by Sa'id Salaam
“It never fails, as soon as I light up my kush, your ass got something to damn talk about!” The statement was true, since the woman was always smoking. It was near impossible to find a time when she wasn’t high, or getting high. Triste took a deep breath to summon her strength and began to speak. “It’s about Joe,” she stammered. She knew her desperate over weight mother loved her no good boyfriend desperately; as far as she was concerned, he could do no wrong.
“What about him?” she demanded bolting up in her chair. Triste was so scared she almost abandoned the mission to take off running instead. It had taken a week to build up the courage, so she refused to back down now. She was no punk in the streets and wouldn’t be one in her own home; besides, it was her body.
“He’s been touching me!” she announced triumphantly. It felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted off of her shoulders. “He’s been feeling on my breast and my booty!”
“ Breasts’! Booty! Bitch, you ain’t got no damn breast or no damn booty! Why the fuck would my man wanna touch your nubs or your narrow ass, when he’s got all this?” she laughed.
“See, that’s why I can’t stand your little yellow ass! Always thinkin’ you so pretty; my hair, my eyes… fuck you and your long hair and blue eyes! Bitch I’ll cut that shit off and pluck them shits right out of your big ass head!” She spent the next ten minutes berating the child until Joe walked in. It was one of those classic ‘speak of the devil’ moments.
“What y’all talkin’ about?” he asked of the animated conversation. “Well, perhaps the word ‘conversation’ was too mild a word to use to describe their dialogue. This was pure verbal child abuse; cruelty to a child. He could tell from the scowl on the little girl’s face that she’d told on him.
Joe knew he gone too far by finally moving up to touching the child. For months, he had settled for just admiring her; stealing peeks when he could.
Triste’s father was a white man, which accounted for her golden skin type and her good hair. She had a headful of curly, light brown hair that extended to the middle of her back when pulled straight. Throw in the eerie set of pale green eyes, and she was destined to be a drop dead gorgeous woman one day.
One day…. only Joe didn’t want to wait that long.
Like most child molesters, he had started off slow; sodomite foreplay. He was content with staring at the frail child whenever he could. Then, he’d gone to looking up her dress while she watched TV; the Power Puff Girls on her panties had a new fan. Next, he began to ‘accidently’ walk in on her at bath time. Of course, there was the usual pedophile past time of sniffing her panties and masturbating on them. He would take it out sexually on her mother whenever he’d get too worked up.
Janice had noticed the sex had gotten better but she didn’t know why. Mentally, and in Joe’s sick mind, he was fucking her daughter.
“This little frail bitch, who thinks she soooo pretty, tryna’ tell me, you been touchin’ her bony lil’ ass! Tell her that’s a damn lie!” she demanded.
“Uh, it’s a lie,” he repeated without conviction. He thought the gig was up, until she’d given him a way out. Had she looked up through the weed smoke, she would have seen the guilty look on his face.
“I knew it!” Janice cheered like she’d won a prize. “I knew your trifling ass was lying! Ain’t nobody touchin’ your ass! You better not never tell me nothin’ else ‘bout my man! Now get your narrow ass out of here before ‘I’ touch your ass!”
The stupid woman had just given him the green light to rape her daughter; if she couldn’t turn to her, her own mother, who could she turn to?
******
“I don’t know why I’m so tired,” Janice yawned at the dinner table. She was bobbing her head like her weave was too heavy, in an effort to stay awake. “You look tired,” Joe agreed. He didn’t say anything about the GHB he’d slipped in her Malt liquor. He’d started to drug the child too to make her more pliable, but what fun would that be?
Triste inherited her unknown father’s above average IQ, and she knew something was out of order. She had watched her mom drink and smoke for years, and had never seen her fall asleep at the table. The lustful looks Joe shot across the table at her, terrified her. She shoved the last few bites of food into her mouth and fled to her room.
Joe was in no hurry. He got up and began to drag his drugged up girlfriend to the room they shared, and lifted her big ass onto the bed. He then took a quick shower, brushed his teeth, and then, brushed his waves for his date; his ‘booty call’. He was rock hard when he walked down the hall to Tristes’ room. Since it was technically rape, he didn’t bother knocking; he just used a shoulder to bypass the flimsy lock, and in he was in.
