Mommy's Angel (14 page)

“Well, my mom said I can hold her car. I’ll take you.”

“You don’t have to. I know you have to go to work.”

“I got a little bit of time to spare. If I get you down there at ten I can be back up here by like eleven. That’s enough time for me to get to work by twelve.”

“Aww, Jamal, I appreciate it.”

Jamal avoided the mushiness and said, “So you can lay back down and get you some more sleep. I’ll wake you up in a hour.”

“Thank you, baby.”

“Uh-huh,” he said.

Jamal loved me so much but it was obvious sometimes that since I messed up and cheated on him he was holding back.

The extra hour I had to sleep went by so fast it might as well have been five minutes. I got up and got dressed. My mom was still asleep when I left out the house. I left her a note explaining where I was going and what time I expected to be back.

I called Elaine from Jamal’s cell phone and told her I was on my way to the place. She said to call her when I was like five minutes away and she would leave her house and get in a cab.

“Elaine, I’m about five minutes away,” I told her when the time came.

“Okay. I’ll see you there.”

“Now where do you know her from again?” Jamal asked. He had become so inquisitive.

“I met her through Antione. They used to work together, and when he got locked up he asked her if I could stay with her,” I said, making sure I repeated the exact answer I had given him the first time he asked me where I knew Elaine from.

I kept a lot from Jamal, and not out of being sneaky or nothing. It was just that it was too sensitive a time to tell him about me getting locked up and having to stay with Butter and meeting Elaine on a damn hooker strip. That would have ended our relationship for sure, and I didn’t want that. Besides, Jamal didn’t need to know all that, because it had nothing to do with where we were at that point. It was irrelevant.

“Thank you so much, boo,” I told Jamal as I leaned over and kissed him on his cheek.

“Um hum,” he mumbled.

I got out of the car and walked up to the building with the address that matched that on the business card.

“Good luck,” Jamal said out the window.

I smiled at him and went inside. I waited a couple minutes for Elaine. We greeted each other with a hug when she got there and then took the elevator to the seventh floor.

“Good morning, ladies,” a tall, dark-skinned lady said to us when we walked through the office door.

“Good morning,” Elaine said.

“Hello,” I said.

The woman looked at Elaine with wide eyes, as if she was waiting for her to tell her what she was there for. Elaine stepped to the side and pointed to me. “I’m just here with her,” she said.

“Oh. What brings you in today?” the woman asked.

“I spoke with Ron Washington yesterday and he told me I could come down here and get more information about the program.”

“Oh, okay. You’ re Angel Washington?” she quizzed, glancing down at some scribbled notes on her desk.

“Yes.”

“Oh, okay. I’m Margie. It’s nice to meet you. Have a seat, and I’ll call Mr. Washington for you.”

“She is so polite,” I whispered to Elaine as we sat down in the chairs a few feet away from Margie’s desk.

Waiting for Mr. Washington, I looked around the office. There were pictures hanging up of women in groups, at speaking engagements, and at fairs. In between the pictures were framed quotes that said things like
ONE STEP AND WILLPOWER CAN GET YOU THROUGH A DAY. ONE DREAM AND DETERMINATION CAN GET YOU THROUGH LIFE
. A good feeling came over me. I hoped the place was everything I had imagined it would be, and most important I hoped they were hiring and I qualified.

A few minutes went by and Mr. Washington came into the waiting area and invited Elaine and me into his office. He looked at me strangely, like he recognized me, but he didn’t say anything. I guessed he figured I didn’t want to discuss how we met since I had lied and told him I got his card from a friend. Inside his office, he explained the organization in detail for Elaine and then answered our questions. He gave us some literature to take with us and then took us on a tour of the building. He told us they were always hiring because their mission was to get as many women off the streets as possible so they never turned anyone away. The only thing was there was a process you had to go through before officially being one of their employees. An application, a criminal background check, and a drug test were the major components. I was cool with everything but the background check. I wasn’t sure if they had put a warrant out on me since I never went to my court hearing and I didn’t want Mr. Washington to find out and turn me in.

