A Street Girl Named Desire: A Novel (31 page)

“Oh, by the way Ms. Vera, all resident members are required to join an activity group after sixty days.” She handed Desire a list of activities: choir, writing, painting, computers, pottery, gardening, cooking and dance.

Desire read the list, and saw Mrs. Avery name listed as the music instructor. She knew for sure that she would not be joining the choir. She settled on pottery, simply because she wanted to try something she had never done before.

A few days passed and Desire had a strange feeling that J.D. had been avoiding her. Every time she'd see him, he would say he was
busy and had to leave. She missed having someone to talk to. There were many other women and men in the facility, but most people were so caught up in becoming rehabilitated, they just attended required activities and otherwise stayed in their rooms. She grew concerned that she was losing a friend, and confronted J.D. in the cafeteria. When she sat down in front of him, he avoided eye contact with her.

“J.D., what up with you? Why you been avoiding me?”

J.D. continued to play with his uneaten food. “I'm aiight, it just…” He shook his head, and said, “Oh, never mind.”

“What up?” Desire asked again. She sounded like a schoolgirl who was about to get dumped.

“I should be asking you that,” J.D. said.

Desire was confused. She had been busy with her required group meetings, therapy sessions, medical checkups, exercise time and journal writing. Not to mention the fact that she was starting to like pottery. It was slow, dirty and sometimes long work, but she had made some nice pieces that she could actually see giving as gifts. She had decided she wanted to practice it even more. She had even started fantasizing about selling her pottery at a table on 125th Street. She had thought J.D. knew she would make time for him when she could. She had begun to notice that whenever they were together anyway, he did nothing but talk about the life of crime he'd had on the street, and how he planned to get back on top once he left Visions. No matter how much Desire tried to tell him he could do other things, he still insisted on focusing on the past.

“Are you mad that whenever we talk, I'm trying to tell you that you gotta change?” she asked him.

“Somethin like that,” J.D. responded. “It like you done got too high and mighty for a nigga …trying to forget where you came from.”

Desire was stunned. She had thought they were friends. Desire still hated the thought of being alone. But she thought about Mrs. Avery, and all the other addicts floating around Visions trying to get clean. She realized she was alone in here, but not lonely.

“Damn right I'm trying to forget,” Desire said, rising up from the table. “I'm in here cause I gotta forget. If I don't forget, I might as well leave here right now and shoot myself.”

“Oh, so you one of those?”

“One of what?”

“Junkie motherfuckers who think this shit in here matter,” J.D. said. “Think you gonna sit up in here and get betta and ain't gonna use shit again.”

“That why I'm here, J.D.,” Desire said. She couldn't believe he was talking like this to her. “That why you should be here too.”

“I'm here 'cause I gotta be,” J.D. growled. “Hell, if I didn't have to be here, I wouldn't be. This shit don't matter. It ain't nothing but some big-ass fantasy world. What gonna happen to your ass when you gotta get back out there on that street, huh? What gonna happen when you ain't got a million motherfuckas you don't know who ain't go'n be there when you need 'em holding you off from suckin' that glass dick? What gonna happen then?”

Desire looked at J.D., and felt guilt that she had ever even entertained the thought of him coming in between her and Carve-las. She knew she would never talk to J.D. again after she spoke these final words:

“J.D., I can't answer that. I really don't know what gonna happen. All I know is, I gotta try. I gotta believe.”

The next Saturday afternoon people started filling the lobby of the Visions Rehabilitation Center. It was Visitors Day. Carvelas and Tiah were the first in line. Carvelas was especially anxious to see Desire. He could hardly get any sleep the night before in anticipation of seeing his boo, his baby, his soon-to-be lady. He carried a bouquet of expensive roses for her.

By the time they all found a corner in the cafeteria, the room was already filled to the max. It was tense for a long period as J.D. stood lurking by them, visiting with some of his partners from the street. Desire looked over at him and could tell that he was up to no good. She didn't even smile in his direction.

“Desire, what up? You don't know me all of a sudden?” yelled J.D.

“No, J.D.,” Desire said. People like J.D. no longer had an effect on her. “It ain't nothing like that…I'm just happy to see my visitors.”

“Is that the reason you can't look me in the eye?” he said, nodding toward Carvelas.

Carvelas met J.D. glare with a steady look of his own. Carvelas had been through a lot with Desire. It seemed as if she was either always leaving him or throwing him off. He knew every time he left her alone, there was a chance that she would leave him. He had come to peace with that, and decided to let the cards fall as they would.

“Who is he, Desire?” Carvelas calmly asked, knowing that he would be able to sense the honesty of Desire answer.

Desire looked over at J.D. and saw him and his boys throwing up signs. She saw them showing off their brand-new tattoos and counting out imaginary dollar bills on the table. Desire shook her head.

“Nobody,” she told Carvelas. “Just somebody I used to talk to up in here.”

