Relapse: A Novel (12 page)

“Momma, you must be off your meds again if you trusted Paris.
After what she tried to do to me?” Beijing’s blood pressure shot up. “Do you honestly think she won’t do something just as bad if not worse to her own daughter?” Beijing pulled on a pair of jeans and whatever shirt she could grab. She didn’t have time to worry about how she looked; she had to leave right this instant to get her niece away from that damn Paris. “I’m leaving right now, Momma. It’ll take me a couple of hours to make the trip. I want you to keep trying to get Chyna on the phone and make sure she’s okay till I get there. And if anything goes wrong, you call the police.” She raised her voice in anger. “I don’t care if the bitch does go back to fucking jail.” She meant every word of it.

Willabee was off her rocker most of the time, but this time she knew better than to challenge Beijing. “Okay, baby, I’ll do what you say.” Willabee hung up the phone while Beijing grabbed her keys and her purse and flew out the door barely touching the floor of the lobby. A few minutes later she was speeding down I-85, wishing this one time that she lived closer to her crazy mother and drugged-out sister.

Paris had been getting high off and on since she was fifteen, mostly on coke. She’d been to jail, drug rehabs, and counseling, but nothing seemed to slow her down; not for long anyway.

Paris was fresh out of jail twelve years ago when she met a hustler who went by the name of Boney-Slim. After doing ten months in the joint, Paris had gotten her weight back up and was looking like her normal beautiful self again. It had been a long time since her ass had been that phat. Boney-Slim liked what he saw and didn’t waste any time getting her back into drugs and in the mix planting a baby in her stomach. Though the drugs were intentional, the baby was an accident.

Paris felt bad about what she had tried to do to Beijing all those years ago, so she named her daughter Chyna in honor of her sister. But Beijing never wholeheartedly forgave Paris and damn
sure didn’t trust her. Beijing strived to be Chyna’s guardian angel and the one normal thing in her niece’s life. She tried to do everything in her power to make sure Chyna would grow up to be a productive human being. It was hard when Beijing lived nearly two and a half hours away, but under the circumstances she did the best she could.

She arrived at the three-story rent-subsidized apartment building where Paris had lived for the past four years and got out of her car. She was on a mission and had a one-track mind, paying no attention to anything or anyone around her.

“Nice Lex,” a guy getting out of a candy-apple-red late-model Cadillac said to Beijing.

“Thanks,” she said to him and gave his 1988 Sedan DeVille Cadi with twenty-two-inch wheels a glance over. “Nice pimpmobile.”

“Somebody’s gotta do it,” he agreed, heading in the same direction as she was.

There were five young cats sitting on the steps leading to Paris’s apartment. They all had their pants hanging down off their butts and were drinking beer and smoking weed. As Beijing started to make her way past, the dude she’d spoken to earlier stopped to kick it with one of the young cats.

“Excuse me, excuse me,” she said to the hoodlums-in-training, easing her way up the steps while trying hard not to tip anyone’s forty over. At the top of the steps, she knocked on her sister’s apartment door several times. She could hear noise on the other side, so someone was definitely home. She knocked harder as she smelled the strong aroma of marijuana smoke from inside the apartment. She imagined her niece inside, probably catching a contact high from the secondhand smoke.

Secondhand smoke is worse than actual smoke. I wish they’d hurry up
. Her wish came true when a guy dressed in camouflage finally opened up the door. She marched right past him without saying a
word. As she entered, out of the corner of her eye she saw Cadi-Man making his way up the stairs.

Once Beijing was in her sister’s apartment she was disgusted.

“Yo, you here to get baby girl, ain’t you?” Camouflage said with the butt of a blunt hanging from his mouth. Before Beijing nodded, he said, “Aight, hold up, let me finish rolling this L and Imma get her for you.”

