The Coldest Winter Ever (41 page)

“Alright, Bullet. I’m willing to work my way in. I ain’t no slouch or nothing,” I reassured him.

“Oh, for a minute I thought you was unhappy. Don’t your man get you everything you need? Don’t I keep your hands heavy?” he asked, pointing out my new Rolex. “Don’t I keep the roof of your choice over your head? Name one thing you wanted that I didn’t get for you.”

“My father’s address,” I said softly.

“Damn, Winter. What you need. What the fuck you need
that I didn’t get for you?
What do you want. I’ll get it for you!”

It was that second I wised up. I would never mention Santiaga to Bullet again. For some reason that I wasn’t getting, it was like asking about Daddy was an insult to him. Now I would get to my father on my own. I wasn’t trading my own smarts for Bullet’s. I could find my pops and stay on point with Bullet. I’d watched for an opening to pull it off. But this was exactly why I needed some cash flow.

The whackest thing about celebrity parties is you’re locked in the VIP section where nobody dances. The live party goes on outside of the VIP room. But Bullet had business in here. I should’ve known this wasn’t no fucking date we were on. By the time we was leaving I felt stressed. Usually when I’m partying I ain’t feeling no pain.

It was going out the back door that shit went crazy. I was walking close but slightly in front of Bullet. Bullet was directly in front of Moose, who had his back. Some fool came walking up to me. Within seconds, I recognized him as the bodyguard who drove me home from GS’s mansion.

“What’s up, Sasha?” He was directly in front of me so I stopped walking. Besides, he was about six-foot-two, much taller than me, and built.

“Do I know you?” I said in a cold, flat voice. I played it off. Bullet, who was only six feet tall, put his hand on the cat and pushed him out of my path.

“You got the wrong girl, nigga. Move on,” Bullet threatened.

“Sasha,” he said again, feeling himself and testing Bullet. “You don’t remember me from GS’s?”

“My fucking name ain’t Sasha,” I tried to cut him with my words.

“Money, I told you move on,” Bullet said with death in his eyes. Bullet’s leather jacket swung open, revealing his arsenal.

Moose stepped in and said, “Here, let me talk to you a minute,” pulling the bodyguard to the side. Meanwhile, Bullet’s man pulled up. Me and Bullet got in the car. Bullet gave his man the order. He parked on the opposite curb of the back entrance.

I asked, “What are we waiting for?” Bullet, still heated, didn’t answer. Bullet got out the car and signaled somebody. Next thing I know he’s outside talking to GS. Through the tinted window, I’m watching. Bullet’s back was to me. I could see directly into GS’s face. It didn’t look like an argument. It looked like a friendly, casual conversation. Then Bullet’s knuckles was knocking on the window. I pushed the button. The window came down.

“Winter!” Slowly I stuck my head out the window. “I want you to meet my man GS.”

Without smiling or nothing, I said, “Nice to meet you,” and pulled my head back inside.

I heard Bullet say, “Yeah, that’s my girl. You never seen her before, have you?”

“Nah, never, man,” GS replied. I sighed relief. I don’t know why GS covered for me. Or maybe he was just protecting his own ass. There was no way he had forgotten me. I knew then that Bullet was the man. He wasn’t taking no shorts and I got to dig him for that.

Moose never got back in the car that night. We dropped Bullet’s man and went home.

Focusing on food was never my thing. As I listened to my stomach growl the next morning, I felt a desire to eat. As I held the refrigerator door open, I couldn’t decide on what I wanted. My hunger turned to nausea. My nausea turned to vomit. After hurling in the toilet, I laid on the bed staring at the ceiling with a nasty taste in my mouth. Seven minutes of silence, then panic settled in.

Immediately I began pacing the bedroom floor. I ran into the kitchen to pull out the calendar the Chinese take-out guy slid under the door. Frantically, I tried to remember the date of my last period. The problem was the numbers on the calendar didn’t mean nothing to me. I couldn’t even match certain incidents with corresponding dates. When I actually thought about it harder, I tried to remember the last time I bought Tampons. Lashay’s face popped in my head. I remembered charging her two dollars for one back at the House of Success! But I had blacked all that bullshit out.

