Thong on Fire (31 page)

I smiled. “Thanks, Tai. You always there for me. Always. I love you, girl.”

She hugged me again. “I love you too, Saucy. That’s why I put up with your crazy-ass shit! And don’t worry. You know what kind of friend I am, girl. I’ma be there for you until the day you die.”

T
HREE WEEKS
later I was finally getting a chance to see my son. I was still kicking it with Quaison at his crib, but his friend Brickett had started liking me. He was asshole-ugly, but he sold some good powder and all I had to do was spend some time with him and he let me have as much of it as I wanted for free.

Tai had told me not to come up in the church starting no shit with Free, and I had promised her that I wouldn’t. I didn’t have no church clothes, so I put on a pair of tight black corduroy pants, a white T-shirt, and a long black shirt over it, and that was about as homely as I was willing to get so it was just gonna have to do.

It was cold as hell outside, and by the time I slipped into the church I was freezing. They say niggas draw heat, and it was sure warm up in there. I peeked in the hall and saw the pews was packed. People was standing around talking and sitting around laughing and carrying on.

I found the stairs and went up to the projection room. An old man was sitting up in there. I pulled my long black shirt over my head and took it off, then pushed the door open and went inside to talk to him. Two minutes later I had found the ladies’ room and was sitting inside a locked stall. I stayed there chilling for a little while, waiting until the program got started before going back in the chapel and slipping into a back pew.

I had to scan the room from side to side, looking over and around all them big ugly church hats before I spotted Free and Aunt Mercy Ann. They were sitting way down front with Tai, and when I stood up I could see Nasir sleeping in Aunt Mercy Ann’s arms.

My baby was so big! He had a lot of curly black hair and he was light brown like me too. I grinned as Aunt Mercy Ann rocked him on her lap. It didn’t matter what they did to keep me away from him, they couldn’t take away the fact that I had carried him in my stomach and he was
my damn son
!

I sat back down and looked around. It was a big, pretty church, and those Pentecostals sure knew how to throw a party and get their sang on too. Everybody was swaying and patting their feet and clapping their hands, as I just sat there listening to a whole bunch of holy lyrics that didn’t mean nothing to me.

Jaheim’s father was easy to spot because he looked just like his son, but older. Like a walking bag of high-yellow bones that somebody had stuck inside of a suit.

When all the praises and testaments were over, Jaheim stepped up to the podium. He had on a pair of dark shades, and if his people didn’t know what them glasses was hiding, I sure couldn’t wait until they found out! That damn hypocrite! Thought he was better than me? He damn sure wasn’t smarter than me. I was about to show and prove that to him and everybody else. I couldn’t stand the way he walked around like he was high class and up there above me, Tai, and everybody else. Tareek and his boy Stubbs had only had to knock him around a little bit, and Jaheim’s sweet ass had caved in and bent right over. They had given him three chances to pay the cost or play the game and get put on blast, and that arrogant nigga had refused to deal and told them to kiss his black ass.

I was half listening as he talked about how important people like Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman were. But when the lights dropped and the overhead projector came on and shone on the big screen they had set up in the pulpit, my heart started beating real fast in my chest.

Yeah, motherfucker! I thought, clenching my teeth. What did he call me? Grimy and gritty? Well Jaheim had fucked with the wrong grimy chick because I was about to get me some payback in a real gritty way. And it had been real easy too. A couple of packs of powder donated by Brickett, and Tareek and Stubbs had been more than happy to do the job.

That toothless old deacon they had upstairs running the film projector had been easy to control too. Hey, a big-titty stunna wearing a white belly shirt in the middle of the winter was something to look at. When I told him Tai wanted to use a different DVD for today’s program he had never suspected a thing. And how could he? He couldn’t take his eyes off my firm knockers and flat stomach long enough to have any sense!

