Texts from Bennett (25 page)

Sabrina removed her shirt in a melodramatically seductive
manner, though even through my haze I could tell it was more absurd than anything else.

Standing there in her bra, she asked, “Do you think my tattoos are sexy, daddy?” and began rubbing my chest and kissing my neck. I kissed her on her bottom lip and had full intentions of doing whatever she wanted, but I was very high at that moment, so her question actually distracted me. I returned a few more kisses, and tilted my head inward so I could look at these tattoos of which she spoke. Before, her halter top had completely hidden her ink. But once she was topless, it was a much different story.

I stepped back and gently pushed her hands off me. I examined her upper body.

She had a faded, sloppily drawn hummingbird-type thing on her left hip.

Chinese lettering adorned her left breast. It probably stood for
peace
spelled backwards or something.

Next to her belly button, a pot leaf, which I was betting she did herself with a paper clip, a mirror, and some Indian ink.

All atrocious. There was no calculated aesthetic for how they were positioned. They looked like they were done by a guy behind a truck stop who traded such scars for meth.

“Do you like them?” she asked.

“Wait. What’s the Chinese one mean?” I asked, to be polite and to dodge the question.

She bit her bottom lip and giggled a very harsh, nasally giggle. “I don’t remember. I just thought it looked cool, so I picked it off the wall.”

She tried to start kissing me again, but I dodged my head out of the way. To which she turned around and pressed her butt against me.

“Whoa!” I yelled. Her back—it was
covered
.

She had the word
Sabrina
on her upper back and across her shoulders, in horrible cursive letters.

She had very shitty angel wings, or butterfly wings, or whatever, covering the majority of her middle back.

Six different dates, undecipherable in terms of the actual numbers, ran down her side. Her kids’ birthdays . . . I hoped.

And finally, last but not least, she had a
giant
heart on the small of her back, with a thick XXXXXXX
^x
X XXX inside of it, covering something else up.

“What does this heart mean?”

“Aw, baby, don’t worry about that, lemme—” She tried to unbutton my jeans.

“Stop,” I said, pushing her hand away. “Just explain it, I’m not going to make fun of you.”

“I got it when I was young and dumb. Don’t we all make mistakes? Now please—” She tried grabbing my package.

“Sabrina.
Stop
.”

“Oh Jesus. Okay. Fuck. Uh . . . Okay. It used to say ‘Garrett’s Ass.’ ”

“Garrett’s Ass?”

“Yeah. It used to say ‘Garrett’s Ass.’ ”

“Why did it used to say ‘Garrett’s Ass’?”

“Because, this used to be Garrett’s Ass.”

“Who’s Garrett?”

“Baby, you’re ruinin’ the mood. Come on, lemme please you—” She tried to unbutton my jeans again, I grabbed her arm and held it away from me.

“
Stop doing that,
” I commanded.

She let out a big sigh. “Who do you think Garrett is? One of the fathers.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-eight. And you’re thirty—so don’t act like I’m all old and shit.”

“No, no. I just thought you were younger. . . .”

All of a sudden Sabrina looked pretty old. Her face was leathery and aged. She smelled like fast food now. She was covered in mistakes, lowbrow disasters, and the words
Garrett’s Ass
—no matter how badly she wished they were covered up.

“Come here, baby, lemme satisfy you.”

“Why’d you cross Garrett’s name out?”

“Because, he’s not my daddy no more. But you.
You
. You could be if you want to!” she said, in a cloying baby voice. She started sucking my index finger and I yanked my hand away.

The thoughts occupying my mind at this point were as batshit as it comes. I was grossed out. I didn’t feel like I was on a higher level of humanity than her necessarily, but her tattoos, her backstory, her ability to just produce random children with who knows how many different men, at such an irresponsible rate, really dipped my dynamite stick in rainwater. I was weak and would have given anything to have an even low-rent sexual encounter at that point, but I found myself literally fighting this girl off me.

As bad as I felt about projecting my disapproval and judgmental attitude on her, I needed a way to get the fuck out of there. I was desperate for an excuse that wouldn’t hurt her but would still liberate me from the situation. A way to let her down easy. I decided to throw a Hail Mary.

Time to pretend that I’m megafamous.

“Put your shirt on, honey. I need to go do something,” I said.

