Return to Flint

by Treasure Hernandez

  Cee Cee spun around to meet her mother eye to eye. Heat flared in Cee Cee chest, and she got ready for war. “Fuck you and your man! I could have him if I wanted to. Lucky for you I don’t want shit to do with him unless it’s about work. That’s what the fuck I came here for. I came here to get work.” She was so furious she could feel her heart beating and the adrenaline running though her veins.

  “I definitely didn’t come to catch up with you and let you know how your only daughter was doing. It’s not like you ever gave any fucks about me anyway. And how dare you think I stole Daddy from you? He was my fucking father. He loved me as his daughter and you as his wife. Do you honestly think I ever wanted to take your place with him? Fuck I want with your life? You ain’t living; you just surviving, moving another man into this house. Lying on your back and spreading your legs and sucking some dick just to keep yourself feeling and looking good. I don’t know how Dad ever saw anything in you. I’m ashamed to be your daughter. You ain’t nothing more than a fuck and a suck to somebody. That’s all you’ve ever been good for,” Cee Cee hissed, fire flashing in her eyes.

  The women stood toe to toe, both exuding palpable waves of fury. Vinny quickly wedged his body between them; and two of his goons who had overheard the commotion ran into the room and slid over to where they all stood.

  “Okay. Okay. I have a small job for you. If you prove yourself, I will have more work for you, maybe even steady work,” Vinny placated her, pushing Marie out of Cee Cee’s reach. As much as he would have enjoyed a knock-down, drag-out mother and daughter fight, he had a meeting to get to so he had to leave soon.

  “Nah, I’m not signing on to anybody’s payroll. I’m just looking for a few quick independent jobs. I’m not joining your new crew,” Cee Cee clarified.

  Vinny looked at the fury in Cee Cee eyes and smirked. “We will see how long you survive out here without the backing of a crew,” Vinny said, his ego clearly bruised from her constant rejection.

  “I’ll take my chances. Now, what’s the job and how much does it pay?” Cee Cee replied, getting right down to business, feeling the heat of her mother’s gaze on her face.

  Chapter 12

  Lost, lonely, and confused, Izzy had been aimlessly walking down Dort Highway for almost an hour. She couldn’t believe that Shawn had moved on without her. She couldn’t understand why her life had been so fucked up for her. Every time she thought things were going to get better, something worse would happen.

  When she met Shawn, she thought God had finally answered her prayers and she had found her Prince Charming. They met at the strip club, and when he found out that she didn’t have a place to stay, he moved her in to his apartment and things started to look up. She was still working her nightshifts at the club, but instead of working every night, she cut her schedule down to just four days a week. On her days off, she would clean the house, cook her man breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and sit with him while he played his beloved video games.

  Shawn was the perfect boyfriend to her. He had a good, steady job, paid the bills all on his own, and seemed to genuinely enjoy spending time with her. After about three months of them living in bliss, things began to spiral out of control. He came home one morning and said he had gotten laid off. He seemed devastated to lose his job, and Izzy did her best to cheer him up and keep him in good spirits.

  The first few weeks he was determined to find another job quickly. He updated his résumé and was out the door no later than ten in the morning to go to different places and fill out applications, and do interviews on the spot. He picked up odd jobs whenever he came across them and he signed up for online programs that offered to send him job alerts every week. At first he was getting e-mails and callbacks asking him to come in for interviews. He got a few job offers, but he turned them all down because they were all offering him less money than what he was making. Eventually, the phone stopped ringing and e-mails stopped coming in.

  Elizabeth went back to working six days a week to pick up the slack and cover the bills. When Shawn realized that she was bringing in more than he was before he got fired, he stopped looking for work. He started going out with his friends, hanging out at bars, and spending money as fast as Izzy was making it. Izzy didn’t mind stepping up and helping out with everything if it weren’t for the fact that Shawn was still expecting her to cook, clean, and take care of everything in the house when she got off work in the morning.

