Never Keeping Secrets

by Niobia Bryant

  “Fuck stressing about something you cannot change and focus on what you can . . . like moving on if it is not moving right.”

  That was easier said than done.

  Chapter 2

  Keesha a.k.a. “Dom” Perignon

  “That’s some real bullshit that you keeping my grandbaby from me.”

  Keesha Lands shook a cigarette out of her soft pack of Newports and lit it with her lighter. She cut her eyes over at her mother, Diane, as she took a deep inhale that was nothing like the shit she used to put into her body. Nothing at all.

  She knew she was lucky to be alive. Lucky and blessed.

  “So you trust Kimani around some man you just met and not me, Dom?” Diane asked, leaning against the kitchen counter in her two-bedroom apartment.

  “Not some man. My father,” Keesha said with emphasis, swallowing back the fresh hurt she felt that her mother played “Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo” with choosing a man to call her father. She went for the one with more money. Too bad that loser started to love using the drugs he was supposed to be selling. “And you know why I just met him, Diane.”

  Her mother—who raised her like more of a friend than anything—shifted her eyes away for a moment. Keesha had to admit she was glad for some show of guilt. Some show that the woman standing before her wasn’t heartless. Some show that she gave a fuck about what she did.

  Maybe the counseling is working.

  “You still don’t know that motherfucker,” Diane spat, walking over to take the pack of Newports from Keesha’s hand to ease out a cigarette. She tossed the pack in Keesha’s lap and took her lit cigarette to light the tip of her own.

  Keesha smirked a little and bit her bottom lip to keep from snapping at her mother. After she overdosed and went into rehab, she was freed from her abuse of heroin and weed; but the weekly counseling sessions that followed freed her from her demons. All of the shit that made getting high feel real necessary. Deaths. Lies. Betrayals. Fears. Angers. Guilt. Shame.

  She thought about the release she received from writing in her journals. At first she laughed at her therapist but in time she felt like there wasn’t enough ink in her pens to pour out everything she was feeling and had ever felt about her life. A love of writing was created and flourished in a place in her heart and soul where anger and hate had once dwelled.

  There were times when Ms. Hardcore “I don’t give a fuck” Keesha Lands would soak the words with her tears. It was a hard pill to realize and admit that you were fucked up—especially when your mother drove the car to Fuckville.

  Her mother suddenly pushed up off the counter and left the kitchen to walk into her living room. Keesha’s brows furrowed but she stayed seated at the kitchen table—a table that was too big and too costly for an apartment in a low-income high-rise building. But that’s how her mother’s mind worked; enjoying cheap rent to afford expensive things to go in it. Just ass backwards.

  She shifted her dark brown eyes out the window on the far side of the kitchen, just seeing the tips of trees and the black coil of electrical wires breaking up the blue of the sky. She took a deep breath as the urge to sit in a windowsill with her computer and write filled her.

  A few months back she decided to try her hand at writing fiction. She couldn’t lie—it felt good to get lost in creating a world full of characters. It was her new high. There was a quote she saw online: “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” She thought that was the realest thing ever.

  Keesha sat up straight at the faint smell of kush. The scent intensified as her mother strolled back into the kitchen. She looked over her shoulder and then shook her head slowly at the sight of her mother smoking a blunt. There was a time they smoked together; but that was before Keesha got clean. Got wise. Grew the hell up.

  It was clear her mother had some catching up to do.

  Keesha waved away the thick silver smoke of weed as she shook her head and let her regrets settle heavily on her shoulders. “I can’t be around that,” she said, rising to stand up on her heels.

  Diane shrugged as she pressed her lips to the end of the blunt and inhaled. “You ODed on dope, not weed,” she said as she held the smoke in her chest.

  For a few long moments Keesha just stood there and watched the woman who birthed her as she extended her arm and pointed the blunt at her. Offering it to her. Offering her own daughter a one way trip back into her addiction.

  And the pain of that stung like a hot blade piercing her heart.

  Keesha stepped back from the blunt and held her breath to keep from even inhaling any of the smoke drifting up from the red fiery tip. She didn’t want to have it in her. Affecting her. Placating her. Fucking her up. Fucking her world up.

  She didn’t want to love it anymore and she knew she would. She would love it more than she loved herself. I’m out.

  Grabbing her tote she slipped it onto the crook of her arm and slid on her shades before she turned and headed out the kitchen.

  “Are you coming to our session next week?” Diane asked, her voice slightly tinged with something—sarcasm, mocking, patronizing. Something.

  Keesha bit her bottom lip as she stopped in the doorway and turned. “I needed the sessions because I overdosed. Because I’m an addict. Because I’m trying not to be fucked up in the head by a mother who never wanted to be a mother. A mother who is vindictive and mean as twelve hells. Unsupportive and childish—”

  “You ungrateful bitch!” Diane roared, taking three large steps. She knocked over the chair Keesha had sat in to now reach her.

  Keesha slid her shades up atop her short, choppy hairdo. “The limb don’t fall too far from the tree,” she told her calmly, their eyes locked.

  So many emotions flickered in Diane’s dark brown eyes before she frowned and then sneered as she deliberately raised the blunt, inhaled from it, and then blew the thick stream of smoke into Keesha’s face.