In a firm tone and with a stare that said
I’m not playing with you motherfuckers
, she demanded to know, “Where is she at? And where is Paris?” Beijing looked around in disgust. The place was filthy. Empty beer bottles and Doritos bags lay around and razor blades, plastic bags, discharged cigars, tobacco, ashes, coffee stirrers, and other trash was strewn about randomly.

There were two guys sitting on the living room couch in front of the small thirteen-inch television who looked like they had dozed off, but Beijing knew that they were high in the clouds by now. She had witnessed Don in that same type of dope nod.

“Lil Momma in the room. And Paris back dere handling her BI,” Camouflage said as he put a cigarette behind his ear.

Beijing stomped down the hall, pissed off that her niece was in the midst of this madness. She tried to open up the first bedroom door, but the knob didn’t move when she tried to twist it. It was locked. She banged on the door with all types of unsavory thoughts of what might be taking place on the other side.

“Chyna, Chyna, open up this door,” she called. Her heart dropped and she began to shake the doorknob in a panic, nearly falling inside when it suddenly opened. Chyna was in the room alone. Feeling enormous relief that her niece was okay, Beijing took her in her arms and embraced her.

“I locked the door because I didn’t want anybody to come in here.”

“That’s right.” She smiled at her niece. “You are such a smart girl.”

“Gram always tells me that I have to take care of myself when I’m over here because Momma is used to living her life without me and she may sometimes forget I am here.”

“Where are your things? Pack everything up and let’s—” Before Beijing could finish her statement, she was startled by a loud noise. She poked her head out the bedroom door to see what in the world had caused the commotion. The back bedroom door had been kicked in and was hanging off its hinges. She sucked her teeth. “What da fuck is going on now?” she huffed.

“Bitch, is you fucking crazy?” the owner of the red Cadi screamed..

“Motherfucker, get out of my shit!” a buck-naked Paris screamed back. “You don’t live here, motherfucker.” Paris tried to shove Cadi-Man out of the room.

“And my bitch don’t either,” he screamed, punching Paris in the mouth and then smacking the naked woman who had been lying in the bed with Paris. “Get the fuck up, Keonna. Now bitch.”

Beijing could see from the doorway that there was a dude in the corner of the room with his pencil-thin dick in one hand and a video camera in the other.

“Nigggga,” the guy said. He had obviously been watching the girls freak off. He continued in a slurred tone, “Ain’t no need to come in here with that bullshit fucking up a nigga’s ménage. If bitches wanna trick off, let ’em do it.”

Cadi-Man hadn’t noticed the man in the corner until he opened up his mouth for trouble. Cadi-Man pulled the longest pistol Beijing had ever seen and went upside of Video Man’s cranium until he was beaten to a pulp.

Blood squirted from his head and mouth, splattering Paris’s dingy white walls. Beijing gasped before turning to make sure that Chyna wasn’t witnessing this mayhem. Only the Lord knew what her niece had already seen.

Cadi-Man’s girl, Keonna, was screaming at the top of her lungs. “Ahhhhh! Please, stop.”

Beijing turned back and saw that Paris wasn’t fazed by the dude getting his ass pistol-whipped in her house and was using the opportunity to run through his pockets to find more of his drugs and money.

That’s her MO
. Beijing shook her head.
She got heart
, she thought of her sister, but wanted out of there.

“Shut the fuck up,” Cadi-Man hissed at his girl. “This is the shit you make me do. This shit is yo’ fault.”

Keonna didn’t respond. Instead she put on her clothes as fast as she could, hoping not to be the next victim of the pistol-lashing.

Meanwhile Beijing grabbed her niece’s belongings, took Chyna’s hand, and they got the fuck out of Dodge.

Beijing sat in a plastic chair in Charlotte’s airport staring out of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the planes coming and going. She reflected on how Chyna seemed unfazed by the entire ordeal the night before and made a mental note to herself to call Greta to have Willabee get the poor child some counseling. Then she thought about how Don had come and gone in and out of her life, and how his career had skyrocketed. Despite their differences, she sincerely hoped that he was getting the help he needed with his health and career.

