The Candy Shop part 2 Kiki Swinson
Beating a Dead Horse
Sometime later the bedroom door finally opened. Slim stood in the entryway with a grin on his face. I didn’t see a fucking thing funny. I was tempted to ask him what the hell he saw that was so amusing, but what the hell was the use. I would’ve gotten my ass kicked all over again. And with the shape I was in at the moment, I couldn’t afford to make things any worse.
“You look like shit!” Slim commented and then he chuckled.
I lay there and tried to block him out, but unfortunately I couldn’t.
“I bet you regret sinking your teeth in my back now, huh?” he taunted. “I know you’re probably cursing yourself out right now and wondering why you messed with a crazy ass nigga like me. And you’re probably mad that you got involved in something that had nothing to do with you. I mean, if it was me standing there watching somebody I only knew for two days getting their ass tore up, I would not have risked getting hurt myself. Are you fucking insane or something? Do you like getting the shit beat out of you?”
I guess he was waiting for me to respond, but I kept my mouth closed. Knowing his dumb ass, it was probably a fucking trick question. So I lay there and let everything he said go in one ear and right out the other.
I assumed it irritated him that I was ignoring him, because he rushed toward me and lunged directly at my face. I threw my arms over my face to block him. But it didn’t matter, because he stopped his arm in mid air and then he burst into laughter. “Don’t be scared now, you little bad bitch!” he yelled.
I continued to shield my face with my arms even though he had not hit me. The fact that he was still within arm’s reach kept me alert and instantly reminded me that he could have changed his mind at any given moment. So to keep an eye out for him, I peeped through my arms.
“How does it feel to be locked up in a fucking room all by yourself like you’re a dog?” Slim asked. “You can’t leave out of here and roam around the house when you get ready. And you can’t go and use the bathroom unless you ask me. I am going to treat you like the dumb dope fiend bitch you are. And if you ever try that bullshit that you did earlier, I swear I am gonna rip your fucking throat out and feed it to the dogs outside!”
Before he walked away from me, he hawked and spit on my arm. Some of it seeped through my arms and onto my face. I guess he wasn’t trying to keep it a secret that he hated my fucking guts. In fact, he made it blatantly obvious that I was beneath him. I was a broke down dope fiend with no life. I was also a fucking prostitute, so I was a whore in his eyes. And what man had respect for a woman like that? I was convinced that as long as I dragged myself through the mud, men would continue to treat me like dirt. And since I had no will to pull myself out of this rut, I knew I had to deal with it.
Slim finally left me alone. When he walked back out of the bedroom and locked the door from the other side, I got up from the bed, grabbed one of my dirty shirts from my duffel bag, and wiped his spit off my face and arms.
While I cleaned myself, I figured that there was no way for me to convince him to let me out of the room, so I sat there and prepared to endure whatever type of punishment he sent my way.
Slim was definitely a heartless son of a bitch. And he was a control freak. He prided himself on beating and tearing down the self-esteem of women like me. To see us squirm and beg him for anything made his chest stick out. I hated that bastard for it, but that was the way the ball rolled.
Like clockwork, my body started the withdrawal process. I was getting sicker by the minute. Not only was my head pounding, but my stomach had started aching too. I jumped up from the bed twice to vomit within the same hour. I even begged Slim to let me out of the bedroom to go to the bathroom. Diarrhea had plagued my body as well, and I found myself right back in the same place I was in the day I checked into rehab over two weeks ago. And the worse part of it all was that I had no one to help me through it. When I was in the rehab center Denise coached me through my illness and I would never forget that. I knew I did her wrong in the end, but that was just the life I lived. I was a fucking drug addict, and when on drugs, I was always doing bad things to the people who cared about me. So I guess I was paying for everything I’d done to the good people who had crossed my path.
I lay in the fetal position in the center of the bed and cried out every chance my mouth opened. I didn’t have access to a watch, but it seemed like time was moving slowly. Slim poked his head in the room a couple times and laughed at me. He found it amusing that I was dope sick. I ignored his antics and tried to play the cards I was dealt.
It seemed like forever, but Jennifer and the other two hoes were finally allowed to come back to the house. I heard Tacora and Sabrina go into the other room and Jennifer came into the room with me. My body wouldn’t allow me to embrace her, but I expressed how excited I was to see her. She rushed to my side.
“Oh my God! Look at you,” she said as she sat on the edge of my bed.
I knew she was looking at how badly my face was bruised up, but that was the least of my concerns. My entire body was ill and I had a hard time dealing with it.
“You’re sick, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yes, Jennifer, I need some blow really badly to take this pain away. I swear I can’t go another minute like this,” I whined. And like a guardian angel, she went into her pocket and pulled out two pills of heroin.
If I had the strength, I would have jumped straight up and snatched both capsules from her. That was how happy I was to see them. But instead I began to cry. I was already in severe pain, but I immediately became emotional when I saw that Jennifer cared enough to cop me some dope to get well. I couldn’t hold back the tears. “Thank you so much, Jennifer,” I said as I sobbed.
