When Mayhem’s wife finally died, everything got worse. The monster had grown into something even more deadly.
He blamed us. Blamed her. He never felt bad to say it out loud, but we felt it in every cold stare, every drunken rant, every beating. He’d take turns making all of us miserable. Many days I wished he had died and not his wife. I wanted the nigga gone for all the torture he caused, hell, his side bitch needed to go too. Before his wife died, my mom had taken all of us to her houseso that she could see the family her husband had made behind her back. While she was on her deathbed. The lady could no longer speak, and was hooked up to so many machines, but the tears that rolled down her face freely, they were hard to ignore. The site was so bad, that her home health nurse had to ask us all to leave. Even at that young age, I knew what my mother was doing, was not right. My mother had broken her heart, and not even a month later, the lady was gone.
“You ruined my life,” he told Sandi one night, gun on the table, whiskey in his hand. “You and them little demons.”
She didn’t flinch.
“You ruined your own life,” she shot back. “I just gave you sons that match it. You ain’t never been nothing but a no good, ain’t shit nigga. So now, this is the life you have to live. Deal with it!” She barked.
That night, he beat her. Made us watch and as much as I hated my own momma for all she put us through and allowed us to go through, I still felt bad for her. He beat her like a man that had stolen his last $100 to his name.
“This is what happens when people disappoint you,” he said, looking right at us. “You make them play!” He smirked, like what he was doing was normal.
That was our childhood.
The only peace we ever got was at Uncle Gary’s house. Gary was my father’s childhood best friend. I’m sure he wasn’t a clean nigga, but he wasn’t on the level as my father in the streets. His wife, Aunt Rhonda, actually treated us like kids. Their neighbor had three kids—two boys and a girl named Ivy.
Ivy was my first crush. Long red hair, bright smile, the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. I used to beat up anyone in their neighborhood who messed with her.
When Grim found out that I liked her, he beat my ass so damn bad. Told me love was weakness. That we didn’t get to feel that.
I was just a kid. And I couldn’t even have a crush.
At that age, Grim was already having sex and moving on from one girl to the next girl. The nigga was detached from the world and how life was really supposed to work. I honestly felt like he didn’t have an ounce of love in his heart for anybody. There was word around town that he had gotten a girl pregnant, and he wouldn’t even acknowledge it. He even told our parents that if the baby was his, he will never raise it. To hell with her and the baby. And the sad part was, our parents thought that shit was funny. They didn’t tell him better or investigate the shit.
I didn’t care how many ass beatings I had to take from my brother, I was hooked on Ivy, and every other weekend, I was on her ass like back pockets. I wasn’t as mature or advanced as my Big brother, but I knew exactly how she made me feel. She was my escape from reality, and that’s exactly what I needed. Our little relationship was always innocent, as a preteen, the last thing on my mind was sex. I had bigger things to worry about, like not fucking up my father’s money and having him to kill my ass.
When I turned thirteen, we had to move. My parents robbed the wrong people, got our house shot up, and had a bounty on our heads. We packed everything into a U-Haul in three hours. Our whole entire lives, and we had to run.
Before we left, my father stopped the U-Haul by uncle Gary’s house to say goodbye, and to give him some packages. I snucknext door to see Ivy one last time. She cried when I told her we were leaving. That shit pulled at my heart more than I expected it to. It was like I had to leave my safe space, and I didn’t know what my life was about to be like if I never got to see her again. Seeing her cry made me want to do something to fix it. I kissed her. That was my first kiss. And I felt something warm in my chest that I wasn’t supposed to feel.
She made me promise I’d come back for her. That I wouldn’t marry anyone other than her when we were grown.We were kids and her ass was thinking about marriage. The way that I liked Ivy, I agreed to anything just to see her beautiful face light up.
I lied.
I knew I’d never see her again. And once we were gone, I had to forget her. Love wasn’t allowed. Still, til this day, every blue moon I would think about my first crush and how things may have been if I had the chance to grow up as a regular kid. I hoped that life had been good to her. I knew that by now, she had a family and all kinds of shit. But that was a time in my life when things weren’t so fucked up, and I appreciated Ivy for it. She didn’t even know the hell me and my brothers lived in.
We moved to Houston. Bigger city. Same hell.
More bodies. More blood. More violence.
My father’s anger grew. My mother got worse. And we became exactly what the streets feared.We had to do the unthinkable just to live to see another day. There was no way we could tell anyone that our abusers were the people we were supposed to trust to take care of us. So we just had to continue to do what we had to do in order to see another day. And to stay in their good graces.
We were always homeschooled, our parents didn’t trust us to leave the house and to keep their dark secrets. We had no tiesto the outside world other than the drugs that we ran, and the people we were forced to get rid of. The thing that I regretted the most, was not doing more to stop this. When I saw what my baby brother was becoming at an early age, I felt like a failure. All I wanted was to protect him, and all he wanted was to be just like us.
—
I shifted again in the chair, jaw clenched under the tape. The warehouse door creaked behind me.
Savage was back.
And now, it was time to face the music.
Maybe I’d lead him to Cherish. Just so I could show her what happens when you cross the wrong nigga.
I loved her once. And love was forbidden.
This was the thanks I got.