  She reached out and snatched the blunt from her mother’s hand and reached past her to throw it into the sink of foamy dishwater. The hiss of the fire being extinguished sounded off just as Diane slapped Keesha soundly.

  WHAP!

  The room was quiet. Even Diane looked taken aback by her action.

  Keesha’s eyes flared as her cheek and heart stung with pain. She defeated the urge to fight her own mother—to literally whip her mother’s ass like she was a stranger—as the tears she fought fell quickly like they were running a race to the end of her face.

  “Same shit. Different day,” she said softly before she turned and walked down the short hall to the metal front door.

  “Keesha. Get back here right—”

  SLAM!

  The shutting of the door behind her cut off the rest of her mother’s words. She allowed herself one quick moment to take a deep breath and lean back against the door. But just one moment.

  She didn’t have any more to waste on her mother.

  “But you put on quite a show, really had me going . . .”

  Keesha sat up straight in the bed, her heart pounding from being awakened by the sudden shrill of her “Take a Bow” ringtone. The chill of the room from the window air conditioning unit caused her bared nipples to harden. Shivering a little bit she looked down at her boyfriend, Corey, still sleeping peacefully beside her. There was just enough illumination from the streetlight outside the window to keep the small bedroom from being dark as a cave.

  “Shit,” Keesha swore, flinging back the covers to rush from the bed naked and cross the hardwood floors. She dug her cell phone out of her tote. “Hello,” she whispered.

  “Thank God you are alive.”

  Danielle.

  Keesha rolled her eyes as she left the bedroom and walked into the small living room and dinette area of Corey’s apartment. “Yes, but not asleep anymore,” she stressed, frowning at the drastic shift of temperature.

  Corey only had an A/C unit in his bedroom. The rest of the apartment felt like the devil’s resting place. Summers in the
city were brutal. Life outside the sweet coolness of Corey’s bedroom felt twice as bad.

  “Well now we both can sleep since I know you are okay,” Danielle said in her soft and husky voice without a hint of that unmistakable East Coast inflection in her voice.

  Monica and Latoya were the friends in the group who were college educated but Cristal was the one who crossed every “t” and dotted every “i” in her pronunciation. It was like she was trying to prove that she wasn’t ignorant but it all just came off like she was. It was really rare to catch her using slang—and that was way before she moved out of the hood and into that high saddity apartment building near Livingston, New Jersey.

  “No, me and Corey turned in early,” Keesha said, her eyes darting over to the kitchenette at the sound of something rattling under the cover of darkness. Corey’s apartment was neat enough but the entire building was home to a mouse-and-roach brigade that didn’t give zero fucks about the people who actually paid the rent.

  “Listen, I was waiting up to talk to you about something,” Danielle said.

  Keesha picked up one of Corey’s shoes from where he kicked them off by the sofa and then flung it like a Frisbee toward the kitchen.

  THUD.

  It bounced off the wall but at least the rustling stopped.

  “Listen, I hate to get in your business—”

  “But,” Keesha stressed playfully, dropping her slender nude figure on the sofa as she used a Vibe magazine to fan away a little of the heat.

  “I’m proud of you for giving up stripping and working at Kimani’s day care but it might be time to think about another job—”

  Keesha’s mocha shoulders squared up and her heart rhythm went askew for a second. “I know I’ve been late with my share of the rent, Danielle,” she said, hating the wave of embarrassment she felt.

  Being broke and feeling like she could never get her head above water financially was a hard pill to swallow. Kimani’s father had hustled hard and by any means necessary to make sure she kept money in her pocket and the nicest clothes on their backs.

  And then he was killed in a car accident. That broke her heart and her bankroll.

  She stripped for a long time and the money was good but the lifestyle was a horrible choice for someone dealing with addiction and wanting to be a better mother to her child.

  And so she slid off the pole after she overdosed and went into rehab.

  Working as an aide at a day-care center, making just a little better than minimum wage, wasn’t cutting it—especially tackling one third of the four-figure rent.

  “Keesha, you still owe me part of last month’s rent, the finance company called about your car note being late, and you owe Monica money that I am tired of hearing about—”

  “So y’all sitting up talking ’bout me?” she asked, her anger and embarrassment coming in a heated rush that made the cheeks of her ass and her face warm.

  Cristal sighed. “No, Keesha,” she answered simply.

  “I can’t fucking tell,” she snapped, jumping to her feet as the urge to smoke a cigarette nipped at her. Truth was it took setting aside every last bit of her pride to borrow money from Monica . . . especially when they just got over the fact that during her drug haze Keesha had committed the ultimate betrayal of a friend and slept with Monica’s boyfriend, Rah. Her drug use and dealing—or rather not properly dealing—with the sudden death of Lex, the man she loved, led her to that short-dick, short-tempered motherfucker. Top that off with snitching on her friend about fucking around on him, getting caught in bed with him, and then being too high to stop him from beating Monica’s ass and breaking her leg. Crazy.

  They were friends again but she just knew Monica had to take some pleasure in the same bitch who betrayed her now needing to borrow money from her. Keesha could admit she knew she was wrong to even ask Monica for a favor. But desperate times . . .

