Black Beauty

by Erica Hilton

He smiled. “How much?”

  “Two hundred.”

  Just as things were about to get hot and heavy, his cell phone rang. He definitely needed to take the call.

  He slightly nudged Miracle off of his lap, indicating that she was somewhat irrelevant at the moment, and he answered the call. “Hey, baby. What’s good?”

  “I miss you, God. Where are you?”

  “I’m chilling with Fingers. What’s good?”

  “You. I wanna see you tonight. But can you come pick me up?” she said.

  “A’ight, no doubt. Where are you?”

  “I’m at Mack’s bar,” she said.

  “I’ll be there in a few.”

  The call ended. Right away, God turned to Fingers and said, “C’mon, nigga. Let’s go.”

  “What? Nigga, I’m ready to fuck tonight.”

  “I gotta pick up shorty, and we need to talk,” said God. “Get that bitch’s number and catch her on the rebound.”

  Fingers frowned and the voluptuous, half-naked girl straddling his lap frowned too. God was being a party-pooper. To compensate the girls for their time, God gave them each a hundred dollars and they were appeased.

  Fingers picked himself up and said, “You lucky ya my nigga.”

  God smiled. “Ride or die, nigga.”

  The two men left the strip club and climbed into God’s Jeep. They drove to Canarsie, Brooklyn, and during the ride, God told Fingers that he’d gotten wind detectives were asking around about them. The streets were talking, and they weren’t saying anything good.

  “They still on that dead cop shit?” Fingers asked.

  God shook his head. “I don’t know. I just heard shit through the grapevine. But you know they ain’t gonna give up on that case. A cop got killed and they wanna crucify some nigga, or niggas.”

  “Shit happened like eight months ago. Fuck that bitch-ass cop.”

  “Anyway, I think you should leave town again fo’ a minute,” God suggested.

  “And go where, back upstate?”

  “We just gotta continue to keep a low profile.”

  Fingers grimaced. He ran once. He hated to run from anything.

  God pulled up to a quaint bar on Rockaway Parkway. He sat behind the wheel staring at the entrance, waiting for his girl to exit the place. He called to let her know he was outside.

  Fingers lit a cigarette and tried not to worry about what God had told him. But as they sat idling outside the bar, his eyes darted around and he kept his gun close to him.

  The entrance to the bar opened and a beautiful young girl emerged. God fixed his eyes on Kym and smiled. He admired the outfit she had on—dark jeans that hugged her luscious curves, a white shirt that highlighted her balloon tits, and a pair of white heels. Kym was dark-skinned with bantu knots styled in her hair. God loved her afro-centric look.

  He climbed out of the vehicle and greeted Kym with a passionate hug followed by a lingering French kiss. Fingers simply watched them make out from the passenger seat.

  Kym had been God’s side bitch for nearly six months. She was the complete opposite of Charlie—dark skin, legit, and she had a blossoming career. He had to admit to himself that Kym was a bit freakier than Charlie, but Charlie was his ride-or-die bitch. Kym was unaware about Charlie, and vice-versa. Both women brought something different to the table for God.

  Kym greeted Fingers by his government name. “Hey, Frederick.”

  “Hey,” Fingers replied halfheartedly.

  She continued to smile. She was happy to see her man. She intimately hugged God again, fondling his masculine frame. “You spending the night with me again?”

  “Yeah. I just need to drop Fingers off and we can chill,” he said.

  She smiled brightly. Kym loved everything about God. He was handsome, manly, and intriguing. They’d met at Mack’s bar. God found her attractive and offered to buy her a drink. She accepted the drink and a conversation was sparked. Right after that, she became his number-two.

  Kym got into the backseat and God drove off.

  The night was still young, and the two lovebirds wanted to make the best of it. That meant going back to her place for a few drinks, followed by some Netflix and chill. Kym was God’s escape from Charlie and her dysfunctional family. When he needed to get away, Kym was always there with her open arms and spread legs.

  God drove the Jeep several blocks until he finally came to a stop at a red light. The traffic had been sparse and the night was going good, until it wasn’t. While idling at the red light, God glanced in his rearview mirror and noticed a black Dodge Charger approaching from behind. It stopped awkwardly close behind the Jeep, and he could see several silhouettes inside the car. Not wanting to overreact, he kept his cool. Under his seat was a loaded Ruger SR9c. It was a clean gun with no bodies on it.

  Before the light turned green, another black vehicle sped toward them and came to a screeching stop at the bumper of his vehicle. Police lights were flashing, quickly indicating to them that it was the NYPD. God again glimpsed into the rearview mirror and he could see men flying out of the Dodge Charger with guns drawn and badges showing.

  “Shit!” God shouted.

  “Police! Put your fuckin’ hands up! Put your hands up!” they all screamed simultaneously.

  God and Fingers had no time to react. They were boxed in with high caliber weapons pointed at them. If one of them moved wrong, it was lights out, bullets spraying, and bodies slumped in blood-soaked seats.

  Kym was wide-eyed and panicking. She shrieked at the heavy police presence but did what she was told, throwing her hands up so they could see that she wasn’t a threat.

