Kiss the Ring

by Meesha Mink

  Project life was just as loud as usual but Naeema barely heard any of it as she stepped on the elevator and leaned back against the wall. She closed her eyes just as a tear raced down her cheek.

  What’m I gonna do?

  “Damn, yo, you a’ight, shawty?”

  Naeema nodded, not even bothering to open her eyes and see who took a moment out of their night to give even a small fuck about her.

  “It’ll be a’ight, yo,” he said just as the elevator gears ground to a halt.

  When Naeema finally opened her eyes and pushed off the wall to exit the elevator, she was alone. She walked through the lobby and left the building. It was late September and the air was cool. It pushed right through her short jean jacket without a care. Shivering, she wrapped the bag around her wrist some more and then crossed her arms over her chest.

  She had to see Chance and convince him this was his baby. She just knew if she could talk to him to see where that lie came from and then defeat it, that shit would be okay. I’m’a wait for him to come home,’ she thought, looking around for somewhere to sit.

  Naeema moved across the courtyard to one of the benches. For thirty minutes she shivered, watched the endless activity around the buildings, and either called or texted Chance. She was just pulling out her phone to text him again when someone called out, “Yo, Chance. Whaddup?”

  She stood up and her head jerked left and right as her eyes searched the scene for a sight of him. Her mouth fell open and her heart sank to see him walking up the street with his arm around a girl she didn’t recognize. She stood there feeling like the fool she was as her babyfather and his new boo laughed and played and kissed as they walked into the building together. Naeema knew from the bags they was carrying that he was moving his new bitch in to fill her spot in his life and in his bed.

  Naeema and the baby weren’t wanted or needed anymore.

  “They’ll run right through a pretty girl like you.”

  Her grandfather’s words came back to her so clearly.

  She started to step to them and fight the girl.

  She started to go upstairs, knock on the door, and bust them.

  She started to call his phone for the thousandth time.

  In the end she reached in her back pocket for the photo and tore it in half before she counted the last of the money she had to her name in the world. Twelve dollars, left over from a twenty she begged out of Chance last week.

  Before she got with him she had mad hangout partners that used to let her stay with them, but once she locked in with Chance, she turned her back on hanging out and partying to sit up in that apartment and be his fool while he was out in the world living it up.

  “I ain’t got nobody in the world. It’s just me,” she whispered, her voice broken and shaky from the betrayal. The pain. The shame. The fear.

  Naeema crossed the street and stood on the corner waiting for the bus. Though her baby kicked and moved in her stomach, she felt so alone. She kept blinking to keep those tears from blurring her vision. She kept sniffing to keep the tears from falling.

  It wasn’t until she rode that bus downtown and then walked the few blocks to Newark Penn Station to take a seat, with all of her shit in a garbage bag, that her resolve broke like a motherfucker and she cried.

  • • •

  Naeema’s heart still stung from the pain of that night. She bit her bottom lip and shook her head at one of her first lessons in how fucked up people could be. How fucked up the world could seem to a pregnant and homeless sixteen-year-old kid.

  She never saw Chance or Mack again. Even as she slept in Penn Station at night and begged for money to buy food, she kept minutes on her phone, hoping he would call and check on her. He never did. And her pride wouldn’t let her call him.

  “Humph,” she grunted at the memories.

  Naeema could never forget being woken up about one in the morning in Penn Station by an elderly Spanish woman in a McDonald’s uniform asking her to understand someday that she’d just been looking out for her and her unborn baby. Naeema had been confused until the two policemen standing behind the woman stepped forward.

  She had been pissed but she knew from the jump that the woman had only been trying to help a young homeless pregnant teen taking refuge from the streets in a train station for the last month. To Naeema, the group home where she was placed wasn’t much better.

  “That’s another sad fucking story,” she muttered, rising up off the bed at the sound of commotion outside.

  She walked over to the window and opened the slats in the blinds. Up the street there was a News 12 van double-parked with the reporter and his cameraman standing in the street. A young girl was standing on the sidewalk cussing up a storm and waving her arms at them. “The fuck?”

