A Street Girl Named Desire: A Novel (8 page)

“The difference is what it mean to everybody else, not you,” Desire said. “This bag with the number mean rich. That shit without the numbers mean fake and you just a wannabe if you carrying it. You really ain't shit, you just pretending to be. I ain't tryin to be no pretender.”

Tiah shook her head, soaking in all Desire was telling her. The blond saleslady had appeared behind them. She cleared her throat loudly and folded her arms.

“Excuse me, can I help you two with something?” She didn't even bother to smile at the two street girls, who she had been trained to watch if they drifted into her section.

Desire simply looked at the saleslady and smiled.

“Not yet,” she said, and grabbed Tiah by the hand to lead her out of Macy's. “You have a nice day,” she called back to the saleslady.

Desire didn't have the rich people stuff yet, but that didn't mean she didn't want what she did have. At the Corley's, Desire had never bothered to unpack her belongings, instead opting to be mobile and ready to go at a moment's notice. All her worldly possessions were contained in a cheap cardboard suitcase. Most of it
were things she had stolen: a couple of bags, items of clothing and cassette tapes of her favorite singers. Her prized possession, though, was the cassette tape that she kept stashed safely inside rolled-up tube socks, along with a few hundred dollars she had saved. Desire would stay away for a day or two. She did it several times and was never missed. When she walked into her room one evening, after being gone for the whole night before, she knew immediately that someone had tampered with her things. Something just didn't feel right in the room, like even the energy had been misplaced. She noticed a slight wrinkle on her bed that had not been there when she had left. Almost nothing in the room belonged to her anyway. The bed, a small chair, bookshelves with no books and a dresser drawer with no clothes were all just props in Mother Corley's act, cover-ups to her real agenda: to fool the social workers into believing that she really cared about making a home for the kids she took in. Desire didn't give a fuck about anything in the room but what was in her suitcase—most of all, the cassette tape. Instinctively, she ran to her suitcase and unzipped it in a panic. Her hands searched the corners for the socks. Unable to find them, she dumped everything on the floor, sifting through each piece. Desire stood up and began searching the room. She looked in the trash can, and that's when she saw it.

“What the fuck?” she muttered as her eyes finally rested on what was left of her cassette tape. She bent down and pulled out a tangled mess of tape that was unreeled, the plastic snapped in half. Desire stared at it with dread as her jaw began to twitch wildly. A single tear fell from her eye, and others were coming fast behind it. She wished Tiah were there so they could bum-rush the two bitches she knew had done it. Just as she began to plot
the revenge that she and Tiah might carry out on the evil twins, she noticed a shadow by her door. She heard footsteps running softly, and then a door quietly snapped shut. A demonic scowl overtook Desire's face. She took off down the hall and burst into her foster sisters' room. She held up the ruined tape with one hand.

“Who the fuck touched my shit?”

Both girls were on their beds, with magazines open in front of them. Kayla frowned and said, “What stuff?”

“You fuckin heard me,” Desire yelled as she approached the twin with authority. “Which one of y'all bitches did this shit to my tape?”

“How you gonna come bustin in our room accusing us of stuff, Desire? Nobody touched your shit,” Layla lied.

Desire continued to press. “I ain't playing with y'all … who went through my shit?”

Kayla sucked her teeth and said, “I don't care if you playing or not, but we ain't touch your stuff.”

“What?” Desire said as she opened her arm. “Y'all afraid to tell the truth to a little old girl like me? What … y'all afraid or something?”

Layla stepped in Desire's face and said, “You can talk all the smack you want, I ain't afraid of nothing, slim.”

Desire shook her head and snickered and said, “Just as I thought, y'all bitches are pussy—ain't got no heart!”

Desire chumped them both, then pretended to be leaving.

Kayla yelled, “Yeah, bitch, we went through your shit, now what the fuck you gonna do about it? This is our house and everything that's up in here is ours.” She turned to her sister and
said sarcastically, “All she worried about really is her lil bit of money she probably sold her ass for.” She reached in her pocket and pulled out the tube sock with the money in it and threw it toward her. “So take the shit and get out.”

Desire paid the money no mind. “I don't give a fuck about the money! Just tell me why'd y'all do this to my shit.”

The twins had never seen this mean streak in Desire. They wanted to dismiss her, but something told them somebody should at least try to offer an explanation. Desire looked like she was ready to explode if something didn't calm her down. Layla was the twin who didn't want to take the risk.

“Aiight, we were just curious to know what was on that tape. We ain't heard nothing but a lady singing some church song, and that's when the tape player started eating the tape and it got bunched up.”

“Fuck her, Layla, you don't have to explain shit to her. So fuck you, fuck the tape and fuck that dope fiendin ass bitch on the tape who was singing!”

Desire snapped, and jumped on Kayla with lightning-quick speed. She whaled on her with no mercy, slapping her until she fell to the ground.

“You fucking bitch,” Desire yelled as she stomped the twin relentlessly.

Kayla curled into a fetal position. She protected her head, and Layla, who was stunned to see the frail little girl tear into her sister like a wild beast, grabbed Desire from behind to stop her from further assaulting Kayla. Desire countered in one precise move. Instinctively, she expertly spit the razor from her mouth and into her hand. It went down so quick the poor twin didn't even see it
coming. Desire caught her in the arm with the razor. In blind fury, she looked at Kayla and was ready to put in work on her face, when all of a sudden she felt a harsh blow to her head. The last thing Desire remembered was seeing stars after Mother Corley dealt a sickening crack to Desire's head. She delivered one more hit for good measure, landing Desire in the hospital.

