by Edwina Fort
“It’s alright, everything worked out. He didn’t hurt me or anything like that.”
“Yeah, but he forced you into a relationship with him. Did he force you to…you know?”
I vehemently shook my head. “No, I swear! He was a perfect gentleman.”
A look of doubt crossed West’s face. “Hitta? A gentle-man?”
I laughed. “Believe it or not, he is very gentle with me.”
He smiled, pleased he’d made me laugh. “Oh, I believe it. If there’s anybody that can bring a man like that to his knees, it’s my sweet little sister.” He took one of my braids in his hand, studying it.
“I just wish it wasn’t because of me that you had to be forced to do something…you know.”
“Hey,” I said, drawing his eyes back to mine. “By no means am I condoning what you did, but if you hadn’t done it, I would have lost my shop. So, in a crazy, dangerous way, everything worked out. Well… almost everything.” He and I were both quiet for a minute, lost in our thoughts.
“I better not ever see that mutha f**ka Stan again. I swear, I’m going to kill him for what he did to my mother!”
I rubbed his hand. “Just let the police deal with it. They’re looking for him.”
Westly shook his head. “I should have killed him a long time ago. When he first put his hands on you, I should have took his ass out.”
“Yeah, and you would have broken your mother’s heart.”
His angry gaze came to mine. “I should have did it anyway! Maybe then, she’d still be with us today! I’m always f**king up, Angel! And my mother had to pay with her life.”
“You can’t blame yourself for this! Diana chose Stan. She loved that bastard! We tried to tell her, she wouldn’t lis—”
He snatched his hand from me shaking his head. “Naw, Angel! That doesn’t matter! I still should have—”
I snatched his hand back. “It does matter, West! You can’t save nobody who don’t want to be saved!”
Too late I realized how bad a choice of words that was. Westly got this bittersweet look on his face before he lowered his eyes back to his hands.
“Like me, right?”
I shook my head. “No, not like you! Like our mother… Not you. I know that you love dearly and deeply. I know that you don’t like the darkness that’s got a hold of you. You want to fight it.”
His gaze came up to mine, that bittersweet smile still on his face. “You’ve always thought so much of me, Angel.”
“It’s because you were my very first hero. You saved me from the bad guy.”
“And then I became the bad guy,” he whispered.
I shook my head again as tears came to my eyes, but I dried them determinedly. “No! I don’t see you that way. In my eyes, you’re still my hero.”
He chuckled with no real humor. “Yeah, well, you always did have a way of seeing only the good in folks and turning a blind eye to their bad.”
“That’s not true… I saw Stan’s bad.”
He pushed the braid that had fallen in my face behind my ear. “Yeah, you did.”
And so it went. Westly and I talked for over an hour, mostly about Diana and Stan, a little about me and Hitta, and our marriage. But then the conversation turned to Trina and the time had come for me to tell him that I was Jessie’s guardian.
“I can’t believe they found her dead. Damn! I leave for a couple of months and everything goes to hell.”
“There is something else,” I told him, now it was me playing with my braid, avoiding his eyes. “Because we didn’t know where you were and with Trina being dead and all, there was a matter of what would happen with Jessie…”
My gaze came back to his. “I’m her guardian now.”
He smiled and I exhaled a breath that I wasn’t aware I was holding. “Come on, baby girl. You wasn’t worried I’d be upset about that, were you?”
I nodded. “Very.”
He shook his head. “Why? Let’s just tell the truth, you’ve always been Jessie’s guardian. She loves her Tee-Tee. I’m so glad you were there for her, ‘cause only God knows where she would be if she depended solely on me.” As he spoke, tears came to his eyes.
“Thank you so much, Angel. I don’t deserve to have you in my life, but I thank God for you every day.”
I hugged him again, but then I told him I had to go. I didn’t want to risk being gone longer and Maddox contacting Hitta.
“Where are you staying?” I asked him as we walked back towards the train.
He held up his hands. “I have no idea. There’s a shelter—”
I shook my head cutting him off. “I will get you a room at the hotel around the corner from the Teashop.”
I knew better than to give him money. I loved my brother dearly, but I could not buy his drugs for him. I will get him food, a place to stay, and clothes to wear. I just can’t bring myself to give him money, knowing he will buy drugs with it.
After we got back to Oak Park, I showed him where we lived and then we walked the short distance to the hotel and got him checked in.
“Hitta doesn’t come home till really late. So after you get some rest, why don’t you come by the house and have dinner with Jess and me?”
He got an uncomfortable look on his face. “Are you sure he’s not going to be there?”
I nodded. “Positive, he’s barely there these days really; he just comes home to sleep. He’ll never know you’ve been there.”
He pushed my braid back behind my ear. “Are you okay?”
I forced a smile on my face and nodded. “Absolutely.” And then I changed the subject. “You can stay here for a couple of nights. That will give me time to talk to Hitta. There is a spare room in the basement that we can turn into—”
He shook his head. “There is no way he’s going to go for that.”
“You don’t know that. Just let me talk to him.”
“Angel, he ain’t the kind of man you can steal from and just walk away without any consequences.”
