Whos Loving You

by Mary B. Morrison

  Put him first? I listed his name twice under PAST. Make that three times.

  Benito had been unemployed, hadn’t been trying to find a job, and had wanted me to put him first. The fact that I hadn’t put his ass out meant I’d put him first every damn time I went to work while he laid up in my bed. Changing that clock that night had made me late for the first time since I’d worked for Valentino James. If I had been on time, Sunny Day would be alive.

  I hummed, “I can’t make you love me if you don’t.” Bonnie Raitt’s lyrics played in the background, on my iPod. I’d listened to her songs each morning, seeking clarity with regard to the love I’d lost.

  Grant Hill personified perfection, with his strong cheeks, thin mustache, firm yet tender touch, and succulent lips. Perched in his eight-by-ten photo hanging on my wall, he brought a melancholy smile to my face. What could I do to make things right between us after his brother showed up at their parents’ home, blabbering like a fucking idiot? Why couldn’t I have met Grant first?

  The difference between Benito and Grant was Benito wanted a mother and Grant wanted a woman. Now I presumed some other lucky woman was getting the love that should’ve been mine. Good pussy did strange things to men. Problem was, I didn’t have an exclusive on good pussy. But what I did have was undeniable love for Grant.

  I’d kissed Grant until I heard the words I love you roll off the tip of his tongue. No man, not even my ex-husbands, had invited me to meet his mother. His father? Yes. Mother? Hell, no.

  Of all the orphans that could’ve been adopted by Grant’s biological mother, what made her choose Benito, and what made him refuse to speak of his family over the three years we dated? Maybe she’d adopted Benito for the same reason I’d dated him. I felt sorry for Benito.

  My cell phone rang. “Aw, damn. I talked his ass up,” I said aloud. “What, Benito?”

  “I’m in Atlanta. I just left the bus station, and I’m a few blocks away from your house. I need a place to stay for a couple of weeks. I know you’re in love with Grant, but help a brotha out. Will ya?”

  “If you show up at my front door, I’m going to neuter you and shoot you. Then I’ma drag you inside, call the police, and have you arrested for breaking and entering,” I said, then hung up. What the fuck was wrong with black men, thinking black women were supposed to bail their asses out? I had no love for any of them, except Grant.

  Love. That one emotion had fucked up my head while crushing my heart. Lonely. Sad. Angry. Disappointed. Sick. Overjoyed. The lack of love as a child had made me suicidal. The lack of love as an adult made me angry. Love was the feeling that had made me the happiest and saddest person.

  “Fuck love!” I yelled. “I hate you! Leave me the fuck alone! No, I can’t make Grant love me! Go fuck up somebody else’s life!” Stomping over to the wall, I snatched Grant’s picture, then threw it in the trash.

  I’d definitely sat in the wrong seat on that plane. All the other window seats in first class had not been next to Grant. Better to have loved at least for a little while, I thought. Was that true? I kicked the trash can. “Hell no, that shit ain’t true!” Whosoever believed that must’ve been happily in love. No one in a fucked-up relationship would say such a thing.

  Picking up my business phone, I dialed Grant’s number, the same as I’d done almost every day since Grant and I had broken up. Maybe this time Grant would answer, and I could curse his ass out, too, while I was on a roll. Get it off my chest. Fuck explaining that I wasn’t a bad person.

  My cell phone interrupted my thoughts. A gentle voice resonated from the opposite end, interrupting my pity party. “Hello, Lace? This is Girl Six. I’m coming to live with you.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Valentino

  “Number two-one-three-six-five-four,” the warden called out. For real, I had never been no fuckin’ number before. And no matter how long I was up in this bitch-ass correctional institution, I’d never get used to being no fuckin’ number. Correctional institution? More like a fuckin’ concentration camp if you’d asked me, ’cause a nigga could die or get killed or rise up outta this bitch-ass place being ten times worse off than when he stepped foot in this motherfucker. Especially if a nigga was entrapped, like me.

