Read Damaged Online

Authors: Kia DuPree

Tags: #FIC048000

Damaged (6 page)

BOOK: Damaged
13.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

It was nothing like where I lived now. My street had a lot of traffic going up and down it—Rhode Island Avenue was always
busy, but no one really hung outside on their porches. Neighbors did yard work and that’s about it. They came home from work
and went in the house.

I liked it around Chu’s way. People spoke to each other, asked about one another’s children and other family. Sometimes fights
sprung up, but everybody knew everybody, so a lot of time the cops ain’t even get involved unless it was a shooting. A few
times fights came from inside the apartments and ended up all the way in the street—usually it was a chick angry at her man
over another chick, or sometimes it was the other way around. Maybe a parent got into it with another parent cuz their child
had started a fight with the other parent’s child. Once, a girl got smashed in the head with a hammer by her baby father.
It was even on Channel 4 News. I couldn’t believe she survived.

In Chu’s neighborhood, people seemed to look out for each other. Every time somebody new came on the block, it was like everybody
noticed. I felt safe around his way for some reason, even though the girls stayed in our business.

Inside their apartment wasn’t nothing much to talk about. They had a couch and a love seat with a plasma TV, where they played
Madden
or
NBA Live
all day. I spent most of the time there smoking with Chu and Rob until it was time for me to go back home.

Chu was really growing on me. We smoked weed and talked a lot about how the Brinkleys wasn’t my real parents and about my
Nana dying. I ain’t tell him about Mama. That would hurt too much. He told me stuff, too. About his brother, Tep, being locked
up for three years and how he wasn’t talking to his mother since she kicked him out when he was fifteen. Chu said his father
moved back to Nigeria when he was seven and he and his brother ain’t seen or heard from him since. We kind of bonded when
I told him I never even knew my real father. When he asked me about my mother, I just told him she was too sick to take care
of me. I was relieved that he let it go at that. I could tell he knew I ain’t really want to talk about it.

When I finally let him put the head all the way in, he took a few strokes but stopped cuz he thought he was hurting me when
I started crying. But I wasn’t crying cuz of that. I was crying cuz I was thinking about Mr. Big the whole time Chu was on
top of me.

When I saw how Chu was looking at me, I almost wanted to tell him why I was crying. But he ain’t say nothing, he just lit
a blunt and started smoking it.

“Man, you gonna have to get over whatever it is you scared of… or I’ma have to…”

“You gonna do what?” I asked, pissed off.

“Man… shit,” he mumbled and shook his head. He took another puff and then completed his sentence. “I’ma have to do something.
Shit, Camille, you gotta suck me or something. I gotta get this nut out.”

I rolled my eyes. I was mad at Chu, but at the same time I ain’t want him thinking about being with nobody else. He was good
to me. I crawled over to him and picked up his man. It looked totally different than Mr. Big’s. Chu’s was thick and long with
smooth veins that ran around the sides. The top looked like a mushroom. Mr. Big’s reminded me of a thumb, except the top looked
wrinkled and like an elephant’s nose. Sometimes I even had to pick lint off before I put it in my mouth. Chu’s dick was three
times the size of Mr. Big’s and it hurt when he put it in me earlier. But Mr. Big’s went in with ease, like I was putting
on a tampon or something.

I held Chu’s man in my hand and then put it in my mouth. He smiled and leaned back, before locking his hand on top of my head.
I knew he was gonna like it.

“Damn, girl,” he moaned as I sucked. “Fuuccck.”

I smiled. I never got scared when I did this part. It was the only time I felt like Mr. Big was weak. As big as he was, he
always acted different whenever I did that to him, like he just couldn’t help himself. I always felt like what me and Mr.
Big did wasn’t right, but I ain’t know how to stop, or if I stopped what would happen to me. Danica was God knows where, for
real. I still ain’t caught up with Mama. She wasn’t out there looking for me, and I wasn’t really looking for her, either.
The Brinkleys made sure I had food and a bed to sleep in, but now that Chu was buying me my clothes and keeping money in my
pocket, I ain’t really need Mr. Big sneaking it to me no more.

That night when I got home, he came in my room like he always did, long after Mrs. Brinkley was in a deep sleep. When he climbed
on top of me, I laid still as usual, listening to him grunt as he stuck his dick in and out a few times. He moaned real loud
and let the sticky stuff get on my stomach.

