Chasing Butterflies (23 page)

“Oh no,
nucca
. I knooooow,
you
not even tryna play me for this corny broad.”

“Yo, ain’t no one takin’ up for no one; I’m just sayin’, yo. Chill
dafuq
out.”

Quita shoots me a nasty look.

Head tilted, brow raised, I match her glare. I’ve had enough of her.

“You can call me names all you want,” I say through gritted teeth. “But I’m not the one wearing cheap weaves and hooker heels, and walking around with a clown face on with all that crazy makeup caked up on your face. You can call me what you want. But I’m not the one who looks like one of the Muppets.”

Someone laughs.

“Ohhh, snap,” someone else says. “She called you out.”

“Oooh, she callin’ you Miss Piggy, girl,” Chardonnay instigates. “She tried it.”

Quita sucks her teeth. “
Bish
, please. She can’t come for me. Ain’t no pigs over here. Try again.”

My chest starts heaving.

“I’m
not
playing with you, Quita. I’m asking you
nicely
to give. Me. Back. My. Journal.”

I’m trying hard to keep it together. But I feel my temper rising. Feel myself being pulled into the inferno.

“Or
whaaat
, Miss Corny?” she challenges, defiantly snatching open my journal and preparing to violate my private, most inner thoughts. “Okay, let’s see what kinda juicy tales you servin’ . . .”

My eyes flash wildly.

My temper flares.

And then I am hopping up from my seat. “No!” I scream, spittle flying out of my mouth. “Give me back my book!”

She smirks. Amusement dances in her eyes as she begins to back away while preparing to read one of my entries. And this only incenses me more.

“Ooh, she—”

Before she has a chance to say anything more, my hand connects with her face. I smack her so hard her whole head swings to the right, practically spinning her around.

I don’t give her a chance to think.

Before she can gather herself, I am punching her upside the head until she’s stumbling backward. And my journal flies out of her hand.

She’s awakened something deep within.

And now I can’t stop myself.

All I see is red.

I’m on fire.

And now she’s going to get burned.

She’s going to learn: Don’t. Mess. With. Me.

I am smacking and punching her, then wrapping my hands up in her weave and swinging her down to the ground.

She screams and curses and tries to fight me off. But my hands are faster, my punches harder. I fight her for every disrespectful thing she’s ever said to me.

I fight her for every kid she might have ever bullied.

“Ohhhhh,
sheeeeeeeeeeeiiiiit!
” I hear someone yell out.

“Ohmygod! Ohmygod! She’s beatin’ Quita down!”

There’s hooting.

And hollering.

And cheering.

“Fight!”

“Fight!”

And then...

There’s Sha’Quita screaming for someone to jump in and help her.

But no one does.

“T
his is some straight BS,” Omar says, a look of disbelief on his face, as he opens the passenger-side door. He shakes his head, and waits for me to get in, then slams the door. He’s come to pick me up from the police station. I can’t remember much of anything after I swung Quita down to the ground and punched her in the face. I remember everything around me starting to fade in and out. I remember my heart beating hard. Remember heat flashing through me. Remember hearing screaming and, at some point, feeling hands trying to pry me off of her.

And then I am in the backseat of a patrol car. Hands cuffed. Shirt torn. Face scratched. Being taken to the station. Sitting in a tiny cell.

Waiting.

Waiting for my racing heart to slow.

Waiting for the blaze to extinguish.

Waiting for the ashes.

Waiting for Omar.

None of this would be happening if I’d never been forced to come here. If Aunt Terri hadn’t lied to me, if Daddy hadn’t died and left me, I would never know these people.

These derelicts.

Yeah, that’s what they are. Derelicts. Degenerates.

Okay, okay . . . that’s not nice. But, oh well. I’m not in the mood for niceties at the moment. I’m angry. Still.

Sha’Quita
caused this.

She
asked for this.

Not me.

I open and close my right hand, and wince. It hurts like heck.

I rub my swollen knuckles.

I wouldn’t have had to beat up that troublemaking girl if she hadn’t kept pressing me.

She’s still inside. Locked up.
Good.
She has some kind of warrant for not going to court, or something like that. So they’re keeping her.

She had the audacity to blame
me
for her troubles when she’s the one who started this. All she had to do was give me back my journal.

Wait—

I quickly dig through my bag.

My heart sinks. No, it stops beating.

It’s not here!

My journal.

