The sun was barely up this morning before he called me, telling me to get ready. I didn’t have my class with Uzi today, so I was out of the house with Dolo by six this morning. After all the running around that I did with him, by the time I got home, Demi called me, asking me if I wanted to go to the mall with her, and Daylani. Somehow, we ended up over here at my mom’s house. The last thing I remembered was lying on the couch with Daylani, trying to put her to sleep, and from the looks of things, I ended up falling asleep with her.
For me to have been in this deep dream, I knew that I had to have been getting some good ass sleep.
“Why you always gotta be doing all that damn screaming? Shit!” I snapped, really wanting to curse her ass out for screaming in my ear like that, and shaking me the way that she was, but I knew that I was dealing with a black mama who’smouth was much slicker than mine, and would curse my ass out to pieces if I thought that I was going to sit here, and curse her out.
“I was in the kitchen cooking, and I heard you screaming in your sleep, so I rushed in here to see what was going on. What were you dreaming about?” she wanted to know, getting all in my business, but of course, I wasn’t going to tell her.
“Nothing. Where is Demi?” I asked, changing the subject, and she sighed, hating that it was impossible for her to get through to me.
“Outside. I think she out there going at it with her baby daddy. I didn’t even go out there and ask because I don’t feel like getting in the middle of her shit,” she voiced.
Even though Demi was my best friend, she was like a second daughter to my mom. So much so, that Demi made my mom her daughters God mom. Demi and my mom had a great relationship. It’s been that way since we were little girls.
Before I got the chance to respond to my mom, I heard her front door opening, and I turned my head, so that I could look back, and see who it was. It was Major walking in. My mom’s boyfriend. He walked in with a bouquet of flowers that were so big that you could hardly see his face. I really didn’t know if this nigga was living here but judging by the way he just easily let his self in, he had to at least be spending a few nights here out of the week.
My mom’s face lit up when she saw him walk in the room, while I just threw my body back into the couch, and rolled my eyes at the top of my head. My mom noticed that, and she gave me a look, basically telling me to be nice.
Major walked into the living room area where we were, and he went right for my mom, palming her butt with his free hand, and then he kissed her on the lips. I was cool with just the little peck, but when his ass started slipping his tongue in her mouth,doing it the same way that Dolo did with me last night, that’s when I let out a grunt, rolled my eyes in annoyance, prepared to walk out of the room.
“Riot, what’s good? How you doing today?” Major asked me, as I was leaving the living room area.
Instead of giving him a verbal response, I just waved my hand at him. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him, but seeing him with my mom, I think it was just that constant reminder that after my dad was killed, life had to go on. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted my mom to be happy. I didn’t want her to live her life and die a single woman, but I would literally give up anything to have my dad, and my brother back in the picture.
I chose to go into the kitchen area, pulling a barstool out, where I took a seat at the island. The second that I sat down, Demi was walking back in the house, holding her phone in her hand, and she had an annoyed look on her face.
She came over to me, prepared to tell me what just happened over the phone between her, and her baby daddy, but I quickly put my hand up, ready to shut it down, not wanting to hear that shit.
“Before you start… don’t. All you about to do is bitch to me about the way that nigga just disrespected you over the phone, and you not going to do shit but continue to allow him to disrespect you, so I don’t want to hear it. Move from by me with that shit,” I was dead ass serious.
I continued to tell Demi that I didn’t want the specifics of her relationship with Gutta because she wasn’t going to ever leave him. When he punched her in her mouth, chipping her tooth, and she didn’t leave, I learned then to stop expecting her to ever do it.
“I can’t wait for the day you get a nigga, so you can see that it’s easier said than done to leave. Riot, I love him. I can’t just leave,” she said, sounding stupid as fuck.
At the same time, my mama was walking in the kitchen. She wasn’t holding Daylani in her arms anymore, so I turned, and I saw that she’d lied her down on the couch. Major had gone outside, taking the patio door out. I’m sure he’d gone out there to smoke because he smoked weed. My mom was carrying the roses in her hands, smiling as she looked at them.
“You want me to get a nigga, so that you can have somebody to relate to on being dumb? The day a man ever raises his hand to even think he’s going to hit me, I bet I kill him. Stop talking to me about that,” I had to look her in her eyes when I said it because maybe she didn’t hear me when I said it the first time.
“Whatever. Keyshawn, what you doing tonight? You’ll watch your god baby? I need a night out. I just let this nigga stress me out,” Demi said, focusing her attention on my mom, who’d already grabbed a glass vase out of the cabinet, and was ready to fill it with water, and add her new roses to it.
“Yeah. You can leave her right here with me,” my mom let her know, not bothering to ask Demi what happened between her, and Gutta because just like me, she’s learned to stay out of it, especially since she knew as much as I did that Demi wasn’t going to do anything to fix the problems that they had.
“I called Ari. She’s already at the club. I told her that we were going to pull up. You going to go with me, right?” she asked.
It was in me to tell her ass no, but I was only going to agree because I wanted to see the chick Jazelle. Hopefully, she was working tonight because ever since Ari told me that she was the chick that Dolo was talking to, I’ve been itching to see what she looks like.
“I’ll go with you. I’m not staying out there all night with you. You know that club shit isn’t my vibe anyways,” I let her know, and happy with my response, she did a happy dance, and then she scooted closer to me, wrapping her arms around me, followed by her repeatedly kissing me on my cheek.
“Eat something before you go, Bean. I made stew chicken. You used to love when I made that when you were a little girl,” my mom went on to say, and I hated that she brought up me eating something because this was usually the part when we would get into it a little bit.
Every time she would offer me a little something to eat, I would in turn tell her that I wasn’t hungry, which would result in her fussing with me, telling me that I needed to put something on my stomach.
Before jail, I had the appetite of someone that was three times my size. I was a picky eater, but I would eat a lot of the things that I enjoyed. I loved wings, pizza, pasta, fries, macaroni, and just all the other kinds of food that a kid would like. I compared my appetite to one of a kid because I swear that’s how I ate. Jail put fears in me when it came to food. Granted, I knew that my mom, or none of my loved ones would ever poison me, in an attempt to kill me, but I think about the morning that I ate that shit in jail, and how it made me feel. I really thought that I was going to die that day.
I remember getting a funny taste in my mouth. Shit tasted like metallic. I tried to shrug it off, and pretend that I was just in my head, but the next thing that happened was I got this sharp, twisted pain in my stomach, feeling like my fuckin insides were being tugged, and squeezed. I got nauseous suddenly, and I started throwing up all over the place. I experienced everything from my body getting weak on me, dizziness, and before I knew it, I started breathing funny. I passed out, and I woke up later inside of a hospital room, chained to a bed.
The doctor came into the room, telling me how there was a toxic substance found in my system, and from there, that’s how I knew that I was poisoned with the breakfast food. Since then, I swear I was surviving off air. I can go days without eating. I’ve convinced myself to believe that it’s toxic substances in all thesefoods, and that everybody was out to get me, and because of that, I wasn’t eating the way that I used to.
“Just pack it for me to go. I’ll eat it when I get home,” I responded, hoping that she would like that answer, compared to me telling her that I wasn’t hungry, which is what I had been telling her every time that she cooked, and she tried to fix a plate for me.