“Hurry up and wipe that off, Nectar,” he said, handing me a roll of toilet paper. “I don’t want your Mama asking me about
the sheets again.”

I rolled my eyes and wiped myself off. Now I knew for sure that bitch knew what the fuck he had been doing to me. Mr. Big
put his night pants back on and left something on my desk before he left.

The next morning, when I got up I looked at the wad of bills. I sucked my teeth, counted the money, and stuffed the crinkled
dollars in my purse. It was enough to get the cute pair of True Religions I wanted. I sent Shakira a text to see if she wanted
to skip school and head up Georgetown. She hit me back:
DWN 4 ?EVA.
School was almost over for the summer, so we was skipping like every other day anyway. As soon as I got out the house, I
called her. We planned to meet at the bus stop on Rhode Island Avenue.

Her and Rob ain’t become a couple like me and Chu. All Shakira ever wanted to do was talk about how Rob had fucked her and
never called her back. I mean, I felt bad for her, but not really. She was a cute girl and could dress, so she could pull
another dude easy. I wished she would stop acting like he was the only guy she could get.

We looked around for a while, and then after I bought my jeans and she bought a cute red pair of stiletto sandals, we went
to get something to eat. After that we decided to go to the movies, just to pass time.

Around three o’clock, we went up to the rec center to see who was out there. We saw Nissa and Lauren and waved, even though
we only spoke just cuz she was in charge of Ebony Fire.

“That bitch is so fake,” I mumbled.

“Damn, like that? You still don’t like Nissa?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I guess cuz I can tell she still be hating on me.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. I be seeing her staring at me in practice. She don’t think I see her, but I do.”

“Hmmm,” Shakira said. “I think she still scared of you.”

“Maybe. Anyway, let’s go. Ain’t nobody up here.”

Shakira followed me out of the building and we walked down the street, still carrying our shopping bags and book bags. Her
cell phone rang and she started chatting away. I pulled my phone out, realizing Chu hadn’t called me all day. I dialed him
up and listened as his phone went straight to voicemail. That was strange.

“Hey, babe, it’s me. Haven’t heard from you all day. I’m about to go in the house like in twenty minutes, so you know it’s
gonna be hard to talk to you. Call me back.”

Shakira and I kept walking till we got to her corner and then we separated. I stopped at the corner store to buy a fruit punch
and some Doritos, hoping to give Chu more time. After a while, when he didn’t call, I went in the house.

Mrs. Brinkley was sitting in the living room watching
Oprah
when I walked in the door.

“Hi, Mama,” I said before going to the kitchen.

“You went shopping again?”

“Um, yes, ma’am,” I said, opening the refrigerator out of habit, since it wasn’t like I was hungry. “You seen Jayson?”

“No. He isn’t home yet. Don’t eat anything that’ll ruin your appetite. I have a casserole in the oven.”

“Okay.”

“Come here. Let me see what you bought.”

I was shocked, since she never seemed to care about what I bought. I walked in the living room, pulled the jeans out the bag,
and handed them to her.

“One hundred fifty-eight dollars?” she asked. “Your father giving you that much money?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“And you’re spending it on jeans?” she asked.

Did she really want an answer from me?

“That’s unimaginable,” she said, shaking her head. She got up and went to the kitchen and checked on her food.

“Am I excused?” I asked, since Mrs. Brinkley looked liked she wanted to say something else to me.

“No. You’re not excused. Take a seat here in the kitchen.”

I rolled my eyes, got up, and walked over to the tiny table in the kitchen.

“So… tell me,” she started. “What are you going to do with yourself?”

I was confused, and my face must’ve showed it.

“I’ve been watching you. Prancing around here in your high heels, and your tight clothes, all made up like some kind of common…
What are you going to do with yourself? Or do you want to just keep doing what you been doing?”

“What’s that?”

“Hmmm,” she mumbled and slammed the oven door shut. “You must think I’m an idiot.”

“Huh?” I said.

“You think I don’t know what’s been going on in my own house!” she yelled.

“Mama, I don’t know what you talking about!” I shouted.

“Don’t call me that!” she said, pacing the kitchen. “I don’t want to hear it!”

“Mama… I…”

“I want you to start praying right now. Get up!” Mrs. Brinkley yelled. “Kneel on the floor. Right now!”

I felt my eyes tearing up. She wanted to put all the blame on me for what had been happening. Was she gonna put me out like
Danica? Where would I go?

