by Dawn Desiree
“Oh, well, that’s because I keep all my temporary kids down here. Now, let me go get you some clean sheets.”
Rain watched with sad amazement as Ms. Darby left the bedroom, and listened as she trudged up the stairs. Rain wanted to sit but was terrified to touch the beat-up mattress for fear she might catch something, so she stood and waited.
She heard someone coming toward the bedroom and assumed it was Jody, but it wasn’t. It was the boy who had answered the door for them earlier. He stood before her with a strange, dumb look on his face. Rain was getting irritated.
“Do you speak, or are you slow?” she asked the boy.
“Yeah, I speak,” he said and held out his hand. “What’s up? My name is Nick.”
Rain shook his sweaty hand. “My name is Rain.”
“Rain. That’s a hot name for a hottie girl like yourself.”
Hottie girl . . . where the hell is he from?
The boy seemed awkward to Rain, almost as if he didn’t know what he was going to do next.
“Listen, Rain, my room is right down there.” He pointed down the hall in the direction of Jerome and Jody’s room. “You can come and sleep with me if you get scared in here all by yourself.” The look he gave Rain made her skin crawl.
“Thank you, but no thank you,” she replied.
“If I get scared in here by myself, I’ll just go get my brother Jody, who sleeps in the room right beside yours, and have him beat the mess out of the ghost for me.”
Read between the lines, weirdo.
Nick sized Rain up one last time before leaving the room. She hoped he had gotten her silent message loud and clear. Nick gave Rain the creeps, and now she definitely didn’t feel comfortable being the only girl in the basement.
After waiting for Ms. Darby for nearly twenty minutes, Rain concluded that she was never coming back down. So, she walked down the hall to check on Jody and Jerome. Their bedroom didn’t look as bad as her room did. In fact, it looked almost livable.
Jody spoke first. “What do you think about this place?”
“Yeah, right. Do you really have to ask?” Rain responded. “I mean, look around you. Besides your bedroom, this house is a shithole.”
Jody laughed.
“Have you talked to the boy Nick yet?” Rain asked.
“No. Who’s that?” Jody asked.
“He’s the scrawny boy who answered the door for us earlier. His room is right next to yours.”
“What about him?” Jody asked.
Rain didn’t want to tell Jody what Nick said to her earlier, because she knew it would upset him. “Nothing much,” she said. “He just creeped me out, that’s all.”
Rain walked over to where Jerome sat on one of the twin beds. She plopped down beside him and started rubbing his head.
“You’re awfully quiet, Rome. Are you all right?”
“Of course he’s not all right,” Jody answered for him. “He doesn’t understand this any more than you or me.”
Jerome sat there, still silent. Rain could feel his pain. She reached out to him and held him like a baby as she slowly rocked him to sleep. Jerome had the closest relationship to their father, so the loss hurt him deeply.
After laying Jerome down gently on his bed, Rain decided to find some blankets herself. Watching Jerome sleep so peacefully put her at ease. She stood up to leave the room.
“Where are you going?” Jody asked.
“I’m going upstairs to get a clean comforter for my dingy bed.”
Jody was bored with the Smack Down vs. Raw portable video game he was playing and needed something else to do. “I’ll go with you,” he said. Jody placed the handheld game on his bed.
“You need to hide that thing,” Rain suggested. “I personally wouldn’t trust anybody in here, especially your next door neighbor.”
Jody picked up the game and stuck it deep into his pillowcase. This was something he had watched Rain do with her diary back at home on many occasions.
“I’ve got to find me a new hiding place,” Rain joked.
They headed upstairs, tripping over heaps of clothes and trash along the way. When they got upstairs, they saw the two girls Ms. Darby had mentioned earlier.
The first girl was tall, dark, and lanky, like an old, stringy mop. Her clothes were so loose and raggedy that they looked like they were trying to run away from her to find a body they could fit.
The other girl looked a little more decent—a thick, pretty redbone with silky locks falling down her shoulders. Rain wouldn’t mind getting at her. She wondered if the redbone was into girls.
