Karma's a Bitch (26 page)

Before Tony even had a chance to say something about how he was getting a job that next day, which would have been a lie, he heard the phone click and then a dial tone on the other end of the phone. He hung up the phone and laid back on his bed. He was staying at his grandmother’s house until further notice. It was like he just couldn’t get any money to save his life. He was starting to regret taking that money from Terrance. Maybe he was being punished for stealing from one of the best friends he had ever had in his life. Terrance had had his back in 5
^th
grade when the Too Fresh crew jumped him in the schoolyard. He had made sure Tony didn’t choke on his own throw up numerous drunken nights in the past when everybody else had left him. Terrance was there for Tony when Tony’s real mother died from a heroin overdose. He had bailed Tony out of some of the worst situations. When his mind’s eye flashed back to the look of disappointment and anger on Terrance’s face that night he had no doubt in his mind that he was wrong. These feelings of regret were new to him. He had no idea why all of a sudden he was starting to hold himself accountable for the things he had done wrong.

He shivered at the thought of calling Jenny the Psycho. He had almost been wooed to that point when he saw an ad for a succulent Arby’s roast beef sandwich on his grandmother’s living room television, but resisted. He didn’t want Jenny having any reason for thinking that he was still interested. She had visited his grandmother’s house on several occasions uninvited, and he was even afraid that she was stalking the house.

“Tony!” Tony’s grandmother yelled from upstairs.

“What Ma?” he hollered back. She didn’t answer, so Tony reluctantly got up from his bed and headed upstairs. When he got to his grandmother’s room he first saw her TV on in the corner. Then he saw her standing at the window looking outside.

“That girl outside again,” she said shakily.

“No she ain’t,” he answered as he went over to where she was standing to look over her shoulder. Lo and behold, right outside was Jenny getting out of her white Jetta, looking around apprehensively as she headed for his grandmother’s front door. She looked like a crackhead as she glanced from side to side, slighlty cowered over.

“What is wrong with that child Tony?” his grandmother asked him seriously as she turned back to look in his eyes.

Tony didn’t know what to say, because he honestly didn’t know. Jenny had been rejected openly and rudely the last couple of times she showed up by his grandmother, and now here she was again. She didn’t get the message. The last time Tony had seen or spoken to Jenny was when she was in her basement looking for something to tie Tony up with. She had gotten locked in her basement, and here she was, still pursuing him romantically. The girl seriously needed help at a mental institution.

“Do you need me to bust her ass?” Tony’s grandmother asked out of the blue. “Because you know I will.”

Tony started laughing at his grandmother, but she didn’t laugh with him. She was serious. She was about tired of this foolish girl showing up to her house. She felt stupid for allowing Jenny to drop her off from the hospital that day. If Tony wasn’t going to handle her now, it was time for Mrs. Jackson to break out the Vaseline.

Ding Dong.

Tony looked out of the window at nothing in particular as he explored new ways of telling Jenny that she was not wanted. Nothing worked. He had insulted her, told her the truth about why he had messed with her in the first place, and even threatened her with physical violence. Now he was thinking that maybe he should do more than just threaten her.

He and his grandmother stood by the window and tried to wait Jenny out. They hoped that maybe she would just leave. It was starting to get dark outside, and people in this neighborhood were so nosy. They waited for close to ten minutes and still Jenny continued pressing the doorbell every few seconds.

“I know someone’s in there!” she suddenly called out as she looked up at his grandmother’s window. They both ducked back to avoid her gaze. This was starting to become ridiculous.

When Jenny rang the doorbell again, this time obnoxiously long, Tony decided that for once in his life he had to be a man about the situation. He had to go down and confront this crazy bitch.

When he got to the door, he snatched it open and went outside almost in the same motion. He didn’t want Jenny to get an opportunity to get inside the house. He stood with his back to the door.

“What the hell do you want??!!” he shouted with every fiber of his vocal muscles.

Jenny looked at him with eyes that said ‘danger.’ She was in a rare state that was accentuated by the fact that she had just snorted four lines of coke. It was a nasty habit that she had just recently taken back up after Tony left her.

“Did you hear me? What do you want?” Tony asked again.

“I want
you
,” she said simply. She had wanted to say those words for the longest time. She hadn’t laid an eye on Tony ever since she had hit him in the back of his head with her candy dish.

Tony opened his mouth to curse her out, but found himself at a loss of words. Everything that swirled in his mind to say had already come out of his mouth before. This girl was relentless. There wasn’t a word or phrase that could turn her off of him.

“I want you to come with me, so that we can have some fun,” she said with a smile that made Tony’s stomach stir.

“Jenny, what is your problem? What the hell do you want from me? Why don’t you go bother somebody else?” Tony said, almost in a pleading tone.

“I just told you.”

“I don’t want to go with you Jenny.” Tony looked at Jenny intently and tried to get his point across to her. This was useless.

Then, just as if Jenny was reading into his innermost desires, she said the one thing that would sway him at that moment. “I’ll take you down to the Outback Steakhouse, and I’ll buy you a steak. You can drink all you want. I just want to talk for a little while.”

