“This what’s up, motherfucker. I’ll beat your ass.”
That’s when Caesar grabbed him and slammed Dame on his back. Dame tried to fight Caesar on the ground. But Caesar managed to get him in handcuffs.
“I want him arrested. He raped my daughter!” my mom yelled.
Caesar looked up surprised but regained his composure.
“No, I didn’t. That bitch liked it. And she wanted it,” Dame yelled. “Just like your ho ass. Had Demarco never walked in that day I could have had you too. I told him time and time again not to marry you! Now look where it landed him.”
“I’m taking you in for threatening a police officer and suspicion penal code 261,” Caesar said.
“Man, fuck you!” Dame said. But it didn’t stop Caesar from dragging him out of the house.
My mother forced me to give the cop a statement about what Dame had done. And I told him exactly how he had treated me. The whole time I did my mom sat there rocking back and forth and crying.
“I’ll call you once I get him booked,” Caesar promised her.
Then it was just me and my mother left in the house. After minutes of silence my mother spoke. “Dominique, I don’t know where to start. You are not the child I thought you were. You doing shit I never thought you would. You look like a tramp on that video. I’m disgusted with what I saw.” Her eyes got watery.
So am I, I wanted to say. I’m disgusted with who you are, Mom.
“Your whole program is about to be shut down. I’m taking and picking you up from school. And I’m going to find a therapist for you to talk to. Point blank. You not allowed to watch TV, talk on the phone. Nothing. Matter fact, give me your phone. I don’t know what’s going through your fucking head but maybe a doctor can tell me because I raised you better than this! To be letting men abuse your body like that.” She punched a fist into the palm of her other hand. “You let your uncle rape you and you didn’t even tell me. But then again I told you to stay out of strip clubs! So had you not been in that bitch the shit wouldn’t have happened.”
I nodded my head to all she was saying like a song was playing. I handed my mother the phone and she set it down on the couch.
“I mean I don’t even know what to say to you. I can’t even . . .” She broke down crying on the couch, to where her whole body was racked with sobs. “I can’t even look at you. I can’t even look at my own baby.”
I tried to play it off and look sad. “Mom. I’m sorry. I’ve only—”
“Go in your room!” she yelled.
I nodded and as I walked up the stairs she continued to cry and say, “Not my baby,” over and over again.
I knew she would watch me like a dog so I didn’t even bother sneaking out. I would just have to make up for the money lost by working harder tomorrow.
The next day my mom kept her word and got up super early to take me to school. When I got out of school I saw my mother’s truck parked out front. I thought smarter and snuck back inside and went to the administration office and asked the secretary. “Can I please use the phone?”
“Sure, honey.”
I dialed Meka’s number. When she picked up, I whispered, “It’s Dominique. Don’t come where you usually go to pick me up. Drive around to the back parking lot where the football field is and I’ll meet you out there.”
“Okay.”
I met Meka out there and jumped in the passenger side of her car quickly.
“What’s going on?” she asked suspiciously.
“My mother came to pick me up is all.” I didn’t want to go into the rest. I just wanted to make up for the money I lost the day before to give to my father. I didn’t want to think of all the chaos that happened the day before. I wanted to get drunk, pop a Molly, and drown in customers.
Chapter 29
Cashmere
I sat outside Dominique’s school for damn near an hour. Normally her school was out at three-thirty. After thirty minutes of waiting for her, I called the school office to see if her last period class had been dismissed. The school secretary said that it had.
“Well did Dominique Pina check in?” I asked.
“Yes. She attended the whole day,” she informed me.
“Then why can’t I find her?” I asked.
“You may want to walk around the campus. You know how these teenagers are,” she joked.
But I was too stressed to laugh. “Thank you.” I ended the call. Where the hell was she? I even got out of my car to walk around the campus as different sports practices commenced in the gym and on their football field. But Dominique’s ass was nowhere to be seen. I even looked in the library that had an afterschool study hall. She wasn’t there either.
I dialed her number but when the phone started ringing in my car I remembered I had her cell in my purse. “Shit.” I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she walked home but that was still the wrong fucking thing to do when I specifically told her little ass not to leave the school and that I would pick her up. I walked back to my car. It was now four-thirty. I got in my truck and headed home to see if she was there. On the way, Caesar called me.
“Hey,” I said in a distracted tone.
“How are you? I just checking to see if you were all right.”
“No. I’m not. I can’t find Dominique and I’m on my way home to see if she is there.”
“Okay. Has she ever run away before?”
“No, never. But I don’t know. Her behavior is so erratic nowadays. I really wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Well check to see if she is home and if she is not, text me a picture of her and I’ll have a patrol car go out and look for her. I got a crack in a case so I can’t leave right now. But when I can get away I’ll also go out with you and look.” He added, “And I won’t stop looking until we find her.”
Something about that “looking until we find her” scared me. Made my heartbeat speed up. I couldn’t believe we were talking about my daughter who had always been such an angel. So sweet and innocent. I swear I used to think she had an invisible halo on her head. And then those images of her on that video sexing all those bastards made me see her in a different light. She was no longer innocent to me. They weren’t forcing her on the video. She was willingly doing it. But why? I rubbed my temples distressed at the images in my head. I had to fix this shit. Right the wrong and save my child from this self-destructive path she was on. To do this, I could no longer look at her as an angel but a girl I couldn’t put anything past.
