“You’re probably tired from your flight,” Tyrell said to me around midnight. “Let me walk you home.”
“Can I ask you something?” I said as he helped me to my feet.
“Anything,” his voice was almost a whisper and kind of sensual. For a moment, my mind flashed back to that night he saved my life. He told me he had always had a crush on me and in that moment I was so tempted to kiss him. But it was just a fleeting moment. There could never be anything between Tyrell and me. Could there be?
Staring into his eyes, I lost my balance for a second. Tyrell wrapped his arm around my waist to steady me.
“You okay?” he asked, truly concerned.
“Yeah fine.” I stepped away. Remembering all the times LaPorscha beat me up over him, I briefly looked around for her. Certain that she was nowhere near, I said, “Um, I was just wondering who that little girl was. The one in the black tank top.”
Tyrell turned and stared at the crowd for a moment. “That’s Tiki Velasquez.”
“Tiki? Oh no, was she named after Tiki Barber or something?”
Tyrell shook his head. “Worse. Her real name is Tequila.”
“Wow!” was all I could say. Unfortunately, I had heard worse. “How old is she?”
“Uh, twelve. Maybe thirteen. She’s new here. Been living with her grandma, Mrs. Jensen, after her mother got pinched for prostitution.”
Mrs. Jensen lived across the hall from my apartment. She was on disability and could barely take care of herself. I had no idea how she managed to handle an obviously active preteen. My heart went out to the little girl. I couldn’t imagine how difficult her life was right now.
“Don’t feel too bad for her,” Tyrell said, reading my expression. “That girl is trouble. She’s got some serious issues.”
I stared at the girl a little longer. She was pretty dark, but with a surname like Velasquez I knew she must have had some Spanish in her, which would also explain her silky waist-length hair. She was tall for twelve or thirteen and skinny as a rail. I wondered if her thin stature had anything to do with her economic status. I was sure she’d had quite a difficult life living with a mother who probably had to resort to prostitution just to feed her child.
Of course, I could be completely wrong about her mother. She could be a tramp who cared nothing about her child. But somehow I always found a way to see the best in people.
Tiki had an air of confidence and apparently loved to be the center of attention. She was currently enjoying stealing the show at the impromptu neighborhood dance party. She enjoyed it so much that when another girl tried to steal her spotlight she reared back and punched her in the eye.
Shaking my head, I said, “Well of course she’s got issues. Her mother is in jail. And I suspect her father is not in the picture since she’s living with her disabled grandmother.”
He nodded. “Be right back,” he said running toward where a full-fledged fight had broken out between Tiki and a girl nearly twice her size. He was going to break up the brawl. I always admired what a good heart Tyrell had. Though he led a gang and had probably personally killed people, he always seemed to do the right thing whenever he was around me. Right now, he was trying to hold an out of control Tiki back before she hurt someone else or herself. She was flailing around and screaming like a petite Tasmanian devil. He was so right. The girl had serious issues.
“The poor girl doesn’t have a chance,” I thought out loud. “Maybe I should give her one.”
Watching Tiki on the dance floor or, shall I say dance concrete, I think I finally realized what my spot or focal point was. It wasn’t Damian and it wasn’t Will. I had neither of them at the moment, yet I was still alive. I was still surviving. Maybe my focal point was Venton Heights itself. It was the place I kept returning to after all. It was what kept me centered and grounded. No matter where I went in life, I could never forget where I came from.
Coming from Venton Heights didn’t need to define me. I could still be who I wanted to be. Venton Heights just added a little seasoning to my life.
Immediately, I started to think of ways to spread this idea to a new generation of Venton Height’s teenagers. Somehow I knew it would start with Tiki.
Chapter 22
Hair Salon
I didn’t wake up until well after noon the next day. I think a combination of jet lag and depression over my situation with Will had contributed to this unparalled fatigue I felt. In an effort to try to get my energy up, I decided to go for a jog, but as soon as I got downstairs I ran into an old … friend.