  “You are taking this the wrong way, Keesha—”

  Still naked, and not caring that she was, Keesha moved to sit in the windowsill. Corey’s apartment was across the street from a deserted parking lot and there wasn’t much traffic. She really didn’t give a fuck either way. She needed to see more than just the four walls of his apartment because it felt like they were closing in on her.

  “I’ll have your rent money and you can tell Monica she’ll have the money I owe her too. Now you two go talk about that,” she snapped, ending the call and looking over her shoulder to toss her phone onto the sofa.

  “You owe somebody money?” Corey asked, strolling out of the bedroom naked.

  Keesha shrugged as her eyes dipped to take in the back-and-forth sway of his dick. She glanced away as she spotted a roach paused on the wall like Spider-Man. She fought the urge to stretch her leg out and smash it under her foot. Having grown up in the projects of Newark, New Jersey, it wasn’t the first roach she’d ever seen and she doubted if it would be the last. Still, for that motherfucker to be so bold to climb within her reach like it dared her to kill it?

  “Why didn’t you ask me for the money?”

  Because you barely make enough to pay your own bills.

  Because I relied on a man for money and he died, leaving me back at one.

  Because I hate being broke, busted, and disgusted.

  “I’m good, Corey,” she lied.

  He worked hard and put in forty to fifty hours a week. He always had her back. He was a good man. A hardworking man. She didn’t want to put extra pressure on him to make up for her fucked up finances.

  The old Keesha couldn’t imagine being in a relationship with a man who couldn’t take care of her and that’s how she knew she had grown up some. And that she loved him.

  Keesha looked back at him and she smiled at him, loving every bit of his dark and delicious frame. Like hers, his complexion was that deep and smooth chocolate like Hershey’s Kisses. He was just a couple of inches taller than her but she felt comfort and strength in his embraces. His smile was infectious and his eyes always bright with humor.

  She loved him. She really did. Her heart pounded with it.

  “We’ll worry about all that in the morning,” Corey said, coming over to stand beside her and stroke her inner thigh. “Let’s go back to bed.”

  Keesha tilted her head back against the window as she looked up into his face. She smiled at the heat she saw in his eyes. Licking her lips, she turned on the sill and pressed her feet and her hands to the edge as she spread her knees before him.

  Corey’s eyes dipped down as he took his dick into one of his hands and stroked the long length of it. He massaged her moist clit with the other. “Right here?” he asked, looking up briefly at the backdrop of the streets through the window as Keesha leaned forward to lick one of his nipples with the tip of her tongue.

  “Right now.”

  Chapter 3

  Latoya a.k.a. Moët

  “Latoya, I’m sorry but your little friends ain’t on the same Christian path as you and it’s time to leave them behind.”

  Those were words Latoya James wished her fiancé, Taquan, had never let leave his lips or even enter his thoughts. But he did. Hours earlier he dropped all of that weight on her shoulders as they strolled out of church after Bible study.

  Humph, I’m trying to get filled up with the Lord and he disturbed my spirit with foolishness. Negro, please.

  But his words were still on her mind and keeping her from sleep.

  She kicked the sheet off her legs and sat up on the edge of the bed, running her slender fingers through her scalp to the trimmed ends of her shoulder-length hair. The walls of the stylishly decorated bedroom felt like they were closing in on her. She glanced at the clock.

  It was almost four in the morning.

  “Dammit,” she swore and then waved her hands in frustration at herself for swearing.

  No one ever said being saved was easy.

  And Latoya should know. After years of growing up in a family with very strict religious beliefs she had learned early t
o play across the line separating sinning and being saved. For years she lived a double life of the good daughter for her parents and the wild child with her friends—and that was long after she was supposedly grown and should’ve been able to stand in the shoes of the woman she wanted to be. If anything, all of the lying and sneaking pushed her so far over the edge of sinning and away from her church upbringing that she felt lost to the woman in the mirror.

  And her sins were many.

  Losing her virginity in her teens and carrying on a secret affair with the minister of the church . . . in the church.

  And that was just the beginning of it all. It was a very slippery slope when nothing mattered but what you wanted.

  Lying and sneaking.

  Abortions.

  Secret boyfriends.

  Falsely accusing the father of her child of rape.

  And then selling false stories about the platinum-selling rap star to the tabloids to ensure he backed off his fight to snatch custody of their daughter away from her.

  Purposefully trying to seduce Taquan to break his vow of celibacy during the first weeks of their relationship had been the act to make her check herself and fall on her knees before the altar. She had sworn in that moment to forge a closer relationship with God and to live by His word.

  Latoya glanced over her shoulder to make sure her one-year-old daughter, Tiffany, was still asleep in her mahogany crib. Looking at the way her daughter pouted her heart-shaped mouth even in her sleep, brought a soft smile to her lips as she left the room and walked down the hall to the spacious living room of the apartment she shared with Danielle and Keesha.

  Everything about the apartment spoke of comfort and luxury. Hardwood floors. High ceilings. Plush furnishings. Style. Substance. Completely away from any of their lives growing up in Newark.

  And completely out of any of our budgets.