He then got on top of me and put his bare, smooth thickness inside of me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go there with him, but if I said no he might tell his dad not to let me stay there. He moved his hips around side to side like he was trying to hit something. It felt so good. I kissed his neck. He held on to me tightly and then he took it out and stroked himself until he released. He kissed me on the forehead and then picked his boxers off the ground, walked out of the room and shut the door. After he left the room I felt differently about Marcus. I thought I might be starting to like him.
The next night Marcus came in again. I started to look at him differently. Marcus made me feel like a woman every time we did it I would always wrap the covers around my body. He would pull them off and tell me I was beautiful. He taught me everything about love and sex.
Chapter 5
“Kendra, are you fucking Marcus?” John yelled at me over the phone
“No, why you ask that?” I stuttered.
“Because he keeps talking about you and asking me what if questions.”
“No. I don’t deal with him like that,” I lied to John.
“Kendra, if I find out he messing with you I’m going to beat your ass, then I’m going to kill him,” John yelled over the phone. I had denied it, but I was with Marcus now. At first I didn’t like him coming in the room in the middle of the night, but he was nice to me and had grown on me. I was really starting to get feelings for him. He had been comforting me and reassuring me that everything was going to be all right with my family. He met me at my job so I didn’t have to ride the bus alone. He bought me my weekly pass to get on the bus, food and clothes. I had been able to save up my money for the house.
Marcus always paid for everything. For my eighteenth birthday he bought me a pair of sneakers, balloons and a teddy bear. Me, him, Nitra and John went to Pizza Hut and to the movies to see Titanic. I really liked Marcus, but I didn’t want to get pregnant. I asked Nitra what to do and she took me to the clinic with her. I got an examination and got on the pill.
My mom had been in rehab for sixty days. When she walked out the doors, she looked so pretty! Her eyes were bright and wide open, her skin was glowing and she had her hair braided back into two French twists. I wished everyone could see her. She had even gained back her weight and then some. I told her I had the money for the house and then we took her to Old Country Buffet because she said she wanted some real food. She piled all this food on her plate.
“You gonna eat all that food?” I asked.
“Yeah, that food was awful in there. I couldn’t wait to get me some real food. I can’t wait to just be back in my own house with my own things. So I’m about to be a grand-mama at thirty-eight, I heard.”
“I didn’t know John told you.”
“He also told me you and Marcus are sneaking around.”
“He told you that?” I said, shocked.
“Marcus is a little older than you. I don’t like that,” my mother said.
“Mom, he’s real nice,” I said, taking up for him.
“Y’all sleeping together.”
“No.”
“Oh, Lord. Yes you are. Y’all grown. All I can say is make sure you love him and he loves you equally. ’Cause I’m going to tell you something, I don’t recommend that young love, Kendra. One day you young and the next thing you turn around, sit back and are married with a bunch of babies and then all your dreams and hopes are gone.”
“Mom, he is good to me. I really love him.”
“Kendra, I really loved your dad too! As a matter of fact I loved him too much. I loved him more than I love y’all and myself. I didn’t know any better ’cause I was lost for so many years drinking. When me and your dad broke up I just lost it. It’s like when he left I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to go on. How to make it. I had five kids and I thought life was over. Who’s gonna want a woman with five kids? But I shouldn’t have did that. When I stopped drinking the first week, that’s when I realized life goes on, and one person can’t stop you from living. Kendra, everything looks different to me now. And I just don’t ever want you to get stuck.”
“I promise I won’t get stuck.” It felt so good having my real mom back. Now all we had to do was get Bubbles and Bilal home, get a place and life would be perfect.
My mom went to the housing office and told them her situation and they gave her the first house available. It was only three bedrooms but that was better than nothing. I went and got a cashier’s check for fifteen hundred dollars and they gave us the keys two days later.
“We’re home. We have our own space again. We have a home,” she said as she opened the door with the key. I followed her in as she looked around our new house. The entire house was painted white with blue industrial carpet all throughout. The sun was shining bright. There was a master bedroom but there weren’t any curtains.
The first night me and my mom slept on the floor. It didn’t matter though. The only thing that mattered was that we had a home.
My mom got up early and went and filled out job applications. She wanted to have a job by the time she went back to family court. I waited for the Rent-a-Center to deliver our furniture and for the phone man to come. They both took all day.
My mom came home. “I filled out applications everywhere—somebody is going to call me.”
“They will mom.”
“Pass me the phone. I’m going to call your sister to see if she wants to come home. You too! You don’t have to live with that boy,” my mother said.
“I know,” I said.
My mother began to search in her bag for Alanna’s number. She found it and called Alanna and then said she was going to cry. “Your sister got married and is moving on base with Bruce to California.” Damn, I thought. A little tear formed in my mom’s eye, then she said, “Kendra, thank you for being my rock, for being strong. I really appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome.”
