by Bell, Kris
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I said but she had already hung up.
I shook the conversation and let it roll off my back as I walked up to Isabel’s door. She opened it before I could knock, all grins and bright eyes. I couldn’t help but grin back. She was so damn cute in her black slacks and burgundy button up shirt. Her long hair was knotted into a messy ponytail, and damned if the top buttons of her shirt were undone. What I would have done to sneak a peek.
“Hey,” she said in a pleasant voice as she stepped aside for me to come inside. Delicious scents hit me as soon as Iwalked across the threshold. I didn't know what she was whipping up in the kitchen, but whatever it was smelled amazing. Every time I inhaled, my mouth watered just a little bit more.
But dinner wasn't the only enticing scent. As I passed by Isabel, I got a whiff of her: vanilla and jasmine. I wanted to grab her and run my fingers through her hair, but I restrained myself. “I hope you don’t mind, Richie, but I made dinner.”
"I can tell. It smells good in here. Chicken?"
Isabel walked past me and ran her hands over my back. I could’ve melted. Shivers went down my spine. When was the last time a woman’s simple touch made me want to run through a meadow full of flowers, and shit? I couldn’t even remember.
She lifted the tops to some pans resting on the stove. “Well, I have pork chops, Spanish rice with pigeon peas, butter rolls and salad. There’s some beer in the fridge, too, if you want. I picked up a six pack on my way home. The food’s done already, so why don’t you go in the living room and pop in a movie while I fix your plate”
I love this woman!
We sat and stuffed our faces with her delicious food until I could barely move. Afterwards, we were cuddled on the couch about to watch some random video I picked out of her DVD collection when Isabel started talking shit about my video game playing skills. I knew she wasn’t trying to challenge me, ‘the King of all PlayStation,’ to a duel. I let it be known that she was about to get her ass handed to her.
“Bring it on, ‘King’!” Isabel taunted as she whipped out two PS3 controllers. “Pick a game, any game, and I bet I can beat the socks off of you.”
“You can't be serious!" Still on the couch, I admired the view of Isabel’s ass while she bent over to plug up her system. She had a nice one. Lord, did she have a nice one.
I finally jumped off the couch and started going through her game collection with her looking for the perfect one to whoop her ass in and to stop looking at her ass.
Finally, we settled on the new Mortal Kombat. We sat on the floor in front of the big TV like a couple of kids.
“I’m about to spank that ass, girl,” I said attempting to put a little fear in her heart. She was a tiger, though; she wasn’t about to let me talk shit to her without talking shit right back to me.
“Hold up, homie! You ain’t about to spank nothing up in her except your own damn ass after I whoop it in this game. What you know about me?”
I had to laugh hard at that one. Isabel talked like a proper valley girl on the regular, but when she tried to talk smack, a little bit of that Yankee attitude came out. It was funny as hell to hear her voice change up from valley to street.
And that’s when we heard the crashes.
Isabel and I both jumped up. She immediately ran for the window, but I pulled her back and went ahead of her. I didn’t know what we would find outside. Better safe than sorry.
When I got to the window, I yelped like a little girl and ran outside with Isabel hot on my heels.
All of the windows to my car had been busted out and the hood had a nasty scratch. I didn’t even have to guess who did it. Only one person would be so vindictive as to wreck my car.
“What in the hell happened to your car?” Isabel yelled.
I couldn’t even see straight. I walked around my car, my feet crunching the broken glass on the ground, seething. All I could do was shake my head. I couldn’t even answer her.
“Oh, shit!” I heard Isabel say. I was standing by the trunk; Isabel was by the hood staring down at it.
“What is it?” I walked over to the front of the car when she didn’t answer me right away and looked down at my hood.
“Fuck me sideways,” I said quietly.
Scratched, or should I say gouged, into the hood of my car were two simple words that spoke in volumes: “Chloe’s dick.”
What the hell was I gonna do with this girl?
ISABEL
It was one of those rare days I was able to leave my job on time. For some reason or another, I always found myself staying late, but not today. I left with Tara and Lawanda as soon as my shift ended. Since my store was located in the local mall in Newport News, we decided to do a little shopping while we had the opportunity.