“Well let’s just hope her ass is home. I’m still going to fuck her up. But at least I know she is safe.”
“Okay. Let me know.”
“Bye.”
I pulled into my driveway, put the car in park, and hopped out. The front door was locked. I hoped it meant that she came home and locked the door.
I unlocked the door and went inside, “Dominique!” I called. No response. I looked in the kitchen and the bathroom downstairs and went upstairs to her bedroom. “Dominique!” I called again. I still heard no response.
“Fuck! Where the hell is she?”
I went back out to my car and grabbed my cell phone. Since it was a new phone it didn’t have any pics of Dominique. They were all in my old phone, which was destroyed. I went back into my living room and snapped a picture of Dominique taken in the fall that sat on the glass picture stand in the living room. I then texted it to Caesar.
As I prepared to step back outside I saw a hole in the wall where I had thrown a knife at the motherfucker Dame. I wished to God that I had killed him. Then I thought back to what he said about some strip club called the Barbary Coast. Maybe that’s where her ass was!
I ran outside to my truck, jumped inside, and punched the name into my GPS. Once the GPS started up, I backed out of my driveway.
By the time I made it to the club over on Western, in the city of Gardena, it was almost six o’clock. And even though it was fairly early I knew from my old days of stripping that it could be a morning
, noon, and night type of job. My sister and I never worked at the Barbary Coast because it was too fucking hood in there. But most strip clubs operated the same way.
I wasn’t surprised when I walked inside there were girls working the poles. And at this point, sadly, I could say I wasn’t surprised to see my daughter’s little body twirling on one of them with her eyes wide and clearly high as a fucking kite!
My eyes teared up instantly and my shoulders shook with sobs.
“Aye. If you ain’t buying a drink get the fuck out,” the bartender shouted at me as I stood there near the bar.
I ignored him and walked toward the stage. Without a moment’s hesitation, I walked up the five steps to the stage as my daughter’s back was to me as she popped her booty in a way I had never seen her do and didn’t know her ass knew how to do. I took a deep breath and brought my left arm around her collarbone hooking it like a V, knocking her off balance. Then as she rested her body on mine backward and screamed, I dragged her little ass off the stage.
The DJ stopped the music and yelled, “Bitch, get the fuck off the stage.”
I ignored him too and heard Dom yell, “Mom, get off of me!”
“Shut the fuck up,” I whispered in her ear.
I pushed past patrons and staff and walked toward the exit. The bouncer tried to block my way. “What the fuck you doing?” he demanded.
I got directly in his face and said through clenched teeth, “I shitted her out. And I’m taking her home. You got a problem with that then I’ll just call the police and have them escort us out this bitch ’cause she only thirteen!”
He took in my words and stepped aside.
Chapter 30
Dominique
I struggled against my mother as she continued to drag me until we got to the car. Once we got there, I pulled away from her. I was so embarrassed that she came here and snatched me out of there like that like I was a little girl. I wasn’t a baby anymore! I was a woman now. And I needed the money to give to my daddy.
My mother hemmed me up against the truck and slapped me. I winced at the pain and scowled at her silently. She then pulled off her belt and started whipping me with it all over my body. I wanted to scream from the pain but my pride wouldn’t let me do it. She raged at me at the top of her lungs.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? In that piece of shit place? Half naked.” She yanked at the flimsy bra and thong I was wearing almost making me lose my balance. “You can barely stand in those heels! You’re thirteen fucking years old!’ She beat on her chest in anger all while tears flowed down her face. “Is this the life you want for yourself? You look like a tramp and all of those perverted, sick men want to do is have sex with you. That’s it. They don’t give a shit about your ass! They will use you up until you got nothing else to give and you walking around here crazy and strung out on dope. Dominique! That’s what this life will do to you. I didn’t raise you like this! I’ve been a good mom to you. I instilled enough in you for you to do better. You see what the fuck I’m going through; why are you stressing me out more?”
As she continued to rant, I thought, Good mom? You’ve been lying to me my whole life. And now you want to fuss at me? I could take it no longer. I spoke up and my next five words had her as quiet as a church mouse. “Like you did better, Mom?”
She took a sharp intake of breath. Then it was like she was nervous about something, like maybe for a split second she silently questioned whether I knew more than she assumed I knew. Then she wiped that look off her face and replaced it with a more self-righteous one. “What?”
I wasn’t going to keep my mouth closed any longer. I was tired of keeping quiet. For what? To spare someone else. They never spared me. “You heard me.”
She gritted her teeth and said, “Since when did you grow such a smart-ass mouth?” she barked furiously. “I asked you a question. Why in the fuck don’t you repeat what you said?” She got all up in my face and grabbed my face in the palms of her hands. “Now what did you say, little girl?”
“I said like you did better.”