  The cops swung open all three doors and dragged everyone out of the car and threw them down to the ground. They were immediately handcuffed and detained. Fingers seethed. God frowned. They didn’t see it coming. The police had come out of thin air. But what were the charges? Why were they being arrested?

  God growled, “What the fuck is this about? We ain’t do shit!”

  He had a cop’s knee on his back and the handcuffs felt extra tight around his wrists. He felt it was done purposely, for he and Fingers were suspected cop killers.

  Kym was bewildered by it all. She was only a passenger, but they arrested her too. While searching the vehicle, the officers removed God’s black Ruger and found Fingers’ 9mm Beretta. They were pleased with the results. It was a gun charge easily slapped against them.

  The streets were snitching a great deal, and God and Fingers kept coming up in interrogation rooms.

  ***

  Charlie was worried about her man. She had tried to call his phone numerous times, but he wasn’t answering. She felt something was wrong.

  So when her phone rang around two in the morning, she answered the call believing that it was God finally calling back. She was furious and ready to curse him out, but it wasn’t God on the other end of the phone. It was an acquaintance of the two men telling Charlie that God and Fingers had been locked up earlier.

  Hearing the tragic news, Charlie was struck with fear and concern. “What? What the fuck happened? For what?”

  “I don’t know. But they got locked up in Canarsie wit’ some bitch in the car,” the man said.

  The caller hung up and she was left with a million and one questions. Did they get locked up for the home invasion? If so, were the cops coming for her too? Or was it because of that cop that got killed in January? Or was it another crime she didn’t know about?

  No matter the crime, Charlie was devastated. Her man and her money were gone, and she had no idea for how long—maybe life.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Harvard University was an entirely different world to Claire. Everything felt so surreal. She wanted to be better than everyone, and she had something to prove to those who doubted her.

  The jealousy she felt befor
e she left home to attend school on a partial scholarship was palpable. Claire Brown was leaving the ghetto to better herself in life—to get a higher education from a prestigious school. She’d graduated high school with a 4.1 GPA, and she scored a nearly perfect score on her SAT.

  The entire school was wonderful. It was 210 acres of historical and contemporary buildings, students, staff, and knowledge—210 acres a world away from the Glenwood Housing Projects. Her dorm room was a bit larger than the bedroom she shared with Chanel in the projects, and she had two roommates—a white girl named Becky, such a cliché, and an African-American girl from Chicago named Tiffany. Though Tiffany was from Chicago, she didn’t have an ounce of ghetto in her. She talked proper and dressed white. Claire thought, Brady Bunch.

  In fact, Tiffany and Becky quickly bonded. Tiffany had a lot more in common with Becky than she had with Claire. Tiffany was sheltered and privileged and grew up in the suburbs, yet, she still represented Chicago. Fuckin’ fraud, Claire felt.

  Two weeks at the school and Claire found out she had a lot to learn. The classes could be grueling. The professors weren’t going to hold your hand. Either you got it or you didn’t. And if you were an undergraduate, they expected you to fully understand their lessons. The school wasn’t going to coddle you.

  In Claire’s first two weeks, she found out that Harvard was a very extreme place. Everyone was extremely smart, extremely driven, and they were extremely focused on attaining their goals. She observed several students suffer from panic attacks in public. The school could become so extreme that it could be scary from time to time. Claire found herself surrounded by highly intelligent classmates with very competitive spirits—and a lot of students were full of themselves.

  Claire figured that because she was from the gritty streets of Brooklyn, she could handle anything that came her way—and that no school or pompous, educated fool was going to scare her. Although her first two weeks started out shaky, she believed that she was built to last and there to stay. If she could survive Brooklyn, then she could survive this.

  It was her third week into the semester and October was right around the corner. The Massachusetts weather was chillier than New York in late September. Claire had a lot of assignments to complete and projects to work on. She was in her dorm room alone, trying to study. She had heard about her father’s seizure and she wished she could be there for the family, but she had a lot on her plate and she didn’t have transportation back to New York.

  She called her family to check on her father’s condition. He was stable.

  The knock on her dorm room door interrupted her time with her books. She sighed, stood up, and marched toward the door to see who was knocking. She opened it to find one of the school’s administrators standing in front of her.

  She gazed at Claire and asked, “Is your name Claire Brown?”

  Claire nodded. “Yes.”

  “You need to come to the Dean of Admissions’ office,” she said.

  Claire was taken aback. What did the Dean of Admissions want with her? She was a freshman who kept to herself, and she didn’t know anyone at the school. Not having a choice, Claire followed the woman to the dean’s office. It was a place she didn’t expect to see so early in the school year, but there she was, meeting face to face with Dean Convoy, an aging white man in his late fifties with a serious look on his face.

  “Have a seat, Miss Brown,” he said.

  Claire felt extremely nervous. She took a seat in the leather armchair and waited to hear the reason for the sudden meeting with him.

  Dean Convoy sat behind his neat looking desk and didn’t beat around the bush, saying to Claire, “It’s come to this administration’s attention that your SAT scores and your GPA are fraudulent.”