  Naeema walked over to the door, lifting and pulling it open, to step out onto the porch.

  “Get that camera out my fucking face!” the woman yelled at damn near a screech level.

  She was surprised to see Sarge at the end of the drive looking up at the ruckus as well. Coming down the stairs, she stepped over the hanging gate to go and stand beside him. “What’s going on?”

  “DYFUS just left with her kids and she been carrying on with those news people ever since,” he said, his eyes locked on the scene.

  “Hey, ma.”

  Naeema looked over at a young dude in an old Honda Accord waving at her from the driver’s seat. He smiled as he reached over to turn up the volume.

  The chorus to an old Plies song filled the air.

  “We fucking or what? Huh? Huh?”

  Naeema rolled her eyes and turned her head to ignore him.

  “Respect is always deserved,” Sarge said.

  “We fucking or what? Huh? Huh?”

  Naeema looked at Sarge as the music blared on even after the car eventually rolled away.

  “But a woman gots to remember that not every man got enough sense to know that. For some respect is given only where it is earned, Naeema,” he said.

  “I hear you, Sarge,” she said.

  He was talking about the way she dressed as always. Sarge hated the skintight clothing Naeema favored and she knew his head was about to explode with her outside in just a sports bra and shorts.

  “Hearing ain’t shit,” he said. “Listening and taking heed is what matters.”

  She reached over to squeeze his beard-covered cheek but he swatted her hand away with an angry turn-up of his lips.

  With the music gone the woman’s tirade continued loud and clear.

  Naeema looked up and down the length of the street to see other neighbors outside coping with the heat to get a better view of the drama. She smiled a little at the sight of Coko sitting on her porch. Her hair was actually combed back in a loose ponytail and she looked sober as she too watched the scene up the street.

  Naeema waved to her with a smile but Coko never saw her, as a black-on-black Tahoe pulled up and Coko went down the stairs to sit in the front seat. Soon her head disappeared above the driver’s lap.

  “I oughta go over and knock on the glass,” she said, censoring her profanity out of respect for Sarge. “Mess his good time all the way up.”

  “For what?” Sarge asked. “To get your head blown off just to keep her from getting high? Shee-it. She got to be willing to face them demons herself . . . same way you trying to face yours.”

  Naeema spun her head to look at Sarge but he had already turned and headed back up the drive to the backyard and through the rear door to the kitchen. She wondered just what-all Sarge knew about her life. Living in the basement he probably heard any- and everything that went on with her. Hell, she didn’t know if he gave a fuck either way.

  She leaned back against the corner of the fence feeling confident the police were going to be added to the mix at any moment. At the sound of a car door closing, she looked over her shoulder just as Coko came around the back of the SUV and stepped up onto the curb.

  That was quick.

  Coko
paused and looked at her. Again Naeema raised her hand and waved at her. Coko shifted her eyes away as she waved back and then rushed up the stairs and into her house.

  She could have sworn she saw shame on the woman’s face.

  Bzzzzzz.

  Naeema reached in her back pocket and pulled out her cell phone. Tank. She started not to answer him. With a roll of her eyes she accepted the call.

  “You home?” he asked before she could say a word.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I got something for you.”

  “I got company,” she lied.

  “Tell him to pull it out for a sec, your husband on the way.”

  He hung up.

  Naeema turned to head back in the house but she had just reached the top step when she heard the roar of a motorcycle. She looked over her shoulder and sure enough, Tank turned the corner off Eastern Parkway and pulled to a stop in front of the house. She didn’t know if he was coming in or not, so she came only halfway down the stairs.

  He looked as good as always and her eyes were locked on him as he took his helmet off and motioned for her to come to him, pulling a manila folder from beneath his shirt, tucked in the waistband of his jeans. He eyed her up and down and shook his head as she walked up to him. “Your man can’t control you?” he asked as he handed her the folder.

