Secrets of a Side Bitch

by Jessica Watkins

  Aeysha

  “I heard you up there calling on God this morning. You were trying to get in touch with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, wasn’t you?”

  I covered my face in shame as Eboni cracked up laughing. I didn’t find anything funny though.

  As usual for a sunny afternoon, we were in the backyard with her kids. That day we brought the kiddie pool out and let them play in the water. Her kids were only five, three, and two, so they were having a ball. I had spent most of the morning pissed off at Omari and online submitting job applications, so when Eboni asked me to join her outside, I was happy to.

  “I told you that you were going to be right in that bed with Omari, didn’t I? You are so weak!”

  “Whatever!” I was fighting back a smile. “I am not weak. He thought the dick was going to convince me that he isn’t cheating, but as soon as he was done, I was and am still convinced that he is cheating on me!”

  My face was scrunched as my toes played in the grass. Not only was I pissed off, but it felt like the sun was beaming straight into my eyes. I looked at my toes as they wrapped around blades of grass and got even more irritated.

  I couldn’t even afford a pedicure. Even worse, my piece of a man couldn’t afford to get me one!

  “Things are so fucked up,” I mumbled.

  “Have you been looking for a job?”

  “Every day and twice on Sunday.”

  Eboni’s kids began to throw water on each other and laugh. I got even more irritated. Life would be so much easier if I could have popped out three kids by three different niggas and got on Section 8, like Eboni.

  But hell, I couldn’t even get pregnant if I wanted to. Couldn’t do that right either!

  Noticing my solemn mood, Eboni put her arm around me and handed me some of her drink; Coconut Ciroc and lemonade.

  “Girl, you are going to be okay,” she told me as I took a sip. “We are going to pray and ask God to change things for you. You have so much ambition and drive. It’s only right that good things start to come your way. This is only a storm, and it will go away. You just have to have faith.”

  Eboni went to church a lot. She wasn’t holy whatsoever, but she knew how to pray. According to her, God paid the bills, put food on her table, and was responsible for everything else in her life.

  “Real talk, I can’t even blame Omari for talking to other women. Look at me.” As I spoke, I was literally holding back tears. “I can’t do anything for myself. I can’t find a job. I don’t have any education. I can’t afford to go to school because I can’t afford to pay tuition. I can’t get much financial aid since I don’t have any kids. But hell, I can’t even get pregnant!”

  I had to stop myself before I started crying in front of the kids. One or two tears forced themselves down my cheek. I quickly wiped them away and took another sip of Eboni’s drink.

  “Girl, you finish that. You need it, shit! There is more in the house.”

  We started to giggle. I appreciated Eboni so much. I don’t know what I would have done in that house all day without her.

  Tammy

  “Bitch, I’m not through with you! Just wait til’ I find yo’ ass!”

  Just hearing Jimmy’s voice on the voicemail made my skin crawl and my insides turn until I felt myself nearly regurgitating onto the polyester bedspread that I was lying under.

  I’d been lying in bed for days, attempting to figure out my life. I wondered if my life with Jimmy had been a front. I felt stupid for wasting the last five years with such a lunatic. I constantly imagined not being alive had the bullet been two centimeters to the left.

  “Urrgh!” In anger, I threw my iPhone unto the bed.

  I knew, since many of his family and friends were calling my mother to check on me, that Jimmy would eventually find out that I was alive. I thought that he would be happy that he didn’t actually kill me. Yet, from the sound of his voice on the message he just left, hearing that I was alive had only fueled Jimmy’s anger.

  I remembered literally tasting the saltiness of his tears as he lay his face next to mine when he thought that I was dead. That was not the same man that shot me. Nor was it the same man that I was just listening to threaten my life all over again.

  He was like a possessed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

  “I just wanted to be happy.” I was weeping as I talked to myself and looked at my bandaged head in the mirror in Donte’s guest bedroom.

  I had left Jimmy to be happy. I left him to get rid of the unnecessary stresses in my life. But it seemed like leaving him had only made my life worse. It had turned my little problems into mountains of stress and fear.

  “You okay?”

  Donte startled me. I didn’t know how long he had been in the doorway. When our eyes met, I let out all of the other tears that had been threatening to come down my face. Immediately, he entered the room, came towards me, and put his arms around me. I lay in his loving arms wondering why the man that I loved for five years couldn’t love me enough that he protected me rather than hurt me.

  “I’m okay.” As I told Donte that, I was also attempting to convince myself of it.

  “You sure?”

  “Really. I’m okay.”

  Though protected, I felt so stupid being there with Donte. I felt like every time I cried or needed him, it was further validation that I had made the worst mistake of my life by choosing Jimmy over him.

  In order to keep my thoughts from consuming me, I left Donte’s arms and focused on something else. “I need to clean this wound.”

  Walking back towards the mirror, I began to remove the bandages, but quickly Donte was behind me with his hand on top of mine.

  “I’ll do it for you.”

  Guiding me by the hand, he took me over to a chair where he sat. I sat on the floor in front of him between his legs. Tears silently fell from my tired eyes as this man began to clean my wound. I fought with my heart, telling it not to go out to Donte. I told my emotions to check themselves because surely I had bigger and more important things to worry about than falling for another man.