Tony put both of his hands on his face and rubbed up and down in frustration. He was hungrier than a cockroach in a crackhouse. His grandmother barely had two end pieces of bread in the house and peanut butter. Was it possible to eat a meal with Jenny without digging himself deeper into the drama? Maybe not, but Tony was not much of a deep thinker on an empty stomach.

“Whatever, only if you promise not to come by here no more. I ain’t hardly here no more anyway Jenny,” Tony conceded.

When they got to the Outback, Tony instinctlively opened the door just as Jenny pulled into a parking spot. But Jenny grabbed his arm before he could get out.

“Hold on a second. Come back in,” Jenny said with a smooth quality to her voice that Tony had never heard. Her mannerisms were almost attractive to him.

Tony sat back in the passenger’s seat of her car and waited. Within a few seconds, Jenny produced a tablet from under her seat and placed it on her lap. She pulled out a small black plastic bag from her purse, and started emptying it out onto the tablet. Tony looked on in shock when he realized that she was sorting cocaine into neat lines.

“What the hell are you doing?” he couldn’t help but ask as he watched her pull out a loosely rolled dollar bill and re-roll it tightly.

Jenny didn’t answer, she just snorted up a couple of lines and then offered it to him. “Have some.”

Tony laughed and shook his head ‘no’ in the same motion. “I’ve done some fucked up shit, but never in my life did I ever fuck with the snow.”

“Come on,” she urged. “It’ll make the meal so much more enjoyable and fun. I really want to talk to you.”

“I just said no. Get that shit out my face!” he yelled.

It was as if Jenny snapped. She shoved the remainder of the cocaine directly into Tony’s face furiously and held it there as Tony struggled to recover from the attack.

“You dumb ass bitch!” he yelled when he finally smacked the tablet away. His face was covered with the white substance. White specks hung from his eye lashes. He rose the back of his hand up to smack Jenny.

But something in Tony made him hold his hand up in that position for a long time. For the first time in his life, he looked at someone in anger and was able to see their pain. He was surprised when he looked at Jenny’s sullen eyes and saw the hurt she was experiencing for a split second. He couldn’t believe that he was actually seeing that. He remembered how insensitive he had been to her in the past, and was almost regretful. The conviction made him lower his hand back to his lap.

“You make me miserable!” she suddenly screamed. “You don’t even know what you’ve done to me! Go ahead and hit me, it won’t hurt as much as you’ve already hurt me!”

Tony continued to look at her dumfoundedly.

“I gave you everything! I gave you all of me! You said you wanted to marry me!” Jenny bawled out. “Now you won’t even see me? You should be dead!”

“I should be dead? See, what the fuck kind of crazy shit is that? That’s what I’m talkin’ about Jenny. You are psycho!”

“You should be dead because you don’t care about anybody but yourself!” Jenny ranted on. She was obviously feeling the effects of the drug. “You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve! Who do you think you are?”

“I’m out of here,” Tony said as he opened the door and got out of Jenny’s car. He was tired of hearing and saying the same things from and to Jenny. Jenny got out of the car in record speed and ran after him. Tony was taking quick steps as he finished brushing the powder off of his face.

“I’m pregnant!” she screamed.

Tony stopped in his tracks, and so did Jenny. He half-turned his head, but stared at the large Outback sign instead.

“Stop fucking lying,” he finally said. He waved his hand dismissively and then kept moving. This girl would say anything to have him, but he wasn’t trying to hear it. How was she pregnant, yet she was doing coke like that? Besides, he had never even come inside of Jenny – she was tripping.

“Where are you going!” she screamed and he heard her boots clicking on the concrete behind him again. “Oooo, I’m gonna kill you!”

Only a few feet before Jenny could reach Tony, she tripped on a dip in the concrete and fell forward. Her hands and knees hit the concrete hard.

Tony turned around just in time to see Jenny looking at her scraped up hands with tears in her eyes. He was shocked when he saw a 10 inch butcher knife gleaming in the sunlight right next to her. If she hadn’t tripped, she would have been moments from possibly stabbing him in the back. He stood and looked at the knife and Jenny for what seemed like an eternity.

Tony finally went over and snatched the knife up off of the street. He looked down at this pitiful pile that was Jenny. She was really messed up, and he actually almost felt sorry for her even though she had just tried to stab him. He wished she would get some help. But that was it – the next time Jenny came anywhere
near
his grandmother’s house he was going to call the cops. He disposed of the knife quickly – they wouldn’t take kindly to a black man walking around with a big knife in the lily white suburbs of Springfield – and then hustled out of the Outback parking lot.

Tony rode the 119 bus all the way to 69
^th
street using an old token he had, and then walked down Market Street back to his grandmother’s house, still on an empty stomach. He couldn’t believe that he wasted all that time with Jenny, only to go home hungry. He should have never given into the temptation. He could have gotten stabbed over a meal! All that drama with Jenny wasn’t worth a steak.

He felt his cellphone vibrating in his pocket. When he saw that it was Scoop he was relieved. Surely Scoop either had some food, or some money to go get some food. Tony would have even settled for a double cheeseburger at McDonald’s at that point.

“Yo, what’s up man,” Tony said with a newly positive attitude. He was walking down a small block parallel to the El towards his grandmother’s house.

“What’s up wit you? What you doin’?” Scoop asked. Despite his upbeat questions, his voice had a heaviness to it that Tony hadn’t ever heard.