“What! Come on. Baby, please. Let me make your wildest dreams come true,” she said.

“Sorry, not tonight.”

“What did I do? Why you change all of the sudden?”

“Sabrina, my angel, we’ve had a moment here, and I feel like I want to marry you and have even
more
children with you. But to do that we shouldn’t have sex right now. Let’s fall in love, and I can meet your children! You’re so beautiful. I feel like you complete me in a lot of ways.”

“What? Really?”

“Yes, truly. Not sure if Bennett told you, but I have to be somewhere in about thirty minutes. Gotta hit the studio—recording with Eminem and Alicia Keys tonight. But give me your number, and we can get together.”

“See?” She started grinning.

“What?”

“I knew somethin’ was special about you! My mom the other day, she said, ‘Sabs, why don’t you find a rich rockstar and marry him?’ ”

“Sounds like your mom was right!”
I was definitely going to hell.

“And you like kids? You promise not to whip them?”

“What? Of course! Write your number down; I gotta go!”

“Wait. You’re gonna call me right? You promise?” she said.

“Yes, I’m falling for you,” I replied, then added, “Boo.”

“I’m falling for you too. I forgot to ask! How many rooms is this house? Can all the babies have a room?” she peeked out into the hallway.

“It’s four bedrooms, but we’ll figure something out. I’m in a hurry, honey.”

“Well, wait. I think Nene should sleep with us. She wets the bed sometimes.”

“No, Nene will sleep in her own room.”

What the fuck!
Why didn’t I just agree? I’d never see this woman again in my life, but I was so high that I couldn’t even agree to letting a child with bed-wetting tendencies sleep in the same bed as me in my
pretend
life. Apparently my stance on the subject only reinforced the genuineness of my proclamations, because Sabrina stood there staring at me in pure awe.

Creepy, creepy awe.

I grabbed her and kissed her passionately. It was the only thing I could think of to shut her the fuck up. I then left her standing in the guest bedroom and ran downstairs. I bolted outside to the back patio. Angel was straddling Leshaun, kissing him. Both of them looked back at me.

“Where did everyone go?” I said.

“Bennett and Krystal went downstairs. The other niggas left. You need a condom, cuz?”

“No,” I said very definitively, and closed the door.

I heard Leshaun yell “Mac!” from outside. I opened the door back up and leaned out. “Yo?”

“Can I post up here tonight? I ain’t got no ride.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Sleep upstairs in the guest bedroom.”

“Aiight, thanks, cuz.”

I stood there, with the screen door propped open in front of me, envisioning how not awesome it would be if I returned to the house
later and Sabrina was still there plotting ways to renovate my home into a daycare. It was time to give Leshaun an assignment.

“Hey, Leshaun, make sure no one but
you
and
Bennett
stay here tonight. Okay?
No females.
Okay?”

“Aiight, I got you, playa. It’ll just be me and him.”

“Okay.”

I slammed the door and ran back through the main level of the house. Sabrina was walking down the stairs and tried to touch me, but I juked out of the way, enacted a 360 spin, and yelled, “Gotta go!” She said something. I don’t know what. For all I know she spelled the word
Czechoslovakia
. Who cares? I was going to drive up the street to the park and pass out in my car.

I grabbed my keys from the mail table and ran to the garage and pressed the garage door opener. Right before I opened the car door, right before I was to make my escape, right before I would be transported to find safety, I looked down my driveway to where the gutter marries the black asphalt . . . and saw the worst possible person who could’ve been standing there.

Mercedes.

“God damn it!” I whisper-yelled under my breath.

SIZE
DOES MATTER.
That’s what Mercedes’s tank top read. She also wore baggy gray sweatpants and had a mess of hair that looked damp from a recent shower. She looked like she’d been harboring heartbreak for weeks and probably hadn’t done much on a social level in just as long.

I would’ve pretended to not see her and attempted to just drive off, but I instantly worried about Mercedes beating up Pistol Krystal or something ratchet and ignorant. The last thing I needed was a girl brawl in my new house. I walked down to the edge of the driveway to see what she wanted.

“What do you want, Mercedes?” I said, walking up to where she leaned against her car.

“Damn. Nigga, you on the monthly bleedin’ cycle or somethin’? I ain’t here tryin’ to start no shit,” she said. “I’m a changed girl. I just wanted to bring this to Bennett.”