  “He wouldn’t be alone . . . ’cause you couldn’t either,” Naeema said. “And your bitch can’t keep you from my house?”

  Tank laughed. “Nah, my bitch can’t keep me from your house,” he said with a smooth lick of his lips, putting his helmet back on. “And neither can your man.”

  She stepped back as he drove off.

  She opened the folder and pulled out the sheets of paper. “Juvenile criminal arrest record of Brandon Mack,” she read and then flipped to the second sheet.

  Naeema looked up the street just as Tank turned the corner on his motorcycle and disappeared from her view.

  • • •

  Darkness reigned over the city as Naeema pulled up in front of the abandoned two-story home on the corner. It was boarded up and had those yellow signs that the city put on abandoned homes. For three months of her life she lived at the Better Days Group Home for Girls.

  She had hated it there. Too many rules. Too many chores. Too crowded. Not safe. No freedom. No privacy. After all that time on her own she had felt like she was losing her mind. She was just sixteen and that or another group home would’ve been her and her baby’s life for the next two years until she turned eighteen.

  She couldn’t see it then.

  Naeema looked up the street, just two houses down, to the small one-story house with dark green shutters and white vinyl siding. She rolled the motorcycle ahead and turned up the driveway. Exterior lights came on. As Naeema got off the motorcycle, lights came on behind the side door just moments before it opened.

  She removed her helmet and looked up at Ms. JuJu standing there in her floor-length robe, her silver hair in those old-fashioned foam rollers. “I wondered when I’d see you again,” she said before turning to walk back in the house, leaving the door open.

  Naeema stumbled back twice before she took a deep breath and steadied herself, then finally walked up the few steps leading into the house.

  “Are you drunk?” Ms. JuJu asked, her voice sharp and hard with displeasure.

  “And high,” Naeema added, pulling back one of the chairs at the small kitchen table to slump down into.

  “You trying to kill yourself?”

  Naeema let her head drop into her hands as she shook her head. “I’m trying to figure out why you let my son run fucking wild,” she said, holding her head up with effort to look across the table at the woman. “I wanted you to make him better than that. And you didn’t.”

  Ms. JuJu leaned back in her chair at the table as she released this heavy-ass sigh. “Get it all off your chest, Naeema . . . and then I gots some things to get off mine.”

  Naeema wiped her face with her hands and laughed bitterly as her eyes filled with tears that she let fall. “There ain’t shit you can say to me . . . that I ain’t said to myself. I know . . . I know . . . I . . . I know I ain’t shit,” she said, her voice breaking. “I know I wasn’t good for him. I couldn’t provide for him. I picked a ‘ain’t shit’ daddy for him. I know all that. You think . . . you think . . . I don’t know all of that?”

  Ms. JuJu remained silent, her eyes piercing Naeema coldly.

  “But I gave him to you because you were supposed to be better for him but . . . where the fuck were you . . . when he was shoplifting at nine fucking years old, Ms. JuJu? Stealing cars at twelve. Selling and smoking weed at thirteen. Vandalizing. Drinking. Robbing motherfuckers. Where the fuck were you at when my son was in and out of juvie. What, you just got the check and said fuck it?”

  “You finished?” Ms. JuJu asked. Naeema just waved her hand like she was shooing away a fly.

  “When you out in them streets you loved so much, partying and smoking that weed, I was here doing what you asked me to do . . . what you wasn’t woman enough to do—”

  “I was sixteen!” Naeema roared, slamming her hand down on the table and causing the glass salt and pepper shakers on top of it to rattle.

  “And I raised your son for fourteen more years after that with no sign of you,” Ms. JuJu said sharply. “You had just started sending money on the regular six years ago.”

  “You got a check from the state,” Naeema said, knowing it sounded selfish and stupid even to her own ears.