“I knew it was too good to be true,” I told Elaine as we waited for the elevator.

“Why do you say that?”

“They do background checks and I might have a warrant out on me,” I revealed.

“For what? Oh goodness, girl. You come fully loaded, don’t you?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. When they raided Shake’s they locked me up for being underage. That’s all. I just never went to court for it.”

“Oh. That’s nothing, and anyway, the way Mr. Washington was talking, he can help you clear that up. He said they didn’t mind criminal records because of the type of women they hired. He just said that you couldn’t have any open cases without addressing them. So, shucks, you might wanna let him look you up. For one, he can tell you if you even have a warrant and two, he can help you clear it up,” Elaine said, shedding light on the situation.

“That’s true,” I said. “Well, I’ll probably fill out everything and bring it back down here. I wouldn’t mind working at a place like this.” We got in the elevator.

“Yeah. It’s nice. The people are nice,” Elaine commented.

“You should work here, too,” I said, getting to the point of why I asked Elaine to go with me in the first place.

“Oh no, not me. The pay isn’t enough for a woman with three kids. Now for you, it’s fine. You’ re young, you stay at home with your mom, and you’ll only have one baby.”

“Well, you should think about it. It’s better than working the strip.”

Elaine frowned at me and said, “Oh, Angel, don’t go there. I ‘ve been doing what I do for long enough to know my options, trust me. I know what I’m doing. I’m a grown woman.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you. I was just speaking out of concern.” I said, trying to clear things up.

“It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. But you don’t have to be concerned about me, sweetie. You have so much to worry about as it is. I appreciate it though—but I know what I’m doing.”

Elaine gave me a hug and got in a cab to go home. I thanked her for going with me and apologized again for the comment I made. I truly didn’t mean to offend her, and I felt bad that I did because she had been nothing but nice to me.

I took the train back to Brooklyn. I walked pass C&S’s. It was clear that the weather and time had discolored the stuffed animals and killed the flowers, but they were still there. Even the bag of quarters I left was intact. That just showed how much love and respect people had for Cat and Stacey. Not even a smoker resorted to stealing the change. I walked down my block, skimming over the application I had. My mind immediately started mapping out a plan. I would get the job at the agency, pass ninth grade, and then by the time I would have the baby I’d have a little stash and could chill for a little while then start tenth grade like in October. My mom could watch the baby while I went to school and the money I got from welfare to pay for day care I could use to help my mom out and buy the baby some stuff.

I got to my front door and turned the key. I walked in my house and almost fainted.

“Hey, Angel,” Marvin said with a smile on his face.

I stared right through him, disgusted at his presence. I didn’t speak to him out of shock, fear, and anger.
Where is my mom,
I thought. She
better not be planning on letting him stay here. How the hell did his an get out of jail? And why is he back in my house?

“Hey Angel, how did it go at the job interview?” my mom asked, walking downstairs.

I looked at her suspiciously, my eyes roaming to her arms, her eyes, and her balance. I wondered if she had been up in the bathroom getting high. With Marvin sitting there, you never knew what was going on. He was bad people, and wherever he was a storm was sure to follow.

“It was all right,” I said out the corner of my mouth.

“Oh. They let Marvin out,” she said joyously.

“Um,” I huffed and walked up to my room.

I slammed the door and put the lock on it. I didn’t want him coming nowhere near me, especially while I was carrying a baby. I wanted to go downstairs and ask my mom had she lost her mind and remind her that she said being away from Marvin helped her stop shooting up. So what did she think was going to happen now that he was back, I wondered. Did she think she would stay clean and be with him at the same time? If she did, she was dumber than I thought, and I was giving her one day to see if she would let him stay. If so, I was out of there. I didn’t care where I went and even though my home was where my heart was, with Marvin in there, it was where my hell was—and I wanted no more parts of hell.

