Saint was dying laughing at me when I knew he probably wanted to smack the shit out of me. “See, that’s exactly what I mean. Always talkin’ shit. Do you really wanna talk about some real fuck-these-hoes shit? Do you really wanna take a head count of the amount of niggas who’ve been up in you? We might as well not even have this conversation. Let’s just handle business as usual and leave it at that, Ma.” Saint shook his head at me before looking back out at the road.
I’d struck a nerve bringing Nina’s name up; I knew that I did. I wasn’t trying to hurt him when he’d done so much to help us all, but he pissed me off. He always thought I had too much attitude and too much dick in my life. To him, I was just a hoe with an attitude. At least that was the way he referred to me when his best friend, Stephen, was feeling me.
I leaned back in my seat, staring out the window, arms folded. “I’m not a hoe, Saint.”
Saint shook his head. “I never said you were one. Those are your words, not mine. I said that you’re reckless; that’s what I called you.”
I shook my head to myself. “I’ve changed a lot over the past year. I’m getting sick and tired of everyone judging me about my past like their past is squeaky-clean. Yeah, I used to break hearts daily. Yeah, I have a few dozen dicks to choose from. Yeah, I’ve fucked niggas and left them sprung. So fuckin’ what? I’d rather do that then give my all to a nigga who really doesn’t give a fuck about me. I’ve never been anything other than a pretty face and a nice body. There’s so much more to me, Saint.”
Saint glanced at me, reaching into his pocket.
I looked at him as he pulled a picture out of his pocket, handing it to me.
I hesitated before taking the picture. I held it up to my face, trying my best to fight the urge to cry. It was a picture of Stephen and I together at the skating rink in Goldsboro back in 2015. The night that he was killed, I was supposed to be out on a date with him. He had invited me to go out to eat with him at a restaurant in Raleigh. When he called to remind me of our date, I was already out on a date with this other dude. I didn’t want to go out with Stephen that night. My mother had just died, and I knew he wanted to talk me through losing her. I didn’t want to talk about my mom. I didn’t even want to go to her funeral, let alone talk about her dying on me. She had always abandoned me when I needed her the most; her death was no different. If I would have just went out with Stephen that night, he would have never been shot. I felt guilty. That conversation could have saved his life.
“Parecías feliz con Stephen; you looked happy with Stephen.” Saint had to remind me.
I couldn’t even respond, afraid that I might start crying.
“My nigga loved you, Kourtney.” Saint just kept rubbing it in. “It didn’t matter to him whether or not you had one, two, three, or five muthafuckas in your life. He was determined to change your state of mind. Personally, I don’t see what he saw in your mean, stuck-up, always-talkin’-shit, conceited ass.”
I looked at Saint, still fighting the urge to cry. He always had got-damn jokes at the wrong time
Saint grinned, grabbing my hand, intertwining it in his. “He saw a beautiful woman who was hurt and used sex as a pain reliever. He saw a woman who needed him. He saw a woman who refused to fall, even when she was pushed. He saw a woman whose last name he was determined to change. If he would have lived to this day, I guarantee you wouldn’t be living here with Nina. You would’ve been in Puerto Rico, making babies with that nigga. He was that one nigga who you know would never give up on you, who you could depend on for anything. I grew up with Stephen. Ran the streets with this nigga since I was a teenager. Ain’t no replacing him. I miss that nigga.” He held my hand to his lips, kissing it.
I sighed, feeling the tears rising in my eyes. I fanned them away with the hand he wasn’t holding. “I miss him too,” I admitted for the first time out loud. “I was so mean to that boy, Saint. And he loved me anyway.”
“We all have our story, Ma. There’s a reason why you don’t know how to love,” Saint whispered.
“I used to love, but…I don’t even have it in me anymore,” I whispered back.
“What happened?” Saint asked.