After some brief window shopping, we walked into Victoria’s Secret. Lawanda hung onto me, literally arm-in-arm while Tara hunted through some bras displayed on a round table. Normally, I hated shopping in there; I seldom found anything that could comfortably cover my boobs and big butt that wasn’t too gaudy for my tastes. Today, though, I didn’t mind so much. I was just happy to be out with my girls.
“Ooh, I love this!” Tara squealed as she ran up to a rack with racy lingerie. She held up a tiny pink mesh teddy with an even tinier matching thong against her frame and pretended to model.
I looked at my best friend sideways. “Tara, I’ve used cotton swabs that were bigger than that thing.”
Lawanda took a moment to unhinge herself from my arm. She grabbed the tiny lingerie from Tara and held it up against her own body. Even though my cousin was noticeably smaller than Tara, Lawanda had more “assets.” If the teddy could barely cover Tara, there was no way in hell Lawanda’s thick butt could fit it.
“I think you should buy it, Tara. This teddy is fire, and you’d look hot in it.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” I said in disbelief. “Wanda, I thought you didn’t like Tara’s style? Didn’t you tell me once she looked like she shopped at ‘Hoes R Us’?”
Tara rolled her eyes at my cousin who now wore a sheepish grin on her face. She handed the lingerie back to Tara who silently placed it back on the rack and continued browsing.
“Are y’all ready to go?” I asked a few minutes later as they continued to browse through racks and tables ladened with underwear.
“Why are you in such a rush?” Tara asked as she examined tiny blue boy shorts with glittery stars on the crotch. “I thought we were going to have a good night of shopping our cares away? Besides, you should be racking up on some sexy drawers if you want to keep your man interested in that ass.”
Lawanda answered before I could open my mouth. “Tara, you know full and well Izzy doesn’t like this store. She can’t fit anything.”
No. She. Didn’t.
Once again, before I could utter a syllable, Tara interjected with her own two cents.
“What do you mean she can’t fit anything? Izzy is not that big and she has more of an hourglass shape than the both of us. She’d look hot in some of this stuff.”
“Yeah! A hot mess!” Lawanda snickered. She turned her back to the both of us and strolled over to the cash register. Tara looked positively disgusted. She started to head in Lawanda’s direction as she opened her mouth to give my cousin what could only be a solid tongue lashing. I held her back, though, and told her to keep quiet.
“Why do you let her talk to you like that, Izzy?” Tara asked. “She ain’t shit her damn self! Why does she always have to get on you about your weight?”
I sighed. “I don’t know, girl. She doesn’t really mean any of that mess. She’s just joking. Sometimes she takes it too far, but she’s not trying to be mean,” I tried to explain.
Truthfully, this wasn’t the first time I had to defend my best cousin to my best friend. I loved them to death, but I often wished that they could see just how good they both are to me instead of watching them constantly fight for my attention. Sometimes, Lawanda’s joking cu
t a little too deep, but that’s all it was: jokes. My cousin would never do anything to deliberately hurt me. We never even argue. But try as I might, I could not get Tara to understand. She only dealt with Lawanda out of respect for me.
After Lawanda made her purchase, we left the store and walked through the broad halls of the mall. There were quite a few people out shopping for it to be late on a Wednesday evening. The mall would be closing in a little over an hour, but we took our time and enjoyed window shopping, not wanting to commit to a location. Or at least two of us did. Tara hung back a little bit, clearly still angry at Lawanda for her comments in Victoria’s Secret. I could almost feel her aching to tell Lawanda off, curse her out, or just flat out smack her. Lawanda, on the other hand, was oblivious to Tara’s new attitude. She talked a mile a minute about absolutely nothing and practically skipped down the hallway.
After stopping at Auntie Anne’s for lemonade, Tara finally spoke.
“So, why the hell are you so perky tonight, Lawanda?” she asked with a little hint of an attitude. I bit my tongue and silently wished that she would calm down. We sat down on one of the benches in front of Auntie Ann’s.
“What do you mean? I’m always perky.”
