Christmas in the Hood (12 page)

Noelle felt like a character on HBO’s hit series
The Wire.
It was
certainly a familiar story line. And since the show was filmed on the streets of Baltimore, it was almost surreal. Inside one of the cruddy dilapidated houses was her mother. Noelle was just having trouble remembering which house it was.

“That one, Noelle,” Paris stated quietly. “The one with the green shutters. Remember?”

“Yes, I remember.”

Noelle pulled over in front of the white house with the green shutters and cut the Camry’s engine. It was déjà vu. How many times had she played out this exact scene? She couldn’t count.

To the ordinary eye, nothing about the house remotely looked like it was a crack house—other than its being in a bad neighborhood. There were no neon signs announcing “Crack House Here.” Noelle forced herself to keep the memories at bay. The last time she had been here it was a living hell. A goddamn nightmare. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself.

“Wait here, Paris. If you have any trouble, blow the horn.”

“Okay.”

Paris looked at the house then at her sister again. She
hated
this part. They never knew if their mother was dead or alive. At times Paris hated her mother for putting Noelle through such hell. She didn’t really worry about herself because as long as Noelle breathed air she would make sure Paris had everything she needed.

“Maybe we should leave, Noelle. If Mom wants a shitty life, then that’s on her.”

“Watch your mouth, Paris. Now stay here.”

Paris closed her mouth immediately. She instantly regretted
using the curse word. She knew Noelle hated for her to curse, but she got so angry about her mother. Lately she was angry all day, every day.

Before Noelle got out of the Camry, she zipped her coat and looked around. The street was empty, but she knew it had eyes. Plenty of them. The streets were always watching.

Before Noelle closed her car door she handed the Club to her sister. Paris had the right idea about their mother, but Noelle felt obligated to help. This was, however, going to be the last time. She’d done one too many of these pickups. If her mother wanted to stay high and nod, tricking in and out of cars while constantly on the city streets, then she could damn well do it on her own. Noelle planned to take Paris and move to another city or, even better, another state. She knew how to hustle hard and make a home anywhere. Besides that, she had a job interview in New York in just a few days. If things worked out, she would take Paris and leave sooner rather than later.

Noelle didn’t even bother knocking on the door. The people who were in the house were always too damn high to notice anything, let alone answer the door. Soft lamplight barely illuminated the rooms as she passed through. She couldn’t really see anything, but she didn’t need to.

The strong foul stench of urine assaulted her nostrils. Dark brown shit stains covered the lower part of various walls, because druggies often couldn’t hold their bowels. Noelle had learned that the hard way the last time she had come to fetch her mother. On the way out of the house her mother had just stopped, dropped her pants, bent over, and explosively shit on the pea green peeling wallpaper.

She thought for a moment and tried to remember where her mother had been the last time she was here. Upstairs bedroom, Noelle thought. Last time she had gone upstairs and walked in on her mother performing a blow job with a ten-dollar bill in her hand. With the constant need to get high, pussy was a bargain.

Just as she climbed the first two stairs, she heard voices coming from the basement. Noelle changed directions and headed there instead.

The rickety stairs creaked beneath her feet but didn’t alarm anyone. She was careful not to touch the broken wooden banister for fear of getting splinters from the jagged edges or getting punctured by one of the many rusty nails. An odor mixed with smoke and liquor and something else that was unidentifiable assaulted her.

The basement was barely lit. Night-lights were plugged into a few of the electrical outlets. But it was bright enough for Noelle to see the faces of the men, women, and teenagers sitting together in various corners.

Noelle’s heart sank. She had hoped against hope that her search wouldn’t produce anything. And when she hadn’t seen her mother’s car in the area, she had an even greater hope. Hope, however, had turned into her own personal hell.

Huddled together with a group of men was her mother, completely naked. Roberta Holiday didn’t even have on a pair of underwear. Her body was filthy with a mixture of dirt, blood, and dried semen, probably from several different men. Noelle followed the trail of blood up to its source. It seemed that someone had bitten her mother on her right breast, and the wound was still slowly oozing blood. Her hair was tangled and all over her
head, like a wild woman’s. Roberta Holiday looked ridiculously horrible.

