by Lena Scott
Marquis rolled his eyes, and Apple giggled, as if sensing her mother’s excitement to be talking to a man of some substance. If she was thinking that, she was right, because Unique was immediately taken. There was something about him that caught her attention. Sure she felt that way about every man at first, but this one was different.
“It’s okay.”
“No, no it’s not.” Unique squinted her eyes at Marquis, letting him know he was in for it, like she’d been able to discipline him lately. It had been nearly a year since she’d whupped him. He was nearly as tall as her already, so wrestling him to the ground was out too.
“I work for the Department of Justice. I see our angry young men and work with them every day.”
“My son is not angry.”
The man’s brow furrowed “You think not? That’s too bad because, trust me, he is.”
Suddenly Unique began to feel something else coming from the man, something parental, judgmental. She didn’t like it. “Well, I need to get going,” she said, excusing herself, and herding her bunch toward the automatic door. “Come on, Cammie,” she barked at the chubby child who was listening intently to the conversation.
“I’m angry,” Cammie said.
Mortified, Unique’s mouth dropped open. “Angry about what?”
“I’m just angry about everything.” Cammie quickly moved toward the market’s automatic door.
Out of the corner of her eye, Unique caught the man’s concerned expression.
“I know what she’s mad about, Mama,” Gina busted in.
Cammie swatted her.
“Cammie, stop it. What you mad about, girl? You’re only nine,” Unique said, trying to move in front of the child, and still holding the hand of four-year-old Apple.
Just then the man took the liberty to touch Unique’s arm, and she looked at him straight on. Her eyes must have reflected her emotions and have been blazing, because he stepped back slightly.
“I’m just mad, that’s all.” Cammie stomped off into the store.
The man reached into his jacket and produced a card. “Here’s my card.”
Unique stared at it as if frightened by what it could mean for her—confessions, more case workers. Maybe they would be trying to take her kids from her. Perhaps it was more of a reality check attached to it than she was ready for.
Gina snatched it and looked at it as if she could read. “What’s your name?”
“Derrick. Derrick Winfrey.” He looked up at Unique, hoping she was listening too.
“You a social worker?” Marquis asked. “You trying to take us from our mother?”
Unique was shocked at how much Marquis’s thoughts reflected hers at that moment.
“No, no. I just want to be her friend. Your friend. Maybe give her somebody to talk to.”
“You sound like a white man. I don’t believe you. I think you’re trying to take us from our mother.” Marquis snatched the card from Gina and tore it in half. Then he threw it in Derrick’s face and stormed into the market behind Cammie.
Unique gasped. “I’m sorry. I’m sooo sorry.”
“He’s angry, ma, and you need to check that.” Derrick handed Unique a fresh card, which she took quickly and dropped in her bag.
“It’s his birthday, and his father didn’t even call, so . . .”
“What’s wrong with our men? A fine woman like you shouldn’t have to wait for a phone call. Give me your number.”
“555-659-9311. You got any paper?” Unique asked, a smile creeping to her lips.
Apple began to pull on her arm.
“Sounds like a song I heard once,” he teased, doing a quick shuffle to the rhythm of the tune by The Time. “I won’t forget it.”
Unique giggled and followed the tug of her child into the store.
Unique thought about Derrick the rest of the day. Maybe life could turn around, with just a little push. Just thinking about a nice man in her life made the rest of her day pleasant. She didn’t care that Marquis had “acted his ass” and refused to get on the bus with them after she’d spent the last of her food stamps in preparation for his party.
Nothing fazed her, until the bus driver stopped for his break in the P. She’d forgotten that, from this direction, she’d hit the Palemos before the West End. It was break time for the drivers at this time of day. That morning she’d taken another bus, which sideswiped the old neighborhood, so she had avoided all this. Now the scent of the burnt air filled her nostrils as soon as the door opened. Apple was clearly excited, jumping around in the seat, as she apparently recalled her feelings. It was obvious she was remembering what she’d seen the just two days before.
