Thong on Fire (27 page)

“Damn, Saucy,” she complained one Thursday night. Free was gone, and Aunt Mercy Ann had laid down because she was sick again. I was trying on a dress by Tadashi I had just bought, and making some calls to find out where the party was gonna be tonight.

“You stay running the streets, girl. Every time I come by here you either gone or on the way out. Are you spending any time with Nasir? I don’t never even see you holding him or playing with him hardly at all.”

“You ain’t here all the time, Tai. He’s been with me all day. My son is well taken care of.”

“I know he is. By everybody except you, though. Look at him!”

Nasir was sitting in his little baby seat grinning and trying to put a toy in his mouth. Everybody said he looked just like me, but the only place I saw it was in his hair and his eyes. I kissed his hand and then his nose and he smelled real good. Free had him dressed in baby Rocawear and tiny Nike sneakers and his Aunt Mercy Ann kept him neat and clean and his hair slicked down at all times.

“See?” I said. “He’s fine, Tai. He knows who his mother is.”

She stepped in front of him and he started waving his arms and acting all excited. “He knows who his auntie is too!!” Tai said, unbuckling him from the chair. She picked him up, then started yelling.

“Saucy! This boy is soaking wet! When’s the last time you changed him?”

I looked at her dumbly. Shit, I had been busy tryna find something to wear and something to get into. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken him out the chair.

“Girl!” Tai said. She carried Nasir into his room and I could hear her in there putting him on the changing table and opening and closing drawers looking for him some clothes. She was just mad because she couldn’t have no babies of her own. Fuckin’ abortionist! All that noise she was making woke Aunt Mercy Ann up too, because I heard her in there acting like the boy hadn’t been changed in two weeks or something. Talking shit to Tai like I didn’t care about my own son.

“Give him to me,” I heard her tell Tai. She came stomping out the room carrying Nasir and his little baby tub. He was naked and she gave me an evil look, then went in the kitchen and got him ready for his bath.

I got a call from Quaison just as Aunt Mercy Ann put Nasir in the sudsy water. He was splashing around and cooing out loud.

“Yo,” Quaison said when I answered my cell. “I’m outside. Bring ya ass on down. We partying in Philly tonight.”

I was dressed and ready to step in less than fifteen minutes, and as I walked past the kitchen on my way to the door Aunt Mercy Ann and Tai were getting Nasir into his pajamas, and both of them looked up and gave me a funky eye.

“I’m telling François,” I thought I heard Aunt Mercy Ann say, but I didn’t give a fuck. I kept it moving right along, never breaking my stride. She could tell Free any damn thing she wanted to tell him. Freedom wasn’t going nowhere. I was his baby’s mama, and neither one of them infertile bitches could give him the gift that I had given him. They both needed to stop hatin’ and get off my clit.

I partied all week long, coming in and out the crib just to wash my ass and change my clothes. Sometimes Free was there when I came in, and sometimes he wasn’t. It didn’t really matter because I stayed too high to care. Just as long as I could find some bills in the bottom of his tissue box, I was cool. At one point I had gotten a little worried that the stack was getting low, but when I looked again that shit was tall again, so I relaxed. This was just a little pocket change to Free. He worked all the time and his artists was going platinum every day. He was always out there wheeling deals and doing some kinda business, so what the fuck. He wouldn’t miss no small-change doe like this anyway.

I stayed gone for days, and on Friday morning I swung my tired, raggedy ass by the crib to recharge my juice after hanging out for three nights straight. Free wasn’t home, but Aunt Mercy Ann was. She was in the room she shared with Nasir and even though the door was closed I could hear her in there moving around and talking to him like he understood what she was saying.

I wanted to see my son, but I didn’t wanna have to fuck with Aunt Mercy Ann. I was gonna have to smash that old lady if she didn’t pump her brakes, and I got tired of Free taking her side every time there was some static between us.

I walked past their room and into mine and Free’s. Fifteen minutes later I had brushed my teeth and washed my hair in the shower, and was crashed out asleep in our big-ass bed.

