The People vs. Cashmere 2

by Karen P. Williams

  I didn’t like how he was treating me. He was worse than Demarco. And yes, I was upset at my mother for killing my dad. But deep down the man he had shown himself to be in that one night was not who I thought he was. Then he did something I never thought he would to me. He raped me. And the fact that Meka was his daughter and he abandoned her just didn’t make a bit of sense to me. And the things he did to my mother. I realized that my father was the real liar not my mom. I believed my mother when she told me what he had done because of how vicious he was to me. Truth be told a part of me hated her for killing Black and a part of me loved her for doing it. Although I fought her I did it in confusion because they had both hurt me and I didn’t know if I was safe with either of them. But now I was starting to think that she saved me from him. And I was safer with her. Because despite her mistakes she continued to fight for me. Backflashes of her getting beat up in the squad car the day she went to confront my aunt flew before my eyes and her words, I could hear them loud and clear now. “Jail or bullets don’t mean shit to me when y’all got my child in those cuffs for some shit she had nothing to do with.”

  And she continued to fight for me, for my safety. I thought back to the day she beat up Jada’s mother and when she tried to stab Dame. She did this all for me. Because she felt that they had harmed me. My mother had proved in so many ways that she loved me. Even after losing Demarco and having a miscarriage she tried to pull it together for me. I guess I was too much in my feelings to see that everything my mother had done was to protect me. And even her killing Black. I asked myself time and time again why this hadn’t been so clear to me before. I guess I either wasn’t in a position to see it or I didn’t want to see it. Maybe it was both. I thanked God my mother had found me. What if she hadn’t and I’d be stuck out there with those other girls at Black’s mercy and his black heart? Thank God for my mom. I realized in that moment that my mother no longer needed to ask for my forgiveness. I needed to ask for hers. As my mother drove, I grabbed her free hand in mine and I clutched it. She looked my way, smiled, and kissed my hand. As we pulled down our street, I gasped as a total of five police cars were blocking off our driveway. “Shit,” I heard my mother whisper.

  They all had their guns drawn. My mother pulled up along our driveway and parked on the street. I saw my grandmother, Bev, and Hank standing on our porch. My grandmother was sobbing.

  My mom slipped the gun out of her back pocket and set it on the middle console.

  “Get out of the car with your hands up!” they yelled with their guns drawn.

  My mother looked down. She closed her eyes tightly. She did as they said with her hands in the air.

  Several cops approached her with their guns still drawn. One shoved my mother against the closest squad car to us, and applied handcuffs. As they shoved her in the back of the car, I grabbed the gun, wiped it off on my gown, and rubbed my hands all over it. Then I tucked it in my underwear.

  I slid out of the car. I jumped out of the passenger side with my hands up. “I did it!” I yelled loudly. “My mother didn’t do it. I did! He kidnapped me and raped me!” I shouted.

  My grandmother, Hank, and Bev all looked at me and gasped in shock.

  As two officers approached me I continued to yell. “My mother didn’t do this. I did! I have the gun in my underwear.”

  One of the officers frisked me and felt for a gun. When he found it he pulled it out and they applied handcuffs on me as well.

  I watched my mom struggle in the back of the squad car. She was shouting and shaking her head but I couldn’t hear her. There was no way I was going to let my mother go down for Black’s murder. She was protecting me; that’s why she killed him and now it was time for me to protect her.

  Once I was secured in the back of one of the other squad cars we all drove off while my mother continued to struggle in the back of the car. I looked away and gave one final look at our house. My grandmother covered her face with both her hands and sobbed while Hank comforted her.

  Epilogue

  Cashmere

  I held on to my daughter’s hand and tried to look brave when I was cracking inside. So much had unfolded six months ago. It was like a fucking nightmare. Since I had got my daughter home, it was pure hell trying to get my baby back on track. But we had and there was one more thing we had to find out: whether my child had AIDS. When I first brought the subject up to her she broke down crying and said, “Mom, I don’t want to know.” But I encouraged her to be brave and take the test.