In jeans, with a pajama top on under my jacket, I walked to the closest pharmacy and purchased a pregnancy test. Back in the bathroom, I zoomed through the directions. Placing the small cup underneath myself, I pissed on my fingers while trying to hold it. Then I pissed on the toilet. Then I pissed on the floor. Therefore, my little cup only had a droplet of piss in it. I turned on the water faucet to make myself able to pee again. I waited a half an hour and finally was able to deliver a half a cup. While I waited for the little plus or minus sign to show up, I smoked a joint to calm my nerves. Three minutes to doomsday …

It turned out positive. I was pregnant. The only thing to do now was get rid of it. After a short while, I remembered hearing an abortion jingle on the radio. I couldn’t recall exactly how the commercial went, but I knew if I tuned in, within minutes the ad would come on.

When I called, they gave me the location of the nearest clinic. A quick shower, I was dressed and on my way.

It was a cloudy morning. Girls were jammed like sardines into the clinic. As I surveyed the room it wasn’t hard to figure the girls whose stomachs were not poking out yet were sure to abort after looking at
the obviously pregnant idiots who decided to keep their babies. One big, pregnant girl had dark, purple circles underneath her eyes. I saw stretch marks on knees, arms, titty tops, and even on her elbow. Some girls were balding from their condition. I even saw swollen hands, noses, and feet. One girl’s ankles were so fat it looked like elephantitus. She had her big tree-trunk legs propped up on not one but two chairs. Meanwhile, others didn’t even have nowhere to sit. Now I’m steady counting who came in first, next and next, and so on. I wanted to get this over with before Bullet came home that night.

The girl seated next to me leaned over to ask, “Are you nervous?”

“Nah!” I said, keeping it brief, not wanting to invite her into conversation.

“Then why are you shaking your foot like dat and bumping against my chair?” As I checked myself I realized I was tapping my foot. I got control of it immediately.

“I was nervous the first time I got an abortion. It turned out it didn’t hurt, though. It was like one, two, three, over.” The girl was still talking. I didn’t say nothing in response to her. But I was glad to hear, once again, that having an abortion doesn’t hurt. Back in the day, my girls told me the same thing.

“Yep,” I couldn’t believe this girl was gonna keep on going in the conversation, without any participation from me. “This is my fifth one. I really can’t get into creams, that shit makes me itch. Them pills make me sick. Can’t feel shit with a condom. It’s easier this way. It works pretty good, too. I only get knocked about once a year.”

“Yeah, but it must be expensive,” I said, allowing her to pull me in.

“Girl,” she went into her pocket and pulled out a Medicaid card. “I got an abortion credit card!”

In the examination room, the doctor grilled me.

“Do you have a private physician?”

“No.”

“When is the last time you had a gynecological exam?”

“This is my first time. Why, do you have a problem with that?” I asked the doctor.

“I’m asking the questions, young lady,” the Indian doctor with the dot said, like I was a lowly soldier in her army. “When was your last period?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Try to remember.”

“I can’t remember.”

When it was all said and done I was three months pregnant, or more.

“What do you want to do?” she asked with a sickening look of concern.

“I want to get rid of it right now. Give me the abortion.”

Pulling the rubber gloves off her hands, one finger at a time, she said, “Not so fast. Have you given this any thought, there are options to consider.”

“Look, on your commercials you said, “It’s a lady’s choice.’ You do abortions? Now get it out.”

The doctor got up from the chair with the wheels on it. She went to the counter with her back toward me. I’m like,
This bitch is crazy. She acts like this is personal.

“See the nurse on the way out. She’ll give you an appointment for your termination. If you wait too long this can get real messy.”

“What’s wrong with now?” I asked her.

“There’s another doctor who performs the procedure. You’ll have to schedule it with the nurse now.” I went right away to the nurse. It only took me two minutes of talking to convince her that I needed to be scheduled to abort tomorrow. “You wouldn’t want to be responsible for pushing me over the three-month line, now, would you?” I challenged her.

