Hood Rat

by K'wan

  “Stop,” she whispered, but leaned in closer to him. Everywhere Jah’s lips touched sent a tingle through Yoshi. At that moment Jah ceased to be that little boy who Yoshi had watched toss firecrackers into Chinese restaurants and became a man, a man who wanted her. Not out of lust, but out of need. A need that she, too, had felt somewhere in the bowels of her womanhood. With a euphoric sigh, she gave herself to Jah.

  23

  Rhonda awoke to the sun shining through a dingy window, attempting to blind her. Her body was numb, but she was very aware of the fact that she was in pain. When she tried to lift her head, it felt like someone had clubbed her with a rubber mallet. Running her tongue along her teeth, she could taste the remnants of something she didn’t want to identify. Rhonda stretched and when she yawned, she almost wretched at the taste of her own breath. It had truly been one hell of a night.

  She looked around the room, trying to get some idea of where she was, but the fact that the room kept spinning made it difficult. Rhonda could make out a small wall-mounted television hanging over a doorway, and a cheap picture hung over the rickety dresser. She had figured out that she was in a motel, but didn’t know which one. Her hand brushed a lump in the sheets beside her, causing her to jump almost completely out of the bed. Slowly peeling the covers back, she exposed the sleeping form of Slick. Suddenly it was all coming back to her.

  After being snubbed by True at the club, Rhonda was beyond uptight. She immediately hit the bar and started throwing back shots. Sometime during the course of the night, Slick had ended up picking up the tab and making sure Rhonda had all the liquor she could stand.

  Afterward, they dropped Rel off and the rest was somewhat hazy. From the looks of things, she had fucked Slick. Curiously, she pulled the covers farther off his body and was astonished to see how big his dick was. It was no wonder she was so sore.

  Glancing over at the other bed, she made out two forms. One was that of Groovy, who was unconscious with his mouth open, and the other was that of Reese. Rhonda wondered if she had fucked Groovy, but being that she was still fully dressed, she doubted it. “Square-ass bitch,” Rhonda mumbled, sliding out of the bed.

  Like a cat burglar, she crept around the room, gathering her clothes. Noticing Slick’s crumpled pants on the floor at the foot of the bed, Rhonda’s scheming-ass brain began working. Careful not to wake Slick, she dipped her had into his pocket. He had about eleven hundred dollars, but Rhonda only took two. If he had been half as hammered as she had, he’d probably think he spent it tricking off. After jumping into her clothes, she began the task of trying to wake Reese.

  “Reese,” she whispered, shaking her sleeping friend. “Reese, get up.” When Reese still didn’t move, Rhonda shook her harder. “Reese!”

  “Huh?” Reese popped up, sleepily. “What time is it?”

  “Time to get your shit so we can roll,” Rhonda said, snatching her shoes off the floor.

  Sluggishly, she sat up and tried to get her bearings. Reese rolled out of the bed and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Seeing the man in the bed next to her, Reese immediately checked for her pants. Thankfully, they were still buttoned as tightly as she had left them. After what she pulled with Don B. and company, she no longer trusted herself. Reese rolled out of the bed as carefully as she could and gathered her shoes. Before she had even placed the second one on, Rhonda was already halfway out the door. Taking one last look at the two sleeping men, Reese slipped out the door behind Rhonda, hoping she hadn’t done anything too grimy to the men.

  * * *

  Marlene’s rest was broken by the sound of her cell ringing. She had meant to turn the ringer off when she came in that morning, but had been so tired she fell out as soon as she came in. The cell phone finally stopped, only to have the house phone pick up where it left off. Fearing that it might be an emergency, she picked up.

  “Hello?” Marlene rasped into the phone.

  “Girl, I know you ain’t still sleep?” Audrey asked, sounding way too bright-eyed.

  “Yes, I’m still sleeping. That’s what normal people do on weekends. What do you want, Audrey?”

  “I wanna know what happened to you last night,” Audrey said suspiciously. “One minute you’re over in the corner running your mouth and the next minute you vanished on me. What’s up with that?”

