Raunchy (29 page)

“No…But I think I did when I was with Monkey. There was something about him that was unconditional. Even when I was with Jace, I always felt like if I did the wrong thing, wore the wrong thing or even said the wrong thing, love would be taken away. I guess he wasn’t taught love either. His mother died, his father was not there and he was basically in the same shoes as me.”

Harmony

Tough Lessons

Three Years Later

I had two three-year old fraternal twins I didn’t want and I hated them for it. Turns out I wasn’t pregnant with one but two babies. ‘Cause of them, I went from living in a mansion, to living in a shelter called,
The Star of Hope
in Houston Texas, in less than twelve years. My face was slashed, my stomach was ripped to shreds and when people saw me they either gawked or ran. The only thing about me that I liked was the fact that my body was on par. So men didn’t mind fuckin’ me if I turned around and let them hit it from the back. It was the only way I could keep a little money in my pockets since I couldn’t keep a job.

I was sitting on my cot, trying to get out of my chore for the day, which was helping to clean the kitchen. Everybody had chores and I hated bathroom and kitchen duty most of all. While I was going through one of the two bags I owned which included mines and my kids’ clothes, one of my Spanish fly by night friends walked up to me. She stayed in the shelter, too. All though I never had a
real
best friend, if I was going to have a friend at all she was it. She knew all about Kali and Jace and my troubles back in DC and never told a soul. She was so easy to talk to that sometimes I forgot I barely knew her. We had plans to get an apartment together when we got jobs. Together with four kids between us, we were prepared to share a room if we had to.

“Harmony, we got some smoke,” Marisol Hernandez said, in a thick Spanish accent. She was waving a baggie in front of me and smiling.

I looked around and said, “Girl, you betta put that shit down before somebody see it.”

“Look at you bein’ all scared,” she laughed.

“Bitch, fuck you.” I joked. “Jayden and Madjesty, go over there and play.” I said referring to a small space a few feet over from our cots. My kids were nosey as shit and were liable to tell one of the staff members if they overheard us.

When they were out of earshot she said, “You wanna hit it with us? We goin’ out back.”

“Yeah. Let me get somebody to watch my kids for me.” I said standing up. “Who watchin’ yours?”

“Uh…I’m not sure.” She hesitated walking over to her cot which was not too far from mine. “But school is out so you can ask any of the high schoolers.”

“Stop lyin’, bitch. I know you know who watching your own kids.” I walked up to her.

“Harmony,” she paused, “nobody really likes watching your kids. They too bad.” She turned around, looked at me, and then looked away. The scar was hard for people to look at up close and sometimes I used it to my advantage to intimidate mothafuckas.

“And your kids not bad? Didn’t Luisa and Rosa just get in trouble for stealing a kid’s toy the other day?”

“Harmony, please!” She said walking around me. “Nobody’s kids are as bad as yours.”

I looked at Jayden and Madjesty across the way digging into Ms. Tami’s bags and shook my head. Sometimes I felt like dumping them off but I didn’t want shit coming back to me. And to think, the day Kali, Nut and Cherry stole them out of my body and left me for dead in Monkey’s house…On the floor…I prayed that God would bring them back to me. Now I feel like they’re nothing more than two bags of luggage God has burdened me with.

I didn’t think I would make it out alive that night. But someone heard me screaming and saw three people running from the house with two babies. The witness called the police and the ambulance came and saved my life. It took ten blood transfusions but eventually I survived. And since I didn’t have insurance and the focus was just on saving my life, they stitched my face up recklessly and sent me on my way. Leaving me scarred for life.

It took them three weeks to find my babies. The three of them were caught hiding in a Super 8 Motel. They said the babies had long umbilical cords still attached to them and they were smaller than they should have been because they weren’t feeding them right. After they found them, they convicted Kali for murder and attempted murder. While Nut and Cherry were charged as accessories to his crimes.

The trial was in the papers nationwide, and for six months after, I was able to sell my story to writers for money. Now nobody cared and every day of my life I lived in fear, not knowing when or if Kali would ever be released from prison. Nut and Cherry were out already and I wondered where they could be. I never understood why they felt the need to help Kali, and I guess I never would.

After the trial, everywhere I’d moved, he’d find me and threaten to kill me when he got out. So I got tired of looking over my back and eventually moved to the homeless shelter where a lot of people were around me at all times. I’d been here for six months and although I wanted to move now, I couldn’t find a place to live because I couldn’t keep a job.

“Did you know I’m moving tomorrow? I found a place.” Marisol said skipping the subject.

“Oh really?” How in the fuck did this bitch find a place? She didn’t have a job either. “I thought we were moving together. What happened to that plan?”

“I didn’t think you were serious.” She said with a dumb look on her face. “Were you? I mean, we barely know each other, Harmony. You can come visit me though.”

“Oh, but you know me enough to be in my business every day, huh?” While we were talking Jayden started screaming and I walked over to him and slapped his face. Sometimes for whatever reason, beating them made me feel better. It helped get some of the hate I had for the world out of my system.