“Don’t worry, I’m not here to fight you,” LaPorscha said when she noted my defenses going up. “I could probably still beat your ass even though I’m five months pregnant, but that’s not why I’m here.” LaPorscha rubbed her stomach and burped. “Sorry, I’m pregnant,” she said a little embarrassed. She didn’t look five months pregnant. She was too thin. She seemed proud of that fact as well. She still dressed like a cheap tramp; a cheap tramp with a slight bulge hanging out from underneath her tight green shirt. Unfortunately, she was still quite pretty even though she had a belly hanging over her belt and was belching like a drunken sailor. LaPorscha was always one of the prettiest girls in the neighborhood. I remember thinking that only Sasha was prettier.
“What do you want, LaPorscha?”
“I need your help.” I have to admit, this intrigued me a bit. I’d known this girl since the third grade and all she ever needed was to see me in tears. She bullied me relentlessly every day until I went to Bridgeton. Even after that, if she ever caught me alone in Venton Heights, she took it as an opportunity to pound me. In fact, my last memory of her was just that. She was beating my face in until I luckily grabbed a piece of her weave, ripped it out, and then ran for my life. After that, Sasha said or did something to LaPorscha and I never heard from her again.
“Boo Man says you’re good with languages and stuff. That true?” Boo Man was what everyone called Tyrell. He was her boyfriend and the father of her child, or shall I say children. His childhood crush on me was LaPorscha’s motivation for hating me.
“I guess,” I told LaPorscha.
“Well, I have a hair appointment right now and those bit … sorry, Boo Man says you don’t like profanity. Those ladies are always talking sh ... stuff about me.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“They from Africa and Boo Man say they speak French. You speak French?”
“A little.”
“Good. Come with me, pretend you don’t know what they sayin’ and then tell me what they sayin’. Know what I’m sayin’?” I stared at her in disbelief. After beating the crap out of me for years, she now wanted my help. What made her think that I would want to do anything to help her? I think she noticed my hesitation because she said, “I knew you would say no. But Boo Man thinks you’re like the nicest person on the face of the earth and that you’d do anything to help someone. I knew he was wrong. I can’t wait to tell him this.” LaPorscha turned to walk away.
“Wait,” I said, thinking of Tyrell and all he’d done for me. He’d protected me in Venton Heights all of my life. He made sure guys didn’t hit on me and he even stopped a man from raping me a few weeks before I went to Rome. I guess the least I could do was to help his silly girlfriend. “I’ll do it.”
“So what are you having?” I asked as we walked to the beauty shop where she got her weave done.
“Twin girls,” she said animatedly as she began to talk about how excited her son Tercel was to have little sisters on the way. Yes, her son’s name was Tercel like the car.
Before I could think about it clearly I found myself saying, “What are you gonna name them? Camry and Corolla?” I smiled at my little joke, but LaPorscha didn’t pick up on the sarcasm.
Instead she just said, “Actually, I was thinking Chevette and Miata. But I do kinda like Camry.” I almost came to tears from holding back my laughter.
“What about you? What are you having?” she asked
.
I stopped short. “What are you talking about?”
“Your baby. What are you having?”
“I’m not pregnant.”
LaPorscha smiled. “Don’t worry about it. You ain’t got to be ashamed or nothin’. You married, right?”
“Seriously, I’m not pregnant.”
“Oh, you serious? You don’t know? Look, girl. Some people have ‘Gay-dar’. I got ‘Baby-dar.’
“Baby-dar?”
“Yeah I can tell when someone is pregnant faster than a Clearblue Easy.”
“Baby-dar?” I said again still trying to get over the nickname she had given her supposed gift.
“Yep. It comes in handy when hoochies be tryin’ to roll up on my man talkin’ about he they baby daddy. I be like ‘oh no, ho. You were so pregnant before ya’ll even met.’“
“Right,” I said nodding slowly. She was out of her mind.
