Harlem Girl Lost (8 page)

“Good girl. Now don't you feel better?”

She felt like she was in a calm, soothing dream, unable to respond. Kenny began to rub her breasts, and he undid her blouse. All Jesse could do was gaze back at the most gorgeous boy she had ever laid eyes on. He began kissing and admiring her fresh, youthful breasts as he expertly pulled down her already wet panties. His fingers began to explore her virgin vagina, sending millions of tingling sensations throughout her naked body, causing her to have an orgasm. Kenny took his time as he turned her on her stomach and kissed her with his steaming hot tongue from the top of her neck down to the small of her back with all the gentleness of a lamb. Never in a million years would Jesse have believed that such feelings were possible. In her blissful sexual journey, Jesse exploded multiple times, her juices saturating the sheets.

He turned her over and, without warning, put his huge, throbbing dick inside her dripping wet pussy, ripping her hymen to shreds as he plunged deeper and deeper inside of her. The pain was unbearable, but she could do nothing—the drugs were much too powerful. But soon, as he continued his powerful thrusts, the pain was replaced with euphoric pleasure. Jesse had yet another orgasm as her brain registered unbelievable sensations. Kenny spread her legs wider and pounded faster and faster as he put every inch of his manhood inside of her. Suddenly, his short strokes turned into long strokes as he began
sexing her like a madman. With an animal-like howl, Kenny released a massive explosion deep inside her, then collapsed, exhausted, into her arms.

She lay helplessly on the bed, the heroin still working its magic, as Kenny looked down at her, seemingly ashamed now. He got up and fumbled around the room looking for her panties, cursing when he couldn't locate them. Finally he gave up and tried to slip on her jeans without them. After several minutes of struggling with her clothes, he grew frustrated and simply gave up, leaving her lying half naked on the bed.

Vonda and Lynn
noticed a crowd milling around in one of the back rooms and became curious at what everybody was gawking at.

“Yo, what's going on back there?” Lynn asked.

“I don't know,” Vonda said. “I can't see.” She stood on her tiptoes to get a better view. “Probably some niggas fighting, as usual.”

Lynn smiled. “C'mon, let's be nosy.”

As they walked toward the crowd, Vonda noticed people staring at them. As they got closer, they saw a female body hanging half naked on the bed. Vonda realized it was Jesse.

“Get the fuck out the way!” Vonda yelled, pushing her way through the crowd at the door. She and Lynn quickly covered Jesse and asked her if she was all right. Jesse could only babble incoherently. Lynn turned around and noticed the crowd in the hallway still looking and laughing.

“What the fuck are y'all looking at?” she demanded. She ran to the door and slammed it shut.

“That motherfucker must've given her some type of drugs,”
Vonda said, tears in her eyes. “We got to get her to the bathroom.”

They carried her limp body to the bathroom and put Jesse's head under cold running water. After about twenty minutes of the cold water and puking her guts out, Jesse began to respond to their questions about what had happened. Still slurring slightly, Jesse told them that she and Kenny had been talking, and the next thing she remembered was him offering her some kind of white powder.

“That snake nigger must ve gave you some dope,” Vonda said angrily.

“I didn't know what it was,” Jesse said. “He said it was like aspirin.”

Vonda stood up. “That wasn't no fucking aspirin that dirty bastard gave you. It was heroin, and he fucking raped you.” She gritted her teeth and spoke to Lynn. “Stay here with her. I'm not gonna let that bastard get away with this shit!” Moments later, the bathroom door slammed shut behind her.

When Vonda spotted Kenny she moved coldly in his direction with the stealth of a panther and leaped on him without warning. Vonda hooked off with blind and ferocious rage as she punched and tore into his face. Kenny didn't know what hit him, and he cowered under the barrage of blows until finally his boys pulled her off him. Vonda kicked and fought mercilessly to be released, but they held on firmly.

