by Mark Anthony
At that point I could hear my mom’s voice again telling me how beautiful I was. I also thought about my three kids that she was raising for me in heaven.
The club was packed to capacity. My services were really needed at the bar but I just felt like I couldn’t let my mom down. I knew that she was watching me at that very moment. I found one of the other bartenders and I told her to cover for me because I had to go. I also told one of the owners that I had to bounce and that I would see him tomorrow, even though in my mind I knew that that was gonna be my last night working at that club. I mean, if I really wanted to change, then who was I fooling to think that I could stay in such an environment as a liquor-filled strip club and not get tempted to fuck?
I normally would speak to Tara before leaving to go home but something inside of me was telling me to just hurry the hell up and get outta that spot as quick as I could.
The bad part about Pink Chocolate was that there was only one way in and one way out. When I left I couldn’t leave as quick as I’d wanted to because the bouncers wanted to chitchat and kick it with me, while at the same time the entrance was jammed with people trying to enter.
Not tonight. No time to chitchat, Shayla. You gotsta get up outta here quickly, I said to myself. It was so bugged because inside I was panicking to the point where I felt like I was trying to get away from a mugger or a murderer or something.
Thankfully, I made it pretty quickly past the bouncers and the crowd of people trying to get in. I was out the door and heading to my car that was parked three blocks away.
My high heels click-clacked loudly from my brisk walking and as I made it to my car I had never felt so relieved. I couldn’t believe how good it felt to finally be able to police myself and show some restraint and self-control. More importantly, I felt good because I knew that I was giving my mom a reason to be proud of me.
I reached inside my Coach bag. I took out my car keys and I unlocked the driver’s door to my all-black Saab. Just as I was about get into my car a red Chevy Suburban truck pulled up alongside of my car. It had my car pinned in where even if I wanted to drive off I wouldn’t have been able to.
“Yo, where them bottles at?” a male voice said as he got out of the passenger side of the Suburban and ran around to where I was standing.
Ah shit! I said to myself when I realized that it was the same dark-skinned guy from the strip club.
“I still gotchu,” I said to the guy as I smiled a nervous smile and thought quick on my feet.
“You still got me? It look to me like you fucking trying to bounce on a nigga!”
“Oh nah, come on, I wouldn’t do that. I was just pulling my car around to the front of the club for a better parking spot. I wasn’t gonna just bounce on you like that. I gotchu,” I said as I nervously chuckled.
The guy looked at me as if he was trying to figure me out as we stood on a dimly-lit and dirty Harlem street.
“Yo, fuck that ho! That bitch is on some bullshit. I told you she pulled the same shit with me before,” the guy that was sitting in the driver’s seat of the Suburban said as he got outta the truck and walked up to me.
I had no idea what the hell the guy was talking about and I definitely couldn’t place his face.
I didn’t say anything but my heart was pounding and I could just sense something wasn’t right.
The next thing I know is that the guy who had got out of the driver’s seat just smacked the shit out of me and knocked me to the ground.
“Ahh!” I screamed.
I was looking right at the concrete. I was on my hands and knees and my face was stinging like crazy.
The blow had come from out of nowhere and I was shocked. I was even more shocked when I realized that blood was coming from my mouth and dripping onto the concrete.
“What the hell you hit me for?” I screamed as I tried to make it to my feet.
I was smart enough to not go into fight mode because I knew that I couldn’t fight off two grown-ass men.
“Shut the fuck up, bitch, and get in this goddamn car!” the guy said as he lifted me off the ground and back onto my feet by yanking my hair.
“Ahh!” I screamed out in genuine pain. “Get off of me!”
“Shut the fuck up,” the guy said to me while covering up my mouth.
I was trying to kick and punch and do whatever I could to free myself from the guy’s grip. In the process I lost both of my shoes. I screamed at the top of my lungs for somebody to help me, but the street was deserted at 3:30 in the morning.
“Yo, drive the car and I’ll stay in the back with this bitch,” the guy said as he threw me into the backseat of the roomy old-ass beat-up truck.
I was still kicking and screaming and trying my hardest to fight my way out of that truck.
“Bitch, I said shut the fuck up!” the guy yelled and punched me in my face.
The punch was definitely the hardest punch that I had ever received in my life and it was followed by the guy’s large right hand choking the shit out of me.
I couldn’t get any air at all and I thought for sure that I was about to die. I scratched and clawed and kicked at the guy, but it was useless. I was pinned on my back and looking up at the guy. I could feel the truck beginning to drive off.
As my eyes were bulging out of my head from the pressure that the guy was applying to my neck, I could tell that he was older and he looked like the fucking devil, but I didn’t remember ever seeing him in the strip club before.
“Yo, pull over underneath that overpass by the FDR Drive so we can fuck this ho!” the guy said as he finally loosened his grip from my neck.
“Hughhhh,” I said as I gasped for air and grabbed my throat to massage the pain.
I soon felt the truck traveling over some real bumpy road that sounded like it was laced with gravel and bricks. Before long it came to a stop and the next thing I know I saw the cute dark-skin turn and look over his shoulder at me from the driver’s seat.
