Secrets of a Side Bitch 2 (14 page)

Two weeks after Dahlia was buried, I finally went by to see my mother.

I still hadn
’t visited Dahlia. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Subconsciously I felt like I would have to face Aeysha and explain to her why I had, once again, let her down.

But
I was ready to face my mother. I had to. She was pissed that I didn’t have any services for her grandbaby.

It broke my heart when she looked at me with disgust
after opening the front door of her brick two story home in Tinley Park. She had a lot of nerve. She couldn’t even afford the door that she barely wanted to open for me. I was in this shit because I’d put myself in harm’s way just to keep this roof over her head.

She
was also to blame for Aeysha’s death, and she ain’t even know it. No, she didn’t pull the trigger and she didn’t make me start hustling. But she put me under the pressure that I felt to make the money that got Aeysha killed.

I shook
off the thought as I walked into my mother’s house. It smelled of old Avon perfume and Skin So Soft. The smell burned my nose. I tried to hold my breath as I sat beside my mother on her sofa. Despite the smell, she looked good. My mother was still beautiful. Her eyes were big and deep like moons, matching its color. She was aging well. Despite natural crow’s feet of a woman in her sixties, she could have easily passed for her early fifties. She kept herself up by walking on a treadmill that was in the corner of her living room facing the television. She stopped eating meat when she was in her thirties. She still had a great figure that could compete with a lot of chicks out here.

“Your sister has been trying to call you.”
She talked to me like she could barely stand it, like she hated that she had to.

“No, she hasn
’t. She on some bullshit anyway.”

“What
do you mean by that?”

My mother knew that I was in the drug game. I had no desire
to ever hide it from her. If she wanted me to be able to help her financially, she had no choice but to accept how I got my money.

“Told Tre about my business.
Simone heard the nigga talking about me while we were over there. She talks too much. I can’t have that type of shit.”

“Umph,” was my mother
’s only response.

Besides being beautiful, she held a smug and disappointed look on her face. I could help her financially, but there was nothing I was willing to do to take that look
off of her face. I had to do what was best for me.

When she noticed me noticing her, she spoke to me in a stern and hurt voice. “I can
’t believe you didn’t let me say goodbye to my grandbaby.”
“Mama, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, I do!”
“But I don’t, mama!”

She smacked her lips and blew her breath in
disapproval. She shook her head in reprimand as she shifted her weight away from me. “You act like you’re the only one going through this. Aeysha wasn’t my girlfriend, but she was like a daughter to me and it hurt me too…”

“Mama, I do not…”

“Listen to me, damn it!” Her body shook as her voice escalated.

I laid my hand on her knee
. “Calm down, mama.”

“No! You need to calm down. You need to calm
down, son.”

I saw that she was upset. I saw that she was so angry t
hat her nerves were causing her to tremble. I couldn’t take anything happening to my mother; not a heart attack, not a stroke, not even a cold. So, I shut up despite my insides burning with irritation.

I didn
’t want to hear this shit. I made it through the day without dwelling on Aeysha and Dahlia. She wanted to have a deep and heartfelt conversation about some shit that I couldn’t handle. It was going to make her feel better by getting it off her chest, but I was going to walk out of there with an even heavier burden on my mind that would lead me to doing something bad- very bad.

“You ain
’t the only one dealing with death. You forget that I am your mother, so I feel your pain too. Aeysha was like a daughter to me. Don’t forget, I was the last person that she talked to that day. She went outside because of me…”

The memory was so painful that my mother
’s tears came out in despair. She clutched her chest with one hand and covered her leaking eyes with the other. I hurriedly wrapped my arms around her and rocked her gently as soft wails escaped her mouth.

“
It's okay, mama.”

“I sent her outside.”

“I didn’t answer the phone,” I said through my own tears.

“Stop shutting me out, baby.
Stop being so hard. I wanted to say goodbye to the only living memory of Aeysha. That was my first grandbaby. You took that from me.”
“I’m sorry, mama.” My voice cracked as my heart did as well. I allowed myself to cry and miss Dahlia just like she did. “I didn’t say goodbye either. We can go say goodbye together, okay?”

She didn
’t respond. She just cried. She held me and just cried into my chest.

And
I let her, while I allowed myself to shed stubborn tears of my own.

No matter how much Rae was irritating
me, I could not believe that she was gone.

No matter our
recent separation, she had been such a part of my daily routine. Even after we broke up, I had become accustomed to hearing her voice every day, even if it was her begging to get back with me or cursing me out for fucking with Chance.

“Where do you want these boxes?”

I told Chance to take the boxes of clothes to the second bedroom. From there, I planned to sort everything out and store what was needed in the closet of the master bedroom.

I was moving into a new house. After Rae
’s suicide, there was no way that I was going to keep living there. The day she shot herself, I left and had only gone back to pack. The bloody comforter was still on the bed, which stunk like a dead body. Evidence of the paramedics and coroner being in my bedroom was still sprawled everywhere.

Just the thought gave me eerie and horrified chills. I forced myself to focus on the
box of kitchen appliances that I was unpacking. But it wasn’t working. As I unpacked the electric can opener, toaster, and blender, Rae’s dejected words rang in my head over and over again.