Both girls sat on the stairwell kicking their feet back and forth while spitting sunflower seeds on the floor.
So much for that idea. Baby girl don’t have no home training.
Rain didn’t like the mean, nasty looks the girls gave her. “What is wrong with everybody in here?” she asked Jody rhetorically. “I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.”
The girls whispered something to each other and erupted into hysterical laughter. Rain didn’t feel threatened by them at all. She knew that she could knock the smiles right off their faces if they provoked her.
“Come on, Jody.” Rain walked right up to the girls. “Excuse me, but can you tell me where the clean blankets are?” Rain hoped that she had disappointed the girls by not letting them intimidate her.
The tall, lanky girl spoke first. “It’s in the hall closet.”
Very funny, Rain thought.
“Okay, where’s the hall closet at?” she asked.
The redbone spoke now. “It’s down that hall to the right,” she said, pointing.
“Thank you,” Rain said, walking in the direction of the closet with Jody right behind her.
“Hey!” one of the girls yelled loudly. Rain and Jody stopped in their tracks.
“We’re sorry for being so rude. We didn’t even introduce ourselves,” the redbone said.
Rain figured that they had finally gained some sense. The girls walked over to where Rain and Jody stood.
“My name is Sleet, and this is Hail. You must be Snow. Ms. Darby told us all about you,” the redbone said.
Oh, they are trying to be funny, Rain thought.
Jody stepped back. He knew what was about to happen next. Rain didn’t allow anyone to make fun of her name. She took pride in the birth name that her mother had given her. When she was alive, Evelyn would always tell the story behind Rain’s name. Rain was a special name, because she was conceived on a rainy night and born into the world on a rainy day.
Rain balled up two tight fists, turning her knuckles red. She’d had enough of these bitches. She swung the first blow at the red bitch who had called her Snow. It came so fast that the bitch didn’t know what hit her. Jody watched in amusement as the girl dropped to the floor.
I can’t believe I was feeling your dusty ass.
The second blow came instantly, hitting tall wonder with a solid shot to her scrawny little nose. Blood oozed out and dripped down into the girl’s mouth as she fell to the floor.
“Don’t you bitches ever disrespect me again! You dig?”
Rain and Jody walked off, Rain slapping imaginary dust off her hands. Jody grabbed what they had come upstairs for in the first place from the top shelf in the closet.
When they reached the top of the stairs to head back down into their dungeon, they froze at the wicked sound of Ms. Darby’s voice.
“Excuse me, young lady! I don’t know what gang you come from, but there will be absolutely no fighting in my house! Consider yourself punished for the rest of the night!” she yelled.
Punished? Rain had never even been punished by her own mother or father. She didn’t pay Ms. Darby any mind. It was punishment enough just living in her house, whether Ms. Darby knew it or not. Rain proceeded down the steps, ignoring whatever else Ms. Darby had to say, with her faithful little brother right by her side.
“I’m going to my room to unpack,” Rain told Jody. “I’ll come and ch
eck on you and Rome in a little while.”
When Rain got back to her room, she noticed that her bags had been moved. Who had come into her room? Jerome was still asleep, so she knew it couldn’t have been him. Rain searched her bags to see if anything was missing. After going through all her things, she noticed that her diary was gone. Had she even packed it? She was almost sure she had, but since everything else was still in its place, she could’ve been wrong. She would have to remember to get her diary when Ms. Bertha took them back past the apartment.
Rain took a pair of socks out of one of her bags and put them on her hands as gloves. She didn’t know which one of the girls had slept in which bed, but she didn’t want to touch their nasty germs. She chose the least smelly bed and discarded the sheets from the pissy bed and put clean ones on to help get rid of the odor.
Rain opened the two windows to allow some fresh air in and finally felt comfortable enough to take a nap. Unfortunately, loud noises from upstairs kept her from falling asleep. Instead, she tried to rest her eyes, hoping exhaustion would win and let her sleep. Vivid images of her father entered her mind, forcing out all other thoughts that floated around.