Chapter One
When I Was Just a Little Girl
The 90s…
When I telling you that it sucks to be Kourtney Marie Chambers, I really mean that shit. Sure, I was always the pretty one of the crew, but that was all that anyone ever saw. No one had ever seen the girl behind the hazel eyes, behind the light skin, behind the tapered waist, behind the long legs. Let me tell you how pretty I was. I was so pretty that my eighteen-year-old cousin, Priscilla, molested me from the age of five until the age of ten. I was so pretty that she made me play in her pussy every time I went over my Aunt Janise’s house. She even went so far as to make me play with myself in front of her and her boyfriend when they had sex. She had this dildo that she’d make him insert inside of me while she played with my clit. I didn’t know what was going on; all I knew was that it wasn’t supposed to be going on.
It went downhill from there. At the age of ten, my mother met Mario. She barely knew this man but let him watch me every night when she worked the night shift on base. The two dated for about five months. Towards the end of their relationship, my mother went on temporary military duty for six weeks and let this nigga keep me at his house because he was already keeping his twelve-year-old daughter, Sonya. She didn’t talk too much. Every time you talked to this girl, she was in tears. My mother should have known something wasn’t right with Mario, but she was too busy being happy that she’d found a man that she didn’t take the time to see that the own man’s daughter was afraid of him. I’ll never forget that girl. He never touched me, but apparently he was touching his daughter.
Sonya had a problem with Mario dating my mother. But over time, we pretty much grew on her. I don’t think I so much as heard more than ten words come out of that girl’s mouth, until the night Mario hired a teenaged babysitter to watch us one night he was working late. We came home from school to see Mario on the couch, kissing this girl. It didn’t surprise me; every nigga my mama dated seemed to have psychological problems. When Sonya saw that seventeen-year-old girl kissing and groping her forty-year-old father, she didn’t say shit; she just went about her business. So I thought anyway. I woke up that night to yelling and screaming coming from Mario’s bedroom. I assumed he was on the phone, cursing out his ex-wife as normal. But when I walked into the hallway, I saw Sonya standing in the doorway, aiming a gun at her father. She was yelling and screaming at him, telling him that it would be the last time that he’d ever touch between her legs again. That it would be the last time he’d make her stick his dick in her mouth. Before I could even get to her to grab the gun from her, she shot Mario in the head. As she aimed the gun at herself, I rushed over to her, pushing her to the ground, the gun falling from her hands, sliding across the carpet. She cried on that floor, and I cried with her. She called the police and told them what she did and what he did to make her shoot him. That man was fuckin’ his own daughter, and she was the one who ended up in jail. That man had her mind so fucked-up that she was actually jealous that he was having another relationship with another teenager. The girl was in love with her own father.
I think I must have had to call at least fourteen niggas daddy by the time I was twelve. My mother had been married at least six times by then. I was told that my father was her first husband, Richard. I loved him, even though he was only in my life for about five years. My mother moved out of his house when I was four, but I still remembered where he lived. I think I purposely got on the wrong school bus for years just so I would get off at the bus stop that stopped in front of his house. I would sit at the park for hours, just staring at his house. Even once I started going to private school, I would still get a ride over to that park so I could sit and watch my daddy going in and out of his house. In time, he remarried and had two girls. I felt abandoned. I felt unloved. My daddy went from teaching me h
ow to ride a bike, from playing house with me, from taking me to Chuck E Cheese every Saturday, from taking me to pre-school every morning to pretending that I never existed. He was my first example that if you wanted to move on, all you had to do was find someone to replace that person. That replacing a wife and a child was easy. That if you pretended a person didn’t exist, after a while, they wouldn’t. It wasn’t until I was thirty-one that I found out that my biological father was my mother’s stepfather.
***
“Aye, cuz!” Nina hugged me in front of my locker, one Friday morning, right before my second period seventh grade math class.
“Hey, boo.” I hugged my cousin back. She was dressed in her PE outfit. I, on the other hand, was dressed in my private school outfit - tight, white buttoned-down shirt and short, plaid, pleated skirt. Black socks stopped at my thighs. Black K-Swiss shoes covered my feet. I had a small frame, but I had a body on me. But nothing like Nina. For as long as I could remember, that girl has always had a body like a big-booty porn star. The boys jocked the shit out of that girl, but she never paid them any mind. Her nose stayed in a book or two.
