by T. Styles
I grab my pants and don’t bother putting them on. I hear her revving up the engine again and know what time it is. I pick up my shoes and carry them in my hands. Before I can put them on, she comes into the house at maximum speed again. The front wheels of her tires are on Dalvin’s body and his blood is everywhere. He’s gone I know it.
I run outside as fast as my legs will take me. I don’t have anything but panties on from the waist down and I know it’s over. That is until I see Metha, Jayden’s driver pulling up. I flag her down and I see Jayden in the backseat. The moment I’m safe and inside I say, “Take off.” I look behind me. The truck and house are still one.
“Ma,” she looks back at our neighbor’s house. “What is going on?” She looks at my lips.
“I had a situation back there.” I drink the rest of the vodka and throw the bottle on the floor. “Ain’t nothing for you to be worried about.” I put on my pants and then my shoes.
“How come you always into stuff? Please say you not fucking that woman’s husband. When you know you’re positive! That is so wrong.”
“Jayden, relax!”
“You being reckless! Damn, we just buried my father!” Silence. “This shit is killing me, ma. I mean, I want to help you but you won’t let me.”
I sigh. “Why do you feel I’m your responsibility? I’m your mother, not the other way around.”
“Because you aren’t responsible and somebody has to worry about you! You run around town fucking people’s husbands and you’re going to get yourself killed when they find out you got that shit. If you don’t slow down you’re going to get me killed, too.” She grabs my hand. “Ma, I’m trying to take care of you, but you gotta meet me halfway.”
I look over at her. Her makeup is perfect. Her body is flawless. She’s being chauffeured by a driver and she has her father’s Escalade. A man who’s dick I sucked most of his teenaged years. She doesn’t know the first thing about struggle. I snatch my hand away from hers. A little over a year ago she thought she had a dick instead of a pussy and now she wants to tell me about life? Yeah right!
“You got money?” I say.
“For what, ma?”
“Because I’m asking, or would you rather me sell myself to get it instead?”
She looks at the woman in the rearview mirror who shakes her head at me. Fuck her too. Eventually Jayden reaches into her wallet and separates a one hundred dollar bill from a stack. She gives it to me. “Be careful, ma.” I leave without responding. The last thing I wanted to be was careful and she and I both knew it.
JAYDEN
EVERYTHING CHANGES
“How are you for real, Jayden?” Passion asks me as I focus on her lips. I don’t want to tell her about all the wild shit my mother has been doing. And how it has me about to pull my hair out. And how she’s throwing her diseased pussy around the neighborhood like the Washington Post newspaper. So I keep it to myself.
“I’m good.” I shift in my chair.
“I hear you, but you’ve been quiet ever since Olive got up and went outside. Still mad at me or something?” We’re in the doctor’s office as I wait for my name to be called to find out the status of my hearing tests. I’m nervous.
“Why are you here, Passion? Just keep shit for real with me.” I look into her eyes. “I know you don’t fuck with me like that. You never did.”
She looks away and then back at me. “That’s not true, Jayden. I mean, we had our problems but I always looked at you like a friend. I guess we don’t do good working for each other, like that anyway. But I’m still trying to be in your life.”
“It ain’t like I’m holding you hostage anymore. Thirteen Flavors is done with, you’re free to do you. I’m never going back to that shit. I made a promise to my father.”
“But I’m still your friend whether you want me to be or not.” She drops her head. “Do you want me to be?”
“That’s on you.” I look at the kid with the boogers in his nose. I’m tempted to pick them out. “I’m going to focus on me and I’ll leave it as that.”
“You talk to your sister?” She asks me.
“No I haven’t and right now, all I’m thinking about is me.” I think I understand the reason she’s around me now, to get closer to Madjesty. If she’s waiting on that she’ll grow a dick first.
“I hope she’s okay.” She sits back in her chair and looked at the ceiling. She looks like she wants to cry. “I been worried sick about her.”
