Still Candy Shopping (12 page)

“What’s going on?” Sabrina asked.

“I came in here looking for my silver sling-back sandals and I can’t find them. But I know Jennifer had something to do with ’em walking out of our room.”

“Bitch, I ain’t touched them ugly ass shoes!” Jennifer barked at Tacora while I stood between them.

I looked back at Sabrina. “Can you please help me before they start throwing blows at each other?”

Sabrina walked up to Tacora and grabbed her arm. “Come on, don’t go there with her. It ain’t even worth it,” Sabina said, trying to reason with Tacora.

“Yeah, Sabrina, talk some sense into her narrow ass mind. Tell her all that shit she popping ain’t gonna be worth it after I put my foot in her ass!” Jennifer roared as she moved from side to side as if she was getting amped up.

“Well if you think you can beat my ass, bitch, then leap like a motherfucking frog!” Tacora snapped.

“Come on, Tacora and Jennifer, y’all gotta stop this mess,” I said. “All this arguing ain’t cool. We just lost Paris last night and you two are ’round here acting like damn children. You two need to snap out of this shit! Life is too short for this petty shit you two are arguing about.”

“Tell her to give me my shoes and you won’t even hear my mouth!” Tacora gritted her teeth like she was at her wits’ end.

Sabrina started pulling Tacora in her direction because she saw how angry she was becoming. Jennifer stood there and cracked a huge smile. That did it for Tacora, so she lunged back and punched Jennifer directly in her left eye. Jennifer could not have seen that blow coming, because after Tacora’s fist stung Jennifer’s left eye, Jennifer’s body staggered a bit.

I think I was more shocked than Jennifer. And now that I was caught in the middle of all this drama, I had one of two things I could do. I could prevent Jennifer from retaliating, or I could let her return a blow. As my mind battled back and forth with the decision, I realized that Jennifer had already figured out what she was going to do. She reached over my shoulders, grabbed Tacora’s hair, and commenced to hit her repeatedly in the crown of her head. I was literally stuck in the middle.

Sabrina and I tried every tactic to break them apart, but with Jennifer refusing to let go of Tacora’s hair, it was definitely a struggle. Tacora was screaming and Jennifer was talking shit to her while she continued to hit her in her head. I figured Sabrina got tired of Jennifer getting the best of Tacora, because when she realized that she couldn’t get Jennifer off Tacora, she started hitting Jennifer in the back of her head. It caught Jennifer completely off guard, and Jennifer started demanding that I help get Sabrina off her back.

“Faith, that bitch is hitting me in my fucking head!” Jennifer yelled.

At that moment I had to switch gears and help Jennifer by stopping Sabrina from attacking her. Sabrina definitely wasn’t playing fair and she knew it. So I removed myself from the middle and focused on stopping Sabrina. I immediately grabbed Sabrina in a bear hug and applied pressure to her stomach. By then her towel had fallen from her body so she was completely exposed. In the beginning I found that my efforts didn’t work, but as soon as I applied more pressure to her, she realized that I wasn’t going to let up, so she let Jennifer go.

I was exhausted. But Sabrina was pissed off, and I knew that I was now added to her shit list. “Get the fuck off me!” she screeched.

“I’ll let you go, but you gotta calm down, Sabrina. I can’t let you get cheap shots at Jennifer while her back is turned.”

Meanwhile Jennifer and Tacora were still going at it. “Bitch, when you let me go, I’ma show your stinking ass something!” Tacora threatened.

“Bitch, you ain’t show me shit witcha punk ass! Got all that mouth and look at you now,” Jennifer said.

“What the fuck is going on?” Slim roared. I felt the heat from his mouth hit my neck the moment he opened it, and it startled the hell out of me. I let Sabrina go immediately. But Jennifer continued to wale on Tacora. By this time they were both on Jennifer’s bed, but Jennifer remained on top.

Slim stormed by me and Sabrina and put a serious chokehold on Jennifer, causing her to release Tacora’s hair immediately. While Slim held Jennifer in that chokehold, she started gasping for air. I saw her face change to two different colors in a matter of five seconds flat. As he pulled her off Tacora, Tacora managed to kick Jennifer in the stomach in the exact same spot where Slim had kicked her earlier.