As she waited for her flight to arrive, she noticed a guy watching her. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him. As she tried to figure it out, her thoughts were interrupted by her ringing phone.

“Hi, TJ?” she answered after looking at the caller ID.

TJ was a guy who moved back and forth among Houston, Dallas,
and Vegas. He could get concert and sporting event tickets in any city, state, province, or country. And he always had the best seats in the house. Beijing had made several large purchases from him for clients over the years, and he would call now and then to check on her, find out what she was up to, and remind her that he was still around.

“What up, Beijing! How are you? Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“I’m great! I’ve been just doing what I do. You?”

“Me? I’m better than most, worse than some. Been running back and forth doing my thing; you know how I do.”

“That’s what’s up.” Beijing fed his ego. “I meant to call you because a girlfriend of mine was dating a guy out there in your neck of the woods and I wanted to know if you had any tea to spill on him?” TJ was a notorious gossip.

As far as Beijing knew TJ wasn’t gay, but he always gossiped like a woman.

“What’s dude name?” he eagerly asked. He couldn’t wait to get into somebody’s business. “’Cause if the nigga is making any kind of noise in any of my zones, you better believe he’s on my radar.”

“I know, that’s what I was thinking,” Beijing said. “His name is, oh I got it on the tip of my tongue,” she stalled, snapping her fingers as if she were trying to remember it. “Lootchee’s his name.”

“You fucking wit dat nigga?” he asked bluntly.

Damn!
Beijing couldn’t believe that TJ had snapped. Maintaining her cool, she said, “I told you, my friend is dating that ol’ boy and she talks about him all the time. I just wanted to make sure he was okay.”

“Ain’t nothing okay about dude,” he said. “He’s rotten to the core.”

“Wow! In what way?” Beijing was more curious than ever.

“He’s just a nasty fucking nigga, that’s all. He’s fucked up.”

“What’s so messed up ’bout dude?” Her antennas were on full alert.

“The nigga is a manipulative, selfish motherfucka. Goes all-out to get anything he wants.”

Beijing thought,
Is that all?
“Does he sell drugs?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. I’ve never heard about it if he does. But that means nothing. He’s so intimidating that the people around him wouldn’t let the cat out the bag if he did.”

How could that cat not get out of the bag if it was true?
she wondered.

“Well, thanks, TJ, I’ll be sure to warn her.”

“Do so!” he insisted, “but don’t tell her that you got it from me.”

Damn, Beijing thought … was that fear in his voice?

“Okay, TJ, you got it,” she said before ending the call.

As soon as the line was clear, she immediately called Seville.

At times like this she couldn’t wait for her cousin to return home. She thanked God for her cousin’s Vonage line because as much as they talked, the long-distance bill would be a small fortune. “Soooo, one of my colleagues called me and he happened to know or know of Lootchee and he had nothing nice to say about him.”

“Girl, I know you ain’t listening to no nigga talking about another nigga. He probably want you for himself and mad that you don’t want him.”

“He said that Lootchee was intimidating and manipulative.”

“So is Donald Trump. You spent hours on the phone with Lootchee; did he seem that way with you?” Seville asked.

Beijing ran her fingers through her hair thinking of the long talks she had with Lootchee. “No, not at all.”

“Then fuck what you heard. All that matters is how he treats you.”

Just then the announcement to board her flight came over the intercom. Beijing said, “You right, girl. Let me board this flight.”

“You know the drill. Call me as soon as you touch down so that I know you’re okay.”

“Will do.”

“Just have fun and try to block out the haters because you know they will be at the party,” Seville said.

Beijing’s flight arrived right on time. Traveling first-class definitely had its perks. Besides the comfortable roomy seats, champagne, and slightly better food, they were the first to board and the first to exit the aircraft. Beijing retrieved her small carry-on bag from the overhead compartment and stepped off the plane.