“And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“What the fuck it means is—”
Her eyes widened and she grabbed my face. “Shut up! Shut up! Cursing at me.”
I ignored her. “Is I know all about you, Mom, and all about your secrets!”
That got my mom to finally shut up. But then she put her self-righteous act back on and said, “What are you talking about?”
“Maybe the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, Mom. The life I’m living now is the life you lived. The things I’m doing are the things you did. Yes! I know everything, Mom! I know what I am. I know you were a prostitute. I know you stripped, did drugs. I know you killed your sister. And I know that Demarco is not my father! You knew all along and you kept it from me. How could you, Mom? And all my life he hated me because he knew I wasn’t his. How could you just sit by and allow him to treat me that way? He hated me and it made me hate myself. And now I know the truth!”
My mother was in complete shock from what I obviously knew. I kept out that I knew who my real father was because I didn’t want to let on and she find some kind of way to stop me from seeing him. Tears flowed like water from her eyes and her shoulders started shaking rapidly and she shook her head saying, “Dominique, no.” She continued to cry. “No, baby. That’s not the truth.”
“I know Demarco is not my father. There is no need to lie at this point. Tell me for once in your dishonest fucking life who my father is!”
She slid to the ground with her back against the car and cried pitifully like a child. “Dominique, baby. Don’t hate me. I—”
“You know what, Mom? You are so self-centered. Always making everything about you. You lied to me my whole life. I have hated who I am for so long. I had no purpose and was afraid of my own shadow. But not anymore. I know who I am. I know what I am. And I no longer hate myself. Mom, I hate you.”
She bawled loudly at those words, “I hate you.” It was like she was in so much pain from what I was saying. Like each word was a jab to her chest with a knife. That’s the best way to describe how distressed my mother looked and sounded.
“Your tears affect me no longer, Mom. I think you’re pathetic. I hate Demarco, too, Mom. I’m glad he died! I wish you would have died in that accident with Demarco. I wish you would have both perished! For the life you gave me. You think because you and Demarco had money and businesses and the fact that I had the best of clothes and schools made everything okay? Well it didn’t. I would have willingly lived in a box if I had a real father like Jada had to love me. You pretended you didn’t see your child suffering and longing for something! You did this shit for thirteen almost fourteen years. And when you did pay attention, when your head wasn’t up Demarco’s butt, it really didn’t matter anyway because all you did was put a Band- Aid over my pain. You never really addressed it. But you say you love me.”
“I do love you, baby. More than anything on this earth. I would die for you! Take a bullet for you, Dom! I love you more than I love myself.”
“Mom. You don’t love yourself. You don’t love yourself any more than I loved myself, prior to finding out the truth that is.”
“I love you more than—”
“More than Demarco?” I countered. “Think wisely before you answer that question, Mom.”
She swallowed hard. “Yes, baby. I do. I swear.”
“Then why would you let a man who hates my guts stay with us, Mom, and he is not my father!” I raged.
She gasped. “You heard us that night.”
“That’s not all I heard, Mom. Sad thing is you would have had me go my whole entire miserable life living a lie! That he was my father! Well now the truth about you is out. The truth about how conniving you are for pushing a man who is not my father off on me is out, Mom. The fact that you were a dick-sucking junkie is out; what you did was no better than what I was doing on that video. And guess what? I loved every min
ute of it and what I do! I will never go back to the life I used to live. It is the truth. Something you are afraid of. Well I’m not. Thank God my aunt was honest enough to tell me the truth.”
Her head snapped up like a robot at the mention of my aunt’s name. Then her tears were replaced with rage. “Who did you say told you all of that?” she whispered.
I ignored her. She stood to her feet and rushed me gripping my shoulders and roughly squeezing. “Who the fuck told you?”
She continued to apply pressure, hurting me to the point that my hands were on hers and I couldn’t breathe. “Was it my bitch aunt? Answer me! Huh?” She continued to apply pressure until I nodded.
She let me go and I weakly sank to the ground, coughing and trying to catch my breath. She opened the passenger door and grabbed me by one arm and tossed me inside. She then got in the driver’s side, started the car, and sped off.
Fifteen minutes later we ended up parked outside of my great-aunt’s house. She drove erratically the whole way there crying, sniffling, and sobbing.
She got out the truck, left it running, and yanked me out the passenger seat. “Since you like to run, come with me. I hate for you to see me this way but hell you seem to think you know the truth and that truth paints me as horrible, despite the real so fuck it. You seem to have your mind made up about me and I don’t think I can do shit about it. And you just don’t even understand that I love you to an amount that is immeasurable and I’d take a thousand bullets for you, little girl.” She mumbled like a crazy person as she pulled me, forcing me like her to run toward the house. She didn’t stop until we got to the door.
She banged and kicked on the door until we heard, “Who in the world is knocking on my door like they the goddamn police?” My aunt opened the door a pinch and said, “Yes?”
My mom wasted no time and burst into the living room causing my aunt to back up, taking steps backward. Them steps didn’t matter because my mother was all up on my auntie. She pressed her body completely against her and demanded, “So you want to tell my daughter shit. You fat, black miserable bitch?”
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