Roxanne: From Addict to Hustler

by King Benjamin

  My friend had tried unsuccessfully to save me, while I was passed on the cold sidewalk. It was then I realized that, just like my best friend, Kiesha, Sunshine had my back for better or worse.

  Chapter 7

  After the beat down, AJ took all of my money. He didn’t take it really, but he held it from me and made sure I didn’t have enough money to take off and go far, or make plans for my abortion. For the next couple of months, I sat around his house every day, feeling like some kind of POW and wondering how I ended up in that position. I could’ve just got up and walked away one day while he was gone to work, but I only knew Woodward and I knew he would find me there, beat me; maybe even kill me this time. He became more controlling every week and now I knew why the last girl had probably just up and left everything she owned, just to get away from this brute. He started making me cook and clean every day, which was all kind of foreign to me.

  At my house, we always ate a lot of processed and microwaveable food and Terry never complained about it. AJ complained about all my food, but still made me cook. I had to depend on AJ to take me everywhere I went and when my belly began to show, he knew I was really pregnant and he stopped supporting my drug habit. Not only was I a POW, I was being held captive in drug rehabilitation center. So I started waiting until he was asleep and I’d steal money from wherever I could find some, then sneak out to the Cass Corridors to see Snake’s punk ass.

  There was a rumor floating around in the Cass Corridors that there was a contract out on Snake’s life. Apparently, he had snaked the wrong people. I only prayed he didn’t die before I found someone new to buy my drugs from. The last time I copped from Snake, he was wearing a bulletproof vest over his shirt and all his flunkies had disappeared. He served me hand to hand, with a big pistol bulging out from the small of his back. I complained about the rocks getting smaller and he grabbed me by my jacket and shoved me out the door. I called him Scrappy Doo and told him I was never coming back. I got caught sneaking in that same night and AJ smacked me up a bit for stealing money that was owed to me anyway. I had a feeling things would have been a lot worse had I not been pregnant. I finally realized I needed to get out of the situation, even if I landed in one that was worse. If I stayed there, I knew he would eventually kill me because of my inability to follow the rules. The fact that I hadn’t miscarried or anything from all of the abuse my body was taking never crossed my mind until that day. As I sat on the edge of the bathtub smoking my last rock, while AJ snored the night away; it began to sink in that maybe this baby was meant to be. It didn’t make sense at the time for me to think that way, but then again, no part of my life had ever made much logical sense. Me as a mother? Fuck that shit, I thought and the moment passed as quick as it came. I did, however, begin to map out my plan of escape.

  ****

  I waited until Friday because it was payday. I knew I needed to leave with enough money to tide me over wherever I landed. I began to call Kiesha every day leading up to Friday. She tried to convince me to come back to Toledo and check into a rehab. She also tried to convince me to keep the baby. I told her my baby would probably be stillborn from all the drug abuse it had suffered. I told her I had warrants in Toledo anyway and I just needed to get away from AJ, before he did some serious harm to me worse than what he’d already done. I had a permanent knot on my head that no one could see because of my hair.

  I still got headaches months later, after he rammed my head into a building. When Friday came, I made sure AJ got extra drunk. I even got drunk with him to make sure he overindulged. He was already beat from work and by 12:30, he was snoring with his mouth wide open. I stole two hundred and seventy-five dollars, plus the keys to his Bonneville. I grabbed the small bag of clothes I had packed and crept out the door as quietly as I could. As I cranked the engine the music of Stevie Wonder came blasting through the speakers and scared the shit out me. I yanked the volume button turning it to zero.

  I prayed the music hadn’t woken AJ as I slammed the gearshift and backed out of the driveway. I felt so liberated and I remember giving his house the middle finger as I drove off as if the house had wronged me somehow. There were only two places I knew how to get to on my own; Cass Corridor and the Woodward strip. I hit Woodward and quickly spotted Sunshine, hugging the curb. I pulled down on her and she reached for her blade thinking I was AJ.