“Why you tried to play me? All you had to do was say you wasn’t wit’ it,” the dark-skinned guy said to me.
I shook my head and before I could say anything, the older, devil-looking guy punched me in the face again.
“This is what she do. I told you the bitch took fifty dollars from me before,” the guy said as he began ripping at my jeans.
I still had no clue what the guy was talking about and I tried my hardest to fight him off but I didn’t have much strength.
“Get the fuck off of me,” I yelled as I fought with all I had.
“Y’all gonna rape me? That’s some bitch-ass faggot shit,” I said as I desperately tried to use reverse psychology, but to no avail.
The guy slapped me again and then he told the dark-skinned guy to come get in the backseat and hold me down so he could fuck me.
The dark-skinned guy quickly climbed over the seat. He was holding my arms down with the force of a bodybuilder. I desperately began to scream my head off for somebody to help me.
“I said shut the fuck up. I’m not gonna tell you that shit again,” the older guy yelled as he punched me in my mouth. I could feel loose teeth and blood fall to the back of my throat. I started coughing from nearly choking on my own teeth. The blow had done its job in shutting me up. When I was finally quiet the older guy tore off my jeans while the dark-skinned guy continued to hold my arms down.
“You don’t even know who the fuck I am, do you?” the older guy said as he came close to my face with his horrible hot breath, smelling like a wino.
I didn’t respond and I just stared at the guy with a look that could kill. I knew I was about to get raped for the second time in my life and at that point I didn’t see any sense in resisting. I knew that it was only gonna get me killed or hurt really bad and I wanted it to hurry up and end.
“Look at that pretty little shaved pussy,” the guy said as he pulled off his own pants. The musty smell of his dirty-ass dick just about knocked me out.
“Ooooh-weeee. Looka-here, looka-he
re at this sweet young thang!” he said as he rubbed his hands together like he was about to dig into a Thanksgiving meal.
The guy then rammed his dick inside of me and I let out an excruciating scream.
To shut me up he covered my mouth with one of his hands while he tried his best to fully get himself inside of me.
“Yo, how is that shit?” the dark-skinned guy asked as he continued to hold my arms down.
“For some ho pussy, this some tight good pussy right here,” the older guy said as he grunted and pumped himself in and out of me while his disgusting sweat dripped down from his head and onto my face.
“Look at me and tell me who I am,” he screamed at me as he continued to ram himself inside of me.
I looked at the guy and the only image that came to my mind was that of my cousin Earl when he was raping me in his basement.
“I’m that nigga you tried to get over on in Queens that time,” the guy said while not breaking stride and still digging into me.
Through the intense pain that I was feeling I then refocused my eyes on him and my eyes got wide as hell.
“Yeah, you remember me now, right bitch?” the guy said to me.
At that point it hit me. I did in fact remember him. I couldn’t believe that he was the same older guy that I had gotten the fifty dollars from that first night that I had gone to an underground sex party with Earl. I had taken his fifty dollars but for different reasons he had never gotten any sex out of me that night. Now four years later I couldn’t believe that not only had he remembered me, but he was actually raping me. It was by far the worst position that I’d ever found myself in.
Realizing who this guy was, it caused something to snap. I lost it and started fighting again to free myself.
It was no use as the two guys were too much for me.
“I ain’t raping you. Bitch, I paid for this pussy two times and both times you tried to play me,” the guy barked at me as he continued pumping in and out of me.
He then moved his face close to mine. In my left ear he grunted and moaned as he began to chant, “I’m gonna hit this pussy and hit it raw. I’m gonna hit this pussy ’till its sore!”
I couldn’t take it and I felt like I was gonna pass out from the pain and the humiliation and the guilt for having let my mom down. I also couldn’t take it because in my mind I was going crazy. I was going crazy as I started to think that I deserved to be getting raped and treated like I was being treated. After all, maybe he was right, maybe it wasn’t rape, maybe he was just collecting on what I had allowed him to pay me for but had never given to him.
Indian giver! Indian giver! Shayla is an Indian giver! my mind shouted to me in the teasing voice of a small child.
Right then and there I just went limp. I didn’t care what happened from that point on, I just wanted everything to end. I don’t remember much else of what happened. The last things I do remember is the guy’s sweat dripping directly into my mouth and him grunting and moaning in my other ear, my right ear this time.
He laughed and then repeated in my right ear the same chant that he had just said to me in my left ear. Only this time I remember feeling his hot liquor breath burning a hole into my skin as he repeatedly chanted, “I’m gonna hit this pussy and hit it raw. I’m gonna hit this pussy ’till it’s sore!”
Wake up Shayla, wake up! I screamed to myself.
Unfortunately this wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare and I was living through it.
Yup, it was as real as real can get.
Chapter Fifteen
Still Lying
Apparently after I had been raped, I was driven near the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and just dumped on the side of the road like a sick puppy. I say apparently because I don’t remember being dumped there but I was told by the cops and doctors that that is where a concerned passerby saw my shoeless urine-soaked half-naked unconscious body and called 911 to get me some help.