And now, I sat in that back row and waited as the music came up and Dr. King’s face appeared on the screen. Jaheim was narrating from the podium and looking up at the screen at the same time. It took him a minute to realize that somebody had flipped the damn script, but when his tooted-up hairy yellow ass came on camera, he damn near collapsed. Tareek, with his big ol’ hormonal titties and snake dick, had on a hot pink teddy and was holding his hard dick and slapping Jaheim all in the crack of his ass with it.

A loud gasp went up in the church, and Jaheim’s mother screamed when a shot of Stubbs straddling a black-eyed, busted-lip Jaheim and squeezing his perfect round titties while his dick hung in Jaheim’s face came into frame next.

“Turn that off!” Reverend Miller’s voice boomed toward the drunk in the projection booth. “You turn that craziness off right now!”

Oh, them sinners in hell was screaming for ice water.

Tai was standing there holding her stomach and covering her mouth. Jaheim’s mother needed to cover her damn mouth because all that hollerin’ she was doing was just sparking everybody else up. I saw her go down to the ground as a bunch of saints rushed over to help her. I stood up and saw Free. He was standing over Aunt Mercy Ann, fanning her real fast with her big church hat as he held Nasir in his arms.

Jaheim was still up at the podium. His face was twisted in pain and he was reaching out toward Tai.

“I knew I should have told you!” he moaned. Dufus must didn’t realize the damn mic was still on, so we all heard him loud and clear. “I’m sorry, baby! I should have told you about this!”

For once Tai did the right damn thing.

She turned around and ran up the aisle, crying as people in the pews reached out and tried to touch and comfort her. I can only imagine the pity and shame she must’ve seen in their eyes, and I tried to get my face to show that same thing, but unfortunately, when Tai’s eyes met mine on her way out the door, she busted me getting my laugh on.

They say death comes in threes, so I was watching my back.

Aunt Mercy Ann had a heart attack at the church. I guess seeing that abomination-looking Tareek with all them titties
and
a dick was too much of a shock to her system. Free had called an ambulance and gotten her to the hospital, but it was too late. She died on the way there and I sure didn’t miss her.

A few days after the Black History Month ceremony, Tai opened her eyes one morning to hear Jaheim calling her name. He was hanging on the ledge outside of her bedroom window, but by the time she jumped out of bed and ran over to him, he slipped. Or he let go. Whatever. Any way you put it, nineteen stories is still a long way down.

And how did I know all this? Free told me. Yep. He made it his business to roll up on me on the street and tell me that I had killed two people he loved, and that he would never, ever forgive me.

“You’s a twisted bitch, Saucy. Psycho. You need some real help, and I ain’t lying.”

“But how is any of that stuff my fault?” I wanted to know. “I didn’t make nobody jump out no window! And I wasn’t nowhere near Aunt Mercy Ann!”

Free ran shit down to me real quick.

“I sent somebody out to find them two freak niggas, Saucy. Yeah. We got to ’em. They was trying to get they sex changed anyway, right? Well we changed it for ’em real quick. But first we had a little talk with them motherfuckers, and your name just came pouring out they mouths. We know all about the gat they pulled on Jah when they broke in his crib and kicked his ass then made that video. One of them niggas said you set the whole blackmail thing up, and even though Jaheim went ahead and paid them niggas all that money to get the DVD back, you’d already had some copies made and told them you was gonna ruin his whole life with it.”

That was a lie! That skinny bastard Tareek! He told me Jaheim had refused to pay up so they beat his ass and left without the money! “Them faggots is lying, Free! I never saw a dime of that money, and I swear on my baby, I didn’t have nothing to do with that shit!”

He shook his head.

“On your baby? Damn you’s a snake, Saucy. You even lower than I thought. But Tai knows you set her man up, yo. She seen it in your eyes, and she heard it from Tareek and Stubbs’s mouth. Your shit is wide open, Saucy. You done hurt a lotta people, shawty. People who really loved you. And now some of them wanna hurt you back.”

“Where’s Tai now?” I said. “I need to go check on her and see if she’s okay.”

Free laughed. “You go near that girl and she’ll slump you. Stay the fuck away from her, Saucy. She don’t wanna see you.”