“Yeah, right,” I interjected. “You always walk through the mall waving hello to people you’ve never seen before. Perfectly normal behavior.”
Lawanda and I giggled. Then a mischievous look dominated Lawanda's face as she crossed her legs and draped her hands over her knee.
“Don’t you guys ever just wake up in the morning feeling light as a feather? Well, maybe not literally, Izzy, but you know what I mean.”
Good grief! If Tara could have frowned any deeper, she’d have to relearn how to smile.
“Well, what’s got you feeling so good in the morning? Could it be a man?”
“Yep,” Lawanda gushed. “I didn’t say anything earlier because I didn’t want y’all to make something out of nothing.”
“How is it nothing if you’re sitting there as red as a fire truck?” I asked. I took a sip of my drink.
“Yeah, Wanda! How is that possible?” Tara asked, her voice oozing nastiness and sarcasm. “I didn’t know black people as dark as you could blush like that.”
I slowly cocked my head at my best friend and gave her my best, “whatdahell?” look.
Lawanda rolled her eyes at Tara and mimicked her sarcasm. “Well, just because I’m not as pale as the moon like you, it don’t mean I can’t blush. Anyway, like I was saying, I didn’t want you guys to make something out of nothing. I mean, the guy’s kind of sort of married so-”
“What?” Tara and I yelled in unison. The guy working in the Auntie Ann's eyed us suspiciously. I stared right back at him until he turned away. Some people were just too nosey for their own good.
“What do you mean he’s kinda married? How the hell can you be ‘kinda married’?” Tara asked. “Why are you settling for a man who’s not yours? That’s some ass backwards shit, Lawanda.”
Lawanda immediately got defensive. “See, this is why I don’t tell y’all anything! You always blow up over nothing.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Nothing? Honey, this isn't ‘nothing.’ Messing around with a married man is jacked up, plain and simple. I don’t care how good the sex is.”
“Ooh! And how good it is, indeed! I’ve never had a man make me feel this good before. Besides, he ain’t getting from his sorry ass woman. Why should he go without because she don’t know how to handle a strong man? Her loss is my gain.” Lawanda crossed her arms and leaned back on the bench eyeing Tara and I with immense satisfaction.
Tara sneered in disgust and scooted away from Lawanda as though she smelled like an overused public toilet.
Lawanda looked at Tara and responded, “I don’t know why you're acting like this is something new. Your hot ass has paraded all around this fucking city getting dicked-down left and right. What makes you so much better than me?”
Tara’s eyes glared. “Well, for one, I don’t go around fucking other women's men. I get my own or I have nothing at all. I’ll be damned if I play the role of some fool’s side chick. I’m better than that. Just trifling!”
“Oh, so what, you really do think you better than me? Well, who gives a fuck what you think? This man adores me, and he’s leaving his sorry ass girl and he’s coming home to me. She can’t treat him as good as me anyway. Just wait and see.”
“And that’s all you’ll end up doing—waiting. ‘Cause no man leaves his wife for his ho. The mistress never wins.”
“Did you just call me a ho?” Lawanda uncrossed her legs immediately and jumped up ready to pounce on Tara who was also standing ready to charge.
Whoa! This conversation took a hard left turn. I jumped up in between my two friends who stood in each other’s faces like they were about to throw down for Pay-Per-View. Other mall walkers and shoppers stared at the three of us. One bold teenager standing in the doorway of a nearby shop yelled out, “Go on and beat that white girl’s ass!”
“Cut it out! Both of you!” I yelled as I pushed them away from each other. Tara backed down and returned to the bench, but Lawanda looked like she was ready to spit fire. She pushed back against me and leaned over to get directly in Tara’s face.
“Hell, naw! I won’t back down!” she yelled. “I want to know if that bleach blond bitch just called me a ho!”
Tara glared back at Lawanda. “Well, if the shoe fits,” Tara said in an icy tone.
