“Just be quiet and sit up for me,” she instructed.
It took everything within me and the help of Jennifer to get me to sit up, but we managed to do it. Seconds later she unscrewed one of the heroin filled caps and dumped half of it into my right nostril. I snorted every grain of it. And when the first half of the capsule was empty, I begged Jennifer to put the other half up to my left nostril. She did as I asked, and immediately after I snorted every grain of heroin from that one, I laid my head back against the headboard. At this point it didn’t matter to me if Slim walked into the room and saw the residue around my nostrils. But Jennifer cared, because while I had my head tilted back, she used my shirt to wipe my nose clean. Somehow I managed to utter the words thank you.
Snorting heroin wasn’t my favorite method to get high, but at this juncture, I’d drink it if I knew it’d get me the high I so desperately needed. Truth be told, getting high wasn’t my main focus. My mission was to prevent myself from getting sick. So if it meant that I had to get that dope through any means necessary and snort it or smoke it, then that was what I’d do.
Not too long after I snorted the heroin Jennifer coped for me, I noticed that my stomach cramps started subsiding and I was beginning to feel some relief. I looked at Jennifer and thanked her at least a dozen times.
She rubbed me on my leg and said, “You don’t have to thank me. I owe you. Because if you would not have jumped on Slim’s back and bit that fucking plug out of his back, then I’d probably be lying around here bruised up like you are, or maybe even dead.”
“It’s OK,” I said, my voice barely audible.
“No, it’s not OK. Faith, you took an ass whooping for me. I mean look at you. Have you seen your fucking face?”
I shook my head.
“Girl, you are a lifesaver. And I owe you dearly.”
“It’s OK,” I repeated.
“Stop saying that, Faith, because it’s not OK,” she whispered. “That grimy motherfucker beat you like he was beating a man, and that’s not how you lash out on a woman. I don’t give a fuck what we did, a real man would not have done what he did to us earlier.”
“Don’t sweat it! Because he’s gonna get back everything he did to me, you, and everybody else he put his hands on,” I whispered back.
“Yeah, you’re right, but I want something to happen to his ass right now.”
“Don’t worry. It’s coming,” I told her, and then I took a deep breath and exhaled.
Jennifer massaged my back while she watched the heroin take its effect on me. “How are you feeling now?” she wanted to know.
I cracked a half smile. “I’m feeling better than I did fifteen minutes ago,” I assured her.
“Good. I’m glad,” she replied and continued to massage my back. She acted like she was my protector and that eased my mind more than I would have imagined. As the drugs took complete effect, I closed my eyes and tried to block out everything around me. Once again I was put out of my misery, and this time it was Jennifer who made it all possible.
Thank God for Jennifer, because I was back in business. I wasn’t that appealing on the surface, but I wasn’t sick, so I felt great on the inside. While the sun was rising, I was rising too. I looked around the bedroom and noticed that Jennifer wasn’t in her bed. I panicked a bit because I knew I would need that other pill of dope she had for me, and if Slim had made her leave the apartment with him, then I would be up shit’s creek without a paddle. I didn’t want to go through another withdrawal. I wanted to prevent the illness before it had a chance to rear its ugly head, so I immediately got out of bed and rushed toward the door. When I opened it up to look for Jennifer, I found her walking toward me and I exhaled.
“You all right?” she whispered.
I grabbed her right hand and pulled her into the room. “I thought you had left,” I replied nervously.
Jennifer closed the door behind us. “Where was I going at eight o’clock in the morning? I only went to the bathroom.”
“I thought it was later than that,” I said and took a seat back on the edge of my bed.
Jennifer took a seat on her bed asked me how I was feeling. I sighed and told her that I would need that other pill of heroin very soon because the other dope she gave me was wearing off. Without hesitation she dug inside her purse and handed me the other pill of heroin. I instantly felt like a kid in a candy shop. I took the drug and cupped it in the palm of my hand because I knew I would be using it in the next few minutes.
Jennifer asked me how my face felt. I told her that it felt better today.
She frowned. “Can you see out of your right eye?” she asked.
I cracked a smile. “Yeah, I can see.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like it.”
“Don’t worry. I can,” I assured her. And when it looked like she was about to open her mouth to make another comment, she paused because we both heard a door open and then it closed. We looked at the bedroom door and then we looked back at each other.
“That’s probably Tacora or Sabrina going to the bathroom,” she whispered.
“Is Slim in the living room on the couch asleep?” I asked her.
“Yeah, he’s in there.”
“Boy, I wish I had a gun because I would walk up on him in his sleep and blow his fucking head off,” I commented as I kept my volume down to a minimum. I could not afford to let anyone on the outside of that bedroom door hear me talk about anything dealing with Slim. I learned the hard way that Tacora and Sabrina were my worst enemies, and if I wanted to keep my head above water around here, then I was going to have to play it easy until the right opportunity came along.
Jennifer got up from her bed, walked over to my bed, and sat down next to me. “I heard some people talking about Paris’s grandparents putting out a reward for information about who murdered her,” she said.
Being reminded about Paris’s murder was a very sore issue for me. I mean, I was the one who she’d last talked to before she got into her killer’s truck. And even though I never had a chance to actually see the man’s face, I did get a glimpse of his license plate. I never told anyone this because I didn’t think it would matter. Immediately after she was killed Slim made the announcement that he didn’t want us to be questioned by the police, and it wasn’t like I could approach the police secretly, since Slim watched our every move. But today I had to tell Jennifer what I knew.
I took a deep breath and said, “I saw the guy’s license plate number.”
Jennifer eyes grew two inches. It was pretty obvious that she was happy. “Oh my God! Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked in a whisper.
“Because I didn’t think that it would matter.”