Unique thought she would die from embarrassment. But how many people really connected her with Javina Nation, who clearly favored her other children more than her? It wasn’t as if people got to see Unique grow up here. By the time she started being a real person, she was on her back, and her feet in stirrups, giving life to another poor child. Did the people think Marquis was Javina’s child? Her brother, not her son?
Unique pushed all those dark memories to the back of her mind. She knew, if she kept thinking this way, she would be glad the house was gone, glad her mother was gone. She stared out the window, trying to pretend she didn’t hear her baby daughter yapping about the explosion, telling everyone within earshot, “The dope man blew my Big Mama’s house up!”
Since Javina threw Unique out of that house, she had always tried to pretend she didn’t care about the house or this neighborhood, that she had no ties to it. But already she missed the house tremendously. For her sanity she knew things needed to get put back like they were. She had barely come to grips with her mother’s death. Either way, she needed to do whatever she could to get that house rebuilt. Surely the insurance company was going to help them . . . if only she could find out which insurance company Javina used.
Unique thought about the last time they were all together in that house, Apple’s first Christmas. Nobody knew how sick Mama was, or how much trouble Larry was in. With Larry being a little slow, who would think he was associated with such bad people?
Mama’s longtime boyfriend, Mr. Ralph, had brought by a ham. He was always bringing something good to the house like that. It seemed that every time Mama got short, Mr. Ralph was there. Unique smiled at the memory. Mr. Ralph, bald and with a braided gray goatee, liked to think he was an old-school pimp. He wore furs and a lot of jewelry and always called everybody “Baby,” and sounded a lot like Sammy Davis, Jr. when he did. He even called the boys that. Funny thing was, the boys respected him. There was something about Mr. Ralph that just commanded the deference.
Mama treated Mr. Ralph like a king. Sometimes she and Mr. Ralph would disappear into her room for hours, and nobody even cared. Mr. Ralph would even stay with them sometimes when Mama went out.
Wonder where she used to go? Unique thought.
Suddenly the bus jerked to a start. Break time was over for the driver.
Unique’s heart filled with emotion when she glanced over at Cammie, who was eating a Pop-Tart she’d taken from the box. She had been silent for a long time, so Unique must’ve failed to notice her digging around in one of the bags for the snack.
An older woman said, “Po’ baby.”
“She ain’t hungry, she’s greedy.” Unique wanted to snatch the treat from Cammie’s crumby mouth. “Always into junk!”
“Well, baby, you’re the mother. Don’t buy the shit.” The woman sat back in her seat, nodding knowingly.
Unique took a deep breath, to keep from going off on the older woman. If nothing else, she tried hard to respect her elders.
“Where’s Marquis?” a boy across the aisle asked.
Unique looked him over. This boy was way too old to be asking about her “only” ten-year-old son. “Why you wanna know?”
“Just asking, ma. Damn! Bite a muthafucka’s head off. Tell that nigga to holla at Duke when you see him.” The boy pulled the cord and stood.
/> “I’m not gonna tell him shit.”
The bus pulled over, and the boy swaggered off.
They were still in the P. They had two more stops before leaving this place.
At this end of the neighborhood Unique could see all the ugly sites of her childhood, her old school, the church. She felt that any second she would see Apple’s father dragging his lazy ass around a corner. She’d heard he was out now. No-good sumbitch preacher’s son, she thought to herself, imitating the way her mother had said the words when she found out who Apple’s father was.
But no words could describe Marquis Sr., and no one had ever tried. He was a true piece of work. Dangerous. She wondered if he would ever see the light of day again.
Once Unique got old enough to even ask the right people about him, she found out he was a habitual criminal. He had strong, broad features, and a dominant DNA, because Marquis Jr. looked and acted just like him.
