Thong on Fire (3 page)

“Oh yeah. That shit sounds familiar don’t it? Well it just oughta ’cause it’s payback time, motherfuckah!”

“Bitch…you set me…” Sincere fell to his knees and leaned on one arm to brace himself.

“Boo!” I screamed. “Oh my God! Baby you okay?” I jumped up and ran over to him. The second I put my hand on him he collapsed to the ground. His eyes rolled around a few times then got stuck up in the back of his head as his body stiffened and twitched, and thick white bubbles started foaming up out of his mouth.

Every bitch at the table next to us started screaming, and the guards came running.

“He’s epileptic!” I yelled. “I think he’s having a seizure!”

The guards pushed me to the side and tried to hold Sincere down as they radioed for help, but who the hell could help him now? Growing up with my daddy I’d seen enough OD’ing junkies to know exactly what was up.

Inmates and their visitors were crowding around being nosy. Babies were crying, kids were still running back and forth all over the place, and shit was just totally erratic.

“Call a fuckin’ ambulance!” I screamed and jumped up and down hoping to create even more chaos. I blended into the crowd as the prisoners were herded back to the holding area and all visitors were ushered back outside to the reception area. A guard came in behind us and announced that today’s visits were being terminated for security reasons, and told us to go back outside and board our buses.

Wifeys and girlfriends started going off. Cursing the guards out like crazy, dragging their kids behind them, mad as fuck that their visit had been cut short.

Me? I was mad too. Yeah, I’d gotten the revenge I had come for, but not only did that stupid fuck Sincere have a real weak system, he had checked out before giving me the address I needed so I could pick up the connect money.

That meant I needed another hustle to get me through the coming winter. The rent on Sincere’s apartment was paid up until the end of the next month, but now that he was history and the Haitians’ drugs were gone, I’d have to find me a new nest to keep my ass off the ground. As I rode that nasty bus back home, I put on my thinking cap and tried to figure out who would be the next victim in my never-ending quest to stay laced.

I
WAS ONE
of the youngest chicks in Harlem to kick a heroin habit.

My father had met my mother in a whorehouse while he was stationed in Korea, and when he came home to Harlem he brought back more than just a pregnant Asian ho. Kimichi was a straight-up duji fiend, and by the time they settled into a cold tenement apartment on 109th Street, Daddy had joined her in playing games with the needle too.

I’d been told all about the day I was born. Some crazy street madness had been waiting to welcome me into this world. My parents were stretched out on a pissy mattress in a dilapidated dope house, drinking wine and sharing some works. Kimichi had slapped her arm red until she finally found a vein. The needle hit the spot, she plunged and pushed, but in the middle of the hit her water had broken. She was soaking wet and Daddy begged her to leave, but Kimichi kept right on getting high, just like I wasn’t barreling down through her uterus and trying to squeeze my way outta her worn-out coochie.

By the time the drugs were gone and Daddy had talked her into going to the hospital, it was almost too late. I slid into this world mad as hell, sucking oxygen and screaming for my next fix.

Kimichi’s nodding ass got arrested, and when the nursing staff whisked me off to the intensive care unit, she screamed out to my father in her thick Korean accent, “Seung Cee! Name she Seung Cee!”

But Daddy was just as buzzed as she was. Seung Cee didn’t mean shit to him. Sun-she? So-see? He turned it over in his mouth a couple of times, and when they asked him what he wanted to name his new daughter he wrote down Saucy for my first name, and then Sarita, after his new girlfriend.

I stayed in the hospital until I kicked that heroin habit, and then they put me in a foster home waiting for family placement. My Uncle Swag came to get me as soon as he could. His wife had recently had a baby girl too, and she wasn’t trying to hear no noise about taking in an ex-addicted infant with special needs who cried all the time. But Uncle Swag wasn’t pressed about my fragile condition. He rescued me from foster care and took me home with him. He took care of me all by himself. Changing my Pampers, fixing me bottles, dealing with my constant crying, wife or no wife.

My daddy couldn’t have known it back then when I was going through all them changes because of that monkey him and Kimichi had put on my back, but the name Saucy would come to fit me from head to toe. Hot, spicy, sassy. Yeah, all that. Saucy. Hottt Saucy. That’s me.

Like a lot of kids who had drug addicts for parents, television raised me. Daddy and Kimichi had gotten me back from Uncle Swag’s custody a few weeks after my second birthday. Both of them had cleaned up and kicked heroin long enough to satisfy the courts. But it wasn’t long before they sidestepped over to cocaine, so I sat in front of the television just to stay out the way. I grew up loving music videos, rappers, and anything else that showcased young black girls looking glamorous, getting the bling, and commanding the spotlight.