  FOUR

  FRIDAY, JUNE 28, 2013

  Omari

  “Fuck!”

  I couldn’t believe this shit. It was Friday. I finally got paid. I was ready to go, but I had a fucking flat. The slash in the tire was so big that taking it to the gas station to put air in it wasn’t an option. Of course, I thought one of my dips was behind all this, but it was no telling. I had been laying pretty low – staying at home and spending time with my girl – ever since Aeysha got into my Facebook page.

  What was worse was that I had a spare, but no jack.

  I got out of the car. I wasn’t about to run out my gas by running the AC, because I didn’t know how long AAA would take. So I took my UPS shirt off and sat on the trunk of my car in my wife beater.

  Before calling AAA, I called Ching. It had been about a week and a half since he loaned me that bread. I was supposed to be on my way to his crib to give it back.

  “What up, Pretty Boy?”

  “Ching, I’m gone be a little late. ‘Bout an hour.”

  “Meet me on the block then.”

  “Cool.”

  As I hung up and dialed AAA, I heard a familiar voice come out of nowhere. “You need some help?”

  I looked to my right and saw Simone coming my way. Looking at her made me damn near not as frustrated anymore. She was a cute girl and dressed up nice. She was always wearing a fitted skirt suit and stilettos – sexy ass business attire type shit. She didn’t have much ass, but it was enough back there. She was fit too; with a flat stomach and nice sized titties. She always kept her hair done. It was a long weave colored in this reddish color that looked good against her brown skin.

  What made my dick hard by just looking at her was the readiness in her face. No matter the time or day– rain, sleet, or snow– Simone always looked ready. She looked eager when it came to a man. The way she talked told me that if I played my cards right,
I could get that pussy. If she wasn’t still with her boyfriend, that is.

  “Yea, I do. You wouldn’t happen to have a jack, would you?”

  “Sure do,” she told me with a flirtatious smile. “I’ll go get my car for you, sweetie. Be right back.”

  I swear she was switching hard just because I was watching. I had half a mind to try to holla at her again, but my state of mine and the state of my pockets were too fucked up to even date a chick like her.

  As she pulled up next to me in a 2013 Camaro, that was confirmed. She was riding around in a forty-five thousand dollar car, probably made about seventy thousand dollars a year, and I drove a UPS truck during the day and an Impala at night that wasn’t worth two g’s.

  Honestly, I tried to step to her a while back, but, as I peeped her style, I knew that I couldn’t pull a chick like her. She was way out of my league.

  It was hot as all hell outside. Too damn hot to be on some steaming ass cement changing a tire, so I hurried up and got the jack out of Simone’s trunk.

  With a cute giggle, Simone told me, “I would ask how you’re doing, but I can see that much.”

  “Right,” I replied with a minor grunt while I worked to get the tire off. “It’s just one of them days.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Simone had sat in her driver’s seat with her legs out of the car and facing me. Her legs were so far open that I damn near saw her cookie. But it was too damn hot to even figure out whether that was on purpose or not.

  Then my phone rung and the conversation that followed irritated me more than the damn tire and this heat.

  “Hey, Pretty Boy.” It was my mother.

  “Hey, Ma. I’m a little busy. Can I call you back?”

  “Make sure you call me right back. I need some help with the rent and the landlord is down my throat.”

  Fuck, I thought to myself.

  “Okay, Mama. I’ll call you right back.”

  I tried to hide my frustration because I felt Simone looking at me. I hadn’t changed a tire so fast in my life. I was feeling like less of a man already, and to have Simone’s cute established ass sitting there watching me change a tire was putting me under more pressure.

  “You and your mom pretty close?”

  “Too close, if you ask me,” I answered as I screwed on the lug nuts.

  “Don’t talk like that.” Suddenly, she sounded so sad. So, I looked up at her. When we locked eyes, I felt so much chemistry. “My mother died a few years back, so don’t take your time with your mom for granted.”

  I quickly changed the subject. I wasn’t in the mood to be brought down anymore than I already was. While I lowered the car to the ground and removed the jack, I asked questions that our normal hi and bye situations hadn’t allowed me to. I found out that she was a little older than me, thirty years old, which let me know why she always had such an eager look. Older women knew what they wanted and didn’t play no games with it. When she told me that she didn’t have any kids, I was sold.

  I was tired of fucking with women with baggage. They usually were looking for a man to play daddy, and I wasn’t down for that, unless it was with my own seed.

  “So, since you helped me out today, you gotta let me take you to dinner as a thank you. That is, unless your boyfriend is going to get mad.”

  As I spoke to her, I made sure to walk real close up on her car, so close that I forced her legs to open wider because I was standing between them. When she didn’t shy away, I knew she was already goin’.

  “There is no boyfriend to worry about anymore.” She had so much confidence that it made my dick hard. The way she licked her lips made me imagine what she could do with them lips while licking something else.