N
o! No! Please, Marvin! Stop!” I yelled, holding on to the banister that led down to the basement.

“You want ya mother to hear you?” Marvin asked. “Keep on yellin’ like that and I’ ma beat that baby out of you.”

Marvin was pulling me, trying to get me down the steps. This was the first time since he had been back at our house that he had tried this with me, and it had been a few weeks. I thought that it was because I was pregnant, but I was wrong. I was showing and everything and that didn’t matter to him that morning. But it mattered to me. I never used to put up a fight with Marvin because he always threatened me. But even with the threats of him beating my baby out of me, I was fighting back. I would have rather him do that then put his nasty, dirty dick anywhere near my child.

“No! Stop!” I continued to yell. All I wanted to do was eat my cereal in peace, I thought while I was holding on to the banister with all the strength I had.

Marvin’s eyes were bloodshot red and veins started to pop out of his neck. He gritted his teeth like a pit bull and said, “You’ re playin’ games with me?!” Then he took one of his hands off me and slapped me across my face.

The slap caught me off guard and made me lose my grip on the banister. I stumbled and almost fell on Marvin and down the steps.

“Aaarh!”
I screamed as Marvin dragged me down the basement steps.

“You done pissed me off, now!” he said, standing over me, practically ripping off his pants.

At that point I was outraged and in so much pain. I didn’t care if he beat me to death, I was going to fight him. I grabbed his wobbling calves to lift myself up, at that same time making him fall over. I got up off the floor and tried to run up the stairs. I thought I had it, but right as I reached my hand out to push open the basement door, I felt Marvin’s hand wrap tightly around my ankle.

I used my hands to keep my face from hitting the steps as Marvin pulled me down them.

“Marvin, please,” I begged, my eyes filled with tears. I was out of breath and weak. I couldn’t fight back anymore if I wanted to, and at that point I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I knew I had said I didn’t care if he beat me to death, but that was because I didn’t think he would. But I realized that he just might. So I tried to get him to stop civilly. I tried to buy some time and I hoped and prayed that in that time he would come down from his high and let me go. He didn’t. I cried and begged the whole time from beginning to end. I damn near lost my voice. But he kept going until he was finished. Then he rolled off of me and laid on the cold basement floor in satisfaction. I got up slowly, pulled my pants and panties up, and limped up the steps. I walked past the bowl of cereal that I had been eating before Marvin came into the kitchen. And I walked out the front door.

Knock! Knock! Knock!
I banged on Jamal’s door.

“What happened?” Jamal asked, concerned.

I could barely talk. I was so sore and I couldn’t stop crying.

“Jamal, I need to go to the hospital,” I managed to say. “I think I’m bleeding.”

Before Jamal could say anything, his mom was standing behind him.

“What she want this time of the morning?” she asked.

“Mom, it’s not the time.”

“My stomach is hurting, Jamal,” I said, bent over, still at his doorway.

Jamal helped me inside his house.

“What happened?” he repeated.

“My stomach,” I said.

“What are you bringing your stomach pains over here for? Don’t no doctors live over here,” Jamal’s mom said.

“Mom! She’s pregnant, all right! It’s not the time!” Jamal snapped.

“Pregnant!” she shouted, “By who?”

I lifted my head up and looked at Jamal’s mom.

“Ms. Brenda, I’m pregnant by Jamal, and I’m in a lot of pain, so…”

She cut me off, “Excuse me? You a stripper, you cheated on my son, disappeared, and come back talkin’ about you pregnant with his baby! And you think I’m just goin’ buy that!”

“Mom! Yo! Chill out!” Jamal defended me.

“Yes. Please, because I need to get to a hospital,” I said, talking back to Jamal’s mom for the first time.