Back at the apartment I was seated at the kitchen table. Rapid picture frames flashed through my head. I traced the baby back to Boom. It was either him or GS’s asshole bodyguard. I wished it was Bullet’s. I knew it wasn’t because I was too far along. I remember the first time me and him fucked ’cause it was on my birthday. Images merged as I made comparisons in my mind. Boom had silky hair. Bullet has naps in a Caesar cut. Boom was yellow, Bullet is brown. Boom has hazel eyes. Bullet has brown eyes. If it was Bullet’s baby he would marry me, give me the whole world, the whole nine yards. But it’s Boom’s or the other guy’s. There was no way to be sure. I couldn’t front it off. So I’d get it scraped out first thing tomorrow.

“What you been doing all day?” Bullet’s suspicious ass asked.

“Nothing.”

“Did you go out?”

“No.”

“How come you didn’t pick up the phone when I called?”

“I was probably at the incinerator emptying the garbage. Why you didn’t page me? You usually page me,” I turned it around on him.

“I did page you,” he said, staring dead in my eyes.

“I didn’t get no beep!”

“Then you must of been on the subway. That’s the only way you didn’t get my beep.”

I got up, pulled my pager off my side and said, “Oh damn, I need a new battery.”

Bullet spent the rest of the night in the walk-in closet, with the door closed and locked.

The 11 A.M. train to the clinic was packed. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about what was about to happen. I mean, Bullet didn’t come to bed before I went to sleep. Even though this gave me the opportunity to clip three hundred from his coat, which he left draped over the chair, I was nervous. He didn’t kiss me before he left. I didn’t even hear him make a sound before he bounced. Would I be able to conceal the abortion without leaving a clue?

These thoughts converted into new thoughts when my eyes caught the front page of the New York
Daily News.
The man in the trench coat sitting right across from me was reading the paper. He had it held up with both hands in front of his face. It wasn’t the headline or the big picture in front. It was a bold line typed across the top of the paper. Rap Star Bodyguard Found Dead. My eyes locked in on the sentence. I read it over and over again. Immediately I got up. I started walking slowly through the moving, packed train car, looking left to right. I knew someone would have left a
Daily News
on the train after being done with it. When the train paused for a stop, some people got out. That’s when I got my hands on the paper.

As I suspected, there was the face of the asshole from the other night, Tony, GS’s bodyguard. It was a picture I guessed came from his high school days. He looked younger, with a big doofy smile. His full name was written underneath the photo. I never knew his last name was Creighton.

Rap star GS lost friend and bodyguard, Tony Creighton, 22, who was gunned down with three bullets to the head. Police don’t yet
know the time of the incident. The body was discovered yesterday afternoon in a vacant lot located on …

Then they had the mother of the bodyguard saying he was such a good boy. He volunteered to feed the homeless on the holidays, blah, blah, blah. People were always talking shit like that after somebody dies. Everybody gets together and starts lying about how a motherfucker was all this or that. He wasn’t no saint when his ass was laying up in that bed pretending to be GS that night, fuck him.

I was only concerned about one thing, myself. This abortion shit had to go smooth. I didn’t want Bullet coming after me. I could get this behind me. It wasn’t like I cheated on Bullet or nothing. This happened before me and him hooked up. But it didn’t matter. I knew that. I just needed to get rid of it and give him no reason to suspect me of nothing. I mean me and Bullet just clicked together. We were thick like that, business and lovers.

As soon as I got to the clinic the nurse started asking me stupid questions.

“Did you come here alone?”

“Yeah, why you got a problem with that?”

“Did you drive or take public transportation?”

“Why?”

“Answer the questions please, miss.”

“I took the train.”

“Okay. You’ll need to take this pill.” She handed me a big pill with one of those small white paper cups. The kind that are only good for one drink before they crumble. “Once the procedure is completed, you’ll probably feel disoriented. You cannot drive a car. You should really have a companion with you in case you don’t feel well and need assistance getting home. Is there anyone you can call to pick you up?”

“Yeah. I have a ride coming for me,” I lied.

She would read my chart, then look back at me. “Good, you’re eighteen. You’ll need to sign these papers.” After they got my promise not to sue if they accidentally killed me on the operating table, I gave them the three hundred dollars.

The doctor came in. It was a man. He held my hand while someone else gave me an injection. “You may taste a salty solution in your mouth, it’s OK.” Then the machine roared. It sounded like a vacuum
cleaner. What seemed like only minutes later, the machine stopped. In my head, I heard the voice of the girl from the waiting room yesterday, “one, two, three, over.”