  Now two weeks later, we were back at out doctor’s office waiting for the results. To be honest, the thought of her having AIDS sickened me to no end. She was now fourteen and the last thing she needed to hear after all that she had gone through was that she had a lifelong illness. I shuddered to think that she did. But despite all the apprehension I had, I didn’t want her to worry. And if she did have it I didn’t want her to think her life was over.

  “Either way, whether you have it or not, Dom, don’t worry, you will be fine. They have all sorts of medications that can help you live a long and healthy life. Look at Magic Johnson,” I said with a reassuring smile.

  But inside I was shitting bricks. The threat of my child having the virus haunted me day and night. But the fact of the matter was that she could very well have it. Meka had it and Dominique admitted that she did sleep with Meka and a customer at the same time and like Meka had said, both of them were infected. I knew as scared as I was I had to convince my daughter that she would be okay. Even if I didn’t believe it.

  As the doctor came back in the room I grabbed both my daughter’s hands in mine and kissed them. “Remember what I said. You are going to be fine either way.”

  She gave a small smile and looked up at the doctor. As the short Middle Eastern guy opened the manila file and read the results inside he was quiet and his expression like a poker player. Then he closed it and focused on us.

  He took a deep breath and said, “I wish I didn’t have to be the one to say this but you tested positive for AIDS.”

  I closed my eyes briefly as his words rang out in my head.

  Damn.

  My baby had AIDS!

  I blinked back tears, which was hard as hell to do. I looked at my child who sat there frozen. I squeezed her hands. “You’ll be fine.” It took some serious work for me to blink back those tears.

  But my daughter buried her head in my lap and cried like a baby. And although I promised her she would be okay and life would still be the same, could I really promise her that when she was walking around with a deadly virus and she was only fourteen fucking years old?

  Fuck! These were the casualties of the game. But my daughter didn’t deserve that shit. She buried her head in my shoulder and continued to cry. I comforted her as best I could.

  During the ride home, I continued to try to stay calm and optimistic and all I wanted to do was scream. So I babbled the whole way home about all the different types of medications and how she would be fine. But Lord knows I didn’t feel that way. I kept seeing images of my daughter being sickly and then in a casket. But I kept a smile on my face and continued to reassure her.

  When we made it into the house I held on to my daughter’s hand as we walked into the living room. “You okay?” I asked her.

  But she jerked away from me and shoved me roughly into the couch. Caught off-guard I lost my balance and fell. Then suddenly she took off running.

  “Dom!” I panicked. I chased after her but she was too fast and had a head start. “Dominique! Stop running!”

  She ran into Demarco’s office that I hadn’t had a chance to clean out and get rid of his gun collection. The one that I didn’t lock back on the day I went to Oakland.

  “Dominique, get out of there!” I tried to open the door but she had locked it. I panicked and banged on the door. “Dominique. Baby, no, don’t do anything stupi—”

  That’s when I heard it. A single gunshot.

  I beat on the door and screamed. “Dominiqu
e, nooooo!”

  “Cashmere. You okay, baby?”

  My eyes shot open and I looked up at Caesar as he wiped sweat off my forehead. Then I looked around the room frantically for my child. My heat thudded in my chest. “Where is Dom?”

  “I’m right here, Mom.” Dominique’s sweet face appeared before me. She grabbed one of my hands and kissed it.

  I smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. “Shit. I must’ve just had a nightmare.”

  “See. I knew you couldn’t handle Hostel,” Caesar said laughing and changing the channel on TV.

  Just then someone knocked on the door. “I got it, Mom.” Dominique went to the living room door with a huge bowl of Halloween candy.

  I could hear the kids yell, “Trick or treat.”

  It was Halloween night and we stayed home to give out candy.

  I smiled and looked at the most adorable little girl in a bumblebee costume standing in my doorway with a couple of other dressed-up kids.

  “You are the cutest,” Dominique said. She reminded me so much of Dom when she was small. “You get as much as you want,” Dominique said.