  Simone gave me her number. While I was storing it in, Aeysha called me. I promised Simone that she would hear from me over the weekend, hopped in my car, and headed towards Ching’s block on Laramie and Jackson while answering Aeysha’s call.

  “What’s up, bae?”

  “Omari, a disconnect bill came in the mail earlier this week. You didn’t see it?”

  Instantly, I got a fucking headache. The women I loved the most in my life, my mother and Aeysha, only called me about shit like this. It was really starting to irritate the fuck outta me.

  “You didn’t see it, Aeysha? I ain’t the one home all day. I don’t check the mail, so how would I see it?”

  “Don’t get mad at me because…”

  Right away, I cut off whatever nagging shit she was about to say. “What’s the disconnect date, Aeysha?”

  But she still had a fucking attitude. “Tuesday!”

  “How much?”

  “Four hundred.”

  Fuck!

  “Ah ight. Let me call you back.”

  She hung up without even saying goodbye. Sometimes I wondered if Aeysha really had the nerve to be mad at me because of the state we were in, or if she was more so mad at herself for not being able to help out.

  It only took a few minutes for me to get to Ching’s block on Laramie and Jackson. Since it was Friday, the block was crackin’! Ching sold mostly coke, crack, ex pills, and mollies. So the block was always an assembly line of all kinds of people; rich, poor, dope fiends, and college students.

  The usual block boys were posted in front of Ching’s trap house. As soon as they saw me, they ran up to my ride.

  “Yoooo’! What up, Pretty Boy?!”

  They young asses thought that shit was funny. Because of Ching, they called me the same thing, so I didn’t smack the shit out of Capone for doing it.

  “What I tell you ‘bout that, man?” He just laughed me off, so I told him, “Tell Ching I’m out here.”

  Ching sent me a text message on my way over there saying that he needed me to run him somewhere real quick. It was cool with me because after Aeysha pissed me off that quick, I wasn’t trying to go to the crib no way.

  She was still trying to piss me off. She was text messaging me all kinds of bullshit about how I shouldn’t cop an attitude with her because I couldn’t afford to pay the bills. I was so pissed that, if I knew I could have gotten another one, I would have thrown my fucking phone out the window.

  “Fuck wrong with you, man?”

  Ching had scared the shit out of me. I didn’t even notice him getting in the car.

  I quickly told him nothing, asked him where we was headed and pulled off. All I could think about was how I was about to give this man money that I probably was gone have to ask to borrow again. My mama needed help and I needed electricity.

  This shit was so fucked, and I couldn’t believe that I was in this type of situation at my age.

  “Man, so what kinda job you got lined up for me?”

  Ching looked surprised to hear me ask that, but he was definitely pleasantly surprised.

  “Something that’s gone make you real comfortable, my dude. You down?”

  My heart was heavy. This drug life wasn’t for me. I played with pussy, not drugs. But I had to do what I had to do. “Yea, man. I’m down. Let’s do this.”

  Tammy

  “Well, that’s done.”

  I sighed heavily as I ended the call with Sprint and rested my head back on the couch. Simone sat beside me as she handed me one of her special drinks, Panty Droppa. She had whipped up a batch of the rum concoction and come over to Donte’s to keep me company. But since she drank most of it, I was really ready for her to go home. I needed someone to talk to, not a drunk chick.

  I had been cooped up in Donte’s house for a week and a half. Though there was no way that Jimmy could have known that I was there, I was too scared to risk going outside.

  Jimmy didn’t know where I was, and, unfortunately, the police didn’t know where he was either. That was horrifying me. If the police couldn’t find him, I damn sure wouldn’t be able to see him coming if he ever found me.

  And I knew he wanted to find me since he constantly called my phone from anonymous numbers leaving me threatening voicemails. T
he police said that they were tracing the calls, but that would take weeks. So, I just changed my number.

  “I cannot believe this shit is happening to me.”

  Simone looked at me with sympathy as she held my hand dramatically. “You are going to be all right, girl. They are going to catch him.”

  “Hopefully it’s before he catches me! He wants to kill me, girl! They are trying to charge him with attempted murder and I am the only witness.”

  Tears started to come to my eyes, so I quickly changed the subject. I was tired of crying. I had been crying so much that my fucking eyes were hurting. “Let’s talk about something else. What’s up with you? How is Tre?”

  Simone immediately frowned and folded her arms. I knew that there was drama.

  No matter how financially stable Simone was– no matter her education, big house, and nice car– she didn’t know what the fuck she was doing when it came to men. She lost at that game every time.

  Maybe because she was fucking with a married man. I don’t know why she even allowed herself to fall for Tre.

  “We broke up.”

  “Broke up? Were you ever actually in a relationship?”

  I never once hid my distaste for her and Tre’s relationship. I’d be damned if a bitch like Simone was up under my man prowling for his attention. I didn’t like that she was that type of woman, which is why I kept my distance. She considered us friends, but I considered us barely friends. She had some caring qualities about her, but some of the choices she made with men made me question her morals as a whole.

  What you’ll do to the next bitch, you will definitely do to me under the right circumstances.

  “Tre was my man just as much as anybody else’s.”