All That Drama (16 page)

“And you didn’t call me? Where are you going?” she asked, sounding hurt and defensive.

“The last time I talked to you, you were busy,” I snapped. “It’s Sunday; I’m going to Faces. I assumed you and what’s his name were still knocking boots.”

“Oh, Curtis, it’s like that, huh,” she fired back.

“Yeah, unfortunately it is. I didn’t write the script; you did.” If she knew what I was referring to she did not own up to it.

“Girl, he wasn’t here that long. He just wanted to talk to me, that’s all.”

“Oh, in other words, he did a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am on your ass,” I said, trying not to laugh out loud. That’s what she got for treating my ass like a second-class citizen. He hit it and quit it and told her to take him back to the parking lot so he could get his car. I would never put up with a man who thought he could use me and then ignore me until the next time his dick got hard, but she obviously did not have a problem with this since she seemed happy to oblige.

“Can I go?” she asked in her little-girl voice that she sometimes used when she was trying to get her way.

“It’s a free county,” I replied, refusing to be swayed by her childish tone.

“When are you leaving?” she asked. She was all business now that she knew I wasn’t up for her bullshit tonight.

“Now. I’ll save you a seat if you don’t take too long,” I said and hung up the phone. I said more than I wanted to but she got my drift. Whether or not it would do any good, I said my piece and only time would tell.

She showed up at the club and as luck would have it, a seat was still available. She did not offer me an apology for the way she acted the night before and I did not bring it up. I had never officially said that I would never ride with her again but I think she understood it without my having to say it. Though the circumstances had been unfortunate, I had learned a valuable lesson.

Sadly, I acknowledged that another line had been drawn in the sand in our friendship.

We continued for months going to the club like it was church in separate cars and meeting up inside. We still arrived at the same time ’cause we would get dressed at each other’s houses. Much to my chagrin, Sammie continued to see Curtis. It was Friday night and we were preparing to go to Chit-Chat’s.

“How’s Dickweed?” I asked her just to see if she knew who I was talking about.

“Dickweed? Oh, Curtis,” she said, laughing. “I knew you had given him a name but I wasn’t sure what it was.”

“Yeah, I thought it was fitting since his dick be growing out of a lot of different things.”

“Well, you don’t know that for sure. You are just guessing,” she said in a huff.

“Come on, Sammie, wake up. He ignores you at the club. You have never been over his house. Do you even have a phone number for him?” I demanded.

“I got his pager number!” she declared, beginning to get mad.

“Pager, what does that tell you. That means either he is married or living with someone.”

“Have you ever paged him in the middle of the night?”

“No.”

“When you page him, does he call you right back?”

“Sometimes,” she mumbled.

“Did you ask him why he never spends the night?”

“Yeah, he said that he can’t sleep anywhere but his own bed.”

“What about the time he called you at 4:00 in the morning and you went to pick him up and all he wanted was a blow job? I still can’t believe you blew him in the parking lot!” Sammie did not say a word.

“Ok, I got just one more question for you and I will leave this alone. How come if sleeping in his own bed is such a priority to him, he doesn’t ask you to come visit him?” Sammie was silent.

“I rest my case,” I said, leaving her in the bedroom while I went in the bathroom to get dressed.

Sammie didn’t speak as we each applied our makeup and final touches to our outfits. We arrived at the club at 11:15 to get a seat close to the dance floor. The new bouncer liked me so I did not have to pay tonight. He charged Sammie and that pissed her off even more. Normally I would have paid half of her admittance but I was still angry with her for being so stupid about Dickweed.

I wasted no time getting on the dance floor when we got in the club. I refused to ride the bar stool as Sammie had been doing for the past couple of months. No one asked Sammie to dance anymore so her only chance to dance was to join in the Electric Slide.

This shit continued even though Sammie knew that I didn’t approve for a long time. For the most part, I tried to stay out of Sammie’s sex life. We could talk about her kids and mine. Our jobs and even our mothers but that man was a forbidden subject. Once again, conditions were put on our friendship.