We lived in a tiny apartment over a record shop. It was owned by a guy named Al, who was raising his two sons, Taleb and Tareek. Taleb was a few years older than me, and real quiet and serious, but Tareek was my age and we loved all the same things.

Whenever Tareek came upstairs to my house, we would sneak into my room so he could try on all my raggedy clothes, even my panties. He would cup his hands up in front of his bony chest and pretend like he had titties.

“They gonna be real big one day!” he told me, his arms outstretched and his fingers wide like he was holding two watermelons. “Big like this!”

Tareek’s father used to beat his ass every day. By the time we was old enough to start school there were extension cord marks up and down his legs and all over his back, chest, and neck. He stayed upstairs at my house as much as he could, but one day my daddy got drunk and laid on the couch with a cigarette burning in his hand. Our sofa caught on fire and smoke was everywhere.

After that, Tareek wasn’t allowed upstairs no more, so we played downstairs in his father’s shop where we would listen to music all day. We’d watch endless videos on BET, and make up our own stylish moves in the mirror. I’d shake my little ass and Tareek would shake his little ass too.

“I’ma be Harlem’s top video girl when I grow up,” he bragged one day, jumping in front of me in the mirror and swaying his narrow hips from side to side.

That shit pissed me off because Tareek was skinny and buck-toothed with peasy hair. Everybody knew I was the pretty one. People liked to put their fingers in my curly hair, and strangers stopped me on the street and told me I had beautiful eyes and a gorgeous smile. Who the hell did Tareek think he was? I elbowed him in his stomach and then grabbed the back of his shirt and slung him down to the ground.

Tareek had his info twisted and I was determined to make sure he got it right.

There wasn’t but one top bitch gonna come outta Harlem, and that was
me
.

Uncle Swag used to have a daughter named Paris. She died the spring we both turned eight. Paris was one of them spoiled-ass rich kids who made you wanna beat the hell outta them. She lived downtown in what seemed like a mansion to me. Compared to the freezing-in-the-winter, boiling-in-the-summer rattrap I lived in, it probably was.

Me and Paris were the same age but we were nothing alike. I lived with Kimichi and her pimp lover, King. Paris had a mother and a father and a baby brother, and I didn’t have nobody. I was poor and dirty, and Paris walked around looking like a sparkling black princess. I lived in a dilapidated Harlem apartment upstairs from a record shop, and Paris lived in a high-rise suite downtown. My daddy had gotten shot dead trying to rob a check-cashing place, and Paris’s daddy was a big willie who worked for the state, a shot caller who rolled with important playas and carried big bank. My mother was a street junkie and Paris’s mom was a sanctified housewife. I crawled into a grimy bed every night, catching feelings when my panties got snatched off and my legs was yanked open. Paris rested peacefully in a platform bed with stars painted on the ceiling and frilly lace curtains hanging over her head.

“Turn that shoe around the other way,” Paris tried to boss me. It was the Friday before Easter and the only reason she’d asked Uncle Swag to bring me to her house was so she could show off all the new gear her mother had bought her.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I snapped, bending up her white patent-leather shoe and shoving it back in the box damn near sideways. Her new clothes were thrown all over the place. The bed, the dress, the floor…most of them sporting price tags so high they boggled my mind. She had name-brand everything. Sailor dresses, party dresses. Panties. Socks. New denim short shorts and back-out tops to match. Skirts with flowing peasant tops. Three pairs of Nikes, some Timbs, and two pairs of shiny shoes with low heels. Cute little summer outfits that would have looked too fly on me. She even had one of those dressy knit ponchos and a real Gucci purse in the same shade.

“These shits is ugly anyway,” I said, tossing the shoe box to the floor with a smirk. “You shoulda got something with a high heel on it. Don’t nobody like flat shoes with buckles on them no way.” I mighta been talking mad shit out loud, but deep inside I woulda died for them patent-leather shoes, and was wishing I had Paris’s whole life.

Uncle Swag was my father’s little brother and I coulda ate me a mouthful of his ass. He worked some kinda high-post government job and people all over Harlem swarmed around him trying to shake his hand and get his attention. Like Daddy, Uncle Swag was tall with sexy bowlegs and had pretty chocolate skin, but that’s where the resemblance ended. Daddy had been a grimy, peasy-head, ball-scratching, stank-breathed needle fiend, and Uncle Swag was paid and shiny, holding swole pockets and pushing a jet-black Maserati. He was down with people on the streets and looked and smelled good, and whenever he came around I told myself it was just to see me. I had even convinced myself that he liked me better than he liked his nappy-headed daughter Paris.

“Sweet Saucy!” He would laugh real loud and grab a handful of my long curly hair before twirling me around and picking me up. “Girl you getting taller and prettier every time I see you. You been a good girl? Tell Uncle what you want for your birthday.”