“Please, Joe,” Triste pleaded, cowering beneath her pink Power Puff comforter, as if it were a shield. The multiple of layers of clothing she’d donned were her armor. The winter coat, house coat, two layers of pants, shorts and long johns, only prevented the rape for as long as it’d take Joe to get them peeled off of her.
“Girl, what you fighting for? You know you want this,” he said seductively. In his sick mind, she was playing hard to get. Triste was so scared, she’d peed on herself. Joe didn’t care. He played in the stream of urine with his fingers. Once her bladder was empty, he leaned in and sodomized her. She had no idea what he was doing down there or why, but prayed it would soon stop. It didn’t and his finger only made it worse.
“Oh, so you a virgin, huh?” Joe exclaimed at the blood on his finger. The discovery would’ve been remarkable, had she been twenty-one, instead of eleven. Hell, in the inner city, keeping your cherry until the age of sixteen was doing good.
Triste didn’t reply. When she saw the bloody finger, she didn’t panic. She took a deep breath and began to fight. She lifted one of her straw thin legs and kicked him as hard as she could. The blow didn’t hurt him, but moved him enough for her to stand. She had always been a vicious little fighter in school and around the hood with girls her own age, but Joe was a grown ass man; she was no competition for him at all. She fought with everything she had, but, to no avail. The tiny blows bounced off like bullets would do from Superman’s chest. Joe smiled, took the beating in stride, and lay back down.
“Hush up all that screaming now girl,” he said cupping a hand over her mouth. The large hand covered so much of her face, that it had blocked her nose too. Triste was on the verge of blacking out before he’d finally removed it. “Open that mouth again, and I’ma put this dick in it.”
The threat did the trick and she shut her mouth tightly; no way did she want him to do that. She’d once made the grim mistake of peeking into her mother’s cracked bedroom door and had watched as Joe put the whole thing in her mother’s mouth. Curiosity and fascination had caused her to stay and watch her mother give him a blow-job. She already knew how that had ended; no thank- you, she would pass on that.
Joe used his full weight to hold the child in place and, then, he raped her. Despite the threat of Triste screaming her lungs out from the pain of being invaded, Joe finished with a grunt, rested and, went at it again; this assault went on all night.
******
“Fuck wrong wit’ you!” Janice demanded when she saw her daughter limping the morning after the rape.
“He….I ‘um….I fell off my….twisted my,” she said scrambling to come up with a lie. Good thing Janice didn’t really care what was wrong and didn’t really listen to her response.
Joe cracked a sly smile to see that Triste was unable to tell her mother about the rape. He’d gotten hard just thinking about his new arrangement; for him, dark couldn’t come soon enough so he could do it again.
“Clumsy ass little heifer, you make me sick!” Janice chided bitterly. She really loathed her daughter. It was a jealousy- hate, fueled by hearing the words ‘oh, she’s so pretty, or ‘is she Indian’ and ‘look at her eyes…look at her hair’. Being a hater was one thing, but to hate on your own kid, took it to a new low.
Triste was
too sore for panties, so she dressed gingerly in a pair of sweat pants. She had balled her blood and semen crusted bed sheet to toss into the apartment dumpster on the way to school.
“Girl, what’s wrong with you?” Triste’s best friend Jasmine asked.
“My momma’s boyfriend raped me!” she spat bitterly. Being able to finally admit it was a relief, and caused tears to stream from her eyes; she was far more angry than sad.
“He did what? Girl, we need to kill him!” Jasmine yelled. “My brother got a lot of guns; we can easily get one.
“If he touches me again, I’ma kill him,” Triste vowed.
“What your momma say?”
“She ain’t say shit, ain’t wanna hear nothing ‘bout her man,” she said mocking her mother.
“Ok, we can steal one of his guns when we come home from school. Oh shit! There goes Kenya!”
Kenya was the Joker to Triste’s Batman. They were arch enemies since first grade. They had been beefing for so long, that they’d both long forgot why they were even fighting, but fight did they, almost daily.