  Claire was shocked by the news. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Are you calling me a cheater?”

  “How you were accepted into this university is beyond my understanding, Ms. Brown. Our vetting process is meticulous, yet, you still made it into the system—and with a partial scholarship. We are conducting a full investigation into this matter.”

  “A full investigation? I didn’t do anything wrong,” she exclaimed.

  “As I explained, some things have come to our attention, and until we investigate, your enrollment is suspended until further notice.”

  Claire couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She tried to deny the accusation of cheating and being a liar, but she knew the truth.

  “Who told you this lie?”

  “I can’t divulge that information to you,” he said.

  “Someone out there is calling me a cheater and a liar, and you can’t fuckin’ tell me who it is!” Her Brooklyn side was coming out for sure.

  “I would appreciate if you didn’t curse at me,” he said politely.

  Claire wanted to do more than curse at him.

  “As I stated earlier, until this matter is resolved, your enrollment at this school has been suspended.”

  ***

  A group of youngsters had openly admitted that they’d been part of a sophisticated cheating ring since the eighth grade, and Claire was part of it. The ringleader of the group was a boy named Trevor. He was extremely smart and manipulative. The group had access to exams a week before they were taken, including the SAT. How it was possible, no one knew. These kids were smart cheaters.

  They’d dropped a dime on Claire, explaining that she had cheated her way all through high school and managed to get herself into Harvard. She was the only one to get accepted to a prestigious school, which had been their goal.

  The kids were of different races and backgrounds, but Claire was the only African-American among the nine. Seeing this, the other eight were consumed with envy. None of them could sit back and watch Claire have a good life with Harvard on her resume. They’d provided a thick folder with incriminating evidence not only to the folks at Harvard, but to the media too. Claire pleaded her innocence.

  The university wanted to avoid a scandal or a lawsuit for wrongful expulsion, so they decided to give Claire a test. She failed miserably.

  After their investigation was complete, Claire was expelled from Harvard, and it became the talk of the town. Claire’s fall from grace had made for a story to read in the newspapers, and somewhat became national news—an intricate group of cheaters who’d all lied their way through high school.

  Claire was a smart girl. She’d started off as an A student in elementary and middle school, but in high school, she fell in with the wrong crowd of cheaters, and she’d gotten lazy and stopped studying because she already had the answers to tests and exams. She felt it was a win-win situation for her.

  Claire had become a disgrace. She was ashamed to go home, but she had nowhere else to go. How could she look her family in the eye after being kicked out of a prestigious school like Harvard? How could she walk around Brooklyn without being laughed at and talked about?

  Her family didn’t understand how an intelligent student like Claire could be part of such a cheating scandal. They believed that she was always studying, always learning. It certainly had to be a lie. Claire continued to deny the accusations against her, and Bacardi was ready to fight for her daughter. She even threatened Harvard with a lawsuit and slandered the school by calling them racists. She wasn’t going to take this lying down or stay quiet about it. She saw it as a payday for Claire and herself. The school had tarnished her daughter’s reputation, and she wanted some money for her pain and suffering, claiming that Claire was completely distraught by the incident.

  Day after day, Bacardi called different lawyers to file a lawsuit against the school, but none of them would take it on. They all felt Claire had no case against the school. The evidence of her deceitfulness was stacked against her. Bacardi became furious, and she felt that they were all in cahoots against her family.

  Claire wanted it all to go away, but the sto
ry of cheaters from high school and the one who’d swindled her way into Harvard continued to play on repeat until the next big story or scandal broke. Now she was back home, living with her family. All three sisters were once again under the same roof, and things were more strained than before.

  It didn’t take long for the other project girls to talk that slick shit and taunt Claire about the cheating scandal. They called her a stuck-up bitch who thought she was better than everyone. She was a big-word-speaking fraud. Those were fighting words and, of course, Charlie went to battle for her sister and warned the bitches to keep her sister’s name out of their mouths.

  Shockingly, Claire and Charlie’s biggest battle was with Chanel. Chanel had always had her doubts about Claire, and she suggested that the evidence against Claire pointed to it being true. The entire household erupted in anger and felt Chanel had betrayed their code.

  “What code is that?” Chanel asked.

  Bacardi replied, “We family! We stick together no matter what!”

  “Since when?” That earned her a five-finger slap across her face from Bacardi.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Remember, no drinking,” the doctor reminded Butch before discharging him from the hospital.

  Butch frowned. The doctor might as well have told him not to breathe. “Not even a damn beer?”

  “This is a serious issue, Mr. Brown. I would assume that your life is more important than alcohol.”

  “How can a man live?”

  “Just take it one day at a time, and try to find yourself a constructive hobby,” the doctor said.

  It was grim news for Butch. His hobby was drinking and having a good time. If he continued to drink, parts of his brain could shut down due to alcohol poisoning—and his long-term abuse of alcohol was manifesting as cirrhosis of the liver.

  Bacardi and Charlie were there to take Butch home. His doctor had a brief conversation with the family, and he gave them the same warning. Butch ranted and cursed from the hospital room to the car, a friend’s Accord that Charlie had borrowed.