  My mother named me Anthony Valentino James. That was what the fuck I repeated in my mind whenever I heard 213654. Thanks to those bitches Lace and Sapphire, I was facing death row or life without the possibility of parole if I entered a plea for killing a bitch who had pulled the trigger her damn self. But how was I going to prove my fuckin’ innocence when I couldn’t afford my own goddamn attorney? I didn’t know where my money was, and I had no one on the outside to figure that shit out for me. But one thing was sho’. Whatever bitch stole my money was one dead motherfucker when I got out. Straight up, I was definitely getting outta here, even if I had to break outta this bitch.

  Fuck!

  Why had I relied on my damn cell phone to remember all of my phone numbers? I hadn’t made a single call since I’d been locked up. I couldn’t even call Benito’s ig’nant ass. I had no idea where Lace was, and that was ’bout the extent of my contacts on the outside, because my parents were deceased. I should’ve been more like that elephant memory–ass, don’t-forget-shit bitch, Lace.

  Angrily, I answered, “What you want this time?”

  I’d been locked up and locked down for ’bout a month now. The only time I heard my number called was when some bullshit had gone down overnight, like a nigga gettin’ fucked in his ass, or like the night I’d stabbed that nigga in his throat with my fingernails. Seventy-two hours in solitary confinement had been hell and well worth it. I wasn’t volunteering to be nobody’s fuckin’ girlfriend. I tried keeping to myself and wished these niggas would just let me be. I knew I had a big, beautiful dick, a nice ass, and naturally wavy hair, and my flawless caramel complexion was tempting to these gay-by-default niggas. “Listen up, motherfuckers!” I’d told them when I first got here. “Let no nigga try to run up on me or inside of me unless he wants to die on the motherfuckin’ spot. I ain’t no snitch, and I ain’t nobody’s bitch.”

  The warden held up two envelopes, waving his hand back and forth. For a few seconds, all I could do was stare at him. Breaking my silence, I asked, “For me?” Then I turned to my cell mate, who was sprawled across his bed, clenching his Bible, his head resting on the mattress.

  “It’s not for him. This time it’s for you. For the first time, you’ve got mail,” the warden said.

  My cell mate sat up as I faced the tall, muscular man in uniform. I’d packed on a few solid pounds myself by pumping iron every day. There wasn’t much else to do. On the under, I’d started loving the way my new body was developing. I didn’t give a fuck if a lump of shit was inside one of those envelopes. Yes! I finally had outside contacts. Trying to conceal my excitement, I frowned. Me? Was he sure? “Give it to me,” I said, reaching into the rectangular slot in the bars, where they made us turn around, put our hands behind our backs, then put our hands through before handcuffing us. “Y’all need to rehab and upgrade this hellhole, man. Give us some of that Oz shit,” I told him. There was one blue, letter-sized envelope and one of those yellow five-by-sevens.

  I peeked inside the already peeled-away edge of the blue letter first, then stuck my fingers in. “What is this? A fucking joke? Where is the damn letter? No fucking return address, either.” I ripped that shit in half, balled it up, then tossed it in the trash.

  Fucking trick!

  Squeezing the edges of the yellow envelope, I peeked inside, praying to see something. Were my eyes deceiving me? I pulled out a five-by-seven photo. I pressed my fingers deep into my sockets to force back the tears, but I couldn’t. I started crying like a li’l bitch.

  “Man, what’s up? Cut out that fucking babyfide bullshit,” my cell mate said, leaning over his top bunk, staring down at me.

  “I’m straight, man. This shit caught me off guard.”

  “Yo, that’s your son and your girl?”<
br />
  She wasn’t my woman, but I lied. “Yeah, man. I thought they’d forgotten about my ass.” Gasping for air, I couldn’t take my eyes off of Summer and what could only be my son. That li’l nigga looked dead-on like me when I was about his age, which I guessed was five or six.

  Sitting on the edge of my bottom bunk, I removed the letter, then silently read.

  Dear Anthony,

  I love you. (She did? Why? Wasn’t like I’d done right by her. My heart thumped.) I don’t know what happened to you after we stopped seeing each other, but I’ve always loved you. I apologize for not telling you about our son for five years, but my parents didn’t want me to have anything to do with you. Actually, they still don’t want me around you, and I don’t have their blessings for contacting you. They don’t hate you. My parents dislike your ways. But you are the father of our son, and no matter where you are or what really happened for you to be in prison, you are Anthony Valentino James the second’s father, and I shouldn’t take that right away from you. (Damn. Summer named my li’l nigga after me.)