“Stupid bitch!” Tacora yelled. But Jennifer wasn’t fazed by Tacora’s blow. She was more focused on Slim and trying to get out of his death grip.

“Let me go,” I heard her say, but it was barely audible. She was kicking too, but it didn’t work. Slim was adamant about getting control of this situation.

“You just wanna keep causing me fucking problems, huh?” he asked. He gritted his teeth and applied more and more pressure to her neck.

I could tell her body was giving out because her fight to get him to loosen his hold on her neck became less intense. I knew right then I had to step in and help her or else he was going to hurt her severely. Tacora and Sabrina just stood there watching as Slim slowly crippled Jennifer by applying pressure to her neck, so I jumped on Slim’s back and began to tear into the flesh of his shoulder with my teeth. I tried to bury my teeth into him as deep as I could, and he felt it. He belted out a scream like the head of a silver bullet had pierced his skin.

“Owww, you fucking bitch!” he yelled and then let Jennifer go to focus on getting me off him.

Apparently Sabrina felt the need to get in on the situation too, because she started punching me in my back. “Bitch, let him go!” she snapped.

I released my teeth from Slim’s back and tried to shield the blows Sabrina was throwing at me. Slim attacked me as well. He pushed Sabrina away from me and immediately started throwing one punch behind the other at me. He used my face as a punching bag and beat it until the entire right side of my face swelled up. I remember landing on the floor and losing consciousness.

I couldn’t tell you how long I was unconscious, but when I opened my eyes I could tell that it was night outside from the darkness in the room. I looked around the bedroom and realized that Jennifer was nowhere in sight. I tried to get up from the bed, but when I lifted my head, it started hurting really badly. I laid my head back down on the pillow and yelled Jennifer’s name. But I didn’t get an answer. I lay completely still and listened for any movement, but heard none.

I was confused. I knew that I hadn’t been with Slim long enough to pinpoint his behavior, but something inside me told me that it wasn’t normal for him to leave any of his girls alone. After three minutes passed I called Jennifer’s name again, but I still didn’t get a response. Something told me that I was alone. But then I figured that Slim wouldn’t dare leave me alone. That would be too risky. As I tried to figure out what was going on, I heard footsteps.

“Whoever is in here, can you please come here?” I yelled, and then I fell silent and waited for a response.

Unfortunately the person on the other side of the bedroom door would not utter one word to me. I heard the footsteps a couple more times and then they stopped altogether. I became really leery. “Who’s there?” I yelled.

Yet again, I didn’t get a response, and that bothered me. I eased my head up from the pillow and slowly eased myself off the bed. I had to get on the other side of that door to see who was ignoring me and why.

I felt excruciating pains coming from my battered face. There wasn’t a mirror in the bedroom, but I knew that my face had been beaten up pretty badly. From the corner of my eye I could see how badly the right side of my face was swollen. And when I tried to touch it, it hurt worse. I tried to deal with the idea that I was banged up while I headed for the door. I grabbed the doorknob and turned it, but it wouldn’t open. The fucking door was locked. I started banging on it.

“I gotta use the bathroom!” I yelled. “Please open the door!”

And, again, no one responded. I was now more frustrated than pissed off. But I figured that if I caused another scene, I would be on the receiving end of another beat-down. So I returned to my bed and lay down. Whoever was in the other room knew I needed some attention. But they didn’t give a fuck, so I decided to chill out and wait to see what happened next.

The Candy Shop part 2 Kiki Swinson

Sometime later the bedroom door finally opened. Slim stood in the entryway with a grin on his face. I didn’t see a fucking thing funny. I was tempted to ask him what the hell he saw that was so amusing, but what the hell was the use. I would’ve gotten my ass kicked all over again. And with the shape I was in at the moment, I couldn’t afford to make things any worse.

“You look like shit!” Slim commented and then he chuckled.

I lay there and tried to block him out, but unfortunately I couldn’t.

“I bet you regret sinking your teeth in my back now, huh?” he taunted. “I know you’re probably cursing yourself out right now and wondering why you messed with a crazy ass nigga like me. And you’re probably mad that you got involved in something that had nothing to do with you. I mean, if it was me standing there watching somebody I only knew for two days getting their ass tore up, I would not have risked getting hurt myself. Are you fucking insane or something? Do you like getting the shit beat out of you?”