I smacked my cousin on the butt as I let go of her.
She giggled. “Play too damn much. What’cha getting into today? You wanna go to the art exhibit with me tonight?” She always got excited about art exhibits. She was destined to be an artist, even though her mother, my aunt Rayna, swore her daughter was going to be an officer of the military, practicing law.
I shook my head, closing my locker. “Nah. I’m going to this party tonight with Geneva.”
Nina rolled her eyes. “Geneva? Lawd.”
Geneva was our fifteen-year-old cousin who helped me continue on my downfall. She partied constantly, and I don’t think there was a time that I ever saw her when she wasn’t high on something. I just wanted to have fun, and she knew how to do that. She knew how to get the party started and knew everything there was to know about pleasing a man. I’ll never forget the time my friends and me walked in on her sucking this boy’s dick. Do you think she stopped when we walked in on her? Hell nah, she kept on going and we stood there watching as that boy skeeted all over her face.
I loved Nina to death, but for the most part, there wasn’t anything poppin’ off in Nina’s world but school. She was in every got-damn academic club there was. Math club. Science club. Read-every-fuckin’-book-in-the-world club. National Honor Society. She was a tutor, tutoring anyone from third graders to seniors in undergrad. She had beauty, brains, and body. The perfect package. She had to fight the niggas off. She hated tutoring boys because they were too busy checking her out to listen to what she was trying to teach their dumb ass. Back then, I didn’t realize the importance of work before play. I was just as smart as Nina, but I could care less about showing it. No one cared about how smart that I was. When a guy saw me, all he saw was light skin, full lips, and a plump ass. He could care less about my brain. So why should I?
“Kourtney, why the fuck are you hanging with Geneva’s hot ass? Aunt Hillary is gonna turn that redbone ass of yours black and blue!” Nina shoved me in my shoulder a little, watching me roll my eyes. “Oh, I get it; who’s gonna be at this party?”
I just looked at Nina. Man, she made me fuckin’ sick, always figuring some shit out. I had the biggest crush on Geneva’s boyfriend, Bobbie Reynalds. That muthafucka was fine as hell. I couldn’t have him, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t look at him. I think I joined the dance team back in junior high just so he would see me dance when my family showed up to my competitions. Geneva dragged that boy with her everywhere. He was a basketball star, and the girls in high school were always on his nuts when she wasn’t around. He never acknowledged me, but it was all good. Soon I’d be old enough to catch his attention, I thought.
I rolled my eyes at Nina. “Girl, nobody. I just wanna have some fun tonight. Shit, it’s Friday—who stays home to study on a Friday night but you Nina? Who goes to a museum on Friday like it’s a got-damn concert? Only you, cuz’. You don’t ever wanna have any fun, shit. C’mon, forget this art exhibit, and come with me tonight, please.”
Nina shook her head. “Girl, this art exhibit is going to be phenomenal. The Knoxberry family donated millions of dollars’ worth of paintings to this museum! I sure hope they show up to the museum! I got an autograph from Kevin Knoxberry, the oldest of the fourteen children in the family, a few months ago when your mama took me to the art show in Las Vegas. I just hope I get to meet some of the grandchildren tonight; they draw, too! Girl, the youngest son of King Knoxberry, Timothy Knoxberry, who is only five, can draw his ass off, too! I’ve never seen the little boy in person, but I’ve seen his work, and it is phenomenal!” This girl was talking about that family like she was talking about meeting a celebrity or something.
“Girl, you’re talking about these people like they’re celebrities or some shit.” I sighed.
Nina looked at me like I was crazy. “What? Girl, in the art world, they are celebrities!”
“Girl, ain’t nobody interested in meeting some rich-ass white people. We deal with enough stuck up rich people in our own family. Shit, our mamas are the prime examples. You can have that shit. I’ll call you after the party.” I turned away from her, digging through my locker for my math book.
Nina sighed as the bell rang. “Boo, you don’t need to go to this party. Geneva and her crew get into all types of shit. Last week, Peanut told me that her sister was going over their place for a threesome! That she even caught her sister in bed with Geneva’s best friend, Meagan, and her boyfriend!”