How could you do this to me
, Noelle thought. She was so pissed off, so fucking tired of being angry all the time. She was tired, period. She was supposed to be the child, but instead here she was being the parent yet again. All she ever wanted was a mother who baked chocolate chip cookies and gave a fuck about her day. Instead, she had a mother who would rather parade herself around high, naked, and kissing any Tom, Dick, or Harry—literally— than be with her children.

She walked straight over to her mother and lifted her up as if she were a small child. “Come on, Mom. It’s time to go home.”

Her mother just smiled and laughed. “But I don’t wanna go home. I wanna stay with my friends and play,” Roberta slurred.

“I said, it’s time to go home,” Noelle repeated forcefully. “But I have so many friends. And this.”

Roberta produced a glass pipe virtually out of thin air. It was still cloudy with smoke, as if it had just been used.

“Where are your clothes? Where’s your purse?”

Roberta just laughed, which made all her new “friends” laugh as well.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t fucking know.”

“Leave Bobbie alone,” a man slurred at Noelle and staggered toward her.

Noelle was a quick thinker. She always had been. That was the only way she had managed to survive and keep her sister safe in the process. So when the asshole began coming toward her, she didn’t hesitate. She grabbed the wooden banister, twisted, and was happy when the splintered wood gave way. She swung hard
and was rewarded when she heard the dull thump of the wood against the side of the asshole’s head. His shriek of pain and the blood on his cheek was further confirmation that a few of the protruding nails had met their mark.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Noelle whispered, and literally dragged her mother behind her. She looked back for any signs of her mother’s belongings but saw nothing. No shoes, clothes, purse … nothing. All she saw were men’s dicks flapping as they tried to stand but kept falling on their asses.

And of course she heard the screams of the asshole who now had more than his personal wood to play with.

Paris jumped out of the car with the Club in her hand when she saw her sister nearly running out of the house. Then she took a closer look and realized that the woman behind Noelle was their mother. She didn’t have a stitch of clothing on, and she was laughing even louder with each step. When the older woman tripped over an uneven section of the walkway, Noelle literally dragged her mother along by the arm.

“Hey, what the fuck you doin’? It ain’t time for Bobbie to leave yet. She owes me another round of pussy. Another goddamn round,” a man yelled after them. “You’re not fuckin’ leavin’ yet. You hear me, you bitch?”

Noelle shoved her mother into the car and hurried around to the driver’s side just as the man came running toward the car.

“Paris, put your seat belt on.”

Noelle’s tires screeched as she sped away from the curb. She tilted the rearview mirror to get a better view of her mother in the backseat. Well, at least the woman who was supposed to be her mother. At the moment, Noelle was looking at a stranger.

Roberta Holiday looked as if she didn’t have a care in the world. She sat smiling and staring out the window as if it were a perfect summer day. That pissed Noelle off. Their mother had no right to disrupt their lives. It was all a bunch of bullshit, and Noelle was so goddamn tired of it all.

She had considered giving her mother her coat, but thought better about it. Since her mother was high enough to think and act like a coat didn’t matter, then Noelle sure as hell wasn’t going to act like it mattered either.

She was
so
angry. Angry for herself and angry that Paris had to be exposed to such a sickening disease. It hurt for Noelle to see her mother in such a condition, let alone for an eleven-year-old to see it all.

Changes have to be made
, Noelle thought. She had to take her sister away from this hell they were dealing with. New York was starting to look better every day. All she had to do was get the job.

Paris looked up at her sister with her big chocolate eyes and uttered, “Thank you, Noelle.”

“You’re welcome, baby girl.”

Noelle fought to keep the tears out of her voice. They weren’t sad tears. They were tears of utter frustration. She had finally just accepted her mother’s fate. After all these years, Noelle realized her mother was simply a member of the walking dead.

Chapter Four

A
s soon as Noelle ushered her mother into the house she started issuing orders then began to make a pot of coffee.