  Marlene was fully awake now. “Oh, I was tired, so I left.”

  “Without telling me?”

  “I hit you on your BlackBerry.”

  “Yeah, and I hit you back, but you didn’t respond.”

  “I was probably already asleep, Audrey. You know I don’t keep late hours.”

  “Umm-hmm.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Marlene asked defensively.

  “Nothing. I just wondered if you and Vincent disappearing at the same time was some type of freak coincidence or not.”

  “Audrey, I don’t know what you’re insinuating, but I don’t like it.”

  “Marlene, I’m not insinuating anything. Call it deductive reasoning,” Audrey said, trying to be clever. “You and Vincent Gold spend the whole night examining each other’s tonsils, then you both happen to vanish at the same time. Something you wanna tell me, Mar?”

  “Oh, no you ain’t! Audrey, I know you ain’t trying to say me and Vince did something.”

  “I haven’t said anything, Marlene. I’m just saying, if I finally got to jump the bones of somebody I had a crush on, I’d confide it in my best friend.”

  “Audrey, I do not have a crush on Vince.”

  “But you didn’t deny fucking him,” Audrey pointed out.

  “Audrey, you know damn well this pussy has Paul’s name on it,” Marlene assured her.

  “Oh, I don’t doubt that. But that wouldn’t stop the next dick from making a pit stop,” she joked. “Anyhow, let me get to the real reason I called you. Where did Paul tell you he was going last night?”

  “He said he and Larry were probably gonna go out and play pool, why?”

  “I didn’t know Exit had pool tables.”

  “Exit? Audrey, what are you talking about?”

  Audrey smiled on the other end of the phone, pleased with herself to be able to spread new gossip, even if it might have caused a problem between her friend and her man. “Well, you know how every bitch from every project rolled down to Exit last night for Bad Blood’s performance?”

  “What the hell is a bad blood?” Marlene asked, not being up on the hip-hop underground.

  “Mar, what planet are you from?” Audrey asked, as if Marlene was supposed to automatically know who she was talking about. “Bad Blood is these sexy little muthafuckas from out of Harlem. They’re doing big things in the music biz.”

  “Audrey, please make a point if you have one,” Marlene said, not bothering to hide her irritation.

  “Oh, yeah. Well, my cousin Tammy and her girls took they fast asses down there, trying to score a baller, and saw Paul up in the joint.”

  Marlene sucked her teeth. “Audrey, you woke me up to tell me something your lying-ass cousin Tammy said? You know she wouldn’t know the truth if it slapped her in the damn face. Remember the time when she said Puffy was taking her to Negril?”

  “I know she be lying, but she swore up and down it was him.”

  “Bullshit. Tammy doesn’t even know what Paul looks like.”

  “Yes, she does. You know you keep that picture of him on your desk and she’s always looming around the office. She said he was up in there with some fat kid and these two stank-looking bitches.”

  “Is she sure?”

  “She seems to be. Mar, I told you them young boys ain’t shit. The first time you give them a little freedom, they out there chasing…”

  Audrey continued to talk, but Marlene really wasn’t listening. She just kept thinking about the fact that Paul had lied to her and what he was trying to cover up by doing so. When she had finally grown tired of hearing Audrey’s voice, she told her that she would call her back after investigat
ing Paul’s story.

  Marlene put the cordless back on the charger and rolled out of the bed. When she stretched, she felt a slight throbbing in her thigh. Hiking her nightgown, she noticed a bruise in the shape of a man’s thumbprint beginning to form right on the muscle. “Shit,” she said, rubbing at the bruise as if it would go away. She would have to put some ice on it and hope that it went down, if not away. It was way too hot to spend the next few nights sleeping in full-length pajamas.

  Walking as if she was still asleep, Marlene made her way into the bathroom. She looked in the mirror and wasn’t pleased at what she saw. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot from drinking and there was a nasty-looking web of saliva that had dried on her cheek. Her hair was a mess, too, because she had forgotten to wrap it the night before. She ran her fingers through her hair to untangle it and watched tiny flakes of sand fall into the sink.