I cringed at the thought. As soon as the word ‘threesome’ came out of Nina’s mouth, images of Priscilla and her boyfriend touching me flashed through my mind. I never told Nina about that. I always thought I was to blame, that maybe if I wasn’t so pretty, maybe no one would want to touch me. Maybe if I didn’t smile at Priscilla’s boyfriend, he wouldn’t have wanted me. Maybe if I had told on Priscilla when she would touch me between my legs, while giving me a bath, maybe the abuse would have stopped. It wasn’t until my cousin moved to Texas that the abuse stopped. She left me feeling like all people wanted from me was my body, and I had to give it to them or they would beat me the way that she did when I told her to stop. Maybe if…
“Kourtney!” Nina snapped me out of my trance. “We’re gonna be late for class. Come on.”
I should’ve listened to my best cousin that night, or better yet, I should have taken my ass to that art exhibit with her. I went to Geneva’s house that night to get ready for the party. Every girl she hung with was in college. Geneva was always grown. Aunt Josephine was never home. She worked at least three jobs to try to keep up with Aunt Rayna and my mother. To my mother, being an officer of the military only meant getting to meet other rich and prestigious families. It meant her getting to date several men at the same time. It meant long vacations, fancy cars, shopping sprees, and eating at expensive restaurants every night.
I was the youngest girl in the crew that night, rolling up in Empress Hall’s party, but to be honest, I fit right in. I always looked mature for my age. I looked at least sixteen. I barely wore makeup, but that night, I beat my face to death with Mac and Este Lauder. I straightened my curls; my hair was halfway down my back when it was straightened. I threw on a BeBe spaghetti-strapped tank top, jean mini skirt, and black sandals that laced up to my knees. My cousin’s friends were rolling their eyes at me from the moment I stepped into my cousin’s house that day, meeting them in her living room. Once we got to Geneva’s best friend, Empress’s party and every nigga up in the party had their eyes on my thighs, oh, they were mad as fuck. And I could really care less.
I was happy when my girls, Peanut and Brittanie, showed up to the party. Peanut was so light-skinned that she could have passed for white or at least Hispanic. Brittanie had the biggest booty on a white girl that I’d ever seen. Outside of Nina and my cousin, Justine, these were the only two girls that I hung around. You couldn’t tell them anything t
hat you didn’t want anyone else to know, but if you needed anything, they always had your back. We’d known each other since the first grade and had been inseparable ever since. Nina didn’t care for them too much but hung around them because I did. She said they were always up to some shit. She was right, but I always had a good time with them.
“Girl!” Peanut squealed, throwing her arms around me. “Everyone in this bitch is like nineteen! We shouldn’t even be here, for real.”
I laughed. “I just came to have a good time. My cousin said not to drink the punch because her people spiked it with every type of vodka in Empress’s mama’s wine hutch. So you already know I’m about to go snatch me a plastic cup.”
Brittanie rolled her eyes. “I’m just here to smoke something with my boy, Wayne. He should be here in a minute. Y’all two hoes are here to fuck some of these niggas, knowing good and well fuckin’ with anyone of them will have that muthafucka under the jail.”
“Girl, you sound just like Nina’s lame ass.” Peanut rolled her eyes back at Brittanie.
I shoved Peanut a little. “Don’t talk about my cousin, bitch. She has too much going on for her to get caught up in the shit we do. She went to an art exhibit; the same place I should have been tonight.”
Brittanie nodded towards the punch table. “Oh, there’s my boo, Wayne, over there at the punch table with your boy, Kourtney. I know that idiot doesn’t think I’m about to smoke with all them muthafuckas he has with him.”
We all looked over at the punch table where fine ass Bobbie stood, drinking from a red plastic cup. Oh, he looked amazing. He was dressed in all black from head to toe, with a black and white bandanna around his neck. He stayed fresh to death. You should have seen the girls standing around gawking at him, myself included. He was so fine, with all that damn hair on his head. His hair was braided back, in tight cornrows.
I Gave Him My Heart Page 2
