Hesitating, I walk back and forth wondering how I would explain what I was doing in an oversized T-shirt that barely touched the back of my thighs. Underneath I am nude. No panties or bra. The wind blows faintly and I’m not concerned of the possibility of the fall’s wind blowing enough to lift the shirt, exposing my stick thin legs. I need another lie. Some excuse of how I had gotten here. To this point.
Last week, in tears, I told him I had been robbed. I told him, they snatched me into the backseat before I approached the other side of a busy street, where others like myself stood, awaiting a numbed moment. My tears were authentic. He believed me. I wasn’t beaten or deprived of any beauty of life, that assured one he was living. He simply told me to wash up, and get back out there.
Now I was afraid that he would catch me here, and the worst would happen. In reality, the worst had arrived with a vendetta. I was paranoid. Every car that drove past me was familiar. I had seen these pedestrians at least once or twice, and avoided eye contact. I doubt they noticed me. It was New York City. I ducked inside of the vacant building I had been prancing in front of, in hopes of seeing my new found friends. I wanted to get high.
Some minutes, or maybe hours ago, I had done the honors of buying the stuff. Three hundred dollars. Wasted. All I had to show from my earnings was what I felt between my thighs. A swollen vagina. I had planned on spending one hundred of that to take a cab back to the track, with the rest of the whores, but instead I bought some dope. In those blurs of seconds it was worth it, at least I thought so, but now, I was certain it wasn’t.
I rethought the situation and blamed my boyfriend. Bastard. I didn’t know he was a crack head until I came home after working at the Dollar Store, a few blocks past Lexington. He didn’t look like one. The day I came home from work, after the store was robbed, me at gun point, I caught him in our living room. Getting high. I excused him, as I had been prone to do with everything else in my life. I was like my mother in this sense. I thought if I gave it a try, I would understand him better. It would bring us closer.
I walked a mighty ways to scope out a local drug dealer. He thought I was attractive, and thought I was hitting on him, but when I told him what I was looking for, his face crinkled. For a second I thought, I had scoped out the wrong guy, or even worst, an undercover cop. I can’t get the way he looked at me to leave my mind. It haunts me still. He gave me the stuff for free along with his cell phone number. When I finally deserted the scene, I had never felt so low. I felt defeated. Once and for all.
On the way home, I was paranoid than I had ever been before. I thought every pedestrian on the block knew I had bought a crack rock. A rock. A ten dollar crack rock. The burden was heavy in my bra. It weighed my down, so that I walked slumped over a tad bit, wishing to be unnoticeable until I got back home. I wasn’t worried about my boyfriend fishing out my nervousness. He had been out job hunting, so he said, to get things for our baby. The neighbors tended to her. They only asked for twenty dollars to look after her.
I crept back into my apartment like I was easing into a jeweler’s domain, about to snatch all I would be able to get away with in a matter of seconds, and locked the door. All three locks. I took the dope out of my bra, sat it on the table, and looked at it. The dimmed light, hanging from our ceiling, gave it a dull look. It looked harmless. I took it out of the bag, to get a better look. I rubbed it between my index finger and thumb, like some archeologist that had just discovered a new species in the bird family. I smelled it. Odorless. I felt an unexplainable connection.
I thought about all the horrible things it could possibly do to me. Then I thought about what life in general could do to me. Both of these concepts bumped heads somewhere to even out. Dope was slowly beginning not to seem like a bad thing to smoke.
Zombie-like, I walked to the kitchen, looked in the kitchen and found myself being excited at the presence of a pipe. I picked it up, carefully, as if it were china, in my mother’s home, and examined it, as I had done the crack rock. When I slid it into the pipe- I knew I would meet that moment- head on. I was about to smoke crack. Crack. I thought about my problems, perhaps as an excuse to go through with it.
I needed winter clothes. My rent was past due. We needed a phone, and were barely getting by. I put the pipe up to my lips and closed my eyes, as if I were about to receive the first kiss of my life. The kind young girls giggle about to their friends after it’s done. My hand blindly found the lighter that had already been prepared for this moment. It had been sitting on the table for two days now. I flicked it, and exhaled the fumes heavily.