Rain’s mind took her back to when she was seven years old, when her father first taught her how to hold her guards up to fight. Her mother sat on the sofa in front of them observing, but she was less than thrilled about their only daughter learning how to throw punches. Rain could hear her mother’s voice like it was yesterday.
“Jim, a beautiful girl like Rain should be taught how to sing and dance, not how to assault people.”
Jim had laughed and pulled little Rain in front of her mother, holding her balled fists into the air and said, “Tell Mommy to put ’em up.”
“Put ’em up, Mommy,” Rain had said, imitating her father.
Evelyn had laughed and said, “Oh, for real? You don’t want it.” Then she threw a fake jab at Jim, and he fell over, pretending to be hurt. They both had tickled Rain silly.
Tears rolled down Rain’s face while she reminisced about those long lost days. Eventually, she cried herself to sleep, forgetting all about the noises above her head.
When she awoke several hours later, she was disoriented and unaware of the time. She assumed that it was well past midnight, because the house seemed peaceful and quiet. The only sound she could hear was the evening song of crickets that sang into the late night and into Rain’s open window.
Rain wasn’t sure what had awakened her so suddenly, until she saw a shadow tiptoeing toward her bed. A body stood right in front of her.
“Jody?” she whispered, praying that it was her little brother.
“No, hottie. It’s not Jody. It’s Nick.”
Rain’s heart began to pound hard inside her chest while the butterflies spread their wings in the pit of her stomach.
What the hell is he doing in here this time of night?
As if he could read her mind, Nick answered, “I came to see if you wanted some company.”
Rain sat up in her bed, trying to focus her vision to get a better look at him. She had to strain her eyes to see him in the dark bedroom. The street light beaming from outside finally helped her focus in on him.
Oh my God, he’s naked! Rain watched as he perversely rubbed his exposed manhood. She watched it rise and graduate to its rock-hard erection.
“Get out, you horny bastard!” she said in an angry whisper, only loud enough for him to hear. She didn’t want to wake Jody and Jerome. She would try to handle this situation herself.
“You don’t mean that, sweet lips,” Nick said.
Rain sat up to get out of the bed so that she could protect herself, but when she looked down at herself, she noticed that she was naked too. Horror and fear overtook her entire body. She felt herself tremble with rage. Did he do this to her?
“Where are my clothes?” she asked, louder than before.
“Shhh! Be quiet. You don’t want to wake the whole house and let them catch us like this, do you?” Nick reached out his hand and gripped the back of Rain’s head, forcing her to put her mouth to his erection.
“Suck it, sweet lips. Suck it like you sucked Terrance’s.”
Rain was humiliated. So she had brought her diary after all, and Nick had stolen it.
He pushed her head back onto the bed using all of his strength. “Just let me put it in, baby. It’s big, but it won’t hurt. I promise.” He forced his body on top of Rain’s. For someone who looked so scrawny, he felt like he had the strength of ten men.
She could feel his cold sweat drip down her breasts and run down her stomach. Rain didn’t know what to do. She felt panicked and helpless. She began to kick, punch, and scream at the top of her lungs.
“Get off me, you freak! Jody, help me! Get off me, you nasty freak! Jo-dee!”
Nick covered Rain’s mouth with one hand to stifle her screams. Rain tried to bite the meat off his hand with all of her might. He struggled to free his hand from the tight grip of her teeth.
When Rain finally released after she tasted his bitter blood, he slapped her hard in the face. Rain continued to spit, kick, and scream, but Nick refused to move. The fight made him want her even more. He began to rub his nature against her breasts, stroking her hair and ignoring her cries.
“Oh, baby, just let me put it in for a minute. Please, baby.” Just as he was about to put his cock inside her and take away her sacred virginity, Jody stormed into the dark bedroom. He flicked on the light switch to see what was going on.
“Thank God! Help me, Jody!” Rain cried.
Without hesitation, Jody reached into his pants and pulled out a loaded nine millimeter. Rain couldn’t process the surreal moments that followed. Neither Rain nor Nick saw it coming.