Her face lit up. She was on fire, I could tell. But I didn’t care. I just needed Jamal to take me to the hospital. I was scared for my baby, and his mom wasn’t making matters no better.

“Oh no, you didn’ t!” she shouted. “Yes, please me in my house! You must have lost ya mind! You have got to go, okay! Out of my house! My son ain’t claimin’ no babies unless a paternity test says it’s his! Ya word is as good as those bruises on ya face—very questionable!”

I looked at Jamal, then at his mom, and I realized I had no win. Jamal had eventually taken his mom’s side. I could tell that he had taken what she said to heart. He was probably starting to question my baby being his. That was why he didn’t say anything in my defense anymore. I knew what it was, so I just left. Jamal didn’t come after me. He didn’t offer to call me an ambulance, nothing. His mom had got in his head with that comment. I couldn’t blame him, though. I got myself in that situation, so I had to get myself out.

I walked up my street, holding my stomach. The guy that lived in the crack house was on his porch.

“You all right?” he asked me.

I didn’t want to, but I started crying. I shook my head.

“Yo, you need a doctor or somethin?”

I nodded.

He ran off his porch and helped me up the steps and then into his house. He sat me on his sofa.

“I’ma call the ambulance for you, okay?” he said, heading for his kitchen.

I nodded again. I was in so much pain. I leaned my head on the arm of the couch and closed my eyes. I heard him on the phone with the ambulance. Then I heard somebody walking down his steps. I opened my eyes.

“Ant Man? What you doin’ here?” I asked, tears still falling down my face.

“I’m servin’. What you doin’ here is the question?” he asked. “You okay?”

“My stomach hurtin’,” I told him.

He looked at me closely. “You pregnant?”

“Yeah, and I think something is wrong.”

Just then the guy came out of the kitchen. “The ambulance is on they way.”

“Naw, it’s cool. She don’t need ‘em. I’ll take her to the hospital.”

“Word?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s okay with you, shorty?”

I nodded as I slowly lifted myself off the couch.

“She my peoples,” Antione told the guy.

“Oh, damn, I ain’t know that. It’s a small world, ain’t it.”

Antione helped me out the house and into the backseat of a car that was parked outside. Some other guy was already in the driver seat. He looked at me strangely. He probably thought I was a crack-head. I was sure I looked like one, all sweated out and bruised, coming out of a crack house. Then he shot Antione a look like he wanted to say
What the hell you bring this pregnant crack-head in my car for?

“This my peoples. Take her up the way,” Antione instructed the driver before he had the chance to ask anything.

The guy huffed, put the car in drive, and pulled out of the parking space.

I was in a lot of pain and didn’t feel like talking, but I was curious about when Antione had got out of jail.

“When did you get out?”

“Get out of where?”

“Wasn’t you locked up?”

“Naw.”

“Butter told me you got locked up out of town around the time they ran in Shake’ s,” I explained.

“Ohhh. Naw. I was out of town. The cops ran up in my crib but it wasn’t shit there. Naw, I ain’t get locked up.”

I left it at that. I wasn’t in the mood to interrogate him anyway. Shit, what was done was done. I wasn’t going to cry over spilled milk. Besides, I shouldn’t have trusted Butter’s word. I should have went by Antione’s house myself. That was my fault.

Antione took a dutch from behind his ear and lit it. He took a few puffs on it and passed it to the driver. The smell was tempting. It reminded me of how good I felt whenever I smoked weed. I was in so much pain, physically and emotionally, and I wanted something that would make it go away. That blunt was calling me.

“Ant man, can you pass that back here please?”

“But you pregnant.”

“I know, but it hurts so bad. Just a little bit to take my mind off this pain,” I whined.

Antione took another puff and then passed it back to me. When I got the dutch in my hand, I hesitated. I thought about the baby, but something inside me told me that my baby was already harmed. It told me I might as well go ahead and smoke it. I puffed it. Then I puffed it again and again and again. After a while I laid my head back and just chilled out.

