Aftermath (23 page)

Camille and Misa leaned forward and waited. Dominique knew she shouldn't entertain the question, but the liquor had her feeling buzzed. Whispering so that Octavia wouldn't overhear, she said, “I've never been handled the way this man handled me. Jamel ain't got shit on him.”

Cheers and applause came then and Dominique found herself wondering why she was so concerned about whether Jamel called or not. Still, she couldn't help hoping that he was safe.

“I know how that feels,” Camille chimed in, her apple juice balanced on her lap.

“How what feels?” Misa asked.

“Not hearing a word from him. Wondering where your man is or if he's okay.”

Dominique felt so sorry for Camille. Here she was complaining about Jamel—a man who added nothing to her life other than a financial drain—while Camille was struggling to get used to life without her wealthy husband. “Camille, I promise you that Frankie is gonna be sorry for how he's treated you. Eventually, he's gonna see that he's dead wrong.”

“I went over there last night to raise hell. That bitch Gillian called the cops on me.”

“What?” Dominique was dumbfounded.

Toya frowned and set her glass down since this was the first she was hearing about this. Misa shook her head, so sorry for having brought more problems to her sister's already troubled marriage. Misa had warned Camille about Gillian, though. Long ago, she had pulled Camille's coat about her husband's so-called best friend, only to be ignored and assured that everything was fine. Things were damn sure not fine now.

“It was late and I couldn't sleep. I was up thinking about my marriage and how Frankie has been carrying on. I got mad and went over there to talk to him. Gillian and I had some words. I threw a vase at the bitch's head and missed. I was so mad that I missed!”

Toya tried to stifle a laugh, but failed. Dominique and Misa joined in and they laughed hard at the thought of Camille going all Tom Brady on Gillian. Even Camille had to join the laughter.

When they recovered, Dominique looked at Camille in amazement. “Frankie stood by and let Gillian call the cops on you?”

Camille nodded. “Sure did. When they got there he told them that I wasn't really trying to hit anybody. But he did ask them to make me leave.”

“So what did you do?” Dominique asked.

“I left,” Camille said as if it was obvious. “No point in me going to jail, too.”

Dominique and Toya winced a little, but Misa seemed to ignore her sister's remark.

“What are you gonna do about all of this, Camille? I mean you can't keep going on like this without any money. Frankie can't expect you to sit by and just let this all happen.” Dominique couldn't believe that Camille's once doting husband was behaving so coldly.

“You need to—” Toya began.

Camille cut her off. “I don't really want to hear it, Toya,” she said firmly. “I'm not in the mood for that shit tonight.”

Toya sat forward, her face expressing her shock. “What shit?”

Camille was tired of being lectured by her friend. “
Your
shit, Toya. Every time one of us has a problem, you're the first one to tell us what we should do, how we should handle it, when you've never been through the shit yourself. You can't tell Dominique not to love Jamel just because he made a mistake that put him in jail. Have you ever loved a man doing time? You can't tell me or Misa how to deal with our shit, either. You've never been married, never been facing jail time. So save it!”

Everyone was caught off guard. They all assumed that the pressure of everything going on in her family coupled with her pregnancy hormones had made Camille hostile. That outburst was so out of her character. But, Misa and Dominique both silently cosigned. After all, Toya
hadn't
walked a mile in their shoes.

Toya calmly stared at Camille before pouring herself another glass of cognac and sitting back, crossing her legs.

“Actually,” she said. “I've been through
all
of that.”

All three of her friends looked confused, and Toya decided that it was time she solved the mystery.

“Unlike you girls,” she said. “I don't open up easily about the things I've been through in my past or what I've survived. So there's a lot you don't know about me.” She guzzled the contents of her glass and felt the warm liquor coat her chest. “On the night that Misa shot Steven, I told you girls that we should stop keeping things to ourselves. So let me practice what I preach.” She sighed and told them a story.