That was all she wrote. Lawanda charged at Tara and tried to grab a hold of her, but I was still in between them. Tara quickly jumped off the bench, reached around me, and grabbed a handful of Lawanda's short hair. Lawanda yelled and started swinging across my back trying to get to Tara, but the more she swung, the tighter Tara’s hold became and the more I got hit. I kept yelling for the two of them to stop and let go, but my yelling was in vain. They wouldn’t quit.
I refused to fight either of them. I wiggled my way from in between them and fell to the ground. Scooting back on my heels, I looked on as people appeared out of nowhere and everywhere, and egged on the fight. I saw an older couple hurry away like they were afraid they would be next to get a beat down. Another woman on the other side of the wide hallway shook her head in disapproval. I guess in her eyes, women weren’t supposed to act like children. I agreed with her. I was beyond embarrassed.
With me out of the way, Tara and Lawanda were able to really go at each other. Years of simple toleration and pent up irritation exploded before me.
Tara let go of Lawanda’s hair and grabbed her shirt collar instead. She tried repeatedly to punch Lawanda’s face, but my cousin twisted around too much. Lawanda had torn half of Tara’s shirt off her back and was kicking the crap out of her knees. I didn’t know what to do, so sat on the floor and watched in disbelief. I couldn’t for the life of me understand how two people who cared so much for me could have so much hate for each other.
The fight only lasted a good minute and a half, although it seemed like forever. The security guards had run over from the other end of the mall and broke through the rambunctious crowd to tear my two girls apart from each other. Tara, once again, backed down quickly, but Lawanda wasn’t having it. She still tried to get to Tara all the while spiting fire.
“I don’t care what you say! You ain’t better than me! You hear me, bitch? You ain’t better than me, and you need to remember that! He’s MY man! He’s gonna be with ME!”
Tara didn’t respond. She fixed her clothes and walked out with one of the guards who held a tight grip on her arm without uttering a single word. I’d never seen Tara so compliant.
Lawanda, on the other hand, bucked hard against two security guards as they escorted her out through an opposite exit. The crowd parted for them like the Red Sea parted for Moses. Seeing as how my cousin still hadn’t calmed down, I got up and followed her. She needed me more than Tara at this point.
Once outside in the cool air of the evening, Lawanda’s anger dr
opped. All the fight seemed to leave her as she hung her head and listened to the security guards threaten to have her arrested. I quickly intervened and explained that the situation was over and wouldn’t happen again. “There’s no need for cops. It was just a misunderstanding!” I exclaimed. The guards demanded she leave the premises, and to make their point clear, they stood at the entrance to the mall just in case Lawanda tried to sneak back in.
Lawanda staggered around the parking lot towards her car, silent. I walked next her not knowing what to say or do. But I didn't have to fight for words to say much longer. As soon as she reached her car, Lawanda did the work for me.
“Izzy, I’m sorry,” my cousin said in a small voice. She lifted her head and looked me dead in my eyes. They were suddenly full of tears. Without a word, Lawanda pleaded with me to forgive her, or at least that’s what I felt she was saying as I caught her gaze. I brushed the feeling aside and remained silent.
“I didn’t mean to act up like that, Izzy. Tara just makes me so mad sometimes.”
I shook my head and said it was okay. “Besides,” I continued, “the feelings are mutual. Y’all get on each other’s nerves. I get that. But you hauling off and getting in her face was totally uncalled for.”
“I know. But I know I’m right about this man, Izzy. He may be taken now, but he’s coming home to me soon.”
I really didn’t want to talk about my cousin’s “new love," but she obviously needed to get it off her chest.
“Well, how long have you known him?” I asked, reluctant. “Did you always know he was married or did you find out afterwards?”
“We knew each other for a minute, and I always knew he had a girl. But he wants me more. He spends more time with me than he does his wife, and he tells me all the time that we’re going to be together. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but now that it has, I don’t want to let him go.”
I stared at my cousin long and hard. Again, that feeling of not being told the entire truth swept over me, but I refused to ask her anything else. I just didn't have the energy by that point. She gingerly touched her bleeding lip and said, “I’m sorry”…again. I didn’t understand why she kept apologizing, but I told her to forget about tonight and just get her head together because she was positively stupid for dating a man who already belonged to someone else.