I feel lightheaded.

My chest tightens.

My thoughts.

My feelings.

My entire life . . .

Gone.

I start rocking.

And hyperventilating.

That journal is my whole existence.

Without it, I’m, I’m, I’m—

Dead!

Flatlined!

Do not resuscitate!

Please and thank you.

“Yo, I need you to tell me . . .”

I hear Omar talking when he gets in the car, but I am too distraught to comprehend a word he is saying.

All I can think of is my journal.

Missing.

“Y-y-you have to take m-m-me b-b-back,” I stammer, trying like heck to keep from crumbling. But it’s too late. I’m cracking open, and have become a babbling mess. “M-my j-j-journal . . .”

“Huh? Take you back where?”

The tears fall heavy.

“B-b-b-back to the p-p-park.”

“The
park
?” He gives me a look of disbelief.
“Now?”

“Y-yes. Please. M-m-my j-j-journal. It’s
losssssssst
.”

And now he’s looking at me as if I’m insane.

Maybe I am.

Maybe I’ve finally fallen—or jumped—off the proverbial cliff.

Omar starts the engine, then pulls off. “Yo, I’ll buy you another book, a’ight? It can’t be that serious. It’s dark as hell out there by now.”

I choke back a scream.

Is he kidding?

I don’t care.

It is
that
serious.

Everything I am is in that journal.

I’ve been carrying that 192-page black leather book around with me since I was twelve. Four years of front-and-back free-thinking and self-expression has been captured on most of those pages over the years.

Gone.

Thanks to that—that heathenish girl.

I sob louder.

“A’ight, yo. C’mon. Don’t cry. I’ll take you back to the park.”

I
t wasn’t there!

My journal.

My knees buckled when I finally resigned myself to the fact that we weren’t going to find it, no matter how hard we looked.

We combed through the park. Nothing.

We searched up and down, under and around the bleachers. Still nothing.

I cried so hard that it made me dizzy. Blood rushed to my head. All I could do to keep from collapsing on the ground was plop down on the bleacher and cover my face in my hands and scream.

I cried out until my throat burned.

I even cursed.

Shocking.

Yes.

Used words I’d only heard in movies and in the streets.

Formed a string of profanity that shocked, and excited, me.

I punched and pounded the bleacher.

Cursed and screamed. I think I might have even made up a few words.

I don’t know. I don’t remember all I said. But I know what I felt.

What I’m
still
feeling.

Omar seemed confused. Still, he tried to console me best he could. But he clearly wasn’t used to seeing—or
having
to deal with—an uncontrollably sobbing teenager, spewing out obscene language, almost sounding like she’s speaking in tongues.

I didn’t expect him to, anyway.

He wasn’t Daddy.

He could never be Daddy.

So he wouldn’t understand.

He couldn’t understand.

Ever.

Daddy had bought me that book.

So the sentimental value of that leather book was irreplaceable.

I’d read some of my best poems out of it.

And now, and now—

I can’t recapture any of those words written.

I fought that girl—that—that scallywag, to get my journal back from her, and I
still
don’t have it. It’s really missing. Gone! All I can think is, it’s somewhere, in someone’s hands, being read. All of my personal thoughts on display for prying eyes.

I’m not crying anymore.

But I’m still angry.

And I feel sick.

“I want to go home,” I say the minute Omar slides back behind the wheel and shuts the door to this raggedy piece of car he’s picked me up in. The outside of the car is sparkling, with glossy black paint and red shiny rims.

But the inside is . . . is . . . a hot smelly mess.

I was too distraught when I first got in to really notice.

But now . . .

Now I see it for what it is.

It’s an old four-door black Honda, with cloth seats—cloth seats, for God’s sake!—that reeks of marijuana and cigarette smoke.

Not that I’m an expert on marijuana smells, but I’ve smelled enough of it being around Quita’s stank butt to know what it is.

I look up, frowning. The cloth from the roof is torn.

And hanging.

I sweep my gaze around the interior.

There’s a pair of red dice dangling from the rearview mirror.

For a split second, I think,
gang
.

I eye Omar and wonder whose car we’re in. But I am too agitated to care. My hands are shaking—and are itching to finish smacking up Quita’s face.
That stank girl had no business snatching my journal from me! And now it’s gone! Lost!

I clasp my hands in my lap to keep from hitting the dashboard. I’ve never been arrested. Never been inside of a cop car. Never, ever, been in trouble a day in my life.