“Where the hell is she, Free! Tai is my best friend and I wanna know where she is! Now where the hell is she?”

Free turned to walk away, then spoke over his shoulder.

“Tai’s staying at my crib now. She’s with
me
.”

N
EWS ABOUT
J
AHEIM’S
death spread through the music community quicker than shit. Everywhere I looked somebody was holding a memorial service for him like he was Tupac or Biggie or Thug or somebody special. They even ran a special program on BET dedicated to him, and Tai was there looking horrible. They showed a shot of her and Free sitting together in the front pew at his funeral. Who the hell did Tai think she was? I wondered. Sitting up there in that big black veil and holding my son on her lap looking like a tore-down Coretta Scott King!

And Free must have gone around telling everybody that Jaheim’s big bungee-less jump was my fault, because all of a sudden everybody was blaming me. I didn’t push nobody off no window ledge, so that shit wasn’t fair. But if I thought video jobs was hard to come by before, them shits were totally dry now. Even sessions I was already scheduled to do was being canceled. Every other day I was getting a call from somebody’s flunky assistant telling me my services were no longer needed.

That kinda messed with my head a little because, c’mon. I had rolled with the best of them. I was a dime, a hot-ass mami, and if Tai and Free wasn’t so busy dragging my name in the damn mud I would still be getting the top slots that I deserved.

And that funny, half-white bitch Dymond had the nerve to call me!

She left a message on my phone telling me I was a ho and a sick murderer! I called her right back and told her the biggest ho I knew was her new husband, and the only thing I had ever killed was his asshole when I rammed poles up in it.

But what was worse, I went to a release party with Brickett one night that was being given by Mary J. Blige at some big-ass estate in the Hamptons. Everybody was chillin’, listening to gully cuts, dancing, and watching movies. Yeah, I was ripped, but so fuckin’ what? It
was
a damn party, right?

I loved me some Mary. She was my favorite female singer, and when her old cut “No More Drama
”
came on, I got up and started dancing and singing that shit like it was my own! Well damn if Mary didn’t get jealous! Everybody was clapping for me and telling me to sang that shit, and Mary came over and interrupted my flow wanting to know who had let me in. When I told her Brick, she swelled up and said, “Well you and Brickett both gotta go. Please leave.”

Oh! You couldn’ta told me
she
was gone stunt! As blasted as she used to get? Now that she had a good man and wasn’t drinking no more she wanted to get brand-new? I flipped that bitch a bird and kept it moving.

Pretty Boy was one of the most connected friends I had in the industry, but one day I called him to ask for a favor and a Chinese-sounding trick answered the phone and told me Pretty Boy no talk to me no more.

“Oh, he gon fuckin’ talk to me, you sucky-fucky five-dollar ho straight off the smuggling boat!”

“I sowry,” she said slowly. “Pretty Boy he no talk to you no more.”

But the worst thing of all was when that nigga Quaison fell off. He started boning some fat Puerto Rican girl from Riis projects and all of a sudden that motherfucker couldn’t speak nothing but Spanish. All of this shit was his fault from the gate, and he had the balls to tell me that nobody in the whole industry wanted to deal with me no more?

“Yo, Sauce. They done X’d you out, baby. Your stock is looking real weak. You bad for a nigga’s career, ya know?”

Well what about
my
goddamn career! Niggas was pissin’ and shittin’ all over me like I was a nothing! As much as I had done for all of them, and this is how they treated me? Hell, I had done it all. Every fuckin’ thing them niggas wanted. Sucked their dicks, performed in underground movies, stripped in private clubs, fucked ballers in dirty trailers on sets.

And this is how they was gon treat
me
? Man, fuck all them herbs! If them dirty industry ballers wanted to put their feet in my face and hold me down, then they could bring that shit on ’cause it was about to go down!

It was go-to-war time and I was ready to blast the whole damn hip-hop recording industry out. The ammo was in my hands and I knew just the right rocket I needed to launch that shit. With all the dirt I had on the big willies of the music world I was a walking weapon of mass destruction and you can best believe I was about to blow all them motherfuckas up!