“Paris, can you get Mom’s robe, please? Then I want you back in bed. You can still catch a few hours sleep before school.”

“Sure,” Paris relented. “But don’t you want my help with Mom? I’ll be okay for school. I’m not a little kid anymore, Noelle. You know I can handle it.”

“Thank you, baby girl, but we’ll be fine. I know you’re growing up, but I’ll get Mom situated then get myself ready for work.”

“Okay. But let me know if you need anything else.”

Paris darted quickly up the stairs and retrieved her mother’s red silk robe. Then she did as she was told and went back to bed. Reluctantly.

*  *  *

Roberta’s high was starting to come down, and reality was setting in. For the first time in nearly twenty-four hours she realized the gravity of the situation. Or at least she thought she did. She wasn’t quite sure. She was fighting through a thick fog to clear her mind. And attempts at doing that were making her want another hit. There was no way she was going to make herself dope sick. She couldn’t handle that. Not right now. Anything but that … anything. She sat at her oak dining table and fought like hell to hold on to her high, but reality was crashing down on her too quickly.

She hung her head and looked down at her robe. Where the
hell were her clothes? she wondered. She barely remembered anything. She fought hard to think and remember the events of the past day. If her life wasn’t so pathetic, she would laugh. Despite the chill of her skin, she was drenched in sweat. She cradled the mug filled to the brim with black coffee that Noelle had given her.

Roberta could barely look her daughter in the eye. What could she say? Sorry? She didn’t think Noelle would fall for that one again. So she remained silent and thought about a likely excuse to give her daughter, and most of all she tried to remember what had happened.

Dammit Roberta, think!

Roberta remembered going to the ATM machine the previous morning and finding out that her account was overdrawn by four hundred dollars. She was feeling so sick, and she needed a fix so badly. She remembered coming back home and searching both her daughters’ rooms for any money whatsoever. She’d found twenty dollars on Noelle’s nightstand and had taken it and bought a couple rocks, but they weren’t enough even to take the edge off. They were just enough to keep her from puking her guts out and getting the shakes.

But she needed more money, so she went … she went …
Where? Where would I go for money?

The memory froze her face in agonizing terror.

Carlos!

“Noelle, where’s my purse?”

“I don’t fucking know. You tell me. I’m not the one who got high and can’t remember a goddamn thing.”

“What the hell do you mean you don’t fucking know? Where
the fuck is my purse?” Roberta jumped up from the table and started searching. She looked in stupid, odd places such as under the dining room table and inside the china cabinet.

She couldn’t have lost the money.
She had to have the money.

Oh Lord! All that money. Roberta had the original ten thousand that Carlos had loaned her, plus the money she had taken, which was another nearly fourteen thousand dollars. She got down on her hands and knees so she could look underneath the furniture.

“He’ll kill me,” she whimpered as she lay her head down on the carpet and openly sobbed. “I’m fucking dead!”

Noelle’s blood ran cold. Time stood still as she watched her mother sobbing frantically on the floor. Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse. What had her mother done now?

“Mom, what are you talking about? Who’s going to kill you?”

“Noelle, where the hell is my purse? Why didn’t you bring it with us?” Roberta stood and screamed at the top of her lungs. She was beyond frantic. She was hysterical.

Noelle screamed right back at her. “I didn’t see your purse. I looked. No purse, no clothes, nothing. You didn’t have anything. Only a crack pipe, Mom. A fucking crack pipe!”

There was no way she was going to be blamed for her mother’s actions. It was ridiculous. Once she would have taken responsibility for whatever went wrong during her mother’s drug trips, but never again. Things were definitely different now.

Roberta rubbed a hand across her face and wiped her tears. She needed another fix. Just enough to allow her to think again. Just enough to take the pain away. Enough to erase the thoughts of Carlos killing her. But she knew she would have no such luck.
At least, not with her judgmental bitch daughter hovering over her, asking her to remember things that she couldn’t. If Noelle was a good daughter she would have paid attention to all the details and found her purse.