Lola Bunny: Naw, I’m cool. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your busy schedule.
I didn’t think we had any issues, but from the way she was responding to me, I could tell something was off.
Me: We got beef?
Lola Bunny: Nope. I just know my place in people’s lives.
Me: You know I don’t do all this textin’ shit. Do you want some food or not? I can bring it by later today.
Lola Bunny: Lol no, I’m good. If I were to wait on you, I would never get the plate anyway.
Damn. I could admit that I hadn’t been as present as I should have been, but it wasn’t like I was out fucking off. I had been making money, so I could provide for myself, my granny, as well as Lyric and Keynauri. I guess I never stopped to consider how my absence affected the people I cared about.
Guilt once again left me stuck as I sat there with my phone in my hand, trying to figure out how to respond to what she said. First, my granny, and now Lyric. It was obvious that I needed to find some time to make things right with the two of them.
Logic sent me a message to let me know he wanted to place an order. He ended up sending me money for six plates because he always looked out for his family. While I responded to him and a few other folks, Granny’s friends showed up. They greeted us, then washed their hands and got straight to work.
I grabbed a piece of paper, wrote down Logic’s orders, and handed them to Ms. Gloria.
“Granny, can you make me a plate to go?” I asked, getting ready to head out. It was obvious that we weren’t gonna get anywhere through text, so I decided to go see Lyric in person.
“I’m not making a plate for one of those desperate and delusional bitches you like to hump on. If they want to eat, they need to buy a plate like everyone else,” she quipped.
“It’s for Nauri’s little sister, Lyric. You remember her, right?”
“Yeah, I remember her pretty self. How is she holding up? I heard her momma out there smokin’ on them glass dicks.”
I wasn’t shocked by her revelation because the streets had been talking about Jazzie for years. I guess she decided not to hide it any longer.
“Yeah. Lyric lives with her aunt Trina, and I figured I would bring her a plate because I know she hasn’t had a meal this good in a while,” I explained.
“In that case, I’ll make two plates. Poor baby has been through hell, and the adults in her life are as dumb as a box of rocks.” Granny huffed, grabbing two plates and then heading toward the food.
“Trina is just as bad as that no-good sister of hers. My cousin, Lunell, lives over there by them, and she said Nate’s nasty ass has been touching her little girl for years. He loves messin’ with young girls because they don’t know any better, and he can manipulate them with his money. Lunell said she’s seen him coming and picking her daughter up in the middle of the day ’cause the young girl is always skippin’ school. I won’t be shocked if she ends up pregnant,” Gloria revealed.
“That’s a damn shame. It ain’t the first time I’ve heard about him messin’ with young girls. Seems to me that he has a problem with keepin’ that little shrimp skewer to himself. I remember Rosalee and her daughter were fighting over him a few years back. The young girl was only seventeen, fighting her momma in the streets over that man,” Granny Nessa added.
“What happened to the girl?” Aunt Pam asked the question that was on my mind, too.
“She turned up pregnant, and Nate drove her right to the abortiana clinic,” Granny declared.
“You mean the abortion clinic, Mama?”
“You know what the fuck I meant. Either way, he took that girl up there and sent that fetus right back to our Lord and Savior.According to the streets, he has some frequent flyer miles up there. I find that crazy ’cause the mothafucka still has about seven chirren running around the city. I like shrimp as much as the next bitch, but I’m not risking my coochie lips to lay down with that walking SDP.”
“It’s STD, Mama.” Aunt Pam corrected her again.
“This ain’t no mothafuckin’ spelling bee, Pam. I should start calling you Pernell because that’s who you look like. I said what I said.”
The two fussed back and forth while Granny fixed Lyric’s plates. My mind was still on the conversation I had with Lyric. I needed to figure out what was going on with her. Once Granny finished packing up the plates, I headed out the door. My cellphone was going off, and I knew it was the money calling. It was still early in the day, so I decided to make a few runs before I stopped by Trina’s house. As much as I cared about Lyric, I couldn’t pass up on the money. I just hoped she would understand where I was coming from.
Just when I thought life couldn’t get any worse, I was proven wrong. Since the first night Nathan made me have sex with him, he had been sneaking into the living room and fucking me whenever he felt like it. It was crazy to me that my aunt never suspected anything, since he was at the house more than he had ever been.
I tried to talk to Shaylyn about it, but when I mentioned it, she turned cold. We used to be close, but everything changed overnight. She spent most of her time at her grandmother’s house, so I was shocked when she came in late last night. Whenever I tried to talk to her about the distance between us, she would brush me off, saying she was busy. I never felt so alone in my life, and depression had swept right in and taken over. There were so many times I thought about going into Trina’s medicine cabinet, grabbing one of her pill bottles, and swallowing as many pills as I could until the pain stopped.
I missed my brother. I missed East, Logic, and Naiari, too. Nathan was her biological father, and I often wondered if she had experienced the same thing I was going through. Iremember her crying when he cut her off and stopped coming around. It was the only reason I recognized who he was because he used to pick her up on some weekends. It disgusted me to know a man with daughters could be capable of inflicting pain on someone else’s child, but he didn’t seem to care.
It had been months since the abuse started, and I had never felt so dirty and worthless in my life. When Tone stole my innocence, I thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen to me, but I was wrong. Being used as Nathan’s personal sex slave was much worse. He would hand my aunt money to go shopping and then spend hours raping me and forcing me to suck his dick. She used to complain about how stingy he was with his money, yet she didn’t find anything odd about him suddenly giving her knots of money for no reason.