I woke up hours later and it was almost dark outside. Aunt Mercy Ann had brought Nasir’s bassinet into the room while I was sleeping. I could hear the shower running in her bathroom so I figured she wanted me to watch him while she got a few minutes to wash her ass and them stank-behind feet of hers.

I got up real quiet so I wouldn’t wake Nas up. I peeked down at him and he was sleeping and looking so cute and kissable with his pretty skin and curly hair that I leaned over and put my lips to his fat little cheek. Aunt Mercy Ann must have just given him a bath because he smelled like Johnson’s baby lotion and his neck had powder all over it.

I got dressed real quick then went in my bathroom to comb my hair. When I came out Nasir was still sleeping. I kissed him again, then walked out the room, leaving the door open. The shower was still running in Aunt Mercy Ann’s room, so I eased out the front door and took the elevator downstairs.

I met Akbar down on the Lower East Side and was drinking with him and one of his boys who was a bouncer at a club down there. Two chicks walked in and sat at the bar and started talking to each other and Akbar’s nose popped wide open.

“Damn,” he said to his boy who was standing up there with his arms crossed and eyeing these two made-up heffahs too. “Them jawns is staring like fuck!” He turned to me. “What you think, Sauce? That one in the black shirt. She look like my type?”

I looked down the bar. Me and Akbar had been friends for a while, and although we used to fuck around for a minute, he was really just a homeboy who was there for me, no pussy required. I checked out the chick in red and something about the way she laughed and held her head cocked sideways looked real familiar to me.

It took me a second or two, but when I got it, I
really
got it!

“Tareek!” I yelled, jumping outta my chair and running toward him with my arms out. “Boy what you doin’ your ass up in here wearing a fuckin’ dress!”

We hugged all over each other, laughing and jumping up and down.

“Tareeka, baby,” he corrected me, twirling his dress around and stepping slow so I could check out his shit. “It’s Tareeka now, Saucy. I told you I was gonna be a bad bitch with big titties one day!”

I laughed so damn hard it wasn’t funny. Tareek had some bodacious titties that was phatter and firmer than mine, and when he twitched his ass round in that dress I almost couldn’t believe he had a booty, hips, all that!

“This my friend Stubbs,” he said, introducing me. “Saucy was my best damn friend in the world when I was a kid,” he explained. He grinned, then grabbed my shoulders and gave me a big fat kiss on my cheek. “Shit, girl. You was my only damn friend.”

Tareek was still living in his old apartment but he told me his father had died in a car accident and his brother was living somewhere in the south.

“I don’t hear from him girl, but you know Taleb always did have a stick up his ass! I guess I embarrassed him when I showed up at Daddy’s funeral wearing a cute black skirt, but fuck him! This is
me
!”

I couldn’t stop staring at him and I was damn sure gonna joke the hell outta Akbar and tell him Tareek was definitely his type.

“But,” I said, shaking my head, “how you get all them titties, boyfriend? The hips is looking good too, Mami.”

He laughed. “It’s the hormones, you know. Me and Stubbs is getting ready for our operations. There’s a whole lotta shit you gotta go through, but the hormones is part of how they start getting you ready for it.”

I grabbed Tareek’s hand and took him over to Akbar and his boy and introduced them. I could tell Akbar knew something was up just by the way he was staring at Tareek but I was gonna let him figure it out for himself.

I had just sat my ass back down when Free blew up my cell phone.

“Saucy where are you?”

“I’m right off the FDR Drive. Why?”

“Because I’m at the fuckin’ police station.”

“What? Why? What’d you do, Free?”

“I trusted your dumb ass! That’s what the fuck I did!”

I shook my head trying to understand because he wasn’t making no damn sense. I turned my back on Tareek and them, and pressed the phone closer to my ear.

“Just tell me what to do, Free. I didn’t do shit to you, but if you locked up, just tell me what you want me to do.”

“You left my son in the house by himself,” he accused me in a deadly voice. “You was so bent on running the streets that you said fuck your own baby, and left him in there alone with nobody to take care of him!”