“Just be quiet and sit up for me,” she instructed.
It took everything within me and the help of Jennifer to get me to sit up, but we managed to do it. Seconds later she unscrewed one of the heroin filled caps and dumped half of it into my right nostril. I snorted every grain of it. And when the first half of the capsule was empty, I begged Jennifer to put the other half up to my left nostril. She did as I asked, and immediately after I snorted every grain of heroin from that one, I laid my head back against the headboard. At this point it didn’t matter to me if Slim walked into the room and saw the residue around my nostrils. But Jennifer cared, because while I had my head tilted back, she used my shirt to wipe my nose clean. Somehow I managed to utter the words thank you.
Snorting heroin wasn’t my favorite method to get high, but at this juncture, I’d drink it if I knew it’d get me the high I so desperately needed. Truth be told, getting high wasn’t my main focus. My mission was to prevent myself from getting sick. So if it meant that I had to get that dope through any means necessary and snort it or smoke it, then that was what I’d do.
Not too long after I snorted the heroin Jennifer coped for me, I noticed that my stomach cramps started subsiding and I was beginning to feel some relief. I looked at Jennifer and thanked her at least a dozen times.
She rubbed me on my leg and said, “You don’t have to thank me. I owe you. Because if you would not have jumped on Slim’s back and bit that fucking plug out of his back, then I’d probably be lying around here bruised up like you are, or maybe even dead.”
“It’s OK,” I said, my voice barely audible.
“No, it’s not OK. Faith, you took an ass whooping for me. I mean look at you. Have you seen your fucking face?”
I shook my head.
“Girl, you are a lifesaver. And I owe you dearly.”
“It’s OK,” I repeated.
“Stop saying that, Faith, because it’s not OK,” she whispered. “That grimy motherfucker beat you like he was beating a man, and that’s not how you lash out on a woman. I don’t give a fuck what we did, a real man would not have done what he did to us earlier.”
“Don’t sweat it! Because he’s gonna get back everything he did to me, you, an
d everybody else he put his hands on,” I whispered back.
“Yeah, you’re right, but I want something to happen to his ass right now.”
“Don’t worry. It’s coming,” I told her, and then I took a deep breath and exhaled.
Jennifer massaged my back while she watched the heroin take its effect on me. “How are you feeling now?” she wanted to know.
I cracked a half smile. “I’m feeling better than I did fifteen minutes ago,” I assured her.
“Good. I’m glad,” she replied and continued to massage my back. She acted like she was my protector and that eased my mind more than I would have imagined. As the drugs took complete effect, I closed my eyes and tried to block out everything around me. Once again I was put out of my misery, and this time it was Jennifer who made it all possible.
Thank God for Jennifer, because I was back in business. I wasn’t that appealing on the surface, but I wasn’t sick, so I felt great on the inside. While the sun was rising, I was rising too. I looked around the bedroom and noticed that Jennifer wasn’t in her bed. I panicked a bit because I knew I would need that other pill of dope she had for me, and if Slim had made her leave the apartment with him, then I would be up shit’s creek without a paddle. I didn’t want to go through another withdrawal. I wanted to prevent the illness before it had a chance to rear its ugly head, so I immediately got out of bed and rushed toward the door. When I opened it up to look for Jennifer, I found her walking toward me and I exhaled.
“You all right?” she whispered.
I grabbed her right hand and pulled her into the room. “I thought you had left,” I replied nervously.
Jennifer closed the door behind us. “Where was I going at eight o’clock in the morning? I only went to the bathroom.”
“I thought it was later than that,” I said and took a seat back on the edge of my bed.
Jennifer took a seat on her bed asked me how I was feeling. I sighed and told her that I would need that other pill of heroin very soon because the other dope she gave me was wearing off. Without hesitation she dug inside her purse and handed me the other pill of heroin. I instantly felt like a kid in a candy shop. I took the drug and cupped it in the palm of my hand because I knew I would be using it in the next few minutes.
Jennifer asked me how my face felt. I told her that it felt better today.
She frowned. “Can you see out of your right eye?” she asked.
I cracked a smile. “Yeah, I can see.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like it.”
“Don’t worry. I can,” I assured her. And when it looked like she was about to open her mouth to make another comment, she paused because we both heard a door open and then it closed. We looked at the bedroom door and then we looked back at each other.
“That’s probably Tacora or Sabrina going to the bathroom,” she whispered.
“Is Slim in the living room on the couch asleep?” I asked her.
“Yeah, he’s in there.”
“Boy, I wish I had a gun because I would walk up on him in his sleep and blow his fucking head off,” I commented as I kept my volume down to a minimum. I could not afford to let anyone on the outside of that bedroom door hear me talk about anything dealing with Slim. I learned the hard way that Tacora and Sabrina were my worst enemies, and if I wanted to keep my head above water around here, then I was going to have to play it easy until the right opportunity came along.