“You don’t believe me?” LaPorscha started digging around in her purse. “Here, take this. It’s my emergency test.”
“You keep an emergency pregnancy test in your purse?”
“Like I said, bitches be tryin’ to pull some mess all the time. I come prepared.”
“That really makes absolutely no sense, but whatever,” I said, tucking it into my bag so no one would see. I momentarily tried to picture LaPorscha trying to force a girl to take a pregnancy test but then quickly purged the image from my mind
As we walked to the hair salon, I started to really think about the possibility. Was I ready to have a baby? I guessed it was definitely possible since Will and I had been kind of casual with protection. But how would I not know? Didn’t women have some sort of symptoms or something? Well, I was tired a lot lately. And my period had always been kind of irregular. So I guessed it was possible that LaPorscha was right. I’d have to use her emergency pregnancy test to find out.
“Wonderbread the daddy?” she asked a few minutes later.
I smiled at hearing the nickname the Venton Heights boys had given Will. When we lived in New Jersey, Will would go play basketball while I rehearsed at Ms. Alexander’s studio. Even though Will was a Bridgeton rich kid, he didn’t mind playing basketball in the slums. Will would play basketball anywhere, anytime, anyplace.
“If I’m pregnant, which I’m not saying I am, but IF I’m pregnant then yeah, he the daddy,” I said imitating her annunciation.
“Why you say it like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you tryin’ to sound like me. Don’t try to be me. You be you and I be me. Can’t nobody be LaPorscha Bennett anyways. So don’t try.”
“Oh, okay. Well, yes, Wonderbread is the only possible option for the father.”
When we got to the salon, LaPorscha wasn’t happy with me just sitting around while she got her hair done. She thought they might suspect me as a spy. She made me get my hair done with her. So there I was sitting in a braid shop getting corn rows in my hair. I don’t know why I decided on corn rows, I just did. I didn’t want to get a weave and it wasn’t the type of place where you could just ask for a wash and style. All they did was braids and weaves.
Now, I had danced with pulled muscles, sprained ankles, and torn ligaments. I’d danced on blistered feet, bruised knees, and even a broken finger. All of those things were very painful, but none of them prepared me for the pain of getting my hair braided for the first time.
I was almost in too much pain to concentrate on what the hairstylists were saying. They were really hard to understand. They spoke so fast and with a bit of an African accent. I was able to gather that they were from the Ivory Coast or Cote d’Ivoire. Anyway, they were definitely talking about LaPorscha. They really disliked the girl. But not for the reasons I used to dislike her. You know, because she was extraordinarily mean and beat me up every chance she got. No, they hated her because she was a bad tipper.
The woman braiding my hair had about a million bracelets on her arm and they kept rattling in my ear as she braided my hair. The other woman had one of those Bluetooth earpieces on and every once in a while started talking on the phone to someone, which really totally confused me.
I had to hold in a chuckle when they complained about how she could afford a tacky gold tooth, but not a little extra for the person who routinely made her nappy hair look fabulous once a month.
But my desire to laugh quickly waned as they started to talk about me.
“Isn’t she the girl that was in the newspaper yesterday?” Bluetooth Girl asked Bracelet Girl.
“No, that girl is in jail right now,” Bracelet Girl answered. “They look alike though. Maybe they are related.”
Oh my goodness. They had to be talking about Sasha.
“Que savez-vous sur ma soeur?” Okay, so my French wasn’t perfect but they understood that I was trying to find out what they knew about my sister.
“Parlez-vous francais?” Bracelet Girl asked as she covered her mouth in shock.
“Oui, je comprends assez pour savoir que vous n’êtes pas un grand ventilateur de LaPorscha,” I said.
“You said my name?” LaPorscha said, turning her attention away from the latest episode of Maury Povitch. “What are they saying?”
I ignored her and said, “You said there was a girl who looked like me in the newspaper and that she was in jail. I think that’s my sister.”