“I thought up the way was the hospital,” I snapped when I realized Antione and the guy had driven me to Butter’s house.

“Angel, you can’t go to no hospital after you done smoked weed while you pregnant. They ain’t goin’ do nothin’ but run ya name, see that you got a warrant, lock you up, and take ya baby from you the minute it’s born.”

He made sense, but why Butter’s house? Why not his own? I was steamed, but I wasn’t stupid. Something wasn’t right with that picture. Then Butter came out of her house. She approached the passenger door and bent over like she was going to kiss Antione, but Antione stopped her.

“Look who I ran into,” he said.

Butter looked in the back seat. The expression on her face when she saw me was unforgettable.

“What corner you pick that ho up from?” she asked.

“Be nice,” Antione said. “She pregnant and shit.”

“She knocked up?” Butter asked with an attitude. “What kind of money is she goin’ make knocked up?”

“Pregnant pussy is the best pussy,” Antione replied. “You ain’t know that.”

I started to put the pieces together in my head, and I knew what was wrong with the picture. I was surrounded by a bunch of shady bastards who had a fucked-up scheme going on and were trying to involve me in it.

“Ant man, I don’t care about the police locking me up. I just wanna make sure my baby is all right,” I told Antione, with hopes he would have a heart and take me to the hospital.

Instead, Antione got out of the car and opened the back door. He grabbed me by my arm and pulled me out. I looked at him with so much anger and hate. I hoped he would get the picture and realize that he was dead wrong for whatever he was about to do. He just smirked. Butter walked up the steps to her brownstone and opened the door. Antione forcefully pushed me in the house. The driver took off.

Once I was inside Butter’s house, I thought about giving up. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t put up a fight. My stomach pains were coming back, and honestly, I just wanted to die. I was asking myself, how did that morning go from me getting up, getting dressed, eating, and getting ready to go take the test to get me back in school, to me being raped, cussed out by Jamal’s mom, and then brought here to Butter’s house for more abuse by Antione, my own fuckin’ family.

“You look like you need a bath,” Butter said with her lips twisted up.

“Yo, clean ‘er up, get ‘er some weed, and let ‘er chill,” Antione told Butter.

Butter rolled her eyes at me and walked up the stairs. That was the first time I seen Butter actually take orders from somebody. She didn’t even listen to Shake like that. Meanwhile, Antione pulled me over to the couch and sat me down.

I figured that was a perfect opportunity to find out what was going on with him and see if I could snap him out of his obvious insanity.

“Ant Man,” I shouted, “What is up with you? Why are you doin’ this to me? It’s me. Curt’s sister. Me and you are like family. What are you doin’?”

“Go upstairs and get cleaned up,” he said, ignoring all of what I said.

He pulled some money from his pocket and started counting it. He didn’t seem to have any remorse for my situation. He knew that I was in pain. He knew that I was pregnant and needed to go to a hospital, but it didn’t seem to matter to him. Me being his little sister went out of the window. I didn’t even know the nigga that was sitting there in Butter’s living room counting a fistful of fifties. He sure wasn’t the Antione I grew up with. He was no different than Butter and probably worse. I was disgusted at him and her, and I would kill them both if I had the chance.

“Go ‘head,” Antione reiterated about me going upstairs and taking a bath.

I slowly walked up the steps and into the back bedroom that was once mine. I sat down on the bed and cried. In no time, Butter came into the room with a blunt. She took a puff and gave it to me. She put an ashtray on the floor in front of me and left the room, closing the door behind her.

I put the blunt in the ashtray. I wasn’t smoking shit from her. I didn’t care how bad I wanted to. I heard somebody walk up the steps and down the hall. Then I heard Antione’s voice. It was muffled, like he was whispering. I heard Butter whispering back. They sounded like they were in the bathroom next to the room I was in. I got up and put my ear to the door.

“Go a little easy on ‘er,” Antione whispered.