“Hurry up! Jesus needs to forgive you,” she said in a voice I never heard from her.

I hopped out of my chair and crawled down on my knees. I put my elbows in the chair I had been sitting in and closed my eyes,
too scared to even think about praying. I cracked my eyes open to see what Mrs. Brinkley was doing. She took a bottle of olive
oil from the cabinet and came back to where I was kneeling. I closed my eyes again, feeling her make a cross on my forehead.
She stood over top of me with her hand on top of my head. “Father, Lord Jesus, we need You today. We need Your forgiveness,
Lord. We need Your glory and Your mercy, Lord. There’s evil all around us, and we need You, Lord. Wash away her sins, Heavenly
Father,” Mrs. Brinkley called out, at the top of her lungs. Her hand rocked my head back and forth. Tears fell, but not cuz
I was the one sinning. Mrs. Brinkley kept on praying, and I wiped tears running down my cheeks.

“Yes, Lord, redeem her! Fill her with the Holy Spirit. Hallelujah! Show her Your love and Your power. Father Jesus, show her
Your mercy! Deliver her from evil,” Mrs. Brinkley shouted.

Suddenly, the front door opened and closed. I could tell it was Mr. Big, and he stomped into the kitchen, asking, “What in
the world is going on here?”

Mrs. Brinkley touched her chest and walked over to the stove. I wiped my face and got up from the floor.

“Rochelle? What happened?”

She shook her head and pulled the casserole out of the oven. “Nothing, Frank. We just had a little girl talk,” she said and
then cleared her throat. “How was work? You’re home rather early.”

The next day Mrs. Brinkley took me to get that birth control shot, the one that stops people from getting their periods. She
never said what she knew was happening under her roof, but I knew she was letting me know that she wasn’t blind.

6

AUGUST 2004

C
hu called me collect two days after Mrs. Brinkley spazzed out. He had got locked up and sent to juvie up Oak Hill for sixty
days for possession charges. The police had found a gun and two bags of weed on him back in May when they had pressed him
and Rob out on the block. Now he was on probation until he turned eighteen, especially cuz of the gun. They don’t play when
it come to that, even if it was unloaded. He almost got charged as an adult. And because of the weed, now he had to check
in with his probation officer and take a urine test once a week. That’s the part that really pissed him off, cuz he couldn’t
smoke weed with Rob and the rest of his friends no more. He always talked about how bipolar he was and how he couldn’t live
without it. I was just glad he was home now.

Shoot, a lot of people was checking for me while he was missing in action. I missed him like I don’t know what while he was
gone. I had to spend more time at home, dealing with the Brinkleys. My summer was miserable without him, but I wrote him a
couple times. He couldn’t write me back though, cuz I knew Mr. Big wasn’t gonna have no jail mail coming to the house.

I’m not gonna lie, I had started to really miss the money Chu was giving me, especially since Mr. Big had stopped giving me
as much as he used to. My gear was starting to slack just a little, up until Shakira put me on to boosting. She showed me
how to steal expensive little stuff like silk scarves and high-priced costume jewelry from Nordstrom and Lord & Taylor, so
we could bring it back for credit slips to buy what we really wanted from the junior’s section. I had to keep being on point.
After all, I was Chu’s girl. But now that Chu was gonna be on his best behavior, I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do. Probably
keep doing what I was doing while he was away, using my five-finger discount.

Smurf was throwing a big crab feast at his house on the last day of the hottest month on record. Chu was really looking forward
to it, since he had missed most of the summer being locked up. I brought Shakira with me to the crab feast, even though Rob
looked mad as hell. He ain’t say nothing to her the whole ride.

As soon as we pulled up to Smurf’s crib all the way out Upper Marlboro, we could smell the steamed crabs.

“Mmmm,” I said. “I can tell they cooked them in beer, too.”

Chu put his arm around my shoulder and kissed me on my neck. “You know I only eat the legs, right?”

“That’s it? Boy, you crazy. I eat the whole damn thing,” Shakira said, sashaying her hips ahead of us. “The mustard, too.”

BOOK: Damaged
13.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Betrayal by Velvet
¡Muérdeme! by Christopher Moore
Sick Bastard by Jaci J
Beggars and Choosers by Catrin Collier
The Makeover by Thayer King
Then They Came For Me by Maziar Bahari, Aimee Molloy
Queen Mum by Kate Long
Paper Moon by Linda Windsor
The Bargain by Vanessa Riley