Bracelet Girl put down a piece of weave then went over to a pile of newspapers in the lobby. She flipped through a couple and picked one out.
“Nous n’avons pas su que vous avez parlé du français. Désolé si nous vous avons offensé. Mais vous devez dire votre ami elle a besoin d’apprendre donner un pourboire.
I grabbed the article and immediately saw a picture of Sasha.
“What did they say? What did they say?” LaPorscha asked tugging at my sleeve.
“You have to leave better tips.” With my eyes still glued to Sasha’s picture, I stood up and headed outside.
“Tip? I didn’t even know I was supposed to tip.”
“Exactly,” I yelled behind me.
Chapter 23
No Saints Here
I had a lot on my mind when I got back to my apartment in Venton Heights. First of all, it felt like that emergency pregnancy test was burning a hole in my purse. I was so tempted to use it in the bathroom of Sofia’s African Hair Braiding salon. But finding out whether I was going to be a mother was not something I particularly wanted to share with Sofia.
I also couldn’t get Sasha out of my head. On the way home, I actually called the reporter of the story and found out that my sister was arrested for extortion and larceny but she wasn’t in jail anymore. She had been released on bail. Now I just had to find her. I didn’t know why I needed to find her. I just did. I had to make sure she was all right. And once I made sure she was all right, I would kill her.
Sitting on my bed, I stared at the pregnancy test willing myself to just go and use it. I was terrified though. I didn’t know whether I could handle the result either way. If I was pregnant, there was the distinct possibility that I would be a single mother given the fact that my husband wanted no contact with me. That wouldn’t be the absolute worst thing in the world. There were millions of single mothers out there who were able to successfully raise children. My mother was a single mother. And I turned out okay. My sister didn’t. But she had nothing to do with this. It was just that in all the dreaming about my life in the future, single motherhood had never popped up.
If I wasn’t pregnant, that might be the last opportunity to somehow have a part of Will in my life. He could be gone from me forever.
I couldn’t deal with either of those options in that moment. I set the test down, grabbed my coat, and went in search of my sister.
I had no idea where she would be. But I knew where I could start. David Winthrop.
When I was at Bridgeton Academy before I met Will, I had a huge crush on David. As it turned out, he was a drug addicted liar and cheat who was actually hooking up
with my sister. It was his false testimony that had gotten me expelled from Bridgeton. Thankfully, Will loved me enough to go about proving my innocence. He saved me in that situation.
I must have been the worst judge of character in the world. First, I was completely blind to David Winthrop and then I fell for a sleaze like Damian Karl. All the while I had a wonderful, loving, fragile guy like Will. Sure Will had his issues, but so did everyone. We could work through his problems together. If I ever got another chance with Will, there was no way I would let him go.
Unfortunately, I remembered exactly where David lived. It was where the first Bitch Brigade ambush happened. They pounced on me when I was completely distraught after the first rock in my rocky relationship with Will. See, he had proposed to me only after two months of dating and it scared me to death.
After I rejected him, I ended up at David’s house where Ashley, Brittany and Lauren showed up and handed me lemonade laced with grain alcohol. Later that night, I ended up doing a strip tease that landed on the internet. Memories of that traumatic set up swarmed into my brain like a pack of angry bees. It hurt too much to think about and it was downright ridiculous that I was now, once again, standing at the scene of the crime. But it was the only way to find my sister. If anyone knew where she was, it would be the boy she had a twisted love affair with who also happened to be the father of her baby. Plus, he was probably also the one who bailed her out. I knew for a fact my mother didn’t have the money to do so.
I didn’t know what my plan was exactly. Why in the world would David tell me anything about Sasha let alone talk to me at all? Instead of coming up with some sort of extensive speech or explanation, I reached out and rang the doorbell before I could think about the million reasons why this was stupid and talk myself out of it.
The Saint of Petersburg (Dancing Dream #3) Page 9