Olive comes into the waiting room with a cloud of smoke over her red Afro. The entire room smells like weed now and a few parents frown. She’s smiling at me through squinted eyes and I can’t help but grin. She sits next to me, grabs my left hand while Passion grabs my right.
“You just had to get high didn’t you?” I ask. “At my doctor’s appointment at that.”
Passion leans forward. “Yeah, Olive, I really wish you would’ve waited to do that shit when I wasn’t with you. You know I don’t want to be around that stuff anymore. If you were trying to stay clean I would respect you.”
“Well I’m not.”
“I’m serious!”
I learned after the funeral that Olive and Passion were friends through Shaggy. And even though he’d been ignoring them too, they maintained their friendship.
“Listen, bitch, I’m not the one who decided not to get high no more.” Olive tells her. “If you wanna hug some trees and save the world then that’s on you. Just don’t knock my flow.” She plays with the silver balls in her other hand. “I swear you were more easier to be around when you were on heroin. I’m just being honest with you.”
“That’s some ignorant shit to say.” She exhales.
Instead of calling Metha, we drove in Olive’s 15 passenger van which she uses for the airport taxi business she ran on the side. She’d just finished a job but wanted to go with me to this appointment and I was glad she came. I always wondered where she got her money because she smokes so much weed and popped so many pills, she had to be able to support her habit some how. I’m sure we looked like three lesbians holding hands but it didn’t matter. I needed their support.
I’m about to call my mother to make sure she’s okay when I feel Olive’s hand brushing against my thigh. She claimed she wasn’t gay no more but every time I turn around she’s touching me. I wish she stops because every time she does it she makes my skin crawl. “Olive, I’m still not fucking you.” I push her hand away. “So I wish you quit that gay shit.”
“I’m not gay anymore.” She laughs, sits back in her chair and crosses her legs. She’s always hornier when she’s high.
“Can’t tell, when I slept over last night, I woke up with your hands on my breasts.” Passion shivered. “That’s some gross ass shit, Olive. Contrary to what you believe, no means no.”
“Because you don’t get high anymore, I’m not gonna bust your little bubble too hard but I will say this. You were with a bitch for two to three months, so you can’t say shit to me about being with a woman.”
Passion turns red. “First of all I didn’t know she was a bitch and second of all we didn’t have a relationship like that. We weren’t eating each other’s pussies, she was doing me.” She looks at me and I look away. “The entire time we were together I thought she was a nigga. Honest.”
“Sure you right.” She laughs. “Nobody is dumb enough to believe you can be with a woman for two months and not know. Save that shit for somebody who believes you.”
“I’ll never tell you anything in private again.”
“Promises, promises.”
Every time anything pertaining to Madjesty comes up, I want to skip the subject. “Olive, I know you not gay anymore, but how could you fuck with a bitch? The shit’s so nasty to me.” I think about how juicy my pussy gets when I get horny and can’t imagine tasting another female’s.
“So you really think eating pussy is nasty?” Passion and me nod our heads yes. Olive leans out and I focus on her lips. “Okay let me ask you this, do y
ou really believe eating pussy is disgusting, no matter who the pussy belongs to?”
I frown. “Yes.”
“So why should a nigga eat yours?” She’s wearing a conquered look on her face.
“What, I’m confused.” I say.
“Me too, Olive.” Passion adds. “You gotta give us more than that.”
“Listen to what I’m saying, if eating pussy is so nasty, niggas who love it gotta be gross too right?”
Passion shakes her head. “Naw, that’s different. They supposed to do that shit.”
“You not making sense. If it’s so gross its gross. It don’t matter who does it.”
“Olive, shut your gay ass up, you a little too high right now.” I respond. “I don’t care what you say, there’s nothing in the world you can tell me that will make me want to eat another bitch’s pussy. I don’t care if they clean that mothafucka everyday with bleach.”
“Whatever, bitch,” she waves me off, “but listen, what’s up with that kid Sebastian and Luh Rod? They seemed real strange to me, the day we came back from your father’s funeral and they were hanging in front of your house.”