I guess he was waiting for me to respond, but I kept my mouth closed. Knowing his dumb ass, it was probably a fucking trick question. So I lay there and let everything he said go in one ear and right out the other.

I assumed it irritated him that I was ignoring him, because he rushed toward me and lunged directly at my face. I threw my arms over my face to block him. But it didn’t matter, because he stopped his arm in mid air and then he burst into laughter. “Don’t be scared now, you little bad bitch!” he yelled.

I continued to shield my face with my arms even though he had not hit me. The fact that he was still within arm’s reach kept me alert and instantly reminded me that he could have changed his mind at any given moment. So to keep an eye out for him, I peeped through my arms.

“How does it feel to be locked up in a fucking room all by yourself like you’re a dog?” Slim asked. “You can’t leave out of here and roam around the house when you get ready. And you can’t go and use the bathroom unless you ask me. I am going to treat you like the dumb dope fiend bitch you are. And if you ever try that bullshit that you did earlier, I swear I am gonna rip your fucking throat out and feed it to the dogs outside!”

Before he walked away from me, he hawked and spit on my arm. Some of it seeped through my arms and onto my face. I guess he wasn’t trying to keep it a secret that he hated my fucking guts. In fact, he made it blatantly obvious that I was beneath him. I was a broke down dope fiend with no life. I was also a fucking prostitute, so I was a whore in his eyes. And what man had respect for a woman like that? I was convinced that as long as I dragged myself through the mud, men would continue to treat me like dirt. And since I had no will to pull myself out of this rut, I knew I had to deal with it.

Slim finally left me alone. When he walked back out of the bedroom and locked the door from the other side, I got up from the bed, grabbed one of my dirty shirts from my duffel bag, and wiped his spit off my face and arms.

While I cleaned myself, I figured that there was no way for me to convince him to let me out of the room, so I sat there and prepared to endure whatever type of punishment he sent my way.

Slim was definitely a heartless son of a bitch. And he was a control freak. He prided himself on beating and tearing down the self-esteem of women like me. To see us squirm and beg him for anything made his chest stick out. I hated that bastard for it, but that was the way the ball rolled.

Like clockwork, my body started the withdrawal process. I was getting sicker by the minute. Not only was my head pounding, but my stomach had started aching too. I jumped up from the bed twice to vomit within the same hour. I even begged Slim to let me out of the bedroom to go to the bathroom. Diarrhea had plagued my body as well, and I found myself right back in the same place I was in the day I checked into rehab over two weeks ago. And the worse part of it all was that I had no one to help me through it. When I was in the rehab center Denise coached me through my illness and I would never forget that. I knew I did her wrong in the end, but that was just the life I lived. I was a fucking drug addict, and when on drugs, I was always doing bad things to the people who cared about me. So I guess I was paying for everything I’d done to the good people who had crossed my path.

I lay in the fetal position in the center of the bed and cried out every chance my mouth opened. I didn’t have access to a watch, but it seemed like time was moving slowly. Slim poked his head in the room a couple times and laughed at me. He found it amusing that I was dope sick. I ignored his antics and tried to play the cards I was dealt.

It seemed like forever, but Jennifer and the other two hoes were finally allowed to come back to the house. I heard Tacora and Sabrina go into the other room and Jennifer came into the room with me. My body wouldn’t allow me to embrace her, but I expressed how excited I was to see her. She rushed to my side.

“Oh my God! Look at you,” she said as she sat on the edge of my bed.

I knew she was looking at how badly my face was bruised up, but that was the least of my concerns. My entire body was ill and I had a hard time dealing with it.

“You’re sick, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, Jennifer, I need some blow really badly to take this pain away. I swear I can’t go another minute like this,” I whined. And like a guardian angel, she went into her pocket and pulled out two pills of heroin.

If I had the strength, I would have jumped straight up and snatched both capsules from her. That was how happy I was to see them. But instead I began to cry. I was already in severe pain, but I immediately became emotional when I saw that Jennifer cared enough to cop me some dope to get well. I couldn’t hold back the tears. “Thank you so much, Jennifer,” I said as I sobbed.