  * * *

  Paul leapt up and nearly fell off the couch when his cell phone rang in his ear. He had been a fool for sleeping with the thing right by his head, but he wanted to be able to hear the alarm when it went off. Seeing that it was one o’clock and he had set it for eleven, it hadn’t done him much good.

  Paul looked around, trying to pinpoint the noisy device and was immediately sorry that he had moved at all. His head felt like there was a game of Pong going on inside it and he was losing. Using more touch than sight, he located the phone under the cushion he had been lying on.

  “Who this?” he said, not bothering to hide the fact that he was pissed off for being awoken.

  “Paul, I know you can answer your phone better than that,” Marlene said.

  “Hey, baby,” he said and yawned.

  “Sounds like you had a rough night.”

  “A little something. You know when me and this fool get together we try to drink up everything in the place. We didn’t get in until like four or five.”

  “The pool hall stays open late these days, huh?” she asked sarcastically.

  Paul, immediately sensing that she was trying to trip him up, got his wits together. “We didn’t stay at the pool hall all night. We went out for drinks.”

  “Yeah, how much they charging for drinks in Exit these days?” she asked, letting him know that trying to think up a lie would be useless.

  “You spying on me, Mar?”

  “No, I’m not spying on you. But when I try calling my man’s house for over a half hour and don’t get an answer, it makes me inclined to wonder.”

  “I didn’t answer my phone because I’m not home,” he said.

  “I know that now. So where are you? Did you spend the night with one of those bitches you were all up on?”

  “Come on, Mar, it’s too early for this shit. Can we talk about it later?”

  “No, we can’t talk about it later. Where did you sleep last night, Paul?”

  “I slept at Larry’s, the same place I am now.”

  “What made you sleep at Larry’s, don’t you have a home to go to?” she asked as if she were conducting a cross-examination.

  “We came here after the club and fell asleep. What’s with the twenty questions?” he asked.

  “Nothing, Paul. I’m just trying to find out how your night went.”

  “My night went the same as it always does when I hang with Larry. We got sloppy drunk and crashed at his pad.”

  “I hope you didn’t get so drunk to where you would’ve done anything to jeopardize our relationship.”

  Paul had finally had enough. “Yo, what the fuck is your problem?”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, Paul.”

  “I can take whatever tone I want, because I’m a grown-ass man who’s answering to his girl like she’s his mother!” he barked.

  “I’m not trying to be your mother, Paul, I’m just making sure you’re not keeping me in the dark about anything.”

  “Jesus H. Christ! Marlene, I spend damn near every waking minute with you. When do I have time to keep you in the dark?”

  “Men are sneaky, Paul. You can make time.”

  “Marlene, I told you, me and Larry came here and fell out. We ain’t do shit but get twisted.”

  “I hope so, Paul. Anyhow, are you coming to see me today or do you guys have another party to go to?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Very funny,” he said sarcastically. “Yeah, I’ll be through there. I gotta go pick P.J. up first, though.”

  “Oh, that’s good. I haven’t seen him in a while. We can rent movies and eat popcorn.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Paul said, speaking a little more pleasantly than he had a few minutes prior. “So I’ll see you later.”

  “Paul?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “I’m sorry I snapped at you. Sometimes I get a little jealous.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Mar. You know I would never put us at risk. I’ll see you sometime this evening.”

  “Love you, big daddy.”

  “Love you, too, li’l mama.” Paul ended the call and lay back on the couch. He would get up and head home in a minute, but he needed a few more minutes of sleep first. No sooner than his head had hit the couch, a voice startled him.

  “Guess you’ve got one hundred problems instead of ninety-nine?”

  Paul popped up and looked over the side of the couch. Stretching her long legs was Stacy. She was naked except for a thin sheet covering her midsection. Paul looked down at his own body and noticed that he was wearing nothing but his boxers. Stacy smiled up at Paul, who could only mutter “fuck…” in response.