  I chuckled.

  “You okay, baby?”

  I looked at Caesar’s concerned face. It took awhile getting used to how crazy fate was: that my first love popped back in my life.

  “I’m okay. But, question.”

  “What?”

  “We had Dom tested for AIDS, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, baby. Three times and every test was negative.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief as Caesar patted me on one of my thighs and kissed me on the lips. “We’re good, baby. That is over, don’t worry.”

  I smiled and stared at the diamond ring that glistened on my left ring finger. Yes. Caesar was my fiancé. I thought back to how we got here because it wasn’t always hugs, laughs, and kisses.

  After the ordeal in getting Dom back and finding the police at my house to arrest me for Black’s murder, Dominique’s statement about killing Black Mitchell somehow managed to stick. And my mother along with Caesar and our lawyer told me to keep my mouth shut. I guessed they knew some shit I didn’t. So I for once did and didn’t fight them when they bailed me out and instructed me to keep quiet. But my closed mouth didn’t last for long.

  The night I was bailed out they were all at my house. And I was pissed as hell that Dominique was still locked up in juvenile hall. I started fussing and cursing them all including the lawyer Hank and Caesar paid for. “Y’all worried about me; what about Dom?” I demanded. “She don’t need to be locked up.”

  “Cash, shut the fuck up!” my mother yelled. “Listen to the lawyer; he knows what he’s talking about. You don’t know shit! They ain’t gonna keep Dominique. She got too much dirt on that black bastard. You on the order hand, it’s different.”

  The balding black attorney nodded and said, “She’s right. Thing is, Cashmere, you will go to jail for life if you confess. Doesn’t matter why you went there, what Black Mitchell did, or what you say. You took the law in your own hands and you murdered him. Dominique, however, has a reason: she was raped, branded, held against her will, and forced to sell her body. With the recent release of Sara Kruzan things are much different in cases like these. Laws are changing in regard to child prostitutes. They are not even calling them that anymore. Child prostitution is now being called child sex trafficking. Logically speaking, no child under the age eighteen is able to consent to sex, yet for years and years they have been locked up like criminals. The crime itself is what’s happening to them and no one is doing anything about it.” He shook his head. “I’m getting off the subject. Thing is I guarantee you that Dominique won’t be sentenced to anything. She will be released to you on the grounds of self-defense. Now if you want to go up for this, go ahead, but I can’t promise the same thing for you. You are not to confess.”

  “He’s right, Cashmere,” Caesar said. “Look, baby, I know you don’t want Dominique in there. Her being there will be only temporary. You being locked up will be permanent. You need to listen to the lawyer. If you want to see the light of day, to be there for your daughter.”

  “Cashmere, just do it,” my mom pressed.

  I took a deep breath. “Okay.” I hoped I wasn’t making a mistake.

  And they were absolutely right. Neither she nor I were charged with anything. She was underage, and his semen was in her. (Yes. Black had sex with his own flesh and blood.) And she testified that he beat and pimped her. After the court proceedings she was released and returned home and the charges against me were dropped.

  Of course it wasn’t easy trying to strengthen our relationship. I had to put her in a detox program along with intensive therapy. Fuck school. The first six months home I worked on rebuilding my child. And Caesar, my mother, Hank and Bev were there every step of the way.

  And what was hard was after all the drama was over, sitting my mother down and telling her that I found Hank in Meka’s apartment. Hank swore up and down that he had never slept with her. After I told her, my mother camped out on my couch. Hank came over every night crying and begging for her to come back to him; he even went as far as having a lie detector test done. But that meant nothing to my mother.

  “Motherfucker. Come with an AIDS test!” my mother had told him. And he did and it was negative. Surprisingly my mother forgave him.

  “You know if you don’t want to go back you can stay here,” I told her.

  “No. I’m going home to my husband. I wasn’t over Desmond and I married him anyway because he was wealthy and powerful. And also it’s probably my karma for all the years I fucked around on your daddy and how I abandoned you guys. I’m sorry for that. I know you never forgave me.” She broke down crying.