“On everything I love I said the same thing. I think they may try to rob me or something.” I think about how broke I am. “They’re going to be mad if they do. Outside of the little money I have saved for a rainy day, I’m dead broke.”
“Ya’ll better get an alarm,” Passion says, “all that house ya’ll got and anybody can walk in there anytime they want. That’s dangerous. You never know which creep may be waiting to take advantage of you.”
“Right now we can’t even afford that shit. I’ll worry about that when the time comes.”
When I look up at the counter, I see a new girl who doesn’t seem nicer than the one I threw the juice on. She acts like she doesn’t want to be here either. I hate bitches like that…just quit. She’s waving at me and I stand.
Passion grips my hand. “You want me to come in there with you?”
Since they don’t know the entire secret I say, “No, I gotta go alone.”
“When are you going to tell us what’s wrong with you?” Olive asks. “It ain’t like we not here to support you. Are you burning or something? If you are it happens to the best of bitches.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Ain’t nothing wrong with this pussy.” Ask my sister, she knows. “I gotta go at it alone.” I walk to the doctor’s office and he’s waiting with a smile. He never smiles so I know immediately something is wrong.
“Where’s your mother, Jayden?” He looks behind me and I take my seat.
“She couldn’t make it.” I shrug and flash my teeth. I feel so stupid. “She’s ill again. It’s okay though, I can tell her whatever you want me to know.”
He takes his glasses off and looks frustrated. “I really want to speak to her this time, Jayden. You are a minor and I can’t keep discussing this serious situation with you alone.” He picks up the phone on his desk.
I lean forward. “What are you doing?”
“What’s your home number?” His finger hovers over the digits. “I have to call her.”
“Dr. Takerski, please don’t. I can handle whatever you gotta tell me.” I want to cry but don’t know if it will help. “My mamma be busy these days. She don’t have time for all that. So much has happened in her life.”
His expression is stone. “The number, Jayden.”
I rattle off the home phone number and hope the man upstairs won’t remember how I told him to fuck off and to go to hell. I need his help right now. I don’t want my mother speaking to him or anybody else about my business. Even now when I go to school, I put in every effort to be the best I can just so she won’t have to crawl out of the hole and embarrass the shit out of me.
The phone doesn’t ring too long and once again the fake ass God upstairs let’s me down. “Yes, may I please speak to Harmony Phillips please?”
At first I’m trying to read his facial expressions, until he looks like he’s seen a ghost. He presses the speaker button on the phone and the office lights up with the nastiest words ever. “I don’t know who the fuck you are but I don’t get up before five in the evening! Who the fuck do you think you are calling me this time of day? Huh? Huh?” She sounds like she’s drinking in her sleep. My mother is the worst.
He clears his throat and wipes the sweat off of his forehead with a stiff hand. “Mam, this is Dr. Takerski and I’m calling because your daughter Jayden is here in my office,” he looks at me, maybe to see if I left him alone with the drama, “and I have something very important to tell her and you.”
“Well shit, if she’s there, what do you want from me?”
He looks at me as if he feels sorry for me. I hate that look. “She’s a minor and she’s been coming here alone lately. Did she explain her situation to you?”
Click.
He looks at the phone. “Hello.” He presses the speaker button again. “Ms. Phillips.”
I’m beyond embarrassed. I can’t believe she couldn’t come out of her drunken status for a few seconds, to be a parent to me over the phone. She didn’t even have to get out of bed. “I’m sorry, sir but like I told you, she’s not feeling too well.”
He’s still staring at the phone as if she’ll call back and say she’s just playing. It never happens. He clears his throat and says, “Jayden, I’ll get straight to it. Do you know if your mother was using drugs when she was pregnant with you?”
Probably. “I don’t know about drugs, sir. But she keeps a bottle in her mouth at all times.” I move in my seat.