  24

  Reese exited the large brown building on 137th and Fifth Avenue with her head hung low. Her eyes were puffy and irritated from crying, and it seemed as if her nose wouldn’t stop running. In one hand she held a wad of balled-up tissues that one of the nurses had given her and in the other she held a sheet of paper, with a prescription for penicillin on it.

  A few days ago, she had noticed a funny smell coming from her vagina when she was using the bathroom. Thinking it was something cosmetic that didn’t agree with her, she switched her brand of douche and feminine wash. To her surprise, the smell was still there. She had made an appointment to see the gyn on Monday, but when she used the bathroom that morning and noticed an off-color discharge, it added urgency. After leaving the hotel and shaking Rhonda, she made a beeline for the STD clinic, which kept short hours on Saturdays. After filling out the necessary paperwork and getting swabbed, she was devastated to find out she had contracted the clap.

  Reese was devastated by the news, so much in fact that she almost fainted in the nurse’s office. Her mind whirled, trying to figure out how the hell it had happened or who could’ve given it to her. She counted off on her fingers the number of men whom she had slept with unprotected within the last week or two and was horribly embarrassed when it spanned both hands. There had been Teddy, a guy she fucked with named Nashawn from the Polo Grounds, and of course the cats from Big Dawg. There were so many that she had no way to pinpoint exactly who it might’ve been. She had heard stories about girls who had caught STDs from guys and always figured it couldn’t happen to her, but it had. She was lucky the rapid HIV test came back negative, but she would have to be tested again in six months to be sure.

  Reese collapsed on the steps of the building and placed her head in her hands. She had enough issues in her life already and getting burnt only made things worse. Feeling broken and defeated, she began to cry. Reese had gambled one time too many with her pussy and lost.

  * * *

  “Willamina Jefferson, I know you hear me calling you!”

  Billy wearily pulled her head out from under the pillow and looked around as if she were trying to figure out where she was. The dress that Yoshi had bought her was crumpled and dropped in a corner near her dresser, and the shoes were nowhere to be found. “Hell of a night,” she muttered.

  “Willamina,” her mother said, barging in, tired of waiting for an invite, “girl, I’ve been calling y
ou for the longest. What in the hell are you still doing asleep at three o’clock in the afternoon?”

  “Three o’clock?” Billy asked, looking over at her digital clock to make sure her mother wasn’t bugging out.

  “Yes, three o’clock,” she said, tossing the cordless phone on the bed. “Rhonda is on the phone. Damn girl has been calling all morning,” she said, slamming the door as she left the bedroom.

  Billy stretched her arms to the heavens and listened as various joints crackled and popped. She looked at the phone for a long minute before even thinking about reaching for it. She had had a rough night and really didn’t feel like hearing Rhonda’s bullshit, but she knew if she didn’t get on the phone, Rhonda would just keep calling, or worse, come over.

  “Yeah?” she said as she yawned into the phone.

  “What was with that bullshit you and Yoshi pulled last night?” Rhonda said in a nasty tone. “Y’all leaving us in the club like that was real fucked up.”

  Billy held the phone away from her ear and looked at it as if it were malfunctioning before responding to Rhonda. “First of all, its too damn early for you to be calling my house talking outta your ass. Yoshi had to dip because she and Jah go into it with some kid who disrespected her. I was ready to go from the gate, so I bounced, too. I thought Yoshi explained this to you?”

  “Yoshi was trying to tell me something like that, but that don’t explain why I didn’t hear from you.”

  “Rhonda, the last time I checked my mother’s name was Regina. I don’t have to report my every move to you, so check yourself before it be something,” Billy warned her.

  “Whatever,” Rhonda said, then clicked her gum. “What you doing today?”

  “I don’t know yet, I’m just waking up. What’s on your calendar?”

  “It’s too damn hot to do anything right now, but I’ll probably be on the streets later. Maybe I’ll give Reese’s silly ass a call.”