“I paid the consequences, now the slate is wiped clean. Plus, you’re my brother and I’m his wife, that got to count for something.”
He laughed at that. “Again, I reiterate, these ain’t those kind of people. Men like him will take out their own mother if they crossed them.”
“You don’t know Hitta. He’s not like that at all.”
With the smile still on his face, he leaned in and kissed my forehead in the way that he always has.
“There you go again, only seeing the good in people and completely turning a blind eye to their bad. I’ll see you guys tonight, baby girl,” he said before stepping on the elevator.
The whole way back to the shop, I was a nervous wreck and I didn’t know why. What I said to Westly was true. I’d paid the price for him stealing the money, so there should be no hard feelings. Only… my gut was telling me that it would not be that easy.
West thought I only saw the good in people and that may very well be true, but even I knew that Hitta is a hard man and probably wasn’t going to be quick to forgive. However, I had to find a way to get him to see that my brother was a really good guy at heart.
I couldn’t wait until Jessie saw her dad tonight. Now, I didn’t feel so bad about Hitta not coming home for dinner. At least some good would come out of it.
However, when I walked into the house after work, it was not to find the neighbor’s fourteen-year-old daughter, who we paid to babysit Jessie after she got out of school until I got home. It was Hitta sitting in the living room helping her with her homework and I almost had a freaking heart attack.
“Hey, where’s Kayla?” I asked as I hung my coat on the rack by the front door.
He sat back on the couch resting his massive arms on the back of it as he studied me.
“Hello, wife. I’m doing good, thanks for asking.”
I chuckled. In my mind, it came out a breezy carefree sound, but I know in reality, it probably sounded like a nervous grunt.
“No, I w
as just surprised to see you here helping Jessie instead of Kayla, that’s all.”
“Look, Tee-Tee, I got an A on my spelling test!” Jessie cried excitedly, shoving her test paper into my hands.
I took the time as I examined her paper to get myself together. It was a damn shame I was this scared of my own husband. Granted I wasn’t afraid for my own safety, but that of my brother. My heart was racing too fast and if I didn’t get control of myself, I was going to mess this whole thing up.
“Great job, baby!” I told Jessie before giving her a big hug.
However, when two strong arms came around my waist from behind, a squeak of fear escaped my lips before I could catch it.
“Damn, baby, why you so jumpy? I’m just giving you a hug after not seeing you all day,” Hitta said from behind me as he tightened his arms, pulling me into his embrace.
I chuckled again and even to my ears it sounded nervous. “You scared me. For a big guy, you move very silently.”
Jessie skipped off, completely unaware of the tension in the air.
He gently kissed my ear. “How was your day?”
“G—” I had to clear my throat because it sounded like I had a frog in it. “Good… busy as usual, and yours?”
“Yeah, mine too.” He brought his big hand to rest just underneath my breasts, pulling me tighter into his embrace. “What’s the matter, Teacup? Why yo’ heart beating so fast?”
I don’t know if my mind was playing tricks on me or what, but the last of his statement sounded as if it came out a growl.
“Just a little winded from the walk home.”
“Why didn’t Maddox bring you home?”
“It was such a lovely night, I told him I wanted to walk.”
He cupped my waist and turned me in his arms so that I was facing him. He didn’t speak right away. Instead, he stood studying me. God, it felt as if he could read everything I was trying to hide. I swallowed trying my best not to fidget under his gaze.
“I told Jessie we could go out for pizza. Grab yo’ stuff.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah, tonight…” His gaze sharpened. “Unless you got something else to do.”
I shook my head. “No, nothing else to do. Let me go and put the chicken I had taken out of the freezer earlier for dinner away. I’ll be right back.”
Needless to say, I had not counted on Hitta being home. And now I wish I would have given Westly some money so that he could have gotten himself dinner.
Dang it!
Hitta
“His keekin around,” Maddox voice came from my cell phone. “'N' he's popped th' snib 'n' is gaun in.”
I exhaled… F**king crack head!
For the last two days, Angel has been sitting on the fact that her hype ass brother was back in town. She didn’t know that I had the inside and outside of the Tea Shop under constant surveillance and that when he first slithered his ass up to her back door, I saw him. I’ve waited for her to come talk to me so that I could tell her don’t even f**king think about welcoming him into our lives.
As soon as she left her shop the first day he showed up after Summer had sent Maddox on that bogus ass food run, Lannox followed her. He sent pictures to my phone of her hugging and crying for this mutha f**ka like he was her f**king hero. And now look, he was breaking into our f**king crib behind her back.
“He's comin' oot wi' a crakin' size bag. Whit dae yi'll waant me tae dae?”
“Grab his ass and bring him to me!”
Angel
I had to bite the bullet yesterday and give Westly a few dollars for food. I wasn’t any closer to talking to Hitta about him moving in with us than I was the first day he’d showed up.
I mean, I’ve tried. Surprisingly for the last two nights, Hitta has been coming home for dinner. I’ve tried to broach the subject of my brother, telling him about some of his good qualities, but every time I did, it was met with resistance.