“Well the issue in your left ear came as a result of glass rupturing your ear drum. But the condition in your right is as a result of a birth defect that I usually see in children who are born to parents who abuse drugs or alcohol.” He seems mad.
“I have a twin sister and she seems to be okay.” Well she did rape me but that’s another matter all together.
“She may be suffering from other defects that you aren’t aware of. I really need to see her too.”
“Humph.” I whisper.
“Chances are your hearing has always been lower than people who don’t have your effect and had you come sooner, like when you were a toddler, we could’ve addressed it right away and corrected the issue. Now, well now your hearing is deteriorating rapidly. The specialist you went to said if you don’t do something now, you’ll be permanently deaf.” He pulls a sheet of paper off of a yellow pad. It has numbers on it, which includes lots of zeros.
I know what this is about. “How much?”
“The surgery will cost $50,000. That’s $25,000 per ear. The problem is, Medicaid only covers your medicines and aftercare. Which means you’ll have to come up with the rest on your own.”
As he gives me more bad news I finally get it. God doesn’t fuck with me at all. “Where am I going to find that kind of money? I’m broke.” Maybe he knows of some charity program for kids with drunken-whore parents like me.
“I’m afraid that’s a problem I can’t help you with, Jayden. This is why it was so important for me to talk to your mother.” He brings her back up and it makes me feel worse. “Now I have something I would like to give you for now. But you must understand that it’s only a temporary situation. After a while, these won’t work either.”
He gets up and walks toward me. I smell the stink of his breath and my stomach churns. For some reason I focus on the bulge of his pants and notice he seems to be packing more than a doctor should. My pussy jumps. Maybe if I fuck him he’ll help me out, its certainly worth a try.
He sits a white box on his desk and removes two brown C shaped devices. They were the ugliest things I’d ever seen in my life. “These are hearing aids.” He sticks one behind my left ear and then the right. “Can you hear me clearer?”
I can’t believe how bright his voice sounds. I can even hear the clock ticking on the wall, although faint. My hearing isn’t back to the way it use to be but it’s better than what I’d been dealing with si
nce Madjesty hit me. I feel a smile stretch across my face so long I think my mouth will crack at the edges. I quickly take a mirror out of my purse and hold it up to my face. And then I see what I look like. A freak. Sideshow Jayden. Like one of the kids at my school with the big block shoes. I can never walk around like this.
“Jayden, can you hear me?” He asks. I hear him just fine.
I place my mirror back in my purse, remove the hearing aids and throw them in there to. They take the sound with them immediately.
“Why did you take them off?” His voice sounds lower again.
“Because I want to adjust them better when I get home.” I stand up. “Dr. Takerski, when is the appointment you scheduled for my surgery?”
I watch his lips. I’ve become a pro and wonder if I can get paid for it. “The earliest I could get it is in six months.”
I frown. He calls that quick?
“But, they’ll want half down in two months just to secure your appointment. You think you and your mother can come up with the money by then?”
I look up at him. He doesn’t understand the life I lead. I need to hear. I need to be a part of the world. So not coming up with the money was not an option. “In two months you’ll have your fucking cash. Thanks for nothing.”
****
Trouble don’t stop. Because when I get home, the windows to my house are busted open and the door kicked in. I walk through the place where the door should be. Shocked, I can only move slowly at first until I see the TV is gone and everything looks destroyed. I just bought that TV.
“You already know who I think did this shit.” Olive says. “Old blue eyes himself.”
I’m so mad I can see my nostrils flaring. Olive and Passion hang in my background as I walk further inside. I can only imagine what their faces look like now. Sebastian and Luh Rod definitely did this shit, I’m sure of it. I’m wondering when this happened until I think of my mother. She has so many enemies that this could’ve been an attempt on her life too. At the funeral last week the lady I found out was my aunt tried to kill her. And what about my grandfather, he seemed like he hated her, too. And then there was the next-door neighbor’s wife. As terrible as my mother is, it could be anybody.