Pap! Pap! Pap! The sound of three shots pierced the air, followed by a deafening silence. With three shots in his back, Nick slumped over Rain’s body. She could feel his erection getting softer as the seconds passed by.
Jody pushed the dead body off of Rain and let it drop to the ground. “Put your clothes on,” Jody said to Rain.
Rain was in a traumatized state of shock, but she tried to dress herself as much as she could.
“Don’t get used to this,” Jody joked as he pulled her shirt over her head. “Twice in twenty-four hours is your limit.”
Rain tried to force a chuckle. “Where did you get a gun?” Rain asked.
Jody never got the chance to answer. Just as Rain finished buttoning her pants, the whole house appeared at her bedroom door. Dreadlocks and Mop & Glo wore the same stupid smirks on their faces as they looked down at Rain. Ms. Darby couldn’t believe her eyes.
“What have you children done?” She ran over to Nick’s dead body and rolled it over onto his back. She took her two first fingers and placed them on his neck to take his pulse.
“He’s dead,” she said in a barely audible whisper.
The three bullet holes in his back covered in blood could have told her that, Rain thought.
“Tammy, go upstairs and call the police,” Ms. Darby instructed the redbone who Rain had punched in the nose.
What happened next added terror to Rain’s worst nightmare. Jody was immediately arrested and taken to an all-boys detention center. Ms. Darby ordered the officers to take Rain away as well.
“That girl is the devil,” Rain heard Ms. Darby tell them.
“What about Jerome?” Rain asked the officer as he escorted Rain out to his car.
“Who is Jerome?” the officer asked.
“He is my youngest brother,” Rain explained. “Can I at least say good-bye to him? He must be so confused right now.”
The officer saw the sincerity in Rain’s face.
“Make it quick. I don’t have all night.”
Rain quickly ran back into the house right past Ms. Darby, who she wanted to stop and spit on, but continued into Jerome’s room.
Jerome sat up in his bed, crying and trembling. Rain broke down and cried too. This was too much for even her to hand
le. She ran over to comfort Jerome, who looked weak and helpless.
“They took Jody to jail,” Jerome told her through his silent cries. “They took him to jail for killing that boy.” Jerome continued, “He used Daddy’s gun.”
Rain was confused. “What are you talking about, Rome?” Rain asked.
“He took it out of Daddy’s dresser while we were packing. He showed it to me, but he made me promise not to touch it.”
Rain wiped away his tears before she spoke. “Jerome, Jody’s not in jail. He’s going to be sent to a home for boys who have done bad things. He’s not in jail, Rome, and he will be fine.” Rain took Jerome’s face into the palms of her hands and held it there.
“Rome, look at me. I need you to be a strong baby brother. I know you are hurting, and it hurts me to see you cry, but everything is going to get better. I promise you, Rome. I have to leave now. They’re moving me to a different home because there’s way too much drama up in here, but I will be back to see you. I’m going to leave you with my friend’s cell phone number, and I want you to call this number if anybody does anything to you in this muthafucka, do you hear me?” Rain was serious now. She would kill for her baby brother, just as Jody had killed for her.
“His name is Terrance,” Rain continued. “I’ll let him know that you’ll be calling.” Rain wrote down the phone number on a scrap of paper she found in the hallway.
“Don’t lose this, Jerome. This is our only way of talking to each other for right now.”
Jerome stuck the number in his shoes.
“Don’t get no nasty feet germs on it, or it might smear,” Rain joked. She had to lighten the air somehow; it was too thick.
“Well, shorty, I have to go, but I won’t be gone for long.”
Jerome hugged Rain so tight she nearly had to peel him off of her.
“I love you, Rome.”
“I love you too, Rain.”
THREE
Sunshine had been adjusting well since the death of her mother, which was nearly a year ago. She eagerly anticipated her senior year of high school, and although she hadn’t gained any new friends, her relationship with Cathy was so tight that someone could have assumed they were related. Only the difference in their skin revealed the truth. Although no one could take the place of Sunshine’s biological mother, Cathy was able to pick up where Ayanna had left off.
