Authors: T Styles
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Urban, #African American, #General
“Mam, if what you’re saying is true, we must call the authorities!”
Mrs. Crimply said.
“Yes we must!” Believing Nook she said, “I know for a fact that this
woman is bound and gagged in her own basement. And by the hands of
her own daughter at that. This is ridiculous!”
“Okay, let me call her home first. Just to see if she answers the
phone. If what you’re saying is true, we’ll call the authorities afterwards.”
“Yes. Let’s do that.” Ursula continued. “Because I believe that bitch
had something to do with my daughter getting murdered, too. She must
be taken off of the streets.”
Mrs. Crimply allowed the phone to ring twice before Harmony answered. “Hello.”
“May I speak with Ms. Phillips?”
“Who the fuck is this?”
“I’m sorry, mam. I didn’t mean to bother you. This is the principal at
her twins’ school and I’m told that Ms. Harmony Phillips is in trouble.” Silence.
“Mam, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m Harmony
Phillips I just got back from a cruise and I’m great.” Mrs. Crimply remembered her voice from the past and knew it was her.
“Oh. I see.” Mrs. Crimply said eyeing Ursula. “Well…I’m sorry to
bother you.”
When she hung up she said, “Ms. Phillips is home and fine. You must
be mistaken.”
“I’m not!” Ursula yelled. Nook seemed to be so forthcoming and she
didn’t believe he was lying when he said she was being held hostage. “I
have first hand information from a reliable source.”
“And I just spoke to Ms. Phillips myself.” Mrs. Crimply persisted.
“She’s okay. Just came home from a cruise and everything.” Ursula was furious. She was all ready to run tell that and came up
short. “I’m sorry to waste your time.”
“Not a problem.” Mrs. Crimply said. “But if Madjesty is out of order, maybe I can let her social worker know instead. I mean, I have had
problems from her in the past.”
“She has a social worker?”
“Yes. And I call on her whenever there’s a problem. Maybe she can
check into things.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.” Ursula smiled, feeling like she was closer than ever to getting revenge.
HARMONY
OLDMAMA
“Jace, thank you for the TV. I appreciate it.” I said talking to him on the phone.
His voice sounded thick with sleep. “It’s eight o’clock in the morning. And you calling me to tell me that?”
“Well I wanted you to know how much I appreciate it.”
“Fuck you, bitch. I didn’t do that shit for you. I did it for my daughter.”
“But she’s not watching it now is she?” I asked.
“Jace who is that on the phone?”
Antoinette asked in the background.
“It better not be Harmony again.”
“Shut the fuck up!” He told her.
“One of these days I’ma leave you!”
She continued.
I thought it was funny that she was still in the picture and that after all of these years, he still loved me.
“If that’s how you feel make it today.” Jace said to her.
Silence.
I waited patiently for her response but heard nothing.
“Harmony, there will never be a me and you again. I need you to understand that.”
“Why don’t you come over here and let me suck that dick. The way I use to. I know you’ll like it.”
“I’ve been with Antoinette for fourteen years and we never had a fight. Now that you’ve come back in the picture you’re keeping shit up. I’m not fucking with you. It’s over.”
“Well I don’t want to fuck Antoinette, Jace. I’m trying to fuck you. And you’re still on this phone because you’re considering it.” I laughed. “Don’t you realize the more you hate me, the more you love me?”
CLICK.
I laughed. I had him right where I wanted him, and it was just a matter of time.
The air conditioning blew comfortably in my large room and it felt good to be on my huge soft bed. For a minute I thought about my father, and Estelle, and how they must have felt coming home every night to this room. After going from a dirty dark basement, being fucked by kids and then entering a hospital for days I was finally getting my life back to normal. This was my life. Now all I had to do was settle old scores by tying up a few loose ends.
“Mam, everything is set in place, will you be needing anything else before I leave?” the technician asked me entering the doorway in my room. His brown skin was sweaty despite the air being on and he was carrying a work case tightly in his hands.
“Did anybody see you come in here? Or see what you were doing?” I asked looking behind him.
“No. I was careful.”
“Good.”
“So when can I get paid?” He asked walking deeper into my room.
I grabbed the remote on the bed and turned the TV on. “Bill me.”
He frowned and angrily replied, “But that wasn’t the arrangement. Had I known this, I would’ve charged you full price.”
“Look, either you wait until I pay you or you get nothing. Now get the fuck out of my room. You’re making my head hurt.”
He stood a few moments in silence before saying, “I’m coming back here for my money, and if you don’t have it, there’s gonna be problems.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
When he left I focused back on the TV and my plan for my little girls. I been in the house for a few days and had relied on Jayden for everything. The funny part about it was, whatever I needed she gave me willingly. Whether it be washing my pussy, or buying me something to eat she did it all without batting an eye. She was my personal bitch slave. I had to give myself credit, even though I hated both of my daughters with a passion; I was able to play it off.
Fifteen minutes later when Jayden walked in, my room was a little uncomfortable. It was always uncomfortable whenever I saw her face. She managed to always look like she breezed out of a magazine. New everything. She was carrying a silver breakfast tray and on top of if it was pancakes, fried eggs with cheese and a glass of orange juice. She sat the tray next to me and opened the large cream curtains in my room to let the sun in. I stirred a little before sitting up straight.
“Good morning,” she smiled, “I made you breakfast.”
“Thanks, baby.” She lifted the tray and put it over my lap. I picked up the fork and ate some of the eggs. “It tastes good.”
“Thanks, I can cook a little something-something.” She blushed. “Breakfast anyway.”