“We just got to go get Bub and Bilal back and everything will be fine again,” she said, reassuring herself.
My mother was able to regain custody of the kids after we went to court. Ms. Norton had gotten promoted, so we had this new social worker who didn’t love her job as much as Ms. Norton had. She took the order on me out of the system. They came and inspected our house and verified my mom was working a job. Our family was back together and I felt so thankful.
Chapter 6
June 2004
On the ride home from the bar I was still evaluating my life. Why those bitches had to come up in my job and talk shit about me? I thought as tears began to flow down my face. My life is okay—I’m doing all right. Yeah, I don’t have a big house, but I’m happy. I have my family, and I have my health. With all that happened to me I’m doing good. I tried to make myself feel good about my accomplishments, but the truth was seeping in slowly. I hadn’t done shit with my life in the last seven years. I couldn’t think of one thing besides helping my family. My life had been on pause, I was stuck in neutral. I have done nothing with my life. I never went back to school, I don’t own a home and my car is a dirty white rusted 1992 two-door Corolla. I always told myself I would go back and get my GED and take some classes, but I never did. Every time I filled out the application, something would happen. The only thing I do is spend time with my family, making sure they are all right, and go to work.
Really, besides work I don’t have a life. Me and Marcus still together, but he turned into an old man, too. All he do is go to work, come home, grab a beer and watch television. We still stay with his dad because he doesn’t want to leave him alone or put him in a nursing home. I do help my mom with her bills and I buy Bubbles and Bilal clothes and sneaks. I take them out and do things with them as much as I can. My mother works at Pathmark, but she still don’t make enough to take care of three people. Plus she spends up all her money. My mom has traded her drinking in for gambling. Yup, out with one bad habit, in with another one. She is a professional lottery ticket buyer
and slot machine puller now. She buys two hundred Powerball tickets and goes to casinos and horse races. She was betting on everything and wasting every dollar she had, but at least she doesn’t drink. My little sister, Bubbles, is in the eleventh grade. She is doing good. She thinned out and lost her baby weight. She has a job at McDonalds. Bilal’s in the tenth grade, and he plays basketball. John and Nitra got married and have three children, and then there is Alanna.
Well, Alanna is still the same evil person, only now she is a bitter, angry, fat, twice-divorced woman. Once she hit twenty-three, Bruce left her for an eighteen-year-old. He found somebody young and dumb like she had been. She comes around the family more but still keeps her distance. She lives in Bakersfield, California. She has a daughter, Ayanna, and a son, Anwar. However, she is such a mess of a mom that her kids live with Bruce.
Her second husband, Ernie, that only lasted three months because she found out he was gay. But we all knew that the moment she brought him around the family. We told her but she didn’t listen.
I haven’t talked to my dad in years—whenever he calls I pass the phone to Bubbles or Bilal. I never forgave him for not coming to get us. If my mother didn’t get herself together we would have been stuck in the system.
I tried to shake off that girl’s comments. I was home now and I would never see that bitch again. I walked in and Mr. Skip was still on the sofa. Everything was basically the same in the house. He was lying in the bed watching television. His walker was sitting next to the bed. He had prosthetic legs that he almost never used.
“Mr. Skip, you want something to drink?” He looked away from the television and at me.
“Yes, can you get me something? My nurse warmed up that food you made me. It was good.”
“You want some more?” I asked as I checked the mail.
“If you could, please.”
I walked in the kitchen and made Mr. Skip another plate of macaroni, greens, and ribs. I gave him his warm plate of food. Mr. Skip in the last two years hadn’t been able to get out of bed at all. He has a nurse come every day and then he was home for a few hours by himself until I got in.
I walked into our room and took my clothes off. I looked around our bedroom. It was a damn mess. We had piles of junk everywhere. Marcus’s shoes and boots lined one wall and mine lined the other. There was a stack of magazines in the corner. We had this old yellowed bed frame with gold trim. One of our dressers was missing a handle. The bottom drawer was just an empty space where a drawer should have been. We needed to get a new bedroom set. I bet you those bitches have master bedrooms with big beds and big closets, and look at how I’m living.
I walked around the room and tried to straighten things up, but it was just no use. I was living in a dump. I felt another tear coming. I looked around again. I should be doing way better than this. Instantly I felt like my eyes had just opened up and I could see clearly.
I walked into the bathroom and turned the shower on. The bathroom looked awful. It wasn’t dirty, because I cleaned it up every other day. It was just old-looking. The old double silver faucet was dripping nonstop—it had been broken for a while. The “c” and “o” on the word cold were missing. The floor had tiles missing, and there was a hole in the wall where the toilet tissue holder used to be. I was beginning to give myself a headache. I looked in the medicine cabinet, popped two Advils and then took a quick glance in the mirror at myself. I noticed puffiness beginning to form under my eyes. I needed to stop crying and worrying. It is what it is. I got in the warm shower and let today’s bullshit roll off me. I closed my eyes and just exhaled. I took a long shower, then walked out of the bathroom. Marcus had come in from work and already laid out on the bed. I gave him a kiss on the lips.