  In that moment I made a decision to really wholeheartedly forgive my mother. I think the ordeal also allowed me to finally put my grudge against my mother to rest. I stopped lashing out at her and disrespecting her. I wouldn’t want my child doing me that way when she got older because of my mistakes so I couldn’t continue to do it to my mother. Aside from her weed smoking and materialistic mentality, my mother had really tried to be there for me and Dominique. I had to let it go and stop holding her mistakes against her.

  Dominique confessed so many things to me that made me want to just break down and cry. From the fact that Mr. Douglas, my neighbor, had been sleeping with my child. Well he was charged right along with Dame for that shit! She even opened up about all the humiliating things that happened to her when Black and Meka had her out there. And me, I held back no punches from my past. It seemed like it made Dominique trust me more because she related to my pain, my story. Because it was now hers. I just thanked God that Dominique didn’t resort to cutting and having the anger belted up inside her like I had all these years. But we took things day by day. She was okay despite the hell she had endured. My baby girl was fine, well-loved, and I refused to allow her to be a victim of the streets.

  I glanced at the sweet and innocent girl who was clapping her hands and jumping up and down at all the candy Dominique was dumping in her pumpkin and thinking that that innocence should never be taken or destroyed. Yet there are so many girls out there who would be forever victimized for someone else’s pleasure or gain. Well I wanted to assist and put a stop to it. So I put my flatiron down to Bev’s dismay and partnered up with Caesar. We expanded his nonprofit and opened another office in Oakland. I didn’t want what happened to me, Dom, or other girls across the country to continue to happen.

  Caesar brought me back to the present by kissing me on my cheek and making me blush.

  Who knew he could take away the pain after losing Demarco and allow me to love again? It was crazy that after all those years Demarco was holding on to guilt about Black raping me. Yet in all those years, I never looked down on Demarco nor blamed him for my rape. But he blamed himself. It’s funny how if we had actually sat down and had that conversation, maybe things that transpired between us including his death wouldn’t have. But wh
o knew. It’s also possible that no matter what I said or did to ease his mind and reassure him it wasn’t his fault it wouldn’t have changed how he felt about himself as a man and thus how he treated me and Dominique.

  At the end of the day, I knew I would always love Demarco but I had to move forward with my life, and let all aspects of the past go, so I did. Because despite the mistakes and my past, I knew I deserved love and happiness just like anyone else. And Caesar was now my new love and a love I hoped would stay. One thing about this love was that it was never painful. Every single ounce of it felt good, wholesome, and pure like I was a thirteen-year-old girl all over again. And I thanked God my daughter was there to witness every minute of it so my words on the freeway would always ring out true and she would see the complete opposite of the supposed love that Black offered her that never really was love. Now she knew the difference. And she would grow up knowing she deserved the same and nothing less. I thanked God for that.

  Dominique closed the door and hopped on the couch next to me. She buried her head in my lap and said, “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you too. Who wouldn’t love Dom?”

  She laughed and snuggled closer as I dozed off.

  Crazy part was that when I reflected on my life it seemed like a dream and the dream I just had seemed like reality. But it wasn’t. With Black gone, Dominique and I were finally free from the past. Now and always.

  The End

  Karen Williams is the author of The Demise Of Alexis Vancamp, Hail Mary 1 and 2, Sweet Giselle, Aphrodisiacs: Erotic Short Stories, Thug In Me, Dirty to the Grave, The People Vs. Cashmere, Harlem On Lock. She also contributed to the anthology Around The Way Girls 7 with her story “Diamond In The Sky,” and “He’s With Me” in the anthology Even Sinners Still Have Souls Too. She also writes as Braya Spice and released Dear Drama in 2012. She graduated from California State University Dominguez Hills with a bachelor’s degree. She works as a Probation Officer and lives in Bellflower, CA, with her daughter, Adara, and her son, Bralynn.