What’s funny is that the two guys that raped me had raped me not too far from 125th Street and the FDR Drive in Harlem. Had they chosen to dump my unconscious body anywhere in those uptown blocks above Ninety-sixth Street, I probably would have been either left for dead or taken to some police precinct and locked up overnight for indecent exposure or something like that. Since my attackers had been gracious enough to dump me in the more upper-class part of town it resulted in a totally different outcome.
For starters I was taken to Bellevue Hospital, one of the finest hospitals in New York City, as opposed to being taken to Harlem Hospital, one of the worst hospitals in New York City. Thus I received some of the best treatment imaginable. Being found near the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge also managed to shine a huge spotlight on me and the vicious crime that had been lavished upon me. If this could happen to me in a white part of town then that meant that it could also happen to a white woman in that same white part of town. Therefore, all of the authorities took this seriously. They made it a priority to find out who had violated me and how quickly could that person or persons be apprehended and brought to justice.
Once the media got wind that an innocent seventeen-year-old girl from Brooklyn had been brutally raped and left for dead in an expensive part of town on the east side of Manhattan, all hell broke loose.
I vaguely remember being inside of an ambulance but I do remember being wheeled into the hospital emergency room. I heard the cops telling the paramedics and the doctors that the media would more than likely be converging on the hospital in a short period of time and that the doctors were not to say anything to the media about me or my condition, especially not until my parents had arrived at the hospital.
“Ms. Coleman, hi, I’m Detective Pelonis and this is my partner, Detective Mangini,” the two female detectives said to me as I lay on a gurney and had doctors working on me and sticking shit inside of my veins
“Detective, with all due respect, can we just stabilize the patient before you start with the questions?” the doctor said to the detective.
“Doctor, with all due respect to you, you do your job and you let us do our job,” Detective Pelonis said.
The doctor and the detective looked at each other and then they both started to speak to me at the same time. The detective was asking me did I mind telling her what had happened to me and the doctor was telling me what to expect and that she would be doing a vaginal exam, but that she first wanted me to change into a hospital gown.
All the talk was like noise to me. I was still feeling really groggy and my head was spinning from all of the things being thrown at me.
Thankfully, the doctor tuned out and allowed the detective to take the lead. She told the nurses to just wait until the detectives were done before proceeding.
“Ms. Coleman, I know you don’t feel too good and I’ll be as brief as possible, but I need to ask you certain questions so that we can determine exactly what happened to you and exactly who did this to you,” the detective said.
I just looked at the detective but I didn’t respond.
“Can you tell me what happened?” the detective asked.
I looked at her and just gave her this blank stare. I was in a lot of pain and I was also confused and trying my hardest to figure out just what I should say.
“Shayla?” the detective said to me.
She then took hold of my hand to make me feel more comfortable.
“I was in Times Square,” I said and then I paused because it felt funny to talk, being that my upper front teeth had been knocked out.
The detective nodded her head for me to continue as she scribbled down notes on her pad.
“My birthday is in a few days, so me and my friend went there to hang out to celebrate my birthday.”
The detective feverishly continued to scribble down everything that I was saying.
“Who is your friend?” she asked me.
“Tara,” I replied and simultaneously I started coughing.
“Okay,” the detective said.
“We just went to the
movies and then we hung out in Times Square just walking around taking pictures and stuff. I had drove and we were ready to leave and go home. When we were walking back to the car these guys that we had met in the movie theater, they saw us and came up to us and started harassing us because we wouldn’t give them our phone numbers,” I lied and said.
The detective then asked me what street was I parked on, she asked me to fully describe the guys, did I know the guys, what movie did we see, where did Tara live, and did I have her phone number. She really pressed me when I told her that the guys had put me inside their truck.
I lied and answered most of the detective’s questions but when she pressed me on where Tara lived, what happened to Tara, and Tara’s phone number that was when I broke down and started crying and told the detective that I really didn’t want to talk anymore.
“Detective?” the doctor said in a sarcastic way.
“Okay, thank you, Shayla. Listen, we’re gonna either stop back by later on or have you come by the precinct to look at some photos to see if you recognize who did this to you.”
I nodded my head and then the detective asked me one last question about Tara. She wanted to know if Tara had also been put inside the truck with me and raped.
“Well, look at my teeth. All I remember was fighting and getting punched in my face repeatedly. It was like I would black out and come to and black out again so honestly I don’t even remember what happened with Tara.”
The detective scribbled everything down and she looked at her partner. Then they both thanked me and told me to try not to worry about anything and that I would be okay. They assured me that they would catch the people who had done this tome.
As soon as the detectives left, the doctors went to work on me, checking me out from head to toe and swiping me with Q-tips and all kinds of swabs. Before they could fully finish examining me, my father and his girlfriend came into my room.
“Oh my God! Shayla, are you okay?” my father asked with genuine-sounding concern.
I shook my head no and then I started balling in order to really play it up and get his sympathy.