S
ammie met a new man named Malcolm Warrens whom she nicknamed “N&P.” It stood for new and promising. Since he had been making regular appearances at her door for the past three months, she felt she had a good thing going. She told me he was a truck driver and I was glad if it was going to get her away from Dickweed.

“Oh Lord. Does he know that you have this thing for truck drivers?” I asked her one night over cocktails at my house.

“No, I got him thinking it’s his dick that has me imprisoned.” She had this goofy ass smile on her face and I could not help laughing with her. They saw each other at least once or twice a week depending upon his load.

“Girl, he said he is looking for a good woman, one he can pamper and take care of, and I told him that I was the woman he’s been searching for. Lord knows I need somebody to take care of me,” she said. We both fell over laughing, reaching out to give each other high-fives.

“What about Kendall and Tyson? Have they met him?” I inquired.

“No, it seems like every time that he is in town they are here with you.” She was right about that. They had taken to coming to my house when they got home from school and staying until practically bedtime. Most nights I didn’t mind it because I wanted to keep an eye on them. Tyson continued to be a discipline problem at school, and Kendall was so withdrawn that the only person who could get through to her was Keira. I tried to push my thoughts about her kids’ state of mind to the back of my head.

“You sure do need someone to take care of you,” I said, pushing her lightly as we clinked glasses. It was good to see her smile again. Her eyes once again took on a special glow and I began to wonder whether Malcolm was okay after all. I was still skeptical but I was willing to wait and see.

“And guess what?” Sammie said with a hint of amusement.

“What?” I responded, catching my breath between my cheeks and knowing instinctively that I would not like what was coming next.

“He is getting me a car! It should be here this week.” She was so happy she could barely sit still. Once again, bells started going off in my head but her obvious delight was catching. And girlfriend really needed a car.

“Get the hell out of here. You mean you are willing to part with the ‘Flint-mobile’?” I could not stop laughing when I thought of her driving a car with real floorboards. Sammie had been driving that beat-up Buick since I’d met her and I just couldn’t picture her in anything other than that.

“In a New York minute,” she said.

“Remember that time I dropped my lighter and it fell right out the car onto Interstate 285 through the hole in the floor!” I said, laughing loudly.

“Yeah, that shit was so funny and you had the nerve to get mad at me.”

“It’s your car! But I tell you what; I feel safe when I ride in it. As long as it starts, you can be sure that anything you hit will crumble and we will be okay. That car is built like an armored tank,” I said, raising my hand for a high-five.

“You ain’t lying about that. These cars today, if you just bump something, you are talking one-thousand dollars in damages. But I’m ready to get me one of those 2002 models! I want to style and profile like you do,” she said, smiling.

I got caught up in her fantasy and started feeling good about her life once more. She had been through so much in such a short period of time. I’m not saying that I believed all the hype that this guy was feeding her but she was looking good again. She was back to watching what she ate, taking hours to get dressed and was her old chatty self. I felt full. Sammie was back in charge of her life and I was feeling good about that. I was happy that she was happy.

“So, you mean to tell me you’re only getting dicked down once a week and that’s okay with you?” I was laughing as I said this but she did not join in. She started to get nervous and placed her drink on the coffee table.

“Uh…I’ve got a little something, something on the side,” she mumbled.

“I knew it!” I exclaimed. “Who is he and what’s his story?”

“Tried and True, you already know him.”

“Girl, please, I can’t keep up with the names, only the circumstances.”

“Curtis.”

“Dickweed? Oh hell no, please tell me that you are not still dealing with Dickweed!” I jumped to my feet and began pacing the room. I could feel the heat rise to my cheeks. “Here we fucking go again!”

“Marie, I know that you don’t like him but the brother is hung like a race horse and knows exactly what to do with it. Don’t hate on his dick,” she replied. She refused to look me in the eye. All those cozy feelings that I had been experiencing since Sammie and I had started spending more time together again were evaporating into thin air.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what kind of dick he got; the man is scum and he treats you like shit. Is he paying you for your services, is that it?” I demanded as I paced back and forth.

