For a minute I was giving up on them, smoking to get my mind off them, but I had to stop all that. I told myself that from that day forth I would stick it out with them. I didn’t want to keep runnin’. And it seemed like I was only runnin’ backward anyway.
When I got to the shelter it was actually a church. I went inside and there was an elderly woman at the front desk.
“Hi, can I help you with something?” she asked me, looking at me over the top of her glasses instead of through her glasses.
“Yes,” I said as I walked over to her. “My house had caught on fire and my aunt had told me that my mom and my sister and brother were staying here.”
“What’s your mom’s name, hon?” she asked, looking through a notebook.
“Carmina Washington.”
“Washington,” she mumbled, dragging her finger slowly down the page.
“And what’s your name?”
“Angel. Angel Washington.”
“Well, it says here that Carmina Washington has two kids. Naja Washington and Kindle, or Kindle Washington. It don’t say nothing about a Angel. Are you her blood relative?”
“Yes. I’m her oldest daughter. It’s just that I wasn’t home at the time,” I explained, wishing she would just get her old ass up and call my mom to the front or something.
“Well, let me call my supervisor and see what she says, okay?”
“Okay.” Thank you, I thought. That’s what you should have done from jump.
The lady picked up the phone receiver and dialed some numbers.
“Kathy, It’s me, Eleanor. There’s a young lady here looking for one of the residents. She says she’s her daughter, but she’s not listed as a resident.”
Duh, I wasn’t here when they got here, I thought as I rolled my eyes.
“Yes. Carmina Washington. It says here that she has two children—Naja and Kindle. No, her name is Angel. Okay. Okay,” the lady said. Then she looked up at me over the top of her glasses again. “She put me on hold. She’s going to go get Carmina.”
I nodded my head, relieved that somebody had some sense.
After a short while, the lady started talking back on the phone, but mostly just answering yes and no. She hung up and said to me, “My supervisor spoke with the resident, and she said she only has the two kids that are here on the list. Are you sure you’re her blood relative?” the lady asked me, as if I wouldn’t know that.
I backed away from the desk and left the church without saying a word. I didn’t want that lady to see me cry, and I knew that tears were coming. Outside on the church steps, I couldn’t hold back. I sat down and put my face in my lap. I cried like a baby. It was getting colder as night was setting in. I was trying to figure out where I would stay. I wished Stacey and Cat were back. I wished Antione didn’t get locked up. I wished I never messed things up with Jamal. My last resort was Aunt Jackie’s house. I got up off the steps and walked to the bus. I used my last couple dollars for the fare and went back around my way.
I got to Aunt Jackie’s door and her oldest son Hasaan was going in.
“What’s up, Angel? Where you been at, ma?” Hasaan asked me.
“Around,” I said with a smile on my face. I didn’t want him to know that I was upset. The minute I showed weakness to him or any man, as far as I was concerned, I was bound to be taken advantage of.
“You comin’ here?” he asked as he held the screen door open for me.
“Yeah.”
I walked in Aunt Jackie’s house. The lights were dim in the living room, but you could see that it was filthy. A pile of dirty clothes were on one sofa and blankets and a pillow on the other, and beer cans decorated the table and entertainment center.
“Mom!” Hasaan called upstairs. “Angel down here!” Then he turned to me and said, “She up there. You can go up there if you want. I’m about to go down in the basement. You can turn on the TV. The remote over there.”
“Angel!” Aunt Jackie’s loud drunken voice bounced off the walls.
Aunt Jackie walked down the steps in a dingy tan robe. She had a scarf on her head and some flip-flops on her ashy feet. She was scratching like she had fleas. She looked so funky. I held my breath when she hugged me.
“What you doin’ back here?” she asked, smiling with those saggy lips that people get when they drink too much.
“I couldn’t find the shelter,” I lied.
“Oh, child, you been living in Brooklyn ya whole life and don’t know ya way around the block! Ain’t that nothin’,” Aunt Jackie rambled. “So what, you wanna stay here?”
I nodded my head—although it wasn’t that I wanted to stay there, it was just that I had no choice if I didn’t want to go back to Butter’s house.
Aunt Jackie started picking up the dirty clothes off the sofa. “Well, that’s fine. I don’t know why you actin’ all shy like you ain’t family. Let me get these clothes up. Kareem put his dirty shit on my couch. I keep tellin’ him this ain’t no hamper.”
I watched Aunt Jackie clean off what I figured would be my bed. Tears formed in my eyes as I envisioned my mom telling some lady that she only had two kids. I tried to block it out my mind by telling myself I didn’t care, but that didn’t work. Instead it made me feel worse. I felt unwanted. It seemed the more I tried to convince myself that what my mom did didn’t matter to me, the more hurt I felt.
“I’ll bring down some sheets and a cover for you. I don’t believe you couldn’t find that shelter. It’s right up there on what’s-a-name,” Aunt Jackie said as she walked up the steps carrying the load of clothes.
With the clothes gone, I could see what looked like piss stains on the sofa cushions. I was not about to sleep on that. Butter may have been shady, but at least her house was clean. And anyway, I needed to make some money—and if Butter’s house was my only means to do that then I had to go back. I had rather deal with Butter’s mood swings than sleep on a pissy couch.
“Aunt Jackie!” I yelled up the steps.
“I’m comin’, Angel! Got damn! I’m getting you some blankets!” she yelled back.
“No. That’s all right! I’m going over my friend house!” I told her, and I left.
It was dark by then. I didn’t have any money so I had no choice but to call Butter. I was not about to walk to Harlem, and hitchhiking was out of the question. I went to the pay phone and called Butter collect.
“Butter,” I said in a hurry.
“You better be in jail calling my house collect!” Butter snapped.
“Bu
tter, I went to get some clothes from my mom’s house and it had caught on fire the other day so I was at every shelter looking for my mom and them all day. I used all my money on bus fare. I need a ride back to your house,” I explained as fast and simple as I could.
“Oh, really? Okay. Where you at?”
“My mom block.”
“All right. Stay right there,” Butter said. Then right before she hung up, I heard her say, “I got something for her ass.”
I put the phone back on the receiver and went inside the Chinese store at the end of my mom’s block.
“Can I help you?” the short Asian woman asked a lady who was already in the store.
“Yeah. Give me three wings with salt, pepper, and hot sauce, and a loosie,” the lady said.
I sat down on the window seat and watched every passing car, anticipating my ride.
“You Carmina daughter, ain’t you?” the lady asked me.
I turned to look at her. She was kind of heavy, light brown skin with a lot of bumps on her face. She had on a baseball cap and a leather jacket.
“Yeah,” I answered her, trying to figure out if I knew her and where from.
“You look just like ya motha,” she went on. “I’m Nina. I used to baby-sit you and ya brotha when y’ all was real little. You probably don’t remember me, though, ‘cause you was a baby. How ya mom doin’?”
“She all right,” I said, unwilling to tell her my business.
“I ain’t seen Carmina in years. The last time I seen her, you was like one and ya brotha Curtis was like eight or nine. How he doin’? I bet you he a grown ass momma’s boy ain’t he?”
“He got killed,” I burst her bubble.
“Oh, no, get out of here. When?” she asked, dragging her words.
“Two years ago,” I told her.
“Oh, my God. Damn, see I been down South for ten years, and I was locked up for a while before that so I’m like out of the loop, you know. But damn, I am sorry.”