  Ms. JuJu raised her hands and clapped slowly, meaning to mock her. “That check didn’t make sure he was washed and fed and did his homework every night. That check didn’t make sure he went to church every Sunday. That check didn’t throw him birthday parties and give him a good Christmas every year. That check didn’t hug and kiss him. And that check didn’t mean a thing when he wondered where the hell his mother and father were. The same mother and father too busy being young and dumb in them streets to raise him. The same parents that passed that love of the streets on to their son.”

  Naeema had dropped her head onto the table, but Ms. JuJu gripped her chin and jerked her face upward so that they looked each other in the eye. Woman to woman.

  “I’m sorry, but that boy was just as wild as you, Naeema. I did everything I promised I would do for your boy and more but I can’t fight what’s in his blood nor what ate him up on the inside because there’s nothing like a mother’s love . . . and he never got that from you,” she finished in a fierce whisper before she released her hold on her chin.

  Naeema’s head hung low and her shoulders shook as she cried. “My boy dead . . . and if I died and went to heaven right now he wouldn’t even know me,” she wailed as her pain pierced her sharply.

  Ms. JuJu came around the table and surprised Naeema when she gathered her into her arms and rocked her. “You did the best you could with what you knew. Ask God to forgive you and move on, Naeema, or you gonna die on the inside from things you can’t change.”

  Naeema nodded in understanding, even though she didn’t believe the words. Was God’s forgiveness really that easy to receive? I doubt that shit.

  She allowed her grief to wash over her. It wasn’t the first time she’d shed tears over Brandon’s death but it was the first time anyone had consoled her. Ms. JuJu was the only person who knew Naeema’s truth. She was the bridge between her past and her present. The only person in her life with whom she could say “my son” and not have to offer explanations or apologies.

  “I just wish I knew who killed him,” Naeema said, long after her tears had subsided and she’d used the damp cloth Ms. JuJu pushed into her hands to wipe her face.

  “I wish I knew too, but we have to leave that in God’s hands, Naeema.”

  “I can’t,” Naeema admitted in a soft whisper.

  “You have to.”

  Naeema didn’t bother to change the old woman’s mind because hers was already set. “Have the police said anyt
hing?” she asked.

  “Haven’t heard from them in a while. Last I know they were thinking some boy Brandon stole a cell phone from might have did it, but they brought him in for questioning and let him go.”

  Yet another lead? The copy of the report she had was months old and this tidbit of news wasn’t in it. So much was coming at her at one time. She didn’t know whether to feel blessed for the knowledge or overwhelmed by so many roads to be tracked for the truth. What if I follow the wrong lead and the murderer gets away? “Can I have some coffee? I need to get home and I don’t know if I can make it back across town like this,” she said. “Shit, I don’t know how the hell I made it here.”

  Ms. JuJu stood up and began moving about her neat kitchen. “You are going up to Brandon’s old room and sleep off that drunk before you leave here. And maybe . . . you can look around his room and you can stop hurting from your guilt long enough for me to tell you more about him. If you want,” she added gently.

  Naeema had first known Ms. JuJu as the woman volunteering at the group home. She came every day with a homemade dessert and was sure to call each one of the troubled teens “sugar” “love” or “baby.” And when she got news one of them misbehaved, she would chastise them in a way that evoked guilt and a desire to make her proud. With her came a love that made those who were able to receive it feel warm and welcomed.

  During her three months at the group home, Naeema had found herself really looking forward to the few hours a day Ms. JuJu was there. The woman discovered that Naeema loved her banana nut bread and once a week she brought a loaf just to give to Naeema, along with a sweet smile and a soft pat on her rounded belly. And when Naeema found out that the nice older woman from down the street, who she would see from her bedroom window walking to church every Sunday morning, didn’t have children of her own, Naeema figured they could help each other.

  The one and only time Naeema had been in Ms. JuJu’s house was the day she brought Brandon to her and asked her to raise him fourteen years ago. She had been so relieved when the woman had reluctantly agreed to take care of him. Not even when she called to tell her of his death had Naeema come to her home—Brandon’s home. “I want that and . . . and thank you. Thank you, Ms. JuJu . . . for everything,” she said.