One reason they fought was envy. Kenya was black and ugly, to Triste’s light and pretty. Triste’s hair was long and curly, while Kenya’s was ‘Th’ long; no typo, it was just long enough to spell ‘that’.
Both girls instinctively looked down to make sure their Tennis shoes were tied tightly for battle. Sometimes, the girls traded insults as a prelude to a fight while other times they fought on-sight; this was one of the ‘other times’ and the girls had attacked.
Fights between the girls were usually even matched. Some days Kenya won and some days, Triste would come out on top. Today with Triste’s added rage, Kenya didn’t stand a chance. Triste was whooping her all the way up Martin Luther King Blvd. Kenya didn’t have a dream, she was having a nightmare. They fought until they’d reached the front of the school.
Kenya landed a wild kick to Triste’s sore vagina and changed the tide of the fight. When she doubled over in pain, Kenya got on her ass. There were several teachers amongst the fight fams, luckily one of them was matured enough to break it up.
“You two, again!” Mrs. Rangle yelled pulling the girls apart. These same two combatants accounted for a quarter of the school’s fights. “What are the two of you fighting about now?”
Both girls stared at each other, while waiting on the other to answer. Neither had a clue, they certainly couldn’t verbalize the fact that their stressful, deprived upbringings had left them both angry and desperate. They couldn’t explain how the verbal abuse, physical and now, sexual abuse, made them want to lash out at something or someone. So, instead they fumed “she started it!” They’d both yelled it out at the same exact time. “No, she did!”
“Child, you’re bleeding!” The teacher exclaimed at the sight of blood between Triste’s legs.
“Are you on your period”? “No!” She replied immediately, not knowing that she really was for the first time. She initially thought it was from the rape. She knew if she couldn’t tell her mother, she damn sure couldn’t tell a teacher. All black children knew better than to tell anybody what was going on in their houses. The ghetto had a rule book, and that rule was in it; “Rule #12- DON’T TELL WHAT HAPPENS IN MY HOUSE.
“The heck you’re not!” Come on here girl!” she demanded and pulled her to the nurse’s office. “You don’t have any pads young lady?”
“I have a writing tablet,” Triste responded, confused by what was going on.
“Got another one,” Mrs. Rangle told the nurse as she dragged her in by the arm. “Get cleaned up, I’ll go get you something to wear.”
Triste had finally figured out what was going on, when the nurse handed her a sanitary napkin, sometimes called a pad. She went into the bathroom and pulled off her soiled clothing. Being sore and swollen made that task much more difficult than it actually should have been. By the time Mrs. Rangle returned, she had cleaned up as best she could.
“Umph, these should fit you,” she said handing her a pair of panties and a pair of pants from the lost and found. The old clothing fared a lot better than some of the ghetto kids who had been lost, but never found. The way Triste had looked curiously at the pad, made it obvious that she didn’t know how to use it; she wasn’t the only one though. Plenty of the young girls whose mothers were too busy drinking or playing Spades to properly care for their daughters, had rushed in the nurse’s office screaming for an ambulance at the arrival of their first period.
“Girl, here!” Mrs. Rangle huffed, taking the pad. Triste watched her demonstrate how to use it, and then, she got dressed.
“Triste got her period y’all!” Kenya yelled, when she walked into the classroom. The class erupted into jeers and laughter; even though most of the girls, including Kenya, had already begun menstruation. When someone teased you, you had to laugh along with them; whether it was funny or not -‘Ghetto Rule Book #87’.
You already know Triste couldn’t stand the teasing. She marched straight over, and bombarded her. Kenya had no choice, but to take another beating. This was their second fight of the morning, and it had gotten them both sent home for the rest of the day.
Since Joe didn’t work a conventional job, Triste decided instead of going home, she would rather roam the streets of South West Atlanta until school let out, that way she could wait with Jasmine until her mother came home from work. Damn shame when a girl felt safer in the streets, than at her own home. Joe was in the apartment playing video games, smoking weed, eating, and fartin’. That wasn’t his job though. His occupation was fuckin’ a lonely, over-weight woman, whose self- esteem was low enough to not only accept his behavior, but, sponsor it as well. Joe wasn’t quite a plumber, but he was still into ‘laying pipe’, and getting paid, nonetheless.