“Why did you just slap him?”

“Fuck that! What happened to our plan?”

“I can’t take you with me.” She said in a low voice looking at my boys. “A good opportunity dropped in my lap and I got to take it.”

“Well he inherited a house. His mother died and he has an extra bedroom in a large house in Galveston, Texas. All I have to do is pay for the groceries and me and the kids can stay there.”

“Mr. Ramsey?” I said confusedly. “I thought you didn’t like him.”

“I didn’t,” she said. “But you know how it is. He has the ability to help me and my family, and I need his help. You would’ve done the same thing.”

“Wow. I know you happy.” I said nudging her. “But you know you gonna have to give up that pussy if you wanna stay there for good.”

“Yeah,” she said looking down at her hands. “I have to do what I have to do.” She paused. “But he said he’s going to marry me. So I won’t be just some whore living in his house. I’ll be his wife.”

What gave this bitch the right to have a come up? Why her? Why not me? Someone who had been given a tough break from the beginning. Where was my chance at life.

“Where are your sisters going to go?”

Marisol’s two sisters lived here too. They ended up at the shelter when their entire apartment complex was burned down, after her grandfather who also lived in the building, dropped a lit cigarette on the floor. He died and so did forty something people right along with him. Marisol and her sister’s were a few of the only survivors.

“Look, we are about to hit this joint outside,” she smiled. “It’s a going away present from my sister Arial. If you want to join us, we’ll be out back. But hurry. You know how they are.”

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

When she left I thought about Mr. Ramsey. He was the one man in the shelter who kept telling me how attractive I was so I couldn’t understand his sudden interest in Marisol.

The scar on my face didn’t seem to bother him, and I hated him for it. I hated him for trying to make me feel like I was still attractive when I knew that I wasn’t. It embarrassed me when he called me pretty or sexy. But now, he held the key to life out of here and I wanted to use it.

Out of both of my sons, Madjesty was the most rebellious. He wasn’t as calm as his brother Jayden and it pissed me off. He seemed to hate the world as much as I did.

“If I come back and you’ve moved one inch, I’ma drop kick both of you.”

With that, I walked toward the men’s section of the shelter and had someone get Mr. Ramsey for me. Women weren’t allowed on their side. It took about ten minutes for him to come outside and a smile spread across his face when he saw me.

I seductively walked up to him and said, “Mr. Ramsey, long time no see.”

Mr. Ramsey was in his thirties and with me being only twenty-one, I was still considered a tender young thing to him. He had a lot of grey hair to be thirty-something but wasn’t very clean or attractive. If he cleaned himself up though, he wouldn’t be that hard on the eyes.

“Well, what did I do to deserve this visit?” He said walking up to me licking his dry cracked lips.

He placed his hands on my shoulders and massaged them oddly. It’s like he knew I would come to him. Now that I think of it, I was starting to believe it was his plan all along. Maybe he knew Marisol would tell me that he had inherited the house, because he knew she told me everything.

“Because I didn’t think you were interested in me, beautiful.” The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I could see my ugly reflection in the browns of his eyes. I was nowhere near beautiful. “Whenever I walked over to you, you acted like I had the plague or something. Like you didn’t want to be bothered, sexy.”

“Well you were wrong,” I said wrapping my arms around his waist. And then I looked around us and when I saw no one looking our direction, I cuffed his dick. “And if you let us move in with you, I’ll show you better than I can tell you.”

My plan worked perfectly and by the end of the day, he let Marisol know that she would not be moving with him and that I would be instead. Marisol walked around all day long with an attitude. I knew I had to leave because I couldn’t fight and I knew she wanted my blood. I even asked Ramsey if he had a few bucks for me and my kids to stay in a hotel until the morning, but he said all his money was tied up on stuff for the house, and that I would have to wait. I wished he hadn’t told her it was me who was moving with him, but now it was too late.

I was in the bed halfway sleep, with my kids in the bunk next to me, when someone grabbed me by my hair, covered my mouth and dragged me out a side door. I tried to kick and fight but there were too many of them. When I got outside, Marisol and her sisters jumped me. They kicked me in the stomach, head, and legs multiple times. Yelling stuff in Spanish, they wanted me dead and I knew it.

When they were tired, they stopped and Marisol stooped down.

“Perra! ¿Cómo pudiste robar mi hombre? Puta! Puta! Si no tiene hijos, te mataría!”

Ms. Burns

Harmony

Six Years Later

It was early in the morning and I was in bed with Ramsey when I saw the door open slowly. It was my nine-year-old son Jayden and he was creeping in slowly. Just like I taught him. Ramsey was snoring but that didn’t mean anything. I had seen him wake completely out of a snore and jump out of the bed when he wanted to. So Jayden had to be careful. Very careful.

When Jayden got to Ramsey’s jeans on the floor, he picked them up and grabbed his wallet. Then he opened it up and removed some money. When he tucked the money in his pocket, he put the wallet back undetected. I remained in bed for ten minutes before following him into his room.