“
H
ello family, my name is Pam and I'm an addict. I'd like to thank my Higher Power for another day clean and sober, for without Him, I would not be here today”

That's how the speaker began. It was the Wednesday night women's group session and every female in the center was required to attend. The guest speaker that night was an alumni who had come back to share the experiences that she went through as an addict, and how she was able to arrest her addiction. Desire sat in the rear of the meeting room, fully prepared to sleep through the lecture as she usually did, but this speaker caught her attention.

“With that out the way, ladies, I'm going to let you know from the very beginning that I'm not the kind of sister to
sugarcoat shit when it comes to sharing my past. I keep my shit real and I keep it raw, because that's the only way a bitch like me knows how to bring it. Don't get it twisted. I ain't here to preach to you, lecture you or give you a sob story on how bad drugs are, because there ain't nothing I can tell you that you already don't know. I'm here for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to save my life. Yeah, I know that sounds selfish, but this is a selfish program, and I'm about saving my life today. The way I save my life is by ridding myself of all the pain that's been tearing my insides apart for so long. So I free myself by telling others my pain, my hurt and my secrets. The shit that's been keeping me down for years. My story is no different from most of yours. I smoked crack and I lost.”

Desire sat upright, hanging on to Pam's every word. The woman couldn't be more than thirty, Desire thought, but her dead eyes made her look much older.

“How many girls in here were ever raped? Raise your hand. How many of you ever sold your body for crack? Raise your hand. How many of you ever sold your baby's diapers or infant milk to get a hit? How many of you ever lived in the train station tunnels? How many of you ever went to the bathroom thinking you had to piss real bad, but instead of urine coming out, a fetus plops out of your pussy? How many of you got HIV, hepatitis C or Herpes because you let men go up in you raw dog?”

Everyone stared at the speaker as she held her hand high. Her eyes scanned the silent room.

“Well, every one of those things I've mentioned applies to me, and as I look in many of you women's eyes, a lot of those same things apply to you too. I'm here to tell you today that it's okay if
they do. It's okay if you aren't ready to talk about it yet, because it took me years to get past the shame. But that same shame kept me out there on the streets, sick and suffering, because I kept being ashamed of myself. Then one day, as I sat in this very room, I heard a powerful woman share her experience, strength and hope, and as she told her story, it was like she was telling mines and that's when I realized I wasn't the only one ever raped. I wasn't the only one who lived like an animal, nor was I the only person that had caught the virus. Then she said the most powerful words I've ever heard. That I would always be as sick as my secrets. She said that I would always remain an addict, always remain miserable and always suffer from them if I didn't give them up. And ladies, this is why I'm here tonight, to give up my secrets and save my motherfuckin life!”

After the meeting Desire headed to the front lobby for her final smoke break before lights out. She couldn't stop thinking about the speaker's words, and how much she had been drawn to the woman. It was almost as if she had known her before, like at some point they had been one and the same. Desire had decided not to wait in the long line of women who mobbed the speaker after she finished giving them all the tongue-lashing they needed. She felt as if the woman was so real, she would be able to look right through Desire and predict her failure or success. Desire wasn't ready to know that truth about herself. She wasn't ready to confront someone who had come across as strong as Pam.

When she got to the bottom of the steps, she saw J.D. involved in a huge argument with some staff members. They had found his urine positive for cocaine for the second time, and security was ordering him to leave the program and return to police custody.
The police had not arrived yet, and obviously J.D. was plotting how he could escape before they got there to return him to prison.

“Fuck y'all, fuck y'all!” J.D. yelled. He was completely out of his mind, out of control.

When Desire got closer, J.D. spotted her. “Desiree, c'mon, baby, we gettin' the fuck outta here. Let's take all these mother-fuckas.”

Desire stood torn. She remembered how once in between all the bullshit talk, J.D. had hinted that he really wanted to change his life. She was given chance after chance and knew that maybe if he had just a little more time, he might be able to do it.

“Y'all 'bout to kick him out of here for one little-ass mistake?” she said to the staff. At that moment, Mrs. Avery arrived. She was responding to the call for staff that had gone out over the loudspeaker. In an effort to get to the front of the small crowd, she pushed Desire out of the way, but Desire continued to speak. “You sending him back to prison? Y'all supposed to be trying to help us!”

“This man don't wanna be helped,” a staff member said as he and a security guard moved J.D. toward the door, where another security guard was waiting to cuff him.

“Who are you to tell somebody whether or not they wanna be helped?” Desire said.

“Ms. Vera,” Mrs. Avery said, “I think it's best that you smoke your cigarette elsewhere.”

“I ain't going nowhere. I'm staying right here, and so is he.”

“Fuck you, bitch,” J.D. screamed at Desire. “Yo stupid ass is stayin here. I'm getting back to life.”

Desire was speechless. J.D. threw the first security guard off of him, snatched up the garbage bag of belongings he had come to Visions with. Punching the security guard who waited with handcuffs, he slammed the glass door and stormed out. Everyone heard the police cars that would soon swarm J.D. As soon as they saw the police overtake J.D., everyone breathed a sigh of relief… everyone, that is, but Mrs. Avery.

“In my office, Ms. Vera,” she shouted to Desire.