I lived to see my Uncle Swag rolling up to my block in that big black whip with the deep cream interior. I would sit in the window for hours fantasizing about how much doe I’d have if I was his daughter, all the shoes I’d sport, all the designer clothes and jewelry I’d possess, and all the smart shit I’d talk, if only I had been born Uncle Swag’s baby girl instead of Daddy’s!

Whenever he pulled up to the curb with those spinners moving, niggas would scatter from their apartments like roaches, rushing over to admire his g-ride. The young boys on the block would be fighting each other trying to get appointed to stand guard over Uncle Swag’s whip.

I knew Uncle Swag felt real sorry for me and Kimichi ’cause my daddy had gotten himself smoked. Sometimes he came by with money for Kimichi, and he was always packing a bag full of food for me. Cereal and milk, Pop-Tarts and franks, and always a little bit of fresh fruit too. I knew Uncle Swag worried about me and I played that shit up to the max.

“Saucy,” he would put his big strong hands on my shoulders and say. “You ain’t nothing but a little pork chop bone. I brought you some pretty red apples, baby, and don’t you give nobody none of them either! You eat every last one of ’em by yourself, you hear?”

But Uncle Swag could keep his Pop-Tarts and his little red apples ’cause right now I had my eye on his daughter’s orange Gucci purse. It was calling me and I wanted it bad. I didn’t own nothing that even came close to looking good with it, but that didn’t stop me from feening for it anyway.

“Hey! Lemme hold that orange Gucci,” I told Paris, making my voice sound real sweet even though I hated her. “You wearing that cute yellow and blue dress to church, right? Lemme get your orange Gucci until next weekend when I come back over.”

Paris was sitting there rubbing the back of her neck. She looked up at me with an evil face and said, “Why you so worried about what I’ma be styling for Easter Sunday? You going to church too?” She covered her mouth and giggled. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You ain’t got nothing to wear.”

I stood there and took that shit while Paris laughed her head off. As much as I hated myself for it, I continued to beg. I wanted that damn purse!

“Come on, Paris. You got all them cute bags hanging up in your closet—”

“And they gone stay hanging up in my closet too.”

“Damn! I don’t wanna keep the bag forever! My birthday is coming up soon. I know you gone let me hold it for my birthday.”

“Then you know wrong.”

I muttered, “Ugly bitch.” Then I snatched one of her new skirts off the bed and flung that shit across the room.

Paris just shrugged, rubbed her neck again, and gave me one of her bitch-I-got-ten-times-more-gear-than-your-ass-will-ever-have looks.

“You real ugly, you know. Baldheaded, too.”

Paris just shrugged. “Chill, Saucy,” she said. “With your dirty mouth. You know how my daddy rolls. I might be ugly, but at least we ain’t broke. But don’t worry. I’ma let you play all this stuff.
After
I show it off a few times.”

No thanks, bitch
, I thought to myself, staring at her as she got down on the floor and started polishing her toenails some ugly blue color. Something grimy flashed inside of me and I got real hot. I swung my foot and kicked that bottle of nail polish so hard it flew across the room, hit the mirrored closet door and cracked wide open. Blue goo spilled all over Paris’s white carpet. It splashed the toe of her new Timbs, got all over the flap of that bright orange Gucci purse I’d been begging for, and dotted the hem of the pretty peasant skirt I’d thrown on the floor too.

I stared at the mess I made and felt a little better inside. But Paris wasn’t fazed at all. She never said a word. She just got up and walked over to her dresser and got another bottle of nail polish in the same color. She clamped the long end between her back teeth and twisted it open, then calmly went back to polishing her toenails again.

“Bitch.”

“Whatever, Saucy.” She squinted as she dabbed polish on her little toe. “But too bad you messed up that Gucci bag. If you had begged just a little bit longer I woulda let you have it.”

Fuck Paris and all her fancy shit!
I thought, stomping toward the door. When I grew up I was gonna get mine in this world. I was gonna take every damn thing I wanted, and I wouldn’t have to beg nobody for nothing! I turned around at her doorway, then marched right back over to where my cousin sat. I swung my foot again and sent that second bottle of polish flying through the air too.

I was still mad with Paris when Aunt Ruthie called us into the kitchen to eat dinner. I walked in there dragging my feet ’cause I hated everything she cooked. All them damn vegetables and lettuce and baked meat that didn’t taste like nothing. I wasn’t big on stuffing my stomach anyway, but if I had to eat, then gimme some hot chicken wings from the Chinese man on the corner, or maybe some barbeque ribs and fries, or some Ramen noodles with a frank sliced up in it.

Aunt Ruthie didn’t really like me and I knew it. Whenever I came to her house she made me strip naked outta my Harlem clothes at the door and then get straight in the bathtub so I could be scrubbed clean.