  “Put the blade up bitch, it’s me.”

  Sunshine was stunned to see me driving his car.

  “I know that nigga didn’t give your crazy ass his car?”

  “Fuck no, I stole it. But fuck him, come on, let’s go get high.”

  “Bitch, that nigga gon’ kill you,” Sunshine warned, but still ended up getting in the car with me.

  “Shit, he gonna have to find me first. We can’t stay around here. Where else can we go?”

  “Where you wanna go?”

  “I don’t know. But I got two hundred and seventy-five dollars that say I can go where the fuck I please.”

  When I said that, Sunshine got hella excited and her brain started working better.

  “Ooooh, bitch, I know exactly where we can go. Just keep straight and make a left at the next light.”

  At this point, I believe I was around five and a half, six months pregnant. I really had no way to know, because I’d never been to a doctor to find out. I told Sunshine I hoped it wasn’t too late for an abortion and she said it probably was.

  “Why you don’t want the baby?” she asked.

  “How the fuck am I gonna take care of a baby? I can barely take care of myself.”

  “You know, it’s true every woman is not meant to be a mother. But I believe every woman has a mother inside them.”

  “Sunshine, shut the fuck up with that, okay? Don’t try to think deep when you should be thinking about getting high.”

  I totally disagreed with Sunshine’s theory. I believed everyone had a position in life and nothing could change that position. Somebody had to be the crackheads and the whores. It’s just the way the world turns. Someone has to be the drug dealer and killer; otherwise, how would the good people know they were good? You know what I’m saying? If there was no comparative standard to go by, what would decent people have to feel good about? But anyway, I didn’t share all of this with Sunshine. I was much more straightforward.

  “My mom and dad had two kids; they didn’t know shit about raising ‘em. Now both kids are on drugs and hooking on the streets. After seeing how bad they fucked it up, I’m not about to try it myself, knowing I’m fucking stupid. I’d have to stop smoking crack, stop tricking, go back to school, all kinds of shit I’m not about to do. You think I’m about to do all that? No…so fuck it.” I shrugged.

  I noticed Sunshine staring blankly out of the window as if something I’d said had struck a nerve.

  “We gon’ take this to 696,” she informed as we hit the freeway. She didn’t say anything else for a long time, and I wanted to ask her what it was that made her grow so silent.

  “You know I got two kids,” she finally said.

  “Really,” I said, smiling.

  “Yep, a boy and girl. My boy is seventeen and my girl is fifteen.”

  “Wow. Who are they with, your mother?”

  “I wish I knew. The state took my kids a long time ago. Nobody volunteered to step up while I got my shit together, so they went into the system. But don’t a day go by, I don’t think about ‘em.”

  “Where’s the kid's father?”

  “One’s dead and the other is doing life in prison for killing him.”

  “One of your kid's father killed the other one?”

  “Yup. Fucked up, ain’t it?”

  I had saddened her with my pregnancy news and now the mood in the car was all dark and gloomy. I wished I had never brought it up.

  “Sorry,” was all I could think to say.

  “You know if I would’ve lived for my kids, I would still have ‘em right now. Even though I know they’re probably better off wherever they
are; if I was given a second chance, I would’ve made a good mother. I know I would have. There ain’t nothing like that unconditional love you get from a chi—”

  I turned the music up louder before she could continue. All that depressing shit about love and loss wasn’t on my agenda for the night. If she wanted to sulk, I could drop her ass back off. I needed to get high and I needed to make some money. I decided Monday morning I was gonna call an abortion clinic in Toledo and make some arrangements if it wasn’t too late. I told Sunshine my plans.

  “You got some ID?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “You probably won’t need it if you as far along as you think you are, but you can’t get an abortion without ID.”

  “Fuck! You know what? I’m not even gonna worry about all that right now. Where the fuck are we going?” By now I was tired of driving and ready to get high.

  “We coming up on this next exit. You got your cell phone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me see it.”