I made a quick call to a dude I knew who worked in BET’s corporate offices. I had done a few quickie favors for him when his wife was pregnant and couldn’t fuck, and when I ran my story down to him he passed me on to his boy at
BET Exposed
. All I had to do was tell this guy a little bit of what I knew, and two minutes later he had me scheduled to report to their studio for filming the next Monday morning.

A few days later I was sitting around freezing in a cheap hotel room listening to WBLS and trying to figure out my next short-term hustle. My girl Wendy Williams was on the air talking about a yacht party she was going to in Cape May that night. People liked to talk trash about Wendy, and yeah, she had talked that same kinda trash about me after I blew up Free’s birthday party, but I wasn’t mad at her. All she did was speak whatever was on her mind, and most of the time when she was talking bad about somebody she was telling the whole truth so fuck them haters!

“Oh yeah,” Wendy was saying. “This is gonna be one live Saturday night! Marshall George is hosting it for his newest business partner, Freedom Moore, and everybody who is anybody is going to be there. I mean, Jay-Z, Jada Kiss,” she started rattling off names like she was spittin’ a rap, “that cute-ass Busta Rhymes, T.I., Fabulous and that hot Jersey cat Reem Raw who came out of the projects in Brooklyn, Robb Hawk and that dude Papoose, Usher, Beez, Trina, Little Wayne, Missy Elliott, and Janet Jackson, who’s looking real good after losing all that weight, that smooth singer Spoons DiNero from N.J.S., and I heard Will and Jada are gonna stop by too! Damn, that is one hot-ass list! This is gonna be a night to remember! Sorry, people, but it’s a private affair and not open to the public, so don’t come trying to crash. But y’all know me. I’ll come back with all the juicy details, so if you ain’t there, by the time I finish giving you the 411 you gonna feel like you was there!”

Them mother
fuckers
!

Here I was sitting up in some nasty roach-infested rat trap, and Free and his posse was chillin’ on a yacht? I only had two hundred dollars left to my name. Just enough to pay this week and next week’s rent on my room, but I wasn’t about to let no party I wasn’t invited to pass me by. I got my gear together the best I could, and put on every piece of jewelry that I hadn’t already pawned. I took my last bit of money and stuck it in my bra, then jetted my ass over to Grand Central Station. I was looking good and smelling fine. I had a fifth of Henny in my bag to keep me warm, and I was steady sipping on that shit as I rode the first Greyhound rolling south to Cape May.

I was lit by the time I got down in south Jersey. I took a cab to the marina and asked some white people where the party yacht was.

“A friend of mine owns it. Marshall George. I know y’all heard of him before. He’s the host for MTV’s
Who Wants to Be a Rap Star
. Yeah, he’s just that big.”

“Oh yeah!” a skinny, baldheaded white guy said. “You’re talking about that 181-foot floating resort down at the end of the long pier over there.” He whistled. “It’s a beauty. It’ll set you back about eighty thousand a day to rent that lady. They must be having some party.” He eyed me swaying in my heels tryna stand up straight. “Have fun. You look like you’ve already gotten started.”

“Hell yeah,” I answered, switching my ass as I walked off in my six-inch stiletto heels. “The party mighta already started, but it ain’t really gonna get live until I get there.”

I sashayed down the long walkway to the end of the pier where the music was just bouncing off all that dark water. I got my strut on, tossing my ass all over the place as I walked through the crowd of people getting on and off the yacht.

When I got to the boarding ramp I saw two toy cops standing there shivering. They was fake security guards with radios instead of guns. I opened my coat and walked up to them.

“Name?” the guy said to me, looking down at the list on his clipboard.

“Hoezetta Woodson.”

He ran his finger down the list, and of course he didn’t find that name.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. That name’s not on this list.”

I laughed. “I know it’s not, silly, because I made it up!” I touched his arm and leaned into him. “I was just making sure you was on your game, ya know? Making sure you don’t let just any old body up on my man’s property.”