Desire suffered a contusion to the brain and a broken arm. She was a ward of the state, and was supposed to be protected as such. Knowing this made Mother Corley nervous. She suddenly changed into the perfect image of the “nice” foster mother, bringing McDonald's, a brand-new outfit from the Gap, and plenty of sweets to Desire's hospital room. Desire had no intention of telling the authorities who Mother Corley really was. She had been through this so many times before and had taken far worse beatings from the best of them. But there was no reason not to let the fat bitch sweat a little, she thought.

“So, Desire, you know if those people start coming 'round, snooping, they go'n put you back in the system. I hear them places is just like prison. They lock you in your room and everything. That ain't no place for a young lady to be. Don't I let you do what you want to do? Do I ever say anything when you stay out all times of night?” Mother Corley asked all of this in a whisper, as she looked over her shoulder toward the young patient in the bed next to Desire's. “Now, all you got to tell them is that you fell down the stairs, and that will be that. So you better—”

She was interrupted by a nurse who entered the room.

“Oh, hi,” said the nurse, with a smile. “I'll be over in a moment
to take her vital signs. I'll take the other patient's first, so you have to step out for a second if you don't mind.”

Mother Corley smiled and nodded as she walked away, satisfied that she had put up enough of a front for an authority. How a foster child could have ended up with her was evidence of the system that didn't care. To Mother Corley, Desire had simply become a paid bill, more food in the refrigerator, extra benefits that a woman who didn't have many other choices could use a child for. She barely loved herself or the twin girls she had been left alone to raise. There was no way she could love Desire. Someone who needed serious help had been put in charge of helping another. It was an arrangement that would never work.

Mother Corley's smile disappeared as she slyly turned. So low that no one else in the room could hear, she reminded Desire one last time, “You being discharged tomorrow, so remember what I said, lil heifer. I'm the only one who want yo black ass.”

Desire just stared at her, not saying a word. She let the words sink in and didn't even try to think of what an alternative would or could be. She was stuck here, in this predicament, and had nowhere else to go. She had no choices. After the nurse finished taking the other patient's vital signs, she approached Desire's bed with a mobile blood-pressure stand. Her face was warm and open, even though the girl in front of her was obviously untrusting. But this nurse was used to working with these types of cases. She could almost guess, without trying, what possible circumstances could have landed this child here. She smiled at Desire and said, “Hello, young lady. I'm Nurse Dixon. What is your name?”

Desire simply stared at the ceiling, opting not to answer. She hated authority figures anyway, so the less said the better.

The nurse awaited an answer, but there was none. Unfazed, she continued smiling and said, “Don't feel like talking much? I understand.” She reached for her chart and said, “Let's see, Desire Mitchell … ” As if struck by a bolt of lightning, she looked at Desire and then again at the chart. She searched the chart for Desire's date of birth, and sure enough, in black and white, February 4, 1984, a day she would not forget. Her mind raced back to that day many years past when she had come to work to find that a child who had been rescued from certain death in freezing East Harlem snow was now fighting for her life in the neonatal crisis ward.

Quickly getting over the initial shock, Nurse Dixon put the thermometer in Desire's mouth. She also checked her blood pressure. She was nervous about what she knew in her gut of the identity of her latest patient, but she needed to continue to do her job. She asked Desire to sit up so she could wrap her arm with the pad. The flimsy hospital gown shifted and exposed a horrid scar on the patient's back. When Nurse Dixon caught a glimpse of it, she gasped. The conclusion as to the origin of the scar was undeniable.

Desire knew that the secret was out. She knew exactly what professionals were trained to look for as evidence of child abuse. Desire could not think of being torn from one hell, one that she had come to at least know, into another that was potentially worse. She pleaded as if her life depended on it.

“She didn't do this to me; these are old …”

Nurse Dixon's arms were folded. She looked unconvinced. Desire continued to beg.

“Please don't tell nobody, or they gonna send me to a group home again.”

Nurse Dixon was speechless as she stared into Desire's terrorfilled eyes. She broke her professional composure and threw her arms around Desire. She was torn apart by the fact that a patient who had been born in such horrendous circumstances had returned to the hospital in arguably an even worse situation. Nurse Dixon could not help but think that it would have been better if Desire had not made it, that the child's fight to save her own life was not worth the pain she continued to get in life. All she could do was give Desire a warm hug to calm her down. Desire could not hug her back.

“You poor child,” Nurse Dixon whispered as she embraced Desire. All she could think was “Why?” but she couldn't say it. She had to regain her composure in order to do her job. “Do you have any other injuries like this?”

Desire did not answer. She wanted to show and tell, but she was afraid to. However, Nurse Dixon was just as insistent with Desire as she had been with Nika years before. She wanted answers, and was not going to leave the room without them. It was a tug-of-war, but Nurse Dixon convinced Desire to show her the other wounds. Slowly, Desire disrobed. Nurse Dixon could not believe her eyes. Desire's body was a map of abuse. Nurse Dixon stared in total horror upon the multitude of purplish-black dead flesh from past beatings.