  After Sunshine made her call, we ended up on Grand River and Telegraph and she began to lay out the plan. Sunshine had devised a strategy so we could get high all night and make some money at the same time, all the while never leaving the comfort of a warm smokehouse. It was a house she was very familiar with and frequented all the time when she lived in the area. She had a younger cousin named D, who hustled from a hotel nearby. He worked from a pager, and he only sold eight balls and up. For my money, D agreed to sell me a half-ounce, but I only needed an eight ball. I felt that a half an ounce was too much coke for me to have in my possession at one time. Plus, I needed to see what the dope was like before I spent all my money on it. So D met us at a gas station nearby and from there, Sunshine and I drove to the smoke house. The place was pretty well-kept, except for all the dirty beer bottles in the corner of the kitchen and the piles of cigarette butts in all the ashtrays.

  Sunshine introduced me to everyone she was familiar with, and the house lady introduced us both to everyone else.

  “Bill, you gon’ have to take your ass in the basement if you can’t stop peeking out my gotdamn blinds. You too, Dave,” the house lady warned.

  The house lady was a big girl and she looked like she didn’t take shit from people at all. We paid her thirty dollars up front and slid down to the basement for a little more privacy. In the basement, Sunshine showed me the best way to chop up the big rock I’d bought into small dime rocks. Then she went upstairs to negotiate with the house lady and find out if there was any money left in the house. Once the house lady found out I had D’s dope, I became an instant celebrity in the house. Apparently, D didn’t do business with the house lady, since he got slid some counterfeit money at her house before. He tried to get her to pay for someone else’s foul play and when she refused, he blackballed her. So, I was the only one who had his dope and once I smoked a few hits, I understood why they were so excited. His shit was better than Snake’s; way better.

  Sunshine and I smoked a rock each and by the time we were finished with those, we had sold the rest of the rocks to the other addicts in the house. We went out to meet D again at the gas station and this time, I bought the half-ounce. The smoke house seemed to turn into a full-fledged crack house because while we were gone, the house lady had got on the phone and made some calls to let everyone know that D’s dope was in the house. Since we now knew we had the best dope around, Sunshine showed me how to make the rocks smaller to stretch the profit.

  Nobody complained and before I knew it, the basement was flooded with traffic. I couldn’t even get high because everything was moving so fast; the more I tried to get high, I felt paranoid and guarded. I knew if I wasn’t careful, someone was going to try something. Sunshine was upstairs hustling, which left me in the basement to fend for myself. There were some big grimy looking dudes lurking around, getting high and watching as I made deals and counted money. The basement was filled with crack smoke everywhere and almost none of it was coming from my lungs. I was stashing money in my bra, panties, socks, and everywhere else I could think to hide it. I was petrified someone was going to try and rob me, but at the same time, I felt an adrenaline rush like never before. Then the white guy, Bill, got horny and wanted to leave out looking for a date, but I figured why go looking when my pussy was ready, willing and able?

  I was in my money-making zone and I couldn’t stop. My pregnant pussy made for some mind-blowing sex for Bill, even with a condom on. While I rode his dick in the upstairs bedroom, I worried Sunshine would try and cheat me out of some of my money. She quickly sold the dope I gave her, because more people were coming and leaving as the night went on. The house lady began to knock on the door, while I was still naked and pleasing a client.

  I knew she wanted me to come downstairs and sell some more dope. He took so long to cum, I started to sell the dope to the house lady through a crack in the door, and then me and Bill would go back to fucking. Once I was finished with Bill, I went to the house lady and had an honest conversation with her. I explained my concern for my safety and she showed me her revolver, and guaranteed me that she wouldn’t let anything happen to me. I felt safe after our conversation, so I continued to hustle my crack until the sun came up. Most of the people in the house were out of money by then, but the house lady assured me if I stayed there, Saturday night would be more of the same.

  Eventually, the house lady put everybody out so she could get some sleep and I had a chance to finally get high in peace and count my earnings.

