Black & Ugly (22 page)

I move toward my bedroom door and open it. Now the feeling is so strong that if somebody is standing right in front of me, I won't be surprised. I walk to the kitchen with my back toward the living room. It feels scary, like the feeling I get only when I watch horror movies alone. It overtakes me.

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Triple Crown Publications presents . . .

I rinse off a cup and don't lift my head so that my eyes can wander into the dark living room. I'ma start leaving these fucking blinds open more often.

Eventually, I focus on two things. First, I see the dark figure sitting in my living room on the chair in the corner. My heart is beating so fast that it's preventing me from doing what I need to do - get the fuck out and save my own life. Next, I see the door open slightly every time somebody leaves the building or out of an apartment. My lock is popped. That's how he got in.

But why is he still here?

"Get the fuck over here before I blow your fuckin'

head off." My worst fear is realized.

I look at him as he demands my attention. I have to face this man. Why the fuck he ain't just take what he wants and leave? Maybe he realized that outside of a thirty-two-inch TV, I really ain't got shit. Maybe he's pissed because I sleep with my door locked and he couldn't get in while the little money I have stays on me. But that don't make any sense 'cuz he coulda broke the bedroom door just like he came into the apartment.

"Walk over here and sit the fuck down." He is serious, so serious that if I don't comply and I try to run, he'll kill me instantly. I know it.

I walk toward the farthest chair from him, the one closest to the door, in case I build up enough courage to go for it anyway.

"I been sittin' in this house all night since you went to sleep. How the fuck can you sleep? How can you lay
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your head down knowin' what the fuck you did to me?"

I know him. Oh my God, I know him. Why me?

Why is he here? It's Cliff Shaun, my next-door neighbor. I turn tricks with him sometimes when his wife isn't home. Cliff is nice because sometimes he just wants to talk. And, he'll pay me a hundred and fifty dollars to listen. Sometimes I give him head afterwards, but even that's always quick.

He's clean and considerate. He never makes me feel like a whore, and I think of him as one of my main customers. So, keeping his business is very important to me. Losing it could possibly mean having a phone or the lights turned off.

"I don't know what you're talkin' about, Cliff.

What's goin' on? You're scaring me."

"I'M SCARIN' YOU? I'M FUCKIN' SCARIN' YOU?

WHAT ABOUT ME?" he yells as he jumps up. His eyes are red and swollen and he looks like he's been crying all night.

I'm trembling, shaking so bad that I feel myself getting ready to pee right where I sit. I know if he yells at me again, it will be all over this cloth chair and on my floor.

"Cliff, please tell me what's wrong. Maybe I can help you. Maybe I can help you get out of whatever trouble you're in. Did your wife find out about us? I can tell her it's not true. I don't have no problem with it, Cliff."

I'm pleading my case, but he looks like a demon
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ready to rip my soul from my body and tear it into pieces.

"Get dressed, Daffany. Put your fuckin' clothes on," he demands.

I know you are never supposed to leave with someone when they have a gun. You're supposed to stay right where you are and scream your ass off because if you leave, it's all over anyway. 'Cuz, for real, you will die.

I wonder if the same thing goes for this scenario since we're in my apartment. Technically nobody's here, and he can easily do whatever he wants and no one would know. My friends won't even come by until twelve or one o'clock.

"Where are we going, Cliff?" I ask slowly and carefully as to not piss him off any worse.

"We're goin' to the free clinic. I wanna know if you got it or not. I wanna know if you got the same shit you gave to me, my wife and our unborn child. I wanna know if you are that vicious to do some bullshit like that to me. That's where we're going. I wanna know if you're the reason my fuckin' life will never be the same. So, get fuckin' dressed!" I'm feeling weak. I can't keep my head up. I'm dizzy

... I ...

~~~~

I come to and my robe is off but I have on some mismatched pants and shirt. I'm even wearing a pair of tennis shoes I've never worn. I focus as my eyes meet the sun coming through the open blinds. Did I lunch
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out off the E I took last night? Am I still having reac-tions?

I turn around to look at the door and the same fear that overtook me before I blacked out is back again.

Then I realize he dressed me and is dead set on taking me out of this apartment. What's scarier is that, although he's probably still here, I feel safer inside than I do out there. My lock is still broken yet taped shut. I guess it's to prevent the door from moving every time somebody goes in or out of an apartment.

"You up, bitch?" he asks as he walks out of the bathroom. "I took the liberty of going through your shit. I don't see nothin' pertaining to HIV in your apartment. Tell me you got it and we ain't gotta go to no fuckin' clinic. Tell me you got the shit and stop wastin' my mothafuckin' time. Tell me the truth, Daffany!"

"I don't know what's goin' on. I mean, I'm sorry about your wife and baby and all, but I ain't got no HIV, Cliff."

"Well, who in the fuck gave it to me then?" he yells as spit escapes his mouth to meet mine. "I thought this was cool. I thought this was real cool, keepin' time the way we did. I felt like you helped save my marriage.

For real, before you, I ain't wanna touch my wife.

Maybe I ain't know how to touch her no more. We fought too fuckin' much to wanna do anything with each other, let alone touch," he says, drinking a glass of orange juice he got out my fridge.

"I found out I had this shit from a routine check-T. Styles

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up," he explains. He stops and looks at me again. "A routine checkup." He laughs. "Ain't that somethin'?

Now my fuckin' routine checkups will pertain to checkin' my T-cell count and shit. I figured, after finding out I had it, that maybe it was my punishment for being unfaithful to my wife. But then ..." he continues and starts crying hysterically.

"But then she got a prenatal checkup and found out she's infected, too. It's fuckin'
positive
that she has HIV.

I gave her that shit because I fucked wit' you," he insists.

"But Cliff, you even said yourself you were seeing somebody else. Uh ... remember?" I say, not knowing if it's a good idea to mention that at this point.

"But you're a fuckin' whore. Everybody knows that fuckin' whores carry that shit!" he yells. "I didn't get it from nobody else."

His words hurt worse than the first time I had sex, although they should have bounced off me like a bad check. I am what I am, but I didn't want to have it confirmed by a man who was always kind to me up until this point. That rips my heart apart.

"I don't want to hear that shit," he continues. "As a matter fact..." he says then pauses and pulls the gun out his pocket. "I don't feel like talkin' no more. Get the fuck up and let's leave. The clinic downtown will tell you right then and there if you're positive or not.

And if you are, I'ma kill you, the doctor and anybody else in that mothafucka."

Why is this happening to me? I can't go with him. I
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can't. He's made it clear that the moment I step out that door, I ain't comin' back if he learns what the doctor confirmed months ago. Also, more people could end up dead.

"Look, I'm not leaving with you. You're not sane.

Look at how you're acting. You done broke in my fuckin' apartment, went through my shit and now you're telling me I got somethin' I don't know nothin'