Crazy Kind of Love

by T. Styles

  “I’m told his name is Jamal Shield. That’s all I know right now.”

  “Well how did you find him?”

  “I didn’t. The nurse who works here is a good friend of mine. She was actually a police officer until she got a call to come here and help those in greater need.” She grabbed my bag out the back seat and said, “Come on. It’s time to go inside.”

  I got out of the car, grabbed my briefcase and followed her slowly. The moment my high heel shoes click clacked against the concrete, I was heckled and eyeballed by neighborhood thugs. Although I was used to men treating me like meat due to my line of work, I didn’t know the men of this city or what they were capable of. I was beyond nervous and all I wanted to do was get high again.

  The Officer walked into the house without knocking and I was taken aback by what I saw the moment the door opened. The furniture looked run down, like it hadn’t been loved or cared for. I’d rather live in an alley than in there. I hoped I wouldn’t have to be there long.

  “Diane,” Officer McDonough screamed as she hugged a slender, dark skinned woman, who walked toward us from the back of the house. “How have you been? It’s been so long! You look great!”

  “I’m hanging in there,” the woman responded before separating from the embrace. “You look good too, girl. Plus you lost a whole lot of weight.”

  Officer McDonough smoothed her own ponytail. “Unfortunately, I’m not trying to lose weight. You know life gets in the way sometimes.” She turned around and looked back at me. “Come here, Lourdes, and meet my good friend. The one I was telling you about.”

  The moment the woman looked into my eyes, I liked her immediately. Her expression was kind and non-judgmental. I felt the same way when I first met Officer McDonough. It was as if she looked at me as a human. Not a whore, troublemaker or liar.

  “Come here, Lourdes,” Diane said to me. I walked over to her and stopped a few feet in front of her. “You’re such a beautiful and brave young lady and I don’t want you to worry about anything.” She rubbed the side of my hair. “You’ll be safe here. It might not look like much and we need new furniture, but what we don’t lack is love.”

  I smiled and blushed. “Thank you very much.”

  “There’s somebody I want you to meet,” Diane continued. “Now, don’t be intimidated by his presence. His frown is worse than his bite.” She turned around to face the stairwell. “Jamal,” she yelled.

  A few moments later, a man bopped down the steps. He was about six feet tall and had a caramel complexion, which resembled a piece of Sugar Baby candy. Through his white t-shirt, I could see that God spent a lot of time sculpting his muscles. My lady parts tingled. There didn’t appear to be a thing wrong with him. Even the small scar on his chin looked more like a dimple than a cut.

  I had seen a lot of men in my life but he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. My body trembled and I tugged at my skirt to pull it down some more. Suddenly, I felt naked in front of him, unworthy. Just when I thought I couldn’t feel worse, he looked at me from head to toe and frowned.

  “What’s up, Diane,” he asked her. He had an attitude and avoided eye contact with me. It figured; a man like that would never find me attractive.

  “This is the person I was telling you about,” Diane said. She held my hand and I wondered when she grabbed it. Things seemed to be moving so fast and my mind was all over the place. “Her name is Lourdes Beaumont, and I need you to keep her with you at all times. Her room is right across from yours, so it shouldn’t be hard.”

  “You don’t have no dudes who need help?” he asked her.

  “What are you gay or something?” I muttered, interrupting their conversation.

  “In your entire life, you’d better never come at me like that again.”

  I was shook and I hated that I made such an insensitive joke.

  “This is who you are charged with protecting, Jamal. And I expect you to do a good job. Remember, helping people in need is the only thing that will keep you out of jail and off parole.”

  He sighed and frowned at me again.

  He hates me.

  Why does he hate me already? Oh yeah. Because you insulted the man’s sexuality.

  “Yeah, aight,” he responded shaking his head. “I guess it’s whatever I gotta do.”

  “Take her to her room and show her where to put her things.”

  He glanced at me and said, “You don’t have something a little more modest to wear? A lot of niggas live here and I don’t want them going after you, unless that’s what you want.”

  “I…uh…I…of course not.”