  She would get home around four in the morning and usually find the apartment a mess with bottles thrown about and cigarettes put out everywhere. Shawn and his friends would be passed out in different places throughout the apartment. Instead of going to bed to get some rest, Izzy would immediately get to cleaning up behind everyone because she knew in the morning Shawn would be up and expecting the apartment to look spotless and his breakfast to be cooking on the stove.

  When Izzy tried asking him if there was any news on him getting a new job, he would flip out on her and accuse her of being a gold-digging whore. He would tell her that the only reason she was so anxious for him to get a job was because she was fucking different guys while he was at work because that’s all strippers were good for. When she tried reassuring him that it wasn’t true, he became more infuriated and accused her of calling him a liar. There was no winning with him and nothing Izzy did was ever good enough for him.

  Eventually, screaming and putting her down was not enough for him and he began to beat on her for any reason he could think of. Despite all of the abuse, Izzy never thought of leaving him because he was all she had. She didn’t have any friends, and she loved him. After every beating, she would convince herself that it was her fault he did what he did. She would go and apologize to him for fear that he would stay mad at her if she didn’t.

  Izzy was tired of walking along the highway. She was in a daze, confused about what she was going to do next. She was considering going into Déjà Vu and seeing if she could start working some night shifts again but being that she had been gone for so long, she didn’t know if they’d take her back just like that. When she went into the ward, she asked them repeatedly if she could call her job so she could let them know that she was going to have to take a leave, but they never allowed her to use the phone. She had a feeling that if she showed up after all this time, they’d be mad at her for not showing up or calling.

  Izzy pulled at the wedgie she had from wearing Laura’s pants. She must have been a petite girl because these pants Izzy had on were a full size too small for her. Izzy wondered if Laura was prettier than her. She wondered how Laura and Shawn had met and how long it had been before Shawn moved her in. The more she thought about the situation, the more infuriated she became.

  She had gone through hell at that psych ward getting raped by Dr. Syed and his staff. She had been drugged, sodomized, and abused in that hospital and, all that time, what got her through was thinking about getting back to Shawn. She had taken beating after beating, and all she thought about was Shawn. And to think that entire time she was suffering Shawn was out here moving on and loving someone else. Izzy started to feel a passion from deep within that she had never felt before. It was like she was waking up for the first time and seeing things for what they really were.

  Tiana and Cee Cee kept telling her to stop thinking about Shawn and to just focus on getting herself better. They warned her about going back to him and told her that she could do better. They told her that he was an asshole for beating her and taking advantage of her like that. She never told them but there were some days that Shawn even made her strip for his friends and one time even made her sleep with one of them.

  Shawn told her that if she loved him she would sleep with Mike, his best friend, because Shawn wanted Mike to see how good her pussy felt. She didn’t feel comfortable doing it, but she did because she would do anything for Shawn. He was pissed off at her for giving away her body even though he asked her to and Shawn didn’t touch her for a month. Izzy missed her period while she was waiting for Sh
awn to get over himself and she found out that she was pregnant with what was likely his friend’s baby. Shawn then forced her to go to some hack job abortion clinic to get rid of it.

  Now she understood what they all saw. She realized that Shawn was just using her and that he never really loved her. All that time, she meant nothing to him. It’s time for me to show him what I’m made of, she said to herself. With that, she began the walk back toward his apartment.

  By the time Izzy got to the apartment she was in a full rage thinking about all the fucked-up things Shawn put her through over the years. “How can this nigga treat me like this?” she ranted to herself. “I gave the best of myself to him and he just tossed me to the side like I was trash to him! Wait until I see this motherfucker; and his bitch better not be in there ’cause she can get it too,” she mumbled to herself as she walked up the steps.

  Izzy stood in front of the door with her chest heaving in and out like she had just finished running a marathon. Just as she was about to knock, she paused and heard laughter on the other side. That was all the fuel she needed to increase the fire that was burning within her.