I knew that I had crossed the line with that remark but I was way past caring. I was wearing a hole in the floor. I really wanted to understand Sammie but I was having a hard time. I left myself open to the fact that maybe she didn’t know any better. Maybe she was just doing what she had been taught to do. Regardless, it didn’t make it any easier to swallow.

Although I knew full well that it was possible, I did not want to believe it. I knew that Sammie could and would at any given moment get enslaved by a dick, but I had hoped that her self-worth would prevail over this one.

“I’m dick-whipped; not much of an excuse, but it’s the only one I have,” she replied. “When I want to get dicked-down-proper, he is the one. Sorry if that offends you but it’s the honest-to-God truth. But this time it’s different; he is my dick on the side now and I call him only when I got to have it, not the other way around.”

“And what about Malcolm? This man is about to buy you a car. What he is going to say when he finds out you still humping Dickweed?”

“He ain’t going to find out!” she shouted, gathering her things to leave.

I just glared at her. I wanted her to see how truly dissatisfied I was with her, but she still refused to look me in the eye.

I was livid and just shook my head. Dickweed would be the straw to break the camel’s back in our friendship if Sammie was not careful. I wouldn’t have minded him so much if he showed my friend a small measure of respect, but he treated her just like she acted at times, like a whore. At that moment, I lost all respect for Sammie.

S
ammie was working at Waffle House as a waitress. It may not have been the most glamorous job in the world but she had potential to make good money if she were in the right location. It also served another purpose; she met more men than she could shake a stick at.

“Girl, you need to bring your tired ass up to Waffle House and check out some of the men that be coming through there!” Sammie declared.

“I’ll pass,” I said, laughing. “I draw the line with men who think fine dining is found at the Waffle House.”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with WH,” Sammie interjected with attitude. “We have steak, pork chops…it ain’t all about breakfast; we have everything,” Sammie said.

“Hey, don’t get your panties all twisted. If it pays your rent and keeps food on your table, it’s all good,” I said, laughing.

There was something about Waffle House and the South that I had not gotten. Even though I could not see the attraction, that place stayed full at all hours of the night. Sammie only worked enough hours to meet her needs and spent the rest of her time sleeping and fucking. She would work a little harder when she got behind on her bills, but she basically relied upon her men folk to pay her bills. Every week, it was someone else stepping up to add some assistance. She would have any number of men stepping up to the plate to pay her bills and would spend her money on clothes and different hairdos. That was why it was especially hard for me to understand why Sammie still put up with Dickweed’s broke ass.

One day she called me and told me that her lights were out. In the seven years that I had known her, she had never had anything turned off. She was constantly adding furniture to her apartment even though it was rent to own. I didn’t ask her what she spent her bill money on and she didn’t volunteer to tell me.

“Gurl, it is February. I thought that they would not turn off your lights in the wintertime! How much is your bill?” I asked her. I would have floated her a loan if I had had enough money to cover it.

“You don’t even want to know,” she said.

“That bad?” I asked. Her silence told me it was.

“I talked to Malcolm and he is going to send me some money in the mail this week,” she answered.

“Yeah, but in the meantime, it’s too damn cold to be in that apartment!” I didn’t say anything for a few minutes as I was thinking. I did not really believe that Malcolm was going to come through since he still had not gotten that car he had promised Sammie a few months ago.

“You can come spend a few days with me until you get your shit together. I don’t want Tyson and Kendall to get sick.” She must have had her bags packed because they were at the front door in fifteen minutes.

“Thanks, girl, good looking out. We won’t be here but a minute. I’m waiting for Malcolm, you know, my fiancé, to send a check and then we’ll be okay,” Sammie said.

I did not comment on the fact that she would not have a fiancé long if she kept hanging out with Dickweed but that was her business. She continued to juggle her men and somehow managed to keep them separate. Since her fiancé did not come to town often, it shouldn’t have been too hard, but Dickweed had the tendency to call up late at night for a quickie. On the nights her fiancé was in town, Sammie would turn off the ringer on the phone and let her answering machine pick up.

This was a bold move since Dickweed felt that he had her so completely under his spell that he could just pop up at her house and it would be okay. I was waiting for the day that he showed up and she got caught. Mind you, I was not wishing that on her but it was bound to happen.