“You put too much trust in a crackhead,” or and by far, the most disheartening, “My uncle had to put a bullet in my mother’s head. You know why? Because the only thing she cared about was chasing that high.”
So yeah, I was back at square one.
“Hey Angel, we’re going to grab some Portello’s, you want something?” Carmen and Summer asked as they headed towards the door. It was just after the morning rush and things would be pretty calm for the next few hours until around noon.
I shook my head. “Naw, you guys go ahead.”
“Okay, we’ll be back shortly.”
My thoughts had already gone back to trying to figure out the best way to bring my husband and brother together. A few minutes later, I heard the bell ding, but I didn’t look up right away because I was grinding down some fresh cinnamon sticks.
“Wow… you look like you’ve been through a lot.” That voice caused my eyes to fly up.
“Shantell! What are you doing here?” She stood dressed to the nines in a white and black leather coat with the matching hat and bag. Had I not heard her speak, I wouldn’t have known it was her. Half of her face was covered by a pair of oversized shades.
She chuckled. “I could pretend I was in the neighborhood, but then I would be lying. The truth is plain and simple. I came to get my man back.”
I drew myself up, eyeballing the lone customer who sat over by the window on her laptop, enjoying her tea. Surely Shantell wouldn’t try to fight me with a witness here to see it.
“Relax, Angel…I didn’t come here to fight you.” Her gaze fell on my wedding ring. “Although seeing you with that does make me have violent thoughts.”
My protected reflexes caused my hand to cover my small baby bump. She snatched the glasses off her face as she took in my pregnant stomach.
“Oh my God! Are you pregnant?!” She screamed her words, causing my customer to look up.
“Keep your voice down, will you?”
“No! Damn that! You have got to be f**king kidding me! He came inside you!”
My customer packed up her bag and slipped out the door and I don’t blame her, I wish I could follow.
"How can I help you, Shantell?"
She held up her hand and stepped back away from the counter. “Give me a f**king minute, okay?! I can’t believe this sh*t!”
Seeing me pregnant was really upsetting her. Goodness! I slid my phone over, just in case I had to press the emergency call button, but it seemed as if she got herself together.
She turned back around to face me with a huge fake smile on her face. “I didn’t come here for you to help me, I came to help you.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think you can. And even if you could, I don’t think I want your help.”
She grinned. “Don’t be so quick to come to that judgment. You are blind, Angel and you need me to help you see.”
“See what?” I snapped, already tired of talking to her.
“You need me to help you see the man you married.”
“Wrong… I know who I married. I don’t need your help in that department.”
“Oh, I beg to differ. Because I’m sure you still believe it was your brother’s fault Hitta ended up kicking in your door that night.”
I picked up a rag and wiped the counter, pretending she didn’t have my complete attention.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do, Angel,” she spoke to me in the tone one would speak to a special needs child and I wanted to throw this rag in her face.
“Hitta told you your brother stole money from him and that’s why he kicked in your door and got you to agree to be his whore.”
I held up the hand my wedding ring was on and twisted my braid. “Ummm, I don’t know if you heard, but I’m actually his wife. You were his whore.”
If looks could kill, I would be dead. She had smoke coming out of her ears.
“Ha ha ha, very funny, but I’m wondering if you’ll be laughing if you knew he set your brother up to take that money. He left it in his
office, knowing he was going to go for that bait. It was a trap, and you and your stupid crackhead brother fell for it.”
That hurt… I had to bite down on my teeth not to show her how much. But then, I remembered this was the same hood rat that lied several times about being pregnant just to try and trap a man.
I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”
Her grin made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “I figured you would say that.” She pulled a tape recorder out of her big purse and pressed play.
“A’richt, boss, 'ere is that cash ye asked fur,” Maddox voice came from the device.
“Put it in my top draw. Don't want to hide it too good, his crackhead ass may miss it,” Hitta muttered sounding like he was occupied with something else.
“Oh, and don’t forget to grab the U-Haul before they close.”
She stopped the tape and waited for my response with an evil smirk on her face. I inhaled and congratulated myself. On the outside, I looked cool, calm, and collected. But ohhhh, on the inside, I was cursing like a sailor.
That rotten, dirty liar! I remember asking him about that U-Haul and he brushed it off like it was no big deal. Oh my goodness! He set my brother up and planted that money there, knowing Westly was going to take the bait. I balled up my fists, wanting to punch him!
Evidently, Shantell wasn’t finished because she proceeded to pull a big envelope out of her bag. Reaching in it, she pulled out what looked like a newspaper article, sliding it across the counter to me. Still watching her closely, I picked up the article and saw that it was about a Jane Doe’s body washing up on the 63rd street beach. Her throat had been slit and her teeth and hands were missing.
“Recognize that description?”
I lowered the paper. “It’s Trina.”
She nodded. “Very good. Hitta ordered his paid assassins to take her out. Removing the hands and the teeth is their calling card.”
She slid several more articles to me, all John Does and all the victims whose hands and teeth had been removed. I stared down at them, shaking my head as I read. There was no way this was true… No way!