I’ve never even had a fight!

Until now!

“We’ll be home in minute,” Omar says, slicing into my thoughts as he starts the engine.

Omar pulls off. Surprisingly, it purrs like a kitten.

I hadn’t noticed that, either, until now.

The ride is smooth, as the engine hums along.

And like my life, this pretty, ugly car is one big elusive illusion.

An oxymoron.

He glances over at me. “You hungry?”

My brain is pounding. I just want to grow wings and fly as far away from all of this drama as I possibly can, like three thousands miles away.

Back to palm trees, golden sunshine, and crystal blue waters.

Back to Long Beach, my home.

I shift in my seat. Lean my body up against the door. “No. I want to go
home
.”

“We’ll—”

I shoot him a look, cutting him off. He catches my stare, and, suddenly, realization takes root. He understands. I want. To. Go.
Home.
Back to California, back to the life I was forced to abandon.

I do not fit in here.

Do not feel comfortable here.

Do not feel wanted here.

This is not
my
life.

It’s
his
.

And I want no part of it,
him,
or any of this ghetto-
ness
that I’ve been dragged into.

I tell him this. Well, not the ghetto part. But I tell him everything else. Tell him I don’t like it here. I’m not nasty or disrespectful when I tell him this. I’m simply being direct. And he tells me that I have to give it some time. That he knows it’s an adjustment for me, for the both of us.

I stare at him blankly.

Time is not my friend. There’s nothing to adjust to. I want out. Now.

I take a deep breath. Open and close my hands. Make two tight fists. Then open them again. All I see is Quita’s face. All I see are my fists connecting to her eye, then her nose, then her mouth.

I am mad at myself for letting that girl get to me, for taking me out of character.

For making me become someone I am not used to. Turning me into someone that I’m frightened of.

This is not who I am.

Or who I want to be.

So why do I feel so bad?

I touch the side of my face. It’s bruised and swollen where she punched me.

“I don’t mean no harm,” I finally say. I take a deep breath and clasp my hands together in my lap, “but I’m
not
ever going to adjust to this, this . . .
environment
,” I say for a lack of a nicer word.

He makes a left turn, then a sharp right before I feel his stare on me. I look straight ahead. Stare at the road ahead of me. And pretend I don’t see him. But even in the dark cabin of the car, I see him. See him searching for . . . something, anything.

“I know it’s not the life you’re used to, but . . .” He pauses as if he’s trying to find the right words to make me a believer. “It’ll get better,” he offers, trying to reassure me.

It doesn’t.

I feel myself shaking from the inside out.

And then I am bursting into tears.

Angry.

No, enraged.

How dare that girl!

The car swerves over. Then it abruptly stops at a curb.

Omar tries to console me, but I push away his attempt.

I want my daddy.

Want the man who raised and loved me.

I miss him.

“Yo, c’mon, baby girl, don’t cry. I ain’t know shit was goin’ down like this, for real for real. I ain’t know.”

I huff, wiping my face with the back of my hand. He hands me a napkin from some takeout place, I think. In the midst of my tearful frenzy, I am still cognizant enough to glance at it, to make sure it’s clean.

I wipe my eyes, then blow my nose. It’s hard. The napkin, that is. “Of course you didn’t know what was going on,” I say, blowing my nose again. “You’re
never
there.”

“Word is bond, yo . . .”

I struggle not to roll my eyes up in my head.

How can I be related to this man? What did my mother ever see in him? Why would she have a baby with someone like him? The mother I knew was polished and articulate. She was well spoken. She was into art shows, dance recitals, and opera houses. Not . . . not . . . riffraff. Not ruffians. Not street thugs.

Not this kind of man.

Or was she?

No. This has to be some kind of mistake, some type of sick, twisted prank. This man cannot be my father. He just can’t be.

I’m still waiting for someone to walk up and say—in their Maury Povich voice—that he is
not
the father.

“The minute they release her,” Omar says, cutting into my thoughts as he pulls away from the curb, then speeds up the street, “I’ma check ’er, for real for real. I promise you, on everything.” He makes a sharp right turn. “She’ll fall back once I get at ’er.”

I say nothing. Simply turn toward the window and look out at everything, and nothing at all, staring into the darkness.

I feel myself ready to burst into tears again.

This is all just too much for me.

I bury my face in my hands and sob.