By agreeing to help Sammie in her time of need, I wasn’t condoning her behavior. We had numerous conversations about the errors of her ways but she was quick to point out to me that she was a grown-ass woman. She would have to answer to all of her choices in the end, but I was not going to allow Tyson and Kendall to be cold. I felt confident that Sammie would pull a rabbit out of the hat any day and pay her bills, so I did not stress about it.

All things considered, I guess I had my own blinders on when it came to Sammie. Had I thought about it in any great detail, I might not have offered her a place to stay. I should have told her just the kids were welcome. She was relying on Malcolm to send her money to pay her bills but this was also the same man that had promised months ago to get her a car and she was still waiting for it.

I had a rather large three-bedroom house so I had the space, and at the time I thought that’s what friends were for.

Sammie took Kevin’s room with Kendall. His room was larger than Keira’s. Tyson moved in Keira’s room with Kevin. Keira moved into my room with me. Tyson, who had just turned fifteen, did not much like the fact that he was sharing a room with a nine-year-old and spent most of his time sleeping on my sofa in the living room. If Kendall minded sharing a room with her mother, she never voiced her objections.

Even though these arrangements were temporary, after a week, Sammie and her clan were wearing on my nerves. Kevin and Keira were completely outdone. They saw Tyson and Kendall doing things that they were not allowed to do and little by little they started to show out.

Tyson was like a human garbage disposal, eating me out of house and home. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he threw his clothes everywhere and insisted upon eating in my living room. He left a trail of dirty dishes all over the place. While I was not anal about cleaning my house, I insisted that my kids pick up their toys after they finished playing with them. I also restricted their play area to their rooms. The living room, which was the first room you saw upon entering the house, was off limits except under my direct supervision. So you could imagine my annoyance with Tyson.

“Sammie, I am about to ring your child’s neck!” I said completely frustrated.

“Join the crowd,” she answered without asking for specifics. If she had threatened one of my kids I would’ve wanted to know why.

“This is serious, Sammie. I don’t allow eating in my front room and Tyson refuses to accept that. If I find one more dish under the sofa I am gonna whip his ass. Now either you talk to him or the next time, it’s gonna be on between us!”

“I told him what you said and he just looked at me like I was an alien speaking a foreign language,” she said.

“That’s ’cause you accept that dumb shit. When I climb on his ass, you better not say a damn thing ’cause I told you it was coming.”

“Good luck. He listens to you more than me anyway. Every time I try to say something to him, he gives me this poof-be-gone look.”

I did speak to Tyson and he became good about cleaning up as long as I was around but when I left to go to work it would be on. He would attempt to hide his mess when I came through the door by shoving dishes under the sofa. However, it never worked because the genius would leave half the plate sticking out so I could see it. Part of me felt that he was doing it for attention, but he really didn’t want that type of attention ’cause I was ready to put it on his ass!

I was going to work every day and coming home to dishes in the sink and no food on the table. Sammie would wait until I got there and ask what was for dinner or she would call me at work and tell me what to bring home. That shit got old real quick.

Stressed out from the long week, I suggested we hit the club. We both got dressed and Tyson agreed to watch over things while we were gone. I had bought a fly dress at the mall earlier that day and was anxious to show it off. It was a shorty-short black dress, cut off on one shoulder and stopping right over my breast. The dress was positively suggestive and I looked good in it. I hooked it up with a rhinestone necklace and earrings. Sammie wore her old standby, a skin-tight white dress with a split straight down the middle that accentuated all her negatives.

It was the same dress she was wearing the night she met Dickweed. The dress was so tight that she couldn’t wear panties. She insisted we stop at the grocery store so she could buy some pantyhose. I was pissed that she didn’t get them earlier, especially since she’d been home all day, but there was nothing I could do at that point but go along with the program.

I pulled up next to her at the grocery store and crunk up the music. I was still applying my makeup and was anxious to get to the club. She opened her door with a loud creak and hauled her ass out of the car.

“Come on,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re coming with me, aren’t you?”