She handed me a crusty stuffed brown bunny rabbit, all the while fighting back tears. The bunny had a tiny collar with a dark-blue pet identification tag attached to it.

It simply read
HUSTLA
.

“Is this the infamous Hustla Da Rabbit?” I asked.

“Yeah. I washed him in the washing machine. He smell good now and not all fonky like before. Please give it to him and tell him I’m sorry.”

“Okay. I will.” I turned back to my car.

“Wait, mothfucka, damn!” she yelled.

“Yes? What’s up?” I said, facing her again.

She reached back through the open passenger-side window and pulled out another stuffed animal. “Will you give this to him too?”

She handed me a plush bumble bee.

“And this would be . . .”

“Queen Bee.”

“Queen Bee?”

“Yeah. Queen Bee. The Queen Bitch.”

“Okay, I’ll give Bennett Hustla Da Rabbit and his friend Queen Bitch the Queen Bee.”

“Ugh!” Mercedes gasped. Her pupils dilated and her eyebrows raised. “
It’s Queen Bee the Queen Bitch!
It ain’t Hustla Da Rabbit’s friend! It’s his girlfriend! Queen Bee hold daddy
down
!”

The petite psychotic inhaled deeply through her nose—to prevent herself from crying, I think—did an about-face, and went around her car. Opening the door, she stuck one leg in but then paused and looked over the roof at me and yelled, “Ay . . . Is she cute?”

“Is who cute?”

“His new girl.”

“What new girl?”

“Don’t fuck with me. The girl up in your crib right now suckin’ Bennett’s little ass dick. Is she cute?”

“Oh. I don’t know. No, not really.”

“See?
::sniffle::
I’m the baddest bitch he ever had.
::sniffle::
Why he don’t want me no more?”

I try to pick my battles. If I can avoid saying something that will cause commotion, I will, normally. But I couldn’t avoid it.

“Do you want me to answer that? Because I will if you want to hear some truth.”

“Truth? What? You know why he don’t want me?”

“Of course I do.”

“Tell me.”

“Uhhh . . . okay. Mercedes, you’re fuckin’ crazy. You steal shit from people. You beat girls up. In fact, I’m kinda worried you’re
going to burst up into my house and beat a girl up right now. You make me that nervous.”

“Chill. I ain’t trying to go to jail over some hooker who wishes she was as good as me at freakin’ down Bennett.”

“Right. Okay. Can I give you some advice, Mercedes?”

“Yup. I guess so.”

I positioned myself parallel to her and leaned against her car with her, so I could demonstrate both tenderness and sincerity in my voice without raising it. She brushed the nomadic lock of hair out of her eyes, exposing the retinas of a furiously wounded young lass. There was so much suppressed anger incarcerated inside of her that her eyes ravenously transformed colors like the four-hundred-year-old anticyclonic storm on the surface of Jupiter. I cupped my palm around her cheek to endear her.

“Mercedes, if you want people to like you, be a likable person. It’s that easy.”

She disconnected her eyes from mine and stared into the distance. Eventually, she said, “I think I’m too crazy to be likable, homie. . . . But I’ll try. I will.”

“Okay . . . well, I’ll give this stuff to him,” I said, heading to the garage.

“Ay, also I wanted to say sorry for somethin’.”

“Yeah? What? Sorry for what?”

“Uhh . . . I forgot. It was gonna make you like me though. I thought it up on my own before you even said dat jus now.”

She was snapping her fingers repeatedly, trying to remember something.

“Um. Excuse me?”

“I been smokin’ hella weed man, fuck I’m ’posed to do? I had a apologation planded out for you, but now I don’t remember it for real.”

“Was it in regards to stealing my girl’s watch, beating up my neighbor Tallulah, or anything along those lines?”

“Ohhh, yeah! Yeah . . . yeah that’s right. Sorry for jackin’ that shit from your crib.”

“It’s okay, Mercedes. I’m sure you were just emotional and not thinking straight.”

“Nah, man.” She smacked the roof of her car. “I just wanted that shit and ain’t got that type of money. So I took it.”

“Okay . . . well . . . I appreciate your apology and that you at least feel badly about it.”

“I don’t feel ba—”