  Shawn was sitting at the dinner table with Laura reminiscing about the last time they had sex at her job and how they were almost caught by the floor manager. “If you saw your face when you heard the door unlock, you would’ve thought you got caught with your pants down. Wait, you almost did!” Shawn roared out with a hearty laugh.

  “Well, if you hadn’t insisted on nutting on my face while I had my makeup on I never would’ve yelled out. Oh my God, imagine if you had nutted on my face. How the fuck would I have ever explained that shit to my manager?” Laura said in a matter-of-fact tone, as she didn’t find it so funny.

  “You know how: tell that motherfucker it was a glazed bear claw you got smacked with.” Shawn couldn’t help himself from busting out laughing at his corny jokes.

  Laura wasn’t pleased being the butt of Shawn’s jokes. But when she knew better than to say anything that would get him upset and cause him to start going off on her.

  Shawn was still laughing at the thought of how funny it would’ve been if they had been caught by the manager when he heard a loud knocking coming from the front door. Boom, boom, boom, boom! If he didn’t know any better he would of thought it was the feds with a battering ram looking for a drug bust.

  This scared the shit out of Laura. She knew Shawn lived in the hood, but banging like that was never heard of where she was from.

  Shawn reluctantly stood up to answer the door. What he really wanted to do was hop through the bathroom window and run just in case it really was the cops looking to cause some trouble. Them alphabet boys stayed making things worse than they were. It was bad enough with people struggling in poverty out there in Flint. With all the cop killing that had been going on all over, Shawn wasn’t looking to be the next name on that list.

  “Who’s that?” he asked in a low but deep voice.

  Boom, boom, boom, boom! Another round of banging came again, this time with a female’s voice screaming behind it, “Open this fucking door, you trifling, bitch-ass nigga and find out who it is!”

  Shawn was confused because he didn’t recognized the voice.

  “Who is that?” Laura mouthed without a sound to him.

  Shawn shrugged and shook his head from side to side. He tried to peep through the side window but it was too dark to make out who it was. He was sure it wasn’t the cops at this point because he didn’t see flashing red and blue lights in front of the house when he peeped through the window.

  He slowly opened the door. When he saw who it was he chuckled and completely let his guard down. Shawn pushed the door back to shut the door in her face. Just as Shawn motioned to close it, Izzy caught a glimpse of Laura for the first time. She darted right past Shawn, determined to choke out the bitch who had taken her man.

  Shawn was taken aback by Izzy’s actions and he didn’t know how to react. Everything happened so fast. He saw as Izzy cocked her arm back and cold-clocked Laura right in the nose. Immediately Laura’s nose started gushing as Izzy kept throwing haymakers in her direction.

  He quickly ran toward them to break up Izzy’s power-beating on Laura, who was now on the ground in the fetal position attempting to protect herself. What Shawn didn’t realize was that Izzy was too far gone in her mind to be stopped by anything or anyone. Shawn came up from behind and attempted to get Izzy off of his girl.

  All three of them were now in the small kitchen. Shawn managed to put Izzy in a full Nelson to get her off of Laura. After a few seconds Izzy eased off of fighting Shawn back and let him pull her up. Shawn was shocked when he looked down and saw the damage Izzy had done to Laura’s face. He never knew Izzy had it in her to be so violent.

  Izzy came to the realization that he had the nerve to defend that bitch over her. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to be mine!” Izzy yelled. “Everything I do is because of you. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy with me. But instead you beat me, put me down, and then went out and got some other bitch to take my place. I got sent up to Rollins because of all your fucking lies and I kept my mouth shut and never told them the truth. You have no idea all the shit they did to me while I was in there. They raped me and abused me night after night and it was because of you,” Izzy yelled with tears streaming down her face and spit flying out of her mouth as she spoke. “Because of you!”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Shawn yelled back, confused.