“For what? I don’t need stockings. Just hurry up; we might not get a seat if you take too long.”

“I don’t want to go in there alone.”

Hell, I don’t blame her
, I thought, but I also didn’t want to be seen with her in those bright lights ’cause people might think that we were hookers. My dress was not as raunchy as hers but it was definitely a party dress. Not to mention the fact that everybody’s mother and father was usually in the store at that time of night and would be looking us up and down like we had one-way tickets to hell.

“Sammie, just go get the damn stockings and hurry up!” I really was having second thoughts about going to the club at that point. Yeah, I wanted to show off my new dress but I just didn’t want to show it off in the damn grocery store. And with Sammie exposing all her wares, it would be especially embarrassing.

“No. If you won’t go in with me then we might as well go home!” She pouted. I failed to realize it until I was in the store that if she had gotten mad and gone home, I still could have gone without her ’cause I was driving my own car.

I got out of the car fuming, making it a point to slam the door. Fortunately I did not lock it ’cause the keys were still in the ignition. I saw my coat on the back seat and quickly put it on. It was a short wool pea coat that made me appear like I was naked underneath since my dress was so short, but it was better than nothing.

I did my best to lag behind Sammie, pretending that I was not with her, but that was an exercise in futility since no one wore heels to the grocery store at 11:00 at night. I just wanted to crawl into a hole and pull the opening on top of me. We got the stockings amid several lewd looks and finally set out for the club.

I was determined not to let this little setback ruin my night. I was irritated, especially since I had to wait while Sammie put the stockings on in the car. But watching her trying to squirm into a pair of pantyhose behind the wheel of a car in that tight-ass dress made me loosen up. Now that was some funny shit.

I found a parking space right in front of the club but Sammie had to park across the street. Just punishment, I thought, for her making me go into the grocery store with her. Ditching the coat, I met her halfway across the street so that she would not have to walk all the way across by herself. I did not mind being seen in this attire in front of the club ’cause there were a lot of women dressed just like me. We could not get a seat at a table but found two seats at the bar.

I really didn’t like bar seats because I hated for my legs to dangle, but beggars can’t be choosey, and it sure beat standing up. The other thing that I hated about bar seats was the fact that every guy coming up to order a drink felt compelled to hit on you, and that night all the foul-breathed stinky mother fuckers were stopping right next to me. I just could not understand how they could have left the house without brushing their teeth and putting on deodorant. I tried not to be rude but when this particularly funky brother ambled up to the bar, I pulled out my perfume and sprayed it right in his direction. He was so drunk that he failed to get the message. He proceeded to ask me to dance. I told him thanks but no thanks.

You had to be careful how you dissed niggas in the club these days. If you were too rude about it, they would get loud on you and start calling you every name but a child of God. I had seen a guy the previous week that just hauled off and smacked a sister ’cause she turned him down and I didn’t want any of that drama happening to me. I slipped off the stool when I heard my song start to play and went in search of a partner. I was not like the other women in the club always waiting for a man to ask me to dance. Sometimes I went and found my own partner.

Dickweed came in about an hour later with a pretty, petite girl on his arm. I looked over at Sammie to gauge her reaction, but she acted like she did not even see him. I decided then and there to stop worrying about Sammie so I could get my groove on. I grabbed the first available man that passed my hygiene test and I was not disappointed. My partner was fine and could really move on the dance floor. We danced for three straight records before I had to beg out ’cause my feet were killing me. I liked him. His name was Norman Parker. I had seen him before but either he was tied up or I was. We always stared at each other but this was the first time that we actually had danced. He left me but promised to return later when I had a chance to rest up.

Sammie was still on the bar stool when I got back.

“What’s up?” I said.

“This shit is lame tonight. I think I might go home.”

Translation—she hadn’t danced a lick and therefore the problem was the club, not her. Not to mention Dickweed was there with a fine young thing and wasn’t paying her any attention as usual.

“The night is young,” I shouted in her ear while bobbing my head to the beat. I was really getting the full effect of the music since I was seated near one of the speakers positioned on the floor.