I felt a smile sneak across my face, but I didn’t know if it was really there or not. I felt a twinge between my thighs, and I had a sudden urge to touch myself, the way a man would touch me. I was numb. Nothing mattered. My body was afloat. My heart raced, at full speed, it felt. After a couple of seconds, it all disappeared.
“I just smoked crack,” I said to my self. Or maybe aloud. I was embarrassed. Paranoid. I thought the cops would kick the door down, ramshack our place, and throw me behind bars. For life. I calmed myself down with happier thoughts- My parents, my parents would be there to rescue me if anything happened. They would be there. Besides, I’m their only child.
I come from a good family. My father, a pastor, at the Church of Chirst. Mommy- a fifth grade English teacher. Me- rebellious and confused of why they wanted so hard for me to excel. Mommy attempted to teach me grammar, and it only made her frustrated. Daddy thought reading Psalms would make a better individual. He had forgotten I wasn’t a good reader. It took me five years and six summers just to get a high school diploma. I barely made it through.
The summer I graduated, I filled out tons of job applications. That’s when I landed a job at the dollar store. My boyfriend came in one Sunday. He was in a hurry. All he winded up buying was batteries and two cans of coke. He said he had left his wallet in the car, and paid me with coins. I believed it. I believed everything he said, until he told me his uncle was a big time pimp around the way. He seemed excited by the idea.
The idea emerged into reality on a night I worked over time. My boyfriend had bought me us a little car. When I saw the headlights after walking through those doors, the first thing I thought was, “he’s on time.” But it wasn’t our little bucket we called a car. It was a Rolls Royce. The driver claimed to have been his uncle. It was all legit. It was real, and the uncle, who I’ll just call uncle, couldn’t believe a girl like me was dating his “wreckless nephew.” He had a cruel way of bringing my own life to my attention. Uncle said, “baby you’re beautiful enough to get any man you want. Hell, I wouldn’t mind taking care of you.”
In the car, I looked out the window- at the corporate world, wondering if there was a place for me out there. Too tight. But then I saw something else. I had seen it many times before, but now it felt as if it was sitting righting next to me: Ladies, beautiful ladies prancing down the street with men three times their age. A week ago I would have thought it was gross. Tonight it was rather interesting. They didn’t bother in body. I watched in awe, not caring that Uncle was watching me. They were laughing. Smiling. Not a care in the world.
“I’m not like that,” I said, yanking my head away from the scene.
He pressed. “But you can, you have what I like to call…potential.” After saying this, he laid out facts (containing me) like poker cards- face down. With my constant rejects, he decided he liked me. I had doubts about him until he started paying rent. Buying me things. Like those beautiful women had. Buying the baby things. As if he had helped me make it. I got lazy at work. Uncle was spoiling me, I figured what was the point of work. I smoked most of my money up, and enjoyed the rest of the spending on whatever Classic decided to buy.
I thought everything was fine. That was until he busted me smoking dope. In front of the baby. He left, and afterwards did the unthinkable. He called CPS, and she was taken away. I was taken to jail. Uncle had taken over my life. He bailed me out around six a.m. The first thing I wanted to do was get high. He dropped me off on a car. Told me to make the money up, or he would have me killed by sundown.
Desperate, after he left the scene. Afraid. I flagged a Spanish man down. His face was blurry. Maybe he didn’t have a face. He didn’t take me to the dope house, after I had sucked his penis. He tried to have sex with me. I fought him off, remembering something I had seen a woman on television do. I poked him in the eye and grabbed his penis like it had been my own life. Then I let it go. I jumped out of the car at a light. Barefooted. I walked briskly, fishing out dope men here and there, forgetting about Uncle. Forgetting about my baby. Forgetting about everything. I couldn’t have been happier to see my raggedy building. That’s all I wanted to do. I just had to see that something in my life was still standing from. The idea made me happy. It made me want to get high, but when I turned around to go back into the streets, I was greeted by a fist. My boyfriend’s physique flashed before my eyes- right before I hit the pavement. I could feel my body being lifted up. I hadn’t a clue of where I was being carried off to. The unknown almost felt peaceful. When I woke up, I saw my parents. They had the baby. The only thing Mommy said was, “Please come home.” I closed my eyes wishing that she could have said that to me months ago.