He laughed, trying his best to keep his eyes off my chest. “Name?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but the female guard butted in.

“Hey! I know you!”

She looked at me with a wide, rotten grin. She had a flat yellow pie-face with red freckles, and a jacked-up perm.

“You don’t remember me? I met you going up to Woodburne on a visit. Our niggas did they bids at the same time.”

I had no clue who this bitch was.

“Oh yeah! I remember you girl! You still ain’t got them teefs fixed though! How you been doing, boo? You been okay?”

“Excuse you!” she said like she wanted to be mad, but she was still grinning all over herself.

“You doin’ videos and stuff now, right? Me, I went back to school and got my GED. Now I’m in college and working security on the weekends. You know a sistah gotta make ends meet. My man caught another charge while he was in there, and I just couldn’t do no more time with him. But you!” She nodded, admiring me. “I see you hooked up with Free Moore! I seen y’all in magazines, on the internet, everywhere. Matter fact, I just saw your little boy a few minutes ago. Is that your sister who’s watching him?”

“Hell no,” I said, waving my hand and trying not to stagger. “Girl that’s my fuckin’ nanny! But I better get on in there and get my goodnight kisses before she puts my baby to bed. You be cool, sister okay? I’ma try and get you some backstage passes to a Ruthless show before you leave!”

I ran up the ramp like the cops was behind me. The yacht was big as hell, and that was good because I didn’t want to be seen. Not yet. I found a bathroom and took off my coat, then finished off the last bit of Yak in my bag, and when I busted up in that main room and started dancing all over the place you shoulda seen the look on Dymond’s face.

“Get this bitch outta here!” she screamed, and I rolled up on her ass like a Harlem trooper. I snatched that bitch by her blond hair and swung her down to the floor. She was on her back with her feet all up in the air as I wiped that damn floor up with her. Yeah, you know all them niggas jumped on me, but before they got
me,
I got
her
ass real good. I banged her head on the floor and kicked her all in her face, denting her grill with the heel of my shoes, and then a bunch of arms was yanking me, twisting my arms behind my back and pulling me off her.

“Fuck all a’ y’all!” I screamed. “All of y’all are grimy! Ain’t nobody up in here clean!”

The music stopped and suddenly I had everybody’s attention. Marshall was looking at me with his eye twitching like he wanted to kill me, and a couple of ig’nant-ass artists were laughing at me from over in the corner.

I saw people moving to the side to let someone through, and I was shocked as hell when Tai appeared carrying my son. He had on some cute blue and white baseball pajamas with the feet in them, and a little blue boxer robe with a hood. “Who let you up in here?” Tai hollered. Her face was all twisted up and ugly, like she hated me or something.

“Oh
fuck you,
Tai! This is my baby daddy’s affair, remember? You ain’t nothin’ but the goddamn nanny. My cheap replacement. If you wanted a fuckin’ baby so bad you shouldn’ta sat in that bathtub stabbing yourself in the pussy tryna give yourself no goddamn abortion, NANNY!”

She based right back. “I’ll be that nanny, you drunk bitch. ’Cause I’m the first face your son sees every morning and the last one he sees at night. He sleeps with his head on
my
titties all night long! He’s calling
me
Mommy, you shitty bitch! So where does that leave
you
?”

I swear to God if they hadn’t held me back I woulda killed Tai’s ass. She knew damn well she didn’t talk to me like that. Ever. The only reason she was even trying me was ’cause niggas was restraining me. Somebody musta ran and got Free, because the next thing I knew he had grabbed me from behind and was dragging me up a short flight of stairs and outside to the deck.

“Get the hell off me!” I screamed, fighting his ass like I was a man.

It was cold out there and white puffs was coming out my mouth as I cursed him out. I scratched the skin off his hands, then reached behind me and tried to scratch up his face too.

He slung me away from him.

“Girl is you crazy? How the hell did you get in here?”

“The same way everybody else got in here, stupid ass! I walked in! You done got even dumber since I left your ass. You was already slow. But damn! Look at you now!”

His breath came out smoky.