“You already know about my father, how he got drunk and high all the time and made a fool out of my family. But what you don't know is that eventually things got really hard for my mother. She was working her fingers to the bone and that muthafuckin' father of mine would spend the money faster than she could make it. Times were hard and to make matters worse, he would put his foot in her ass every now and then for good measure.” Toya rolled her eyes in disgust. “Anyway, it was the eighties and crack was making average Joes into millionaires. And I met this guy named Michael. He was from Antigua, but had an unmistakable thoroughness, a swagger that could only come from the streets. I was about to graduate from high school and I couldn't wait to get the fuck out of my parents' house. My father was a fuckup and my mother was an enabler and I was sick of watching it. Three of my brothers were older than me and had already moved out. But I was still there and so was my little brother Derrick. He was sixteen, I was almost eighteen and we both used to talk about how eager we were to get grown and move out.

“So I met Michael and he pursued me something terrible. He was the same age as me—actually he was a year older—but had dropped out of school already. I would see him when I was on my way to school and he would follow my ass all the way there. At first, I ignored him. My father had drilled into my head that men only wanted me for sex. I had the body of a video chick—big boobs, phat ass, small waist—and my father made me feel like that was all I had to offer a man, like no guy would ever want me as anything but a sex object. So I was leery of Michael at first. But he was so
fine
! I liked him, I just wouldn't give in and let him take me out or anything.

“Well, I graduated high school and I spent that summer getting ready to go away to college. I would see Michael from time to time and we would chat. I told him that I was going away to school and do you know that he offered to take me shopping for my dorm room?” Toya paused her story, smiled at the memory of the beautiful Antiguan man who had swept her off her feet. “I didn't accept it, but eventually, he wore me down. I started seeing him secretly behind my parents' back. By the end of that summer, I was in love with him. But my father had done a number on me. I still wouldn't let myself believe that he wanted anything from me but sex. So I went away to school on a scholarship and didn't look back. Then I came home for Thanksgiving and I wound up never going back to Atlanta.”

Camille was hanging on Toya's every word. She had gone to high school with Toya at Brooklyn Tech, but hadn't known about her father's tyranny. Since Camille traveled to school from Staten Island, she had been oblivious to what had gone on in her friend's family life. The Toya she had known was a pretty, around-the-way girl who all the other girls in school wanted to be friends with. After graduation, the two had kept in touch, but only via occasional letters and postcards, until one day they just stopped. “Why not?”

Toya looked at her, smirked. “I came home and found out that my father was worse than ever before. He was getting high more than ever, still kicking my mother's ass, but my brother had started fighting him back. One night, while I was away at school, my father had punched my brother in the face and Derrick lost it. He kicked my father's ass!” Toya chuckled, wishing she had been there to witness that. “My father kicked Derrick out, even though he was only sixteen years old, and my mother let him do it. Nobody told me about all of this while I was away at school, so I didn't find this all out until I came home. I was pissed! I went out in our neighborhood looking for my brother and eventually I found him with Michael. He was working for Michael.”

Dominique shook her head. She had never known that Toya had dated a drug dealer, let alone one who had put her little brother to work. “What did you do?” she asked.

“I went
off
! I called Michael every name in the book and Derrick dragged me away, pulled me into some apartment building lobby and tried to calm me down. He told me that he had been kicked out with nothing but the shit he could fit in a duffel bag, that my parents had left him with nothing. He knew he could come back around when my father wasn't there and my moms would have given him money or made him something to eat. But my brother was too proud to do that. He felt like since they kicked him out, fuck them. He was gonna make it on his own. He went to Michael, because he had seen him around the way, knew what he was doing, and saw that he was getting money. He asked Michael to put him on and at first he refused because of me. Michael knew that I wouldn't approve. But Derrick was persistent and eventually Michael gave in. My brother was a drug dealer.”

Toya took a break from her story and poured another drink. Her friends waited with bated breath for her to continue.

She sipped her drink and finally went on. “Well, at that point I was mad as hell—not just at my father, but my mother as well. This was her baby boy she allowed to be tossed out in the street like that. So I kept to myself. I stayed in my room most of the time and ignored both of them. When I did go outside, I spent most of my time with Derrick and Michael and their crew, watching them do their thing and keeping an eye out for cops. Derrick had found a room in a rooming house on Saratoga and he was renting it by the week. It was small, but it was warm and clean and that's all he cared about. Michael was living nice! He had a big old apartment on the top floor of a building with a doorman and everything. I was impressed, but I tried not to show it. I would chill with them, help them bag up their shit and then I'd go home and lock myself in my room until the next day. Then one night, I came home and my father was waiting for me at the front door. He told me that he needed money. I said I didn't have none, but he knew that I was lying and I wouldn't give it to him. He slapped me so hard that my ears were ringing and I swear I saw stars. So I packed my shit, went back out there in the cold and told my brother and Michael what happened. Michael told me that I could stay with him. I didn't even think twice about it. I knew I wasn't going back home, otherwise I would have wound up murdering my father. From that night on, Michael and I were official.