It took Kenny a few moments to realize that his molester was a girl. Angry, Kenny set out to retaliate, but his boys held him back also.

Tears falling from her eyes, Vonda screamed, “You dirty motherfucker … you gave my homegirl some dope and then
fucking raped her? Nigger, I'm gonna fuck you up,” and she went on the attack again, grabbing his Afro with one hand and punching and clawing him with the other. It took his entire crew to rip Vonda off him as she yelled like a madwoman, “Get your fuckin’ hands off me!”

Not able to get to him, Vonda threatened, “Motherfucker, this ain't over. I'm gonna get your bitch ass for this shit … you best to believe that!”

“Bitch!” Kenny spat. “You scratched my face … are you fucking crazy?”

Vonda sneered, “Bitch? We gonna see who the bitch is when I tell all my brothers what your punk ass called me. And when I do, they gonna bury your punk ass. You can best believe that, you raping bastard!”

Kenny and his boys put their heads down because they knew this wasn't an idle threat. They knew Vonda's brothers, and they knew that they'd murdered niggas for much less.

Seeing the fear in Kenny's eyes calmed Vonda down. Smiling now, she said, “Yeah, I thought so … you fucking chump!” And she walked back to the bathroom.

Half an hour passed
before Jesse began to feel better, only now she was embarrassed and ashamed. Vonda was tired of waiting around.

“Fuck them people out there,” Vonda said. “You ain't got nothing to be ashamed of. It wasn't your fault. So let's get the fuck out of here and go home, okay? We going out there with our heads up.”

Jesse managed a slight smile as Vonda and Lynn helped her to her feet and checked her appearance one last time before they opened the door. The first thing she noticed was that the lights were on and the music was off. The second thing she saw stopped her heart cold: her mother.

When Mrs. Jones spotted her daughter, she walked directly up to her, her face stiff with anger.

“You lying bitch!” her mother snapped, and slapped her senseless.

The partygoers squirmed as they witnessed the vicious smack. Embarrassed beyond belief, all Jesse could do was run toward the door with her mother still beating her from behind. The entire place erupted in hysterical laughter as her mother beat her all the way out the door. She heard their laughter three floors down as she exited the building.

Jesse was on
her knees in the bathroom, violently throwing up. Her worst fear had become a reality—she was pregnant.

Her mother had kept her in the house the entire summer as punishment, but a week before school started, her mother loosened up a little and allowed her to run simple errands and go shoe shopping. This had given her just enough time to go to the free clinic to get a pregnancy test. Vonda had gone with her, and as she'd suspected, the test came back positive—she was three months pregnant. They'd both cried all the way home, Vonda railing because Jesse hadn't let her tell her brothers about the incident.

When she emerged from the bathroom, once again she
dialed the number Kenny had given her at the party. She'd been trying for days but hadn't been able to catch him at home. Maybe this time she would be successful.

“Hello … can I speak to Kenny?”

“Kenny's not here,” a woman answered.

Disappointed once again, Jesse sighed. “Okay, can you tell him Jessica called?”

There was a slight pause at the other end of the line. “Are you the same young lady who's been calling all week?”

A little ashamed, Jesse said, “Yes, ma'am, I am.”

The woman spoke gently. “Listen, Jessica, I'm only telling you this because you sound like a really nice young lady. Kenny has a lot of young girls like you calling for him. Do yourself a favor and find yourself a good young man. Kenny is just like his father, and believe me, I should know.”

Jesse grew curious. “Ma'am, if you don't mind me asking, who are you to Kenny?”

“Why, I'm Kenny's mother, dear!”

Jesse hung up the phone and began to cry. Kenny had lied to her, played her for a fool. And a fool she was, for she had believed his every word.

As time passed, Jesse's stomach and breasts began to swell. She had to make a decision soon, because she could no longer keep ducking her parents. It was time to confront Kenny with the news. Deep down, Jesse prayed Kenny hadn't used her. She naively thought that if she hadn't been so fucked up on the drug, things wouldn't have gotten out of hand. Besides, she reasoned, she was now pregnant with his child, and she had to give this Harlem cat the benefit of the doubt.