Fast and loud, Unique was only twelve when she’d met him. She was playing on the block when this new family moved in, and that’s when she spied Marquis Sr. He was about eighteen or nineteen, and pretty and tall. He wore a rag that claimed him to a gang, but Unique was too young to know, or care, about all that stuff. She just knew he was tough, and kinda scary-looking to most people, but to her, he was fascinating.
Her mother was working then. Nobody knew why she just suddenly had to get a job after never having to work before, but now that Unique was older, she realized welfare had probably made her do it. Mama was a young woman after all, and able-bodied enough to work. They were coming up with all these new rules and all that back then, and as far as Unique was concerned, they still didn’t have the program right. At the time Debonair was fifteen, Tang was thirteen, and Sinclair was seven, so yeah, she musta got caught up in all that welfare reform stuff and had to go to work.
Anyway, she was working, and Larry was supposed to be watching everybody, since Mr. Ralph hadn’t been there in a while. Larry was twenty-three. Yeah, he and their mother were only fifteen years apart. Unique hadn’t done the math on that one until she was older. In fact, she didn’t put together a lot of stuff about Mama until she was older.
Larry didn’t work because he didn’t hear too well, and something was wrong with his right foot, but he was okay enough to get in with a gang and fight in the street. Their mother thought he could be depended upon to watch the four younger children.
Unique had taken to staring at Marquis on her way to school. He always parked away from his house, waiting out in his car for something or someone. He would stare back at her and watch her walk down the street. Sometimes she would turn and walk backwards, staring at him, until Tanqueray pulled her along.
Unique wasn’t too tall, but she was thick and probably looked older than she was. But, surely, she didn’t look old enough for him to get with. Yet, one morning right before winter break, Tanqueray was home sick, and so Unique was walking to school alone.
Marquis Sr. called her over to his car. “You wanna ride?” he asked.
Unique was so excited, she couldn’t even speak. She nodded and got in.
Unique rode with Marquis to school three days in a row. On the third morning, he took her to a house that, to this day, Unique can’t remember having seen again, and he raped her. At first when he kissed her, she liked it, but he began to get rough, sticking his big tongue, down her throat. She wanted him to stop, but he didn’t. Before she knew it, he had her out of her panties and on his lap.
Unique remembered how ugly she felt, how ugly he looked with his face twisted and his eyes almost bugged out of his head as he lifted her up and down on his rod of hot steel, tearing and ripping through her tender linings.
Before that moment, when he looked at her, she felt cute and flirty, but while he took her virginity, gritting his teeth and staring deep into her eyes, she felt ugly and animal-like. Even the sounds he brought from her own mouth didn’t even sound human.
When he was finished with her, she had a hard time walking and peeing.
After dropping her at school, he said, “Don’t tell anybody, Unique.”
She nodded, and quietly limped to class. She wanted to call her mother, tell her what she had done—what Marquis had done to her—but there were no phones in that school. There was no way she was going to tell the nurse. That white bitch would have made a mountain out of a molehill. Sure, it wasn’t a molehill really, but Unique figured that way on it. She had to figure that it was one of those things that every girl went through, although she hadn’t figured it happening to her so young.
Unique had seen her first period at school the year before. That ugly, white bitch nurse was hollering and talking all loud that day, telling Unique’s business for all to hear. Unique remembered the humiliation, so there was no way that white woman was going to ever know what she and Marquis had done that morning.
When her mother got home from work that evening, she knew something was wrong. “Your period is here early,” she said, having found the bloodstained panties Unique had buried deep in the dirty clothes hamper.
Unique just shrugged and sat on the side of the bed, her hands folded and her feet swinging listlessly. She’d taken a bath and had been sleeping since she got home from school. She woke up when her mother came from work, but didn’t have the energy to do anything but sit. The pain was still with her, and going to the bathroom had been hell all day.
“Why you not watching TV?” Her mother stood in the doorway, holding the panties with an accusative expression. No smiles, just heat and anger.
“I’m sick.”
“Sick with what?”
“I don’t know.” Unique shrugged again. “Maybe I got what Tanqueray got.”