“Really? I never knew you could cook like this.”
She was silent before saying, “That’s cuz there wasn’t ever that much food in the house for me to show you.”
I dropped the fork and looked at her slowly. “I’m sorry, Jayden. I guess everything I say or do will remind you of the mother I never was to you.”
“Maybe at first, ma, but I really want us to get along better. I want us to have the relationship I know we can have.”
“Even after everything I did to you?”
“Especially after everything you did to me.” She paused. “I don’t want you holding this over your head forever. I forgive you, ma. I really do. And I know when we speak to Madjesty together, she will forgive you too.”
“Fuck her!”
“What?” She asked confused at my outburst. “I thought you said things were good between you two.”
Damn it! I let her catch me slipping. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about what you just said. About Madjesty.” She paused. “I thought you said things were cool.”
“Wait, what did you think I just said, baby?”
“Fuck her.” She repeated.
I shook my head and laughed. “I knew you heard me wrong. I didn’t say fuck her, Jayden. I said
I fucked up
.” I paused. “
I fucked up
because my daughters will never know how sorry I am for ruining their lives.” She didn’t seem to buy it and neither did I so I kicked my plan into full gear. “Come here. Sit next to me on my bed.”
She sat next to me and I reached in the drawer to my right. Then I handed her the gold earrings with the word Princess in the middle of them. They were the same earrings I’d stolen from Ebony and tucked in my pussy when I was a teenager. “These have been with me for a long time, and I want you to have them.”
She held them in her hand and examined them. “Really? But why?”
“My daddy gave them to me when I was a kid and they mean a lot to me.” I touched her hand. “You mean a lot to me and I want you to have them.”
She looked confused. “But…these are big earrings,” she paused examining them, “and I thought daddy said that granddaddy died when you were a kid. How could you wear them?”
This bitch makes me sick. Why couldn’t she just go with the flow? “He did die when I was a kid. But he bought them for me before he died, so that when I got older I could wear them.” I continued. “When I was a teenager I wore them everyday and now,” I paused, “I want you to have them. This way you’ll have something that you know meant a lot to me. It’s a peace offering from mother to daughter. Do you accept?”
She held the earrings in her hand and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Yes, mama! I do.”
Her embrace caused my stomach to churn but I held it together. I was just about to push this bitch away from me when Madjesty walked into the room half drunk and stumbling.
She looked at Jayden removing her arms from around my neck and said, “Did I interrupt? You two look like you’re about to fuck or something.”
“Madjesty!” Jayden said walking up to her. “Why would you say something like that?”
“Because I can’t believe you in here hugging this bitch. After everything she’s done to us.”
“So I get no thank you for arranging a pick up for you and your little friends in Virginia?” I ask. “You see me and the first thing you do is call me a bitch?”
“You having the man whose dick you made Jayden suck come get us doesn’t make you a model parent.”
When Madjesty called and said she was stuck in Virginia, I called Abdul who lived in DC but close to Virginia. He agreed to pick them up for me as a favor, especially after the treat my daughter gave him. So what Jayden sucked his dick, at least she was home and in one piece. Because from what I heard from Abdul, one of the kids could barely even walk due to a dog bite on his leg.
“You had Abdul pick her up?” Jayden asked.
“It was the only thing I could think of last minute.” I paused.
“See, Jayden, this bitch isn’t sorry for anything she put us through.”
“Mad, mama is sorry for everything. And she admitted that how she treated us when we were kids was wrong. We were just talking about it and everything and to tell you the truth, I believe her.”
Madjesty walked up to me. “Well I don’t believe her.” Then she took a swig of the Hennessy in her hand. Then she looked at me. “So you asked to see me. What do you want? To have me locked up?”
“Locked up for what?” Jayden asked. “You didn’t do anything to get you locked up. Right, mama?”
“Jayden, give me and Madjesty,” I paused, “I mean, me and Mad a few minutes alone.”
Reluctantly she said, “Okay. I’ll be in my room if you need me. Just call.”
When she left I looked as compassionately at Madjesty as I could, “Mad, I’m not going to tell the police what you did to me. And Jayden doesn’t know what you did and I want to keep it that way.”
“What?” she asked stumbling again. “Why?”
“Because it was my fault.”
“Your fault?” She paused. “How?”
“Because had I not done you so wrong as a child, you would never have had to do what you did to me. And as horrible as that experience was in the basement, I’m realizing now it was all my fault.”
Madjesty walked closer to the bed. “How come I don’t believe you? How come I believe you’re up to something?”
“I can’t tell you why you feel the way that you do, but I’m coming to you as honestly as I possibly can, Madjesty. I was wrong for how I treated you when you were a kid, and because of it, I had everything you did coming to me.”
“So you really aren’t going to tell the police about me and my friends?”
“No, I’m not.”
Madjesty took a swig of Hennessy, smiled and sat down on the bed. I wasn’t a brown liquor girl but the bottle had my mouth watering. “You mind if I have some?”
She shrugged and said, “Are you supposed to be drinking? With you coming from the hospital and all.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”
She laughed and handed me the bottle. “It’s your funeral.”
I took the bottle and poured the liquid down my throat. She quickly took it back. I guess we had more in common than I wanted to admit. We both favored liquor. I was immediately relaxed even though the brown makes me frown. I was about to ask for some more when Jayden came running into the room.
“Ma, somebody’s at the door!”
I sat up straight because her anxiousness put me on edge. “Well who is it?”
“It’s three women. One of them is old and she says…”
“She says what, Jayden?!”
“She says that she’s your mother!”