  I couldn’t believe I had a thousand fucking dollars and still had almost fifty dollars in rocks for myself. I paid the house lady a hundred dollars and gave Sunshine two hundred for her part and she was more than satisfied. We got some weed once the weed house opened up and we spent most of the day, just getting high and talking about the night before. I never once dozed off or took a quick nap. I had been in the house for so long I knew I’d be up for a couple days. Sunshine finally took a nap while I continued to get high off weed and crack, but mostly weed, after the rocks were all gone. That evening, I bought another half-ounce from D and paid the house lady up front to repeat last night’s behavior. I took a bird bath in the sink and washed and reused my panties I had on. This time I let Sunshine do all the tricking and I tried to stay focused on selling the drugs and getting high here and there. It wasn’t an easy task at all. All the zombies from Friday night came back with more money and condoms. Bill came back and offered me even more money than he paid me the first time for some pussy. I flashed my bankroll on him foolishly.

  “It ain’t about the money, Bill, but it is about the money. If I wanna fuck you, I’ll fuck you; if not, you’re just shit out of luck.”

  I felt a power that night I hadn’t felt even when I played a dominatrix. There was nothing like it. I mean, as long as I had the dope I was the queen of the castle rather I was selling my body or not. The zombies bought me food, drinks, and weed; whatever they could come up with to please me. I know it sounds crazy, but I never felt that important to anybody, and that night I felt invincible, like I could do anything. I sold those little dime rocks until the wee hours of the morning and fatigue from the lack of sleep began to set in. I had money in my jeans and my jacket. I had money in my bra, as well as Sunshine’s bra. As the basement began to clear out, all I kept thinking was what now?

  I couldn’t stay there; it was way too dangerous. Should I drive to Toledo and try to get an abortion? All I knew was that I’d made more money than I could remember ever making at one time, and no one was trying to take it from me. I tried to smoke another rock to stay awake, but I could feel my body about to shut down. I was way too tired to think clearly, but I knew I had to make a move soon, before I ended up in jail for stealing AJ’s car, before I ended up getting robbed, or found a way to fuck up all the money I just made. Early that morning, I dozed off for a couple of hours and when I realized it, I jumped up in panic. I woke Sunshine up, who was curled up in a recliner behind me.

&nb
sp; “Sunshine. Sunshine, wake up. We gotta go.”

  I counted all the money again and gave her some more, then took her home. I was jumpy and nervous at every stoplight, thinking AJ was going to jump out the sliding door of a dark van and snatch me out of his ride. When Sunshine asked me where I was going, I told her the truth. I honestly didn’t know. I was way too spooked to stay in Detroit, so my only logical conclusion was Toledo.

  I turned my cell phone on for the first time in almost twenty-four hours, and saw AJ had left eighteen messages on my voicemail. It was all threats and name calling; everything you’d expect under the circumstances. Another message I had on my voicemail was from Kiesha. She was worried about me and wanted me to come home. The sincerity in her voice made my eyes water when I listened to the voicemail. I stopped at a gas station and filled up the tank after asking for directions toward Toledo, Ohio. I played AJ’s messages over and over again to keep from falling asleep at the wheel.

  Chapter 8

  I arrived in Toledo an hour later; dirty, smelly, hungry, and sleepy as fuck. I called Kiesha and caught her just before she had to leave out for work, and she gave me directions to her house on the Southside. When I pulled into her driveway, she was standing in the doorway waiting for me. As soon as I walked in, she jerked her neck back like I was contagious.

  “Eww, you stink, girl!”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Un-un, fuck this,” she said, as she flew to the bathroom and turned on the shower immediately “Go, right now!” she ordered, pointing her finger at the bathroom.

  “I don’t stink that fucking bad,” I said, as I sniffed my underarms.

  “Whatever, just go.”

  “I need a change of clothes,” I said.

  “I’ll find you something.”

  “No, I have clothes, they’re in my car.” Ha, my car.