I felt so helpless. Initially, I felt so independent, as if I had to leave Rae for me. Now, I felt like I
should have handled her with kid gloves. I knew her story. I knew that she was lonely. I knew that she had no one in her life like me.

Yet, I was so selfish and so dic
k-mitized that I was reckless with her heart. When I thought about my life before her suicide, I felt good about leaving her. I was free. I was light hearted. Chance had little to do with that, but he still added to the joy of my daily life.

Now, I wondered if it was all worth it.

I watched Chance walking around drunkenly; barely able to carry the boxes that he was transporting. I wondered was throwing him in Rae’s face worth it. We weren’t in a committed relationship. I was enjoying being single, and he was enjoying getting his life back in order. But we both were very real with each other about how much we liked each other. I was even throwing myself out on a limb by dating his young ass.

However, things had changed recently. I guess the sight o
f a woman with her head nearly blown off would put things into a different perspective for anybody. It was definitely putting things into a difference perspective for me; which was why I was wondering what was up with the sudden change that I was seeing in Chance.

All of a sudden, he was drunk most of the time. When he wasn
’t, he was short, bitter, and angry. Something was wrong with him, and it wasn’t me. But I didn’t sign up to be in another fucked up situation with a significant other. I didn’t sign up to babysit another grown motherfucker with issues.

After leaving Gia’s new crib, I headed over to the spot in Riverdale. My stomach was bubbling. I was nervous as fuck. A few weeks ago I was about this life. I was ready to do what the fuck I had to do to survive. But this; this was something I never wanted to do.

Not again.

Especially to somebody else that didn’t deserve it.

All day, I
’d tried to calm my nerves by drinking away the fear and dread that consumed me since me, Omari, and Capone had that talk outside his condo.

That shit was
n’t working though.

As I road down 147th Street towards the spot, my cell phone rang. I was riding in silence; having a mental conversation with
myself and my conscience. The bright lights of my cell and that screeching ringtone scared the fuck outta me.

I answered immediately when I saw that it was Simone.

“What’s up?”

I hadn
’t talked to her since I saw her at the condo. Yet, she’d been texting me nonstop saying how she was going to fix this.

How was she going to fix something so fucked up was beyond me.
But she was known to pull one hell of a rabbit out of her hat, so who knew what she would come up with.

“Where are you?”

“On my way to the spot.”

She
huffed and puffed. “You can’t keep working for him.”

“What the fuck
am I suppose to do? Until you come up with some cash, I’m trappin’.”

“Trap somewhere else!”

“Where?!”

Her smart ass didn
’t have an answer for that.

“Shit. Don
’t you think if I had an option, I would have been on it already?”

As always, she changed her tone. She was sweet,
nurturing and somewhat lustful. She used the same tone while I was living in transitional housing, telling me that her brother’s ex-wife was a dirty bitch taking him for everything and beating his daughter; a dirty bitch whose life was worth twenty-five thousand dollars that was supposed to change my fucked up life.

“You need to leave, Chance.”

I laughed hysterically. “Shit, the way shit is going down, sounds like you need to leave too.”

Silence.

“Oh, but I forgot. You jumped through so many hoops to get this nigga that you too sprung to leave.”

It was funny how no matter how much proof I had, she still danced around her truth.

“This is cutting it too close. They are still investigating her murder.”

That made the bubbles in my gut dance like the Twerk Team. I was wrong for killing Aeysha. I would probably kill myself with alcohol, then eventually drugs, by trying to float through the guilt.

But I be damned if I end up in prison for some shit that I was coerced into doing.

Simone took my silence as weakness, an opportunity to convince me. “You have to leave.”

“I can’t leave without any money. Set me up and I’ll bounce.”

I was willing to bounce. This shit was becoming
too hectic. I needed to get the fuck away from these motherfuckers.

“I don
’t have any,” she groaned.

“Well, find some.”
Then, I took her silence for weakness. “I’m not leaving again without a cushion. Yea, I fucked up the first time, but I won’t let it happen again. I understand you want me gone. Shit, I wanna be gone too. Shit is getting way to thick around here.”

She chuckled sarcastically. “Hell, how can it get any thicker than
this?”

I had an answer for her rhetorical question.
“They’re about to kill Ching.”

“What?”

“Tonight. That’s why I was at the condo that day. He wants to kill Ching. He thinks he killed Aeysha. I ain’t for killing another innocent person. What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

Simone snuffed out my guilt
. She caught how weak I was in this; how close I was to the edge. “Well, kill him!”

“What
?!”

“Kill him!
Do what the fuck you gotta do to keep yourself from looking suspect. He didn’t kill Aeysha, but Ching has been in the game for years. Do you know how many people he probably killed?!”

Once again, I couldn
’t believe the pure audacity of this bitch. She was willing to do anything, take any steps, to keep this shit going. But everything she was doing, every step she was taking, was about covering her ass and to keep herself in a sweet position.

My heart was heavy. I was stuck in between a rock and a hard place. I didn
’t want to kill again. I didn’t want innocent blood on my hands again. But I also didn’t want these niggas looking at me suspect because I was bowing out.

As I pulled up in front of the spot
, Capone and Omari were standing out front waiting on me. I knew that I had to do what I had to do.

“
You have to go along with this. Otherwise they will suspect something,” Simone told me, seemingly begging. “
Kill him
.”