  “Jamal, try to be a little more respectful,” Diane said.

  “I’ll bring her some clothes tomorrow,” Officer McDonough added. She placed a warm hand on my shoulder and I relaxed. “You’re going to be fine, Lourdes. I lost my daughter to Holliday, but I won’t let the same thing happen to you. Just hang in there and I’ll be back for you.”

  I hugged her. When I tried to release her she held onto me for a second longer. When we separated, she said, “Stay strong, and if you still want to leave, I’ll be back here in the morning to pick you up.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Follow me,” Jamal said breaking our connection.

  I quickly obeyed him. I walked so closely to him that I could feel the warmth from his back. It was like I was magnetized to him. He stopped suddenly and I ran into him. He turned around and said, “I know I’m supposed to be looking out for you, but I’d appreciate a little breathing room.” He extended his hand between us. “You walking too close.”

  “I’m sorry, I just…”

  “No explanation needed. Just hang back some,” he responded abruptly.

  When I continued to walk behind him—slower, of course—I was taken to a tiny room. It had a twin bed inside, with a bland cream-colored blanket on it. Above the bed was a cross and there was a small mirror to the left.

  “You a whore?” He asked me as I was walking inside. “Because I don’t like whores.”

  I wanted to scream on him, but when I opened my mouth I was crying. I felt overwhelmed by all of this. I was in a city I didn’t like, in a home that wasn’t mine, with a man who hated me.

  I dropped to the bed and tossed my briefcase beside me. I let all of the pain out of my soul.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him, trying to stop crying. “This isn’t about you. I…I…”

  When I looked up at him he wasn’t angry anymore. He looked as if he felt bad for me. He rushed toward me and said, “Look, I’m sorry. I just…I don’t know what they want me to do with you. I didn’t mean to ask you if you were a whore. It’s just confusing that’s all.”

  He was about to sit next to me but he didn’t. He moved as if he was holding himself back and for a minute I thought I sensed an attraction to me. But I’m usually wrong about everything else so what do I know?

  Just as quickly as he was kind to me, he stepped back and appeared angry again, as if a switch had been turned off. “I’m across the hall if you need me. Bye.”

  He walked out of my door and slammed it so hard that the cross on my wall fell to the bed.

  I wonder what that means.

  CHAPTER SIX

  PREACHER

  I stood in my room. A ray of sunlight shined through the worn curtains. The room smelled musty like the rest of the house. It was drab, decorated with simple amenities—a dresser with a dusty bible and a single twin bed with a gray blanket covering it.

  For the last thirty minutes, I had been staring out the window at the crowds of people walking the street, mostly junkies and dope boys. Mike Brown’s nephew, Bam, really spooked me earlier that day. It was almost as if they had been waiting on me, I thought as I continued to stare. Then, suddenly, it dawned on me my grandmother didn’t pick me up from the bus station. I still had the cordless house phone in my pocket from when I called my parole officer to let him know I had arrived on time.

  I dialed my grandma’s nu
mber and she picked up on the fourth ring. “Hello,” she said sounding winded.

  “Hey, grandma.”

  “Heeey, baby,” she exclaimed joyfully. “I had to run all the way from the kitchen, I almost missed your call. I’m fixing you and everybody at that house a big dinner. Can y’all have people food?”

  “I guess so, grandma, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come here,” I said, still looking out the window.

  I saw two women get out of a car. One of them had on a pin stripe pantsuit; she was heavyset with a pleasant, oval face and wore a long ponytail. The woman with her was a redbone in a miniskirt. I couldn’t help but notice her lady humps bounce as she walked and so did everyone else on the block. All the guys began catcalling at her as she sped up her pace to catch up with the woman in front of her.

  “Why can’t I come there?” My grandma asked.

  “Because I’m in one of the worst parts of the city, off Belair Road,” I said, still watching the chick in the miniskirt.

  “Belair? What they send you there for?” She screeched.

  “It’s part of a reintegration program to help me get off parole.”

  “And help you get into the grave yard or back into prison. With all that killing going on over there, child, you was safer in prison,” she said sarcastically.