The history of
Harlemites is legendary. Some of the greatest masters of game-ology have been from Harlem. Since the 1930s, blacks came from all over the country to settle in Harlem. Most arrived penniless, with nothing but game. Times were so hard back then that you had to survive off your wits or bounce back on the train, bus, or boat that you'd ridden in on, and so people did what they had to do to survive. But with all that game coming together in Harlem, what you got was people who had a different way of carrying themselves. They talked differently and they walked differently. If you saw someone wearing an outfit that you'd never seen before, that person was from Harlem. If you heard somebody talking some slick shit you hadn't heard before, you knew you were talking to a Harlemite.

And then in the seventies came those blaxploitation films like
Superfly
and
The Mack
, and niggers lost their goddamn minds. Those movies singlehandedly set young black boys back fifty years. They created false images and made all those black boys want to be players, drug dealers, or pimps. It was all just an illusion, and over the years every single wannabe would eventually pay for it with their lives—they would eventually get murdered, go to jail, or become junkies—but they fell for it nonetheless. And one of those who did was Kenny.

But Jesse wasn't thinking about that as she walked down 142nd Street in her Catholic-school uniform. Then she spotted Kenny on the corner, surrounded by his boys. She had not seen or heard from him since the night of the party.

Jesse stared at them for a moment, trying to get the nerve and the words together. She had decided that under no circumstances would she have an abortion, so she knew where she stood. If she knew where Kenny stood, she would have a better sense of how to handle things when she told her mother. If things worked out, maybe, just maybe, Kenny would do the right thing and get an apartment for them together before the baby came. Besides, telling Kenny wasn't the hard part— it was breaking the news to her mother that would be doomsday.

As Jesse approached, the voices of the men fell to whispers.

“Kenny,” Jesse said, “I'd like to talk to you.”

As if she were interrupting a major conference, he threw her a bored look. “Fuck you want to talk to me about?”

She was caught off guard by his venom, but she shrugged it off and continued. “I'd like to speak to you … in private.”

He looked at his boys and smirked. “Bitch, anything you want to say, say it right here.”

Jesse could tell he felt compelled to put up this tough front to impress his friends. All the guys Kenny hung out with were much older than he was, but they were bringing him along because he had potential and was building his rep as a player. A nigger's rep was like gold, and a nigger would do anything for it—anything! His boys added fuel to the fire by calling him soft. So Kenny had to prove to the older heads that he could be “dat Nigger.”

She took a deep breath and tried not to let the coldness of his words affect her. Surely, she thought, he would soften up after he heard her news.

“All right, then. Kenny, I'm pregnant!” she said, point blank.

“Aah … sukey sukey now … poppa muthafuckin’ doc,” his boys began to mock.

Kenny appeared to be unfazed by the revelation and spoke almost casually. “So fuck you telling me for?”

She felt momentarily stunned. “ ‘Cause you're the father!”

Kenny barked, “Bitch, I don't know what the fuck you talkin’ ‘bout, so you better take your freak ass up outta here and find the real daddy.”

“Ooh, shit, that nigga on the come-up!” one of the boys shouted, giving the others daps.

Unable to comprehend his denial, Jesse spoke in hurt surprise. “What are you talking about, Kenny? I ain't never been with nobody but you.”

Sucking his teeth, he waved her off. “Yeah, right!” He turned to his boys and pointed his thumb back at her. “All you Catholic-school girls are undercover freaks.”

“Sure you right, nigger!” the boys howled.

Jesse grew angry. “Why you acting like you don't know what happened at the party, Kenny?” she snapped, hands on hips.

“Look here, bitch,” Kenny said quickly. “I remember two things that happened at the party that night. One, you sucking my big black dick, and two, ya momma beating ya ass while you ran out the door!”