“I didn’t even hear you come in,” I said as I dried off.
“Yeah, I’m tired. My body hurt. All this overtime is killing me,” he said.
I slipped on the nightgown and lay next to him. I began stroking his hair and closed my eyes.
“How was your day?” I asked.
“It was good. What about yours?”
“It was kind of messed up.”
“Why? What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it. Did you get a chance to pay the cell phone bill?”
“No, not yet.” he said.
“You know they are going to turn our phones off,” I said sighing.
“You don’t have the money?” he asked.
“No. I paid last month.”
“You might have to take care of it again okay? My overtime should be on this check, but I’m not sure. So are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?”
“Nothing is bothering me.”
“Yes it is, baby. Tell me. I can see it in your face. What’s on your mind?” I sat on my side and said, “Baby, these women I went to school with came into my job today.”
“Okay, so what happened?”
“Well, they asked me what was I doing with my life.”
“Okay,” he said like he was waiting for me to tell him what else had happened.
“That’s it. One of them got drunk and she was just talking shit. She was really loud, saying, ‘Oh my God, Kendra, you used to be a good singer. Now all you do is this.”
“How could you allow someone to come into your job and make you feel bad? You should have said, ‘Bitch, what the fuck do you do?’” he said as he stood up. I knew he could see how badly it had affected me.
“I couldn’t say that because they all had their shit together. Like one was a nurse, the other just bought a house in North Carolina and the other was engaged.” I saw the dumb look Marcus was giving me.
“So? They still don’t have anything on you,” he said.
Obviously he wasn’t getting it, so I said, “Just forget it, Marcus.”
“You shouldn’t be upset. It is really not that big of a deal.”
“Don’t tell me I shouldn’t be upset. You don’t know how that shit felt, having a bitch you hardly remember tell you basically your life ain’t shit,” I snapped as I stood up.
“Baby, listen. I’m not telling you how to feel. I just don’t see why you are so upset,” he said, standing up, easing me back on the bed.
“Get off me, Marcus. Get off me, Marcus!” I said as I tried to stand up. “It hurt, baby, to have them look at me like I’m nothing. It hurt because maybe they are right. Maybe I’m not living the life I’m supposed to be living. Baby, I feel like I’m supposed to be doing something else with my life.” I felt tears rush down my cheeks.
“Like what?”
“Like something. Why didn’t I ever think to get a real job? Huh?”
“You have a real job.”
“No, I don’t. You can’t retire from being a bartender. Why didn’t I go to school or something?”
“You are doing good,” Marcus said.
“No, I’m not. I mean look around. I should have more. I’m twenty-five years old. In five years I’ll be thirty and what the fuck do I have? We should have more. We need to buy a house.”
Marcus stood up and began walking around the room and said, “Yo, what’s wrong with what we have? We doing good. I mean, we both working and we have cars. You know my dad is going to leave us this house. And then we’ll get a loan against it, fix it up, do some remodeling and live a good life.”
“Marcus, I’m not sitting around waiting for your father to die so we can own a home.”
“Okay, we can get a house before that.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment.
“What is it that you think you might want to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said angrily as I turned over and went to sleep.
The next morning, I shook the day before off. My mother called and said, “Don’t forget your nephew’s party is today.”
“Mom, this my only day off. I’m tired, and I don’t feel like dealing with any kids.”
“I don’t care. Don’t stand my grandbaby u
p on his birthday. I better see you there. You know John and Nitra will be so upset if you aren’t. We have to go to Toys “R” Us and pick something up.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” I forgot that I had to go to my damn four-year-old nephew’s birthday party. John and Nitra have three kids. The first is my nephew Montae—he was about to be seven—and my niece Laila was a month old and Damir was turning four today.
Marcus and I arrived just as they were opening gifts. Nitra and John had made a nice home for themselves. They lived in a spacious row home in the Overbrook section of Philly, on a block lined with trees and small lawns. The theme for the party was Power Rangers. Nitra had Power Ranger everything everywhere. She had transformed her house into a Power Ranger station. Nitra was always good at that motherly stuff. She was still carrying a little bit of her baby weight, but she looked great.
“Marcus, John’s upstairs putting that game together. You should probably help him,” she suggested, and Marcus went up the steps.
“Come on in the kitchen and get yourself something to eat,” she said, pulling me by the arm.
We walked past the children running all around the party. The birthday boy—his name was Damir, but his nickname was Boy Boy—ran into the kitchen behind us.
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