  “I’ma be okay—”

  “No you ain’t okay. You staying there in that war zone and back messing with that girl Tanya. I know you still got feelings for her but you need to find yourself a good girl. Stay away from her. You hear me, boy?”

  “I ain’t messing with her no more, grandma.”

  “Well, why did she call me and tell me you wanted her to pick you up from the bus stop instead of me?”

  At hearing that, I tore my eyes away from the pretty girl in the miniskirt and groaned under my breath. “Oh, no.” Tanya was up to her tricks again.

  “What did you say, boy?”

  “Nothing… It was just a misunderstanding, grandma.”

  “Well, lately it seem like Tanya been doing a lot of misunderstanding. She misunderstanding that you don’t get pregnant by your boyfriend’s best friend. Then to top it off she got that new baby by that other guy.”

  My grandma is kind of longwinded when you get her going and it suddenly occurred to me I needed to find a way to get off the phone.

  “Grandma, I ain’t messing with that girl. As soon as I get situated, I’ma come by there to eat,” I said trying to ease off the phone. But it was too late I had got her going.

  “And not just that, it’s something else I need to talk with you about, but you gotta promise me to stay out of it.”

  “I promise,” I said nonchalantly.

  I heard the front door close causing the curtains to slightly sway. As I looked back out the window, a tricked out Chrysler Charger drove by and the color of the car changed from red to purple when the sunlight hit it. I bugged out. It had what looked like twenty-eight inch monster rims with an earthquake stereo system that rattled the bedroom windows. I had never seen anything like it in my life.

  “The police picked up Steve for your mamas murder, then they let him go. Tanya knows all about that, plus Steve was in a shootout at some club with Mike Brown.”

  “Wha…what?” I was perplexed.

  My heart suddenly raced in my chest. I sat on the edge of the bed and ran my fingers through my hair. Steve used to be my best friend and when I went to prison, he promised to look out for Tanya. He did and he got her pregnant.

  Tanya enjoyed the finer things of the ghetto, so she was always with a dope boy and had trophies to show for it—babies by each dude. I suspected she was messing with a drug dealer, judging from the nice whip she picked me up in.

  “The police arrested Steve for my mother’s murder?” I asked with a wrinkled brow as I stared at my reflection in the mirror.

  “Now you listen to me, boy. That don’t mean a damn thing! He may not have had nothing to do with it. I’m just telling you this before you let one of them damn fools get into your ear and put a battery in your back and get you to go back into your old ways. The thing with Steve and Mike shooting at each other at the club was over Tanya when she was pregnant. That might be Mike Brown’s baby-.”

  “Shit she got a baby by Mike Brown?” I accidently blurted out.

  My mind flashed back to Tanya giving me a ride with the baby in the backseat. I mentioned Mike Brown’s name and instantly she started acting all jittery. Then I thought about Mike’s nephew confronting me with the shotgun, almost as if him and his mans were waiting for me.

  “Baby, I’ma be honest with you. I don’t know, but I do know one thing for sure—it all boils down to the money they say you took from that Brinks truck. Baby, if you got it, take it and run with it. Or you can give it back, but I’m telling you that money got blood on it. You can’t stay in the ghetto with that kind of money and expect to live. Whatever decision you make, I will support you. I love you, my grandbaby…You hear me, boy?” Her voice trembled with emotion. I nodded my head as I held the phone tight, stood up and stared out the window, watching people who suddenly looked more suspicious. There was a crowd across the street next to an abandoned building.

  “Yes, ma’am, I hear you,” I swallowed the dry lump in my throat.

  In the silence, my thoughts raced, as time stalled like a clock without hands. So much was going on inside my head. My first instinct was to holla at Steve. My mama had been tortured and murdered, and if he had something to do with it, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from reverting back to my old ways. Then, I thought about calling Tanya to pick her brain. I quickly pushed away all those thoughts as my grandma’s warning ruminated in my head. It would just lead to more drama. Finally, my mind reflected back on the money, the 1.2 million. Truthfully, I wasn’t even certain the money was still where I stashed it.