“Aunt Mercy Ann was there!” I screamed. “She brought him into our room so she could take a shower, and when I left the crib she was still in there! She was the last one with Nasir, Free. Don’t you let her blame that shit on me!”

“She wasn’t there, Saucy. She was with me. I came home to take her to pick up a prescription and get something to eat while you was sleep. So was Nas. Before we left I rolled his bassinet in our room so you would hear him if he cried. I can’t believe you got your ass up and walked past our son and out that damn door.”

My mind was blown. I concentrated on trying to figure this shit out.

“She was in there, Free. I swear to God, I heard her in the shower. She was there.”

“No, she
wasn’t
. Did you knock on the door and let her know you was leaving? No. Because she wasn’t in there. Nas was by himself when he woke up and started crying. When he didn’t shut up for over an hour, that old cranky dude next door came over and banged on the door. When nobody answered he called downstairs to the security office. They called the cops, Saucy, and when they showed up, security unlocked the door and let ’em in.”

“Oh my God…I coulda sworn she was…” I didn’t know-what else to say.

“I got there right when social services was taking my son out the house, Saucy. The cops brought me and Aunt Mercy Ann down to the station so we could give statements, and the only reason I’m about to get Nas back is because the doorman vouched that me and Aunt Mercy Ann left the building two hours before you did.”

I was struck dumb. I couldn’t believe this shit! I knew I’d heard that damn water running in Aunt Mercy Ann’s shower.

“Well how is Nas? Where they got him at?”

Free’s voice slapped me through the phone.

“Oh, so you finally thought to ask about your son, huh?”

“I’m sorry, Free. For real, I am.”

“Oh, I know you sorry, Saucy. It’s sad, but I been knowing that for a good little minute now.”

It was about a month later when I found myself walking into the Brown Box Theater on Free’s arm. It was his twenty-seventh birthday and Tai and Jaheim had set up a huge-ass party bash for him. The place was swarmed and it looked like everybody in the industry had turned out to celebrate his day. Actually, it was gonna be a double celebration and Free had a lot to party about because his latest project was being unofficially released tonight too. Free had named the collaboration album
Keep It Gangsta,
and it had some of his wildest tracks on it from his heavy-hitting days on the mic, plus it pumped some hard cuts from Thug-A-Licious, Rhyme Mastah, and Gutta Brown. The video that Free had gone to Jamaica to shoot was ready too, and it was gonna be running all on MTV and BET in a couple of days.

I was kinda surprised when Free invited me to come out with him ’cause shit had been real shaky between us ever since the night he claimed I left Nasir home alone. We’d had a big fight when I got home, throwing down in the crib ghetto-style. Free had slung me down to the floor, and when I got up I tried to burn his ass with a hot iron, but he slapped it outta my hands. I still got him though. When he tussled with me and tried to hold me down, I bit his damn thumb all the way down to the bone!

Yeah. It was ice-cold up in that camp for a good minute. I straight didn’t speak to Aunt Mercy Ann at all, and whenever I tried to do something for or with Nasir, she jumped in and took over. And whenever me and Free was both in the apartment at the same time we acted like strangers. Nah, I acted like Free was a stranger. Free acted like I was stinking up his crib or something. The nigga didn’t even wanna speak when he saw me! He would just slide right past me like I wasn’t even there, and then if I turned around real fast I would bust him looking at me with love and hate at the same time. I didn’t know what the fuck his problem was. I begged him to talk to me, to give me another chance. I really missed that closeness we used to have and I knew he still cared just as much as I did, but everything I said went in one of his ears and bounced right back out.

But tonight was going different. Free was being the old nigga he used to be. Talking and laughing and giving me mad attention like the cat who had opened my nose up wide almost two years ago. Free was looking real good too. He had on all white from head to toe. An ice-white suit, white shirt and tie, white shoes, slamming white hat. All his boys were dressed in white suits too, except they was shining in chains and rings, and Free was still holding it down with that air bling.