“Girl, you crazy!” Jasmine laughed, when she’d arrived home to find her friend sitting in front of her apartment. “You whooped her ass though!”
“Shoot, I got tired of that mutt always messin’ with me!” Triste said, as if she hadn’t started both fights that day. Kenya had started plenty in her own right, but that day, it had all been Triste’s doing.
“Oh, ‘bout time you got your damn period. I was starting to think you was one of them ‘whatcha ma call it’ things like that chic on Love and Hip Hop; the one that messes with that guy who looks like a rat.”
“You mean a hermaphrodite?” Triste asked, helping her vocabulary challenged friend. Jasmine was pretty, she was funny, she was loyal, but she definitely wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, or brightest bulb in the box, or…., let’s just say, the girl was dumb.
“Yeah, that’s her name!” Jasmine guessed. Anything with more than three syllables may as well have been Korean, as far as she was concerned.
“How long am I gonna be bleeding?” Triste asked with a frown on her face.
“All depends. Mine only lasts’ for a couple of days, ‘cause I eat a lot of sugar. My momma bleeds for a whole damn week ‘cause she likes salt,” Jasmine explained.
Still it didn’t sound quite right to Triste, so she decided she’d look it up online when she got home; of course, she wouldn’t be going home until Janice got home. If Joe would rape her while her mother was at home and right down the hall, what would he do if he ever got her home alone, she wondered.
She waited a few minutes after seeing her mother’s car pull up before leaving. She wanted to wait for the weed and alcohol to get into her mother’s system first.
“I’m finna’ go. You still gonna give me that?”
“Give you what?” Jasmine asked, having forgotten their talk earlier; that, along with everything they’d been taught in school that day.
“You know, the gun? You said you was gonna let me hold one,” Triste reminded her. She was too ‘green’ to realize people didn’t borrow guns.
“What you gonna do? Use it and bring it back? Just make sure to fill it back up. Nah, on second thought, you can keep that one.”
“Oh, ok. Come one,” Jasmine sa
id leading the way to her brother’s locked bedroom door. The multiple locks clearly meant nothing to Jasmine. She used a butter knife and an expired bankcard ,and just like that, she was in seconds. “Pick one,” she said, opening a drawer filled with guns, condoms, and ammo.
“This one,” Triste said, picking a big one. Joe was a big guy, so in her mind, it would take a big gun to kill him.
“Girl, do you know how to use it?” Jasmine asked frowning.
“No, do you?” Triste shot back asking her friend.
“No, but I know where we can learn how!” she said and turned on the TV. She turned to the Rap videos and they both sat down to watch. An hour later, they were both weapon experts and could also make their booties clap. She cocked the gun racking a live round and went home.
“Heard your little period came on and you bled all over your class!” Janice barked, as Triste opened the door to the apartment. That was Janice’s way of saying, “hey, baby how was your day?”
“Yes, momma I…..”
“Yes momma hell! Get your ass in that kitchen and make dinner! What you think, you a woman now ‘cause you got your period?!” Her mother yelled, chasing her into the kitchen. She tried to snuggle up to her man while he played the video game, but had gotten rejected.
“Get off of me! Dang, you made me crash my car!” he grumbled, as if he hadn’t been playing the game all day. Truth be told, hearing that his victim was on her period had ruined his plans for the evening. “Shit, I might as well quit playing now!”
“I’m sorry. I just wanted some affection,” she pouted sadly. She hopped off the sofa and headed towards the rear of the apartment.
“My bad Shawty, I’ma break you off real good tonight,” he promised before she could get away. He figured he may as well since Triste was ‘out of order’ temporarily.
“OK, I’m gonna go ahead and take a shower.” The big woman cheered bouncing up and down like a big bear. Joe never brought in one coin for the house, nor did he bother to fix anything that needed fixing, but he didn’t mind ‘laying pipe’.