“Oh my God, Faith! Do you know what this could mean? We gotta get in touch with the police.”
“But how?”
Jennifer’s reaction changed. “I don’t know. But we’re gonna have to figure out something.”
“I can tell you right now that it’s going to be pretty hard coming up with a plan when we don’t have access to a cell phone. And not only that, there is simply no one in this entire neighborhood that will help us because they know we work for Slim.”
Jennifer sighed heavily. “I know. But I’m still not giving up. Because when there’s a will, there’s always a way,” she told me and then she fell silent. It was evident that she was in deep thought about ways to get this information to the police.
Looking at it from a clear standpoint, it would be a win-win situation for the both of us. Not only would we be able to break free from that asshole in the next room, we would be collecting a reward and Paris’s grandparents could rest knowing that her murderer got what he deserved, no matter what Paris may have given him.
While we were both in deep thought, we heard a little bit of chitchat in the hallway. It was none other than Slim and Sabrina.
“We need some toilet paper in the bathroom,” Jennifer and I heard her say.
“I just bought some a couple days ago and you mean to tell me that it’s all gone?” he asked.
“It was only a little bit left before I went in the bathroom. I had to go in the kitchen and get a couple paper towels before I used the bathroom.”
“Well that’s what y’all better use, because I ain’t going out this house until later on,” he told her.
Sabrina didn’t respond to Slim’s unwillingness to make a trip to the neighborhood convenience store. Instead we heard her suck her teeth, walk back into her room, and slam the door.
Jennifer chuckled. “That’s what her stupid ass gets. The nigga she’s always going to bat for and jumped on your back for won’t even go out and get her dumb ass a roll of shit paper. Now ain’t that crazy?”
I smiled and nodded.
“You should’ve seen her last night out on the corner trying to be all up in his face like they were a couple. But he wasn’t paying her ass any mind. He kept telling her to get away from him and flag down some cars to get him some money. I just laughed the whole time.”
“You gotta be kidding me. He played her like that?”
“Girl, please, he ain’t thinking about her ass for real. And she’s just too stupid to realize that he don’t give a fuck about her. Because if a nigga come on the block and fired a shot at her ass, Slim wouldn’t do a damn thing but run down behind the guy and fire a couple shots back at him to prove to everybody on the block that he will shoot his gun.”
“So you’re basically saying he’s a pussy?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, because if you really think about it, Slim was only a couple feet away from that truck when it sped off. If he really wanted to shoot that guy, he could’ve. He was right there, so why didn’t any of the bullets he fired penetrate the man’s truck?” Jennifer asked, and then she fell silent and waited for me to speak.
I was blown away when Jennifer revealed all this information to me. “You damn sure make a person go umm!” I said.
“Faith, I’m telling you some good shit. That nigga that’s on the other side of that door is a fucking coward and he preys on women like you and me. And one of these days, I am going to get him back for everything he has done to me.”
“To be honest with you, Jennifer, I’m not seeking revenge on that loser. I just want to get out of here and never look back.”
Jennifer looked at me and smiled. She had seen how tired I was, and how drained I was about this situation. She rubbed me on my back and said, “Don’t worry. We gon’ make sure that happens.”
The Candy Shop part 2 Kiki Swinson
Back on the Corner
Slim finally gave me the green light to leave the house once he thought that my bruises had healed enough. But it wasn’t to go on a joy ride or a shopping spree. I had to report back to the corner where I belonged, as he so eloquently put it. It had been four days since I had been out of the apartment, so I welcomed the fresh air. We were back on the corner of Washington Street and Tidewater Drive, so we knew exactly where we would stand. Everything was cool and customers rolled in one after the other. But when there was traffic like that, it attracted the police.
While we were standing at our posts Slim spotted a cop car coming toward us and warned us to get behind the building. After the police left the block, Slim ordered us to come back to our posts. While I stood there, I wondered how I would get a chance to talk to the cops about Paris’s murder. I knew that they were riding around policing the area, looking for someone who might give them the answers they needed. There was one problem, though. People in this neighborhood didn’t like the cops. They hated them to be more frank about it. They looked at the local police department as the enemy because most of the people living in the neighborhood were doing everything illegal under the sun.
Even though I broke a lot of the laws in this city by buying drugs and being a prostitute, I’d welcome the chance to talk to the police. I wasn’t afraid of them. I was afraid of the motherfuckers that roamed this neighborhood. Everyone out here cared about no one but themselves. And since the day I’d been out there, I knew that I was on my own.
Slim told us that we had fifteen more minutes before we were going in for the night. To be perfectly honest, I was ready to go a long time ago. When he wasn’t looking, Jennifer coped me a couple pills of dope from a guy whose dick she’d sucked earlier. I had ducked behind a building and snorted it in a matter of ten seconds flat, so now I was buzzing and I wanted to relax. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, much less fuck somebody. But when this idiot pulled curbside for some pussy, Slim made me hop in the car with him. I wanted to tell this man that I had herpes or the clap so he could carry his ass, but then I thought about what happened to Paris and decided against it. The men around here were crazy and would kill you over the pettiest things. And in spite of my actions, I really did want to live.
Now the guy was a fat ol’ black guy with a musty smell. He looked like he was a mechanic or a construction worker because his hands were hard and filthy. The facial hairs on his face looked really bushy and unkempt. I wasn’t feeling him one bit. He had on this old, red greasy baseball cap and a plaid flannel shirt while it was eighty degrees outside. He smiled at me and even though it was pitch black outside I could see his stained teeth. There was no question in my mind that he was a tobacco-chewing loser looking for some cheap fun.
After I sat down on the passenger seat of his old, beat-up van and told him the prices of my services. he said, “Come on, little lady, it’s a recession out here. Can you give an old man like me a break?”