“I eventually dropped out of college and spent most of my time with Michael and Derrick. I was part of their team, and even got to know some of the other hustlers' wives in their circle.” Toya looked at Camille. “So this was when I got married.”

Camille looked amazed. “You married Michael?”

Toya nodded. “Yup. I was so fucked up at first by all the shit my father had drilled in my head over the years—a man won't marry you if you give up the ass too soon; the only thing a man wants from most of the women he meets is some pussy; once a nigga gets the pussy he's looking for the exit—and I believed that. So I started expecting Michael to push me away, to do all the things my father said men do. But he didn't push me away. In fact, he tried to undo all the damage that had been done to my self-esteem throughout my upbringing. He loved me.” She nodded matter-of-factly. “No doubt about that.”

“Did you have a big wedding?” Misa asked.

Toya shook her head. “Nah. We went right down to City Hall and did it. And that was the happiest I've ever been in my life. Michael had it all—a nice home, fancy car, clothes, cash, so much fucking cash!” She shook her head at the memory of it. “We used to travel all over the place—Mexico, Aruba, Barbados, all around the United States!”

Camille smiled. “That's when you were sending me postcards from all those places,” she recalled. “I thought you were traveling while you were on break from school.”

Toya smiled, too, remembering. “That's what I wanted you to think,” she said. “But I was Mrs. Michael Nash, and I was on top of the world. I had furs, diamonds, expensive furniture, but most of all I had respect. People respected me in the streets 'cuz they knew I was Michael's wife. I even went back home and told my mother that I got married. She was happy for me, but my father said it wouldn't last. I didn't give a fuck what he said. I was happy and I was finally out of their house for good.”

Toya looked at her friends seriously. She took a long swig of her drink and stared at the floor. “We were happier than anybody else in the world,” she said. “I was so in love with him! I'm sure he cheated on me, but I never knew about it. When we were together, it was all about me and everybody knew us as a team. I felt powerful, and I was more in love with him because
he
was so powerful. He made a lot of money. They all did. My brother was driving fly cars, getting all the prettiest girls. My mother was mad because she didn't approve of us being involved in the drug game. Meanwhile, she was still with my drug-addicted father.” Toya shook her head at the absurdity of that. “Years went by and we were untouchable.”

She looked at Misa. “Then my brother got arrested. I thought it was my fault—definitely that it was Michael's fault. We never should have let him sell drugs in the first place. I think at that point that I started looking at the whole thing differently. Michael became the bad guy in my mind, because if it wasn't for him, Derrick wouldn't be in jail. At least that's how I looked at it. Derrick wouldn't rat, so they sent him to jail for five years. He was only twenty-one.” She sighed. “That was hard to handle. My parents turned their backs on him. My mother was embarrassed that a child of hers—a teacher who worked hard to make ends meet—would resort to selling drugs. My father was disappointed for God knows what reason! It seemed like neither of them saw that my brother's hand had been forced, that my father's bullshit contributed to it. Anyway, I held Derrick down. I sent him money orders, food, cigarettes, sneakers, letters. I accepted collect phone calls and went on visits … I did
all
of that!” She looked at Dominique pointedly. “And I watched women go up there week after week, dragging small kids with them and getting treated like shit by the prison guards. Then the same unappreciative bastard they were traveling hours to see would have some next bitch sitting up there at the next visit. I listened to the stories Derrick told me about guys in there dealing with faggots on the low and then kissing their wives when they came to see them; heard story after story about chicks paying thousands of dollars in phone bills because their punk-ass man couldn't do his time without touching base every night. And I even watched women get arrested and their kids taken away because they tried to smuggle drugs into the prison hidden inside their baby's diaper. So all the things I warned you about, all the things I said to you about Jamel … I was speaking from experience. From day one, I could tell that he ain't shit! I was just trying to save you the trouble of finding out the hard way.”