  “You motherfucker. You! You’re the reason I went to the psych ward. You’re the reason I got hit by that car! You’re the reason I was raped!” She began to weep. Her breathing had now become labored and she struggled to get those last words out. She was finding it harder and harder to catch a full breath and her knees started to buckle. When her legs finally gave way and she was about to fall, Shawn slapped her across the face.

  “Bitch, you brave enough to run up in my house and act a fool! I’ma kill you for real this time.”

  Shawn’s slap actually helped her get herself together again. It was like the slap made her catch her breath and forced the adrenaline to start coursing through her veins.

  Shawn cocked his arm all the way back to give her a final backhanded pimp slap. As Shawn’s hand was coming down Izzy mustered up all her energy to get up and push him across the kitchen floor. She felt the rage resurface in her. She searched around the room to use something to protect herself with. She saw the butcher knife sitting on the counter and snatched it up. Not knowing how to use it against him she pointed it in his direction. “Come on, bitch-ass nigga I’m sick of the bullshit of men touching my body when I don’t want it!”

  Shawn had slammed his head on the edge of the countertop. The hard blow to the head had him a bit confused about what had just happened. He knew he had fallen, but he was finding it hard to believe it was Izzy who had pushed him with such strong force.

  He stumbled up from the floor to get his bearings. “I know you didn’t just put your hands on me. I just told you, now you about to die,” he said, applying pressure to the knot that was forming on his forehead. He was still talking the talk, but he was so dazed he was barely standing up straight. Izzy kept swinging the knife from left to right to get him to keep his distance. It didn’t stop him from lunging toward her.

  As he jumped forward, Izzy sliced the brachial artery on his left arm. “I told you I’m sick of you men touching me.”

  Shawn had no idea the arteries in his biceps were just as important as his carotid artery in his neck. Blood started gushing out of his arm within seconds. Izzy calmly walked over to the dining room table and took a seat.

  By now Laura had managed to sit up and crawl over to Shawn, who was now sitting on the floor too. There was so much blood she couldn’t make out where it was all coming from.

  “Baby, you . . . you’re . . . Shawn! Shawn! You’re bleeding!” she screamed in a panic. “You hurt him!” Laura spat at Izzy.

  “Yes, I did.
Fuck around and you’re next!” Izzy spat back.

  “Ha! Who’s next? Remember whose house this . . .” Shawn’s voice trailed off. Even though he could barely move, he was still trying to get the last word in. “Fuck. I’m starting to . . . feel weak.” Shawn passed out.

  “Shawn!” Laura screamed, hoping to see a glimmer of life still in him. “Baby, baby, look at me. No, no, no, no,” she said, frightened. “Hang on, baby. I’m gonna call the police.”

  “No, the fuck you not calling any police while I’m still here,” Izzy said in a rage.

  Laura had no idea who this girl was, but she wasn’t trying to stick around and find out. She whispered a final, “I love you,” to Shawn and then mustered up all the courage to crawl past Izzy so she could try to make a run for the door.

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Izzy grabbed her by the hair.

  “Arg! Please, stop!” Laura pleaded. “Let me go. I promise I won’t tell anybody about anything that happened,” Laura tried to reason with her.

  “You damn right you won’t tell anybody about what happened.” Izzy pulled her head back and made a swift cut across Laura’s neck. She released her and watched as Laura began to grab at her neck to try to stop the blood from seeping out.

  Izzy took a seat back at the dining room table still holding the knife in her hand. She sat there in silence just staring at the wall and rocking back and forth for what seemed like an eternity. Suddenly, a phone began to ring. Izzy snapped out of her trance and looked down at the bloody knife in her hands. She looked over to the kitchen and saw Shawn’s and Laura’s dead bodies.

  She dropped the knife as if it were hot coal in her hands. She had wanted to confront Shawn and teach him a lesson, but a double homicide had never been part of the idea. She jumped up toward Shawn and picked up his lifeless body. She caressed his face and started to remember the good times they had together. Weeping, she turned his face toward her.