  I pray you didn’t kill my twin sister, Sunny, who was also my best friend. But I’m sure you had something to do with her death. When I first met you, I should’ve told you I had a twin. What exactly did Sunny do every night while working for you? I have so many questions I need answers to. There were so many conflicting stories in the newspaper, I stopped reading them.

  I guess you’ve heard they paid me for the rights to my story, and they’re going to do a movie and a book that will highlight the days I spent with you before Sapphire busted you. I’m ashamed to admit, I was bribed into being a part of the sting operation to bring you down, and, yes, I’ll testify to that fact. I don’t know much, but Sapphire told me she gave Lace fifty million dollars of your money, and that Lace was taking care of your escort girls and they were all living in Atlanta. Buckhead, to be exact.

  What does all of that mean? Your girls? Sapphire mentioned that Benito couldn’t come back to Nevada or she’d arrest him. She also gave me ten million, but I’m afraid to deposit the cashier’s check. I mean, what if they think I did something illegal and I get arrested? I know my parents would take care of our son, but what I haven’t told you is…I’m pregnant. This time with twins. Remember that night during the sting operation when you thought I was Sunny and you made love to me? I’m so sorry I let them use me to get to you, but we’re having two more babies. More than anything, I want us to be a family. But if you really killed my twin sister, I could forgive you, because that’s what God would want me to do, but I’d never forget. I need some answers from you.

  Today our pastor said, “The present is a gift of happiness. In order to be unhappy, you must relive the past.” With or without you, I choose to be happy. Anthony, what’s done cannot be undone. No matter what, I will always have a place in my heart for you.

  Your Summer Day

  Now I wasn’t sure if I should jump for joy or be pissed the fuck off at that bitch. Summer had set me up? She was the fuckin’ reason I was behind bars. That was a hard one to deal with. I cried on the inside, wondering what my life would’ve been like if Summer’s father hadn’t single-handedly taken away my parental rights. What in the fuck had made him think he had the right to tell Summer not to tell me she was pregnant with my fuckin’ kid? That wasn’t his fuckin’ right! That was my fuckin’ seed, not his!

  My cell mate dug into the trash and pulled out the blue envelope. I ignored him.

  Who knows, my entire life could’ve been different. I could’ve gotten out of the pimping game early. I’d only been less than two years in when I met Summer. She was a senior in high school, still a virgin, and naturally beautiful. I loved Summer for letting me be her first. Even a hard-core nigga like me, along with all the pimps and gangsters in the world, needed love. What was it about fuckin’ women that could soften the heart of the hardest motherfuckers? Even Frank Lucas loved his mother and his wife, and he was the smartest and hardest straight, hard-core, capital G gangster.

  I needed Summer to deposit that ten-million-dollar check and hire the best attorneys in the fucking country so I could get up outta here. That was my fuckin’ money. I’d have more than enough money left over for me to settle down with Summer and my kids. I had to get out before she gave birth to…twins? But first I had to find those bitches Lace and Sapphire. Summer probably had their numbers. I prayed Lace hadn’t plotted this shit to get my money, because if she had, I might just end up right back in this bitch, because sure as my name was Anthony Valentino James the first, I was gonna put a bullet in her head, then her ass, in that order.

  “Man, there’s something written inside here. You just ripped it,” my cell mate said, leaning against the wall.

  “For real? Let me see,” I said, reaching for the wrinkled halves of the blue envelope.

  Piecing the envelope together, I discovered a blue sticky inside with a number written on it but no name. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this shit? Ain’t no fuckin’ name on it.”

  “Blue, man, blue. Didn’t you say the cop that got your ass was—”

  “Yo, I’m ready to make my phone call,” I yelled out to the warden. “Now!”