Jennifer got up from her bed, walked over to my bed, and sat down next to me. “I heard some people talking about Paris’s grandparents putting out a reward for information about who murdered her,” she said.
Being reminded about Paris’s murder was a very sore issue for me. I mean, I was the one who she’d last talked to before she got into her killer’s truck. And even though I never had a chance to actually see the man’s face, I did get a glimpse of his license plate. I never told anyone this because I didn’t think it would matter. Immediately after she was killed Slim made the announcement that he didn’t want us to be questioned by the police, and it wasn’t like I could approach the police secretly, since Slim watched our every move. But today I had to tell Jennifer what I knew.
I took a deep breath and said, “I saw the guy’s license plate number.”
Jennifer eyes grew two inches. It was pretty obvious that she was happy. “Oh my God! Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked in a whisper.
“Because I didn’t think that it would matter.”
“Oh my God, Faith! Do you know what this could mean? We gotta get in touch with the police.”
“But how?”
Jennifer’s reaction changed. “I don’t know. But we’re gonna have to figure out something.”
“I can tell you right now that it’s going to be pretty hard coming up with a plan when we don’t have access to a cell phone. And not only that, there is simply no one in this entire neighborhood that will help us because they know we work for Slim.”
Jennifer sighed heavily. “I know. But I’m still not giving up. Because when there’s a will, there’s always a way,” she told me and then she fell silent. It was evident that she was in deep thought about ways to get this information to the police.
Looking at it from a clear standpoint, it would be a win-win situation for the both of us. Not only would we be able to break free from that asshole in the next room, we would be collecting a reward and Paris’s grandparents could rest knowing that her murderer got what he deserved, no matter what Paris may have given him.
While we were both in deep thought, we heard a little bit of chitchat in the hallway. It was none other than Slim and Sabrina.
“We need some toilet paper in the bathroom,” Jennifer and I heard her say.
“I just bought some a couple days ago and you mean to tell me that it’s all gone?” he asked.
“It was only a little bit left before I went in the bathroom. I had to go in the kitchen and get a couple paper towels before I used the bathroom.”
“Well that’s what y’all better use, because I ain’t going out this house until later on,” he told her.
Sabrina didn’t respond to Slim’s unwillingness to make a trip to the neighborhood convenience store. Instead we heard her suck her teeth, walk back into her room, and slam the door.
Jennifer chuckled. “That’s what her stupid ass gets. The nigga she’s always going to bat for and jumped on your back for won’t even go out and get her dumb ass a roll of shit paper. Now ain’t that crazy?”
I smiled and nodded.
“You should’ve seen her last night out on the corner trying to be all up in his face like they were a couple. But he wasn’t paying her ass any mind. He kept telling her to get away from him and flag down some cars to get him some money. I just laughed the whole time.”
“You gotta be kidding me. He played her like that?”
“Girl, please, he ain’t thinking about her ass for real. And she’s just too stupid to realize that he don’t give a fuck about her. Because if a nigga come on the block and fired a shot at her ass, Slim wouldn’t do a damn thing but run down behind the guy and fire a couple shots back at him to prove to everybody on the block that he will shoot his gun.”
“So you’re basically saying he’s a pussy?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, because if you really think about it, Slim was only a couple feet away from that truck when it sped off. If he really wanted to shoot that guy, he could’ve. He was right there, so why didn’t any of the bullets he fired penetrate the man’s truck?” Jennifer asked, and then she fell silent and waited for me to speak.
I was blown away when Jennifer revealed all this information to me. “You damn sure make a person go umm!” I said.
“Faith, I’m telling you some good shit. That nigga that’s on the other side of that door is a fucking coward and he preys on women like you and me. And one of these days, I am going to get him back for everything he has done to me.”
“To be honest with you, Jennifer, I�
�m not seeking revenge on that loser. I just want to get out of here and never look back.”
Jennifer looked at me and smiled. She had seen how tired I was, and how drained I was about this situation. She rubbed me on my back and said, “Don’t worry. We gon’ make sure that happens.”
The Candy Shop part 2 Kiki Swinson
Back on the Corner
Slim finally gave me the green light to leave the house once he thought that my bruises had healed enough. But it wasn’t to go on a joy ride or a shopping spree. I had to report back to the corner where I belonged, as he so eloquently put it. It had been four days since I had been out of the apartment, so I welcomed the fresh air. We were back on the corner of Washington Street and Tidewater Drive, so we knew exactly where we would stand. Everything was cool and customers rolled in one after the other. But when there was traffic like that, it attracted the police.
While we were standing at our posts Slim spotted a cop car coming toward us and warned us to get behind the building. After the police left the block, Slim ordered us to come back to our posts. While I stood there, I wondered how I would get a chance to talk to the cops about Paris’s murder. I knew that they were riding around policing the area, looking for someone who might give them the answers they needed. There was one problem, though. People in this neighborhood didn’t like the cops. They hated them to be more frank about it. They looked at the local police department as the enemy because most of the people living in the neighborhood were doing everything illegal under the sun.
Still Candy Shopping Page 10