  “Baby, you still there?”

  “Huh, yea, grandma,” I said with my mind churning. Then I heard someone call my name from downstairs.

  “Jamal?” It was Ms. Diane. For some reason, her booming voice startled me.

  “Grandma, I gotta go. I’ma try to come by there today to get a plate of food but don’t you come over here.”

  “Don’t you forget what I said. You stay away from that girl and outta that mess with them boys. You gotta let God deal with them and don’t forget to bring your butt over here and get some of this food I cooked for you.”

  “Okay, grandma, I love you.”

  “I love you too, baby.”

  I hung up the phone and hurried to see what Ms. Diane wanted. When I made it downstairs, the chubby woman with the ponytail and the chick with the short miniskirt were standing there talking in a huddle.

  "This is the person I was telling you about,” Diane said. “Her name is Lourdes Beaumont, and I need you to keep her with you at all times. Her room is right across from yours, so it shouldn’t be hard.”

  My mind took a mental stutter step as I looked at Lourdes. Her starry green eyes held mine and wouldn’t let go as she stared up at me meekly. Time escaped me as I tried not to stare back at her but I couldn’t help it. It was as if I had seen her before someplace, another time. Eerily, she reminded me of someone and my heart quaked.

  She had an angelic face. Mounds of curly brown hair cascaded down her slender shoulders and I could tell it was her real hair. She was mixed with some other ethnicity that made her features look exotic. I allowed my eyes to travel down the curves of her body.

  She was dressed in chic, short miniskirt that hugged her plumb hips and wide thighs. A ray of dim light coming from the window made her skirt transparent. I wanted to avert my eyes, but I couldn’t. It looked like Lourdes Beaumont wasn’t wearing any panties. The first two buttons on her blouse exposed supple breast. Nimble nipples, large, erect as if in defiance of gravity protruded forward. Her amber skin tone was tinged with brownish orange as if she had been sun kissed by a glorious sun. Then it dawned on me where I had seen her bef
ore. She looked just like…She looked just like my mama when she was a whore, when she was selling her body for drugs. Pain panged in my gut. Lourdes Beaumont was a whore. But she was also the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Suddenly, I told myself I despised Lourdes, everything about her.

  I asked if there were any men who needed help and Lourdes made a disrespectful comment about my sexuality, something that, in prison, could have gotten her gutted.

  But through it all, after the mindless comment, Lourdes’ dreamy eyes still had a hint of mystery. All I was told about her before she came was that she was in trouble, running from something and I was to help her if I wanted to stay in the reintegration program and get a good grade. For all I knew, she could have been a snitch running around setting people up.

  I gave Lourdes an icy glare and sighed. “Follow me,” I told her.

  My words held venom just to let her know I wasn’t interested in whatever she was selling. I didn’t want to go back to prison messing with some chick with no morals. This was my only shot at freedom and nothing was going to stand in my way.

  With feline quickness, she ran up the stairs and walked so close behind me that when I slowed, she walked right up my damn leg and collided with my back. Her breasts pushed up against me and the heat from her soft body engulfed me along with the succulent scent of her flesh. She was wearing some kind of cheap perfume that smelled expensive on her. I told her not to walk so closely and we continued our route to her room.

  I tried to sound stern but her sweet perfume infiltrated my nostrils like an aphrodisiac and I felt something stir in my body as I did my best not to look down her breasts.

  She had awakened some insatiable desire in me. Something I needed to rid myself of. I needed to repel her, the woman who reminded me of my mother and had a mysterious past.

  As soon as we entered the tiny bedroom she was assigned to, I lashed out at her, fully expecting a hood rat battle. I got something else instead. She began to cry.

  Her entire facial expression changed. Her shoulders slumped as she hung her head. She tossed her briefcase, flopped on the bed and began to sob uncontrollably. I’ll never forget the look of helplessness and despair in her eyes. Her skirt rode a little up her thighs, and her cries rocked her body. Lourdes Beaumont definitely wasn’t wearing any panties. I was certain of that now.