Her mother looked at the panties again and this time gave them a sniff. Her eyebrows furrowed at the manly scent mingled with the blood from her torn hymen.
“So you wanna fuck now.”
Unique remembered the instant fear she felt. It started in the pit of her stomach. For the second time today she was terrified in the presence of a trusted adult, first Marquis Sr. and now her mother. Backing into the middle of the bed, she shook her head vehemently, holding out her hands as she did when beseeching the belt not to land on her thick thighs.
“No, Mama, no. I didn’t want to.”
Javina didn’t care if fucking was what she really wanted to do or not. The belt came from nowhere, it seemed, and she beat Unique mercilessly.
Unique didn’t sleep all night. She wanted to tell Tanqueray what she’d done, but her mama had called her so many bad names, she figured, why include her in the mess.
The next morning, she looked for Marquis Sr., but he wasn’t sitting in his car. She wanted him to be sitting there because she had dreamed about him all night, saving her from her mother’s wrath and hateful words. She had made what had happened between them beautiful in the dream. Almost like love. Unique had reasoned in her mind that he wanted her more than her mother did. He hadn’t called her anything bad. He’d even called her baby under his breath while holding her tight on the downswing, swiveling his hips and grunting during their time in that chair.
If she let her imagination go, he’d even smiled at her before she walked away from his car. Yes, he had smiled at her. But he wasn’t there. He was never there again—not even when Marquis Jr. was born nine months and four days later.
Unique never told anybody Marquis was a junior. She just said she liked the name. Mama liked it too, and so she got to keep it.
Mama had a party, laughed, danced and sang the day Marquis Jr. was born. Tanqueray came to the hospital and told her that Mama had everybody over. They were drinking and playing music. She was still in the hospital, but in a way, she was happy that Mama was happy.
It was hard having a baby in the house, especially since Mama wasn’t about to quit her job to take care of it, and welfare had started giving her extra money. But Mama liked her job, which clearly paid good, because she started fixing up the place and getting stu
ff for Marquis Jr. to be comfortable.
Real soon Mama, on her days off, would take Marquis places, as if he was her baby, and soon Unique began to feel lonely and bored.
Two months after Marquis was born, and with no one else on her mind and heart but Marquis Sr., and with a burn between her legs that she couldn’t control, Unique was out fucking again. This time she knew exactly what she was doing. And it wasn’t bad at all. Matter of fact, it was real good.
It didn’t take long before Unique was bringing her breakfast up again. She knew even then she was no-good; her mother didn’t even have to tell her, even though she did . . . often.
With her mind coming back to the now while on the bus, slamming back in her seat, Unique felt overwhelmed with instant anxiety. If only she could pick up a cell phone and call her son the way she saw so many mothers do. They would just pull their cell phones out of their purses on a whim and call sons, husbands, lovers, even mothers, just to say, “I love you.” And she did love Marquis, both of them. But with all her bills, she couldn’t afford a cell phone, and now she was gonna have to start giving Debonair money. That twenty is a joke. He wants more than that.
She thought about Derrick. “I bet his wife has a cell phone,” she said in an undertone. “She calls before stopping in to have lunch together and shit,” She scrounged in her bag for his business card but couldn’t find it. “Shoot! I lost it!”
But, then again, Derrick had said he worked at the Department of Justice. How hard could that be to find? Excited now, Unique smiled at her girls, even Cammie, who now smiled back. Unique wriggled in the seat next to Apple and pulled her into her lap.
Soon they reached the West End, and Unique pulled the cord at their stop.
“Get the stuff!” she barked at Cammie, who jumped to obey, looking just like Unique used to look when she was Cammie’s age. Sometimes Unique couldn’t bear to look at her. She knew Cammie was nothing like her. Quiet and shy, she was developing early. All Unique knew was, if Cammie ever got caught fooling around with some boy before she got eighteen, she and “that” was gonna catch “pure D hell,” as Mama used to say.