  CHAPTER 15

  Honey

  Stepping between the ladies that were standing tall in sexy high heels and the men posing in their new tennis shoes, Onyx and I strutted across a thin gray Berber carpet sparsely covered with single dollar bills. There were two women abandoning a high table with two bar stools near the stage. Swiftly grabbing the stools, we sat, then crossed our bare legs underneath our baby doll–length dresses and began watching amateur strippers bounce their booties, some firm, others soft. I’d touched enough asses during my days of being a madam to distinguish between soggy, soft, or supple with just one look. Three mediocre girls were performing on stage at the same time. Humph. No wonder the patrons seemed more interested in entertaining one another with conversation than making it rain. None of those supposedly exotic dancers could have worked six seconds for me.

  Hm, six. Girl Six. I was happy she was finally on her way to Atlanta. Then we’d all be family again. I couldn’t change what I’d done to her, but I was going to do my best to take special care of Girl Six. She deserved that much from me and had it coming.

  I stretched my neck, then stood up in hopes of locating another stage. This can’t be what all the hype is about, I thought. I wasn’t remotely impressed. Any one of my eleven girls could take over that stage and put these out-of-shape dancers, who were probably college students by day, on the unemployment line before the end of the first song.

  Whosoever owned this placed needed an ass whipping. “Onyx, you know what?” I said.

  “What’s that?” Onyx asked. “You ready to get up?”

  “No, not yet. Velvet’s mom asked us to come check out her daughter, but I got one better.”

  “And?” Onyx said. “You’re not thinking about having us work this spot, I hope, ’cause—”

  “Hell, no. I’m going shut down this strip club. I bet half the men in here have babies and baby mamas they don’t give a damn about, and they’re up in here, waving money at these strippers, hoping to get their dicks sucked.”

  Glancing around the room, Onyx asked, “How you plan to do that?”

  “You know me. I’ll come up with something, and I’ll tell you later,” I said, watching the women on stage.

  The crowd was comprised mainly of men dressed in denims and long T-shirts and resembled the gathering you’d see at a hip-hop concert featuring Chris Brown. A few of them wore striped, button-down, collared shirts. Butch women sucking on cigars and dressed like the majority of the men were sitting in corners, with naked strippers giving them either a lap or private dance.

  Sitting back on my stool, I overheard one of the two young men standing behind us say, “Man, I’ll be glad when Darius Jones does his thing and opens up his FL strip clubs for men only. D is clever, man, naming all of his clubs FL for ‘Flawless diamond
s,’ then putting the cut on the end, like Princess, Radiant, Emerald, Marquise. And that FL HeartBreakers location opening downtown is gonna be the shit!” The guy started grinding the air behind me to the beat of, “Come, girl, let me get your pussy wet. Work that, let me see you drip sweat.”

  None of those tired girls were working hard enough to break a sweat. They need to play “Peep Show” by Joe, “Taking you from the bed, to the walls, to the floor. Sexing you, sexing me, freaky freak, behind closed doors. Nobody else can know…” because these girls were seriously barely moving their asses. I was sure no one would have RSVP’d if they’d known what they’d be getting in advance.

  “That’s what’s up. Me, too, man. Can’t wait,” the other guy replied. “I heard gymnast-type dancers that are top-notch models, like women we ain’t never seen before, gon’ be in D’s club. These honeys are going to be imported and shit, flown in from Brazil, Trinidad, England, Africa, and Spain. I’ma spend my whole paycheck up in his joint, ’cause I swear, man, I’m tired of competing with these lesbians for a ten-minute lap dance from a stripper who acts like she hates her job. Red Velvet is the hottest dancer up in here, and they say she quit giving lap dances after she had that abortion. What I really hate is these lesbians and bisexual chicks are making it rain up in here harder than us.”

  “Yeah, but I heard DJ gon’ make us put on Steve Harvey suits and Sean John button-ups and slacks and shit, and no tennis shoes are allowed up in his spot,” the first guy commented.

  “That’s what up. You can’t get no fine-ass woman dressed like this here,” the other guy said, smoothing out his T-shirt. “Check out them two honeys in front of us. Long, sexy, shiny legs. Pretty, soft hair. Nice skin. Especially that black one, man. We can’t get no women like them dressed like this. We gotta step it up.”

  Well, I’d overheard enough about Darius Jones to add him to my list of club owners not to shut down but to partner with. He sounded like my type of man. I wasn’t into basketball, but I was definitely going to a game or two before the season was over.