Thug-A-Licious Read online

  He swung his clipboard so hard and fast that for a second Carmiesha didn’t know what had happened. She fell back against a display cabinet, and shampoos and gels hit the floor and broken glass and products went flying everywhere.

  “W-w-wha—” She pressed her fingers to her temple and felt a stream of blood run down the side of her face.

  She stared at her bloody fingers then looked up, and that’s when he punched her in the face, cracking her nose.

  “Aggh!” Carmiesha screamed and fell to her knees. The old cop kicked her square in the head with his hard black shoe, and Carmiesha found herself laid out on her back.

  “No!” she screamed, rolling over and balling up in a knot.

  The younger cop was on her now. He came over swinging his nightstick, whacking her on the legs, back, and even on her head.

  “Please…,” Carmiesha begged through the blood that was dripping from her nose. She tried to crawl up under one of her styling chairs, and one of them grabbed her foot and dragged her back over.

  “Help!” Carmiesha cried, screaming as loud as she could. “Somebody help!!”

  She kicked her foot so hard her shoe came off in his hand, then grabbed at a bottle of designer spritz off the floor and threw it at him, shattering the glass.

  “Stupid bitch!” one of them cursed. And then both of them were on her. They beat her with their sticks and stomped her with their feet. There was no way of dodging their blows. And no way of getting to a pair of her cutting scissors or even a curling iron. Carmiesha twisted and rolled all over the floor bleeding and in deep pain and leaving blood everywhere. At one point she found she’d rolled close to the back of the shop, and she managed to jump up and run through the agony as she tried to get near her office door.

  They dragged her back out to the middle of the shop, then whipped out small pistols and started firing at her feet.

  “Dance, bitch!” they laughed as she hopped and jumped, slipping and sliding all over the place. She had lost one of her shoes during the struggle, and now broken glass cut deeply into her foot. “Somebody told us to make sure your ass danced!”

  Carmiesha was so scared she ran toward her office again, ready to bust through the door without even opening it. The younger cop snatched her by the back of her sweater, catching her bra and ripping it open, freeing her breasts. He kicked the door in and flung her into the small office where she fell and split her forehead on the edge of a file cabinet. Carmiesha screamed even louder as she hit the floor, gushing blood. Her shoulder felt like it went up in flames, and ledgers and sample products rained down on her, battering her some more.

  “Next time,” the older cop said, unzipping his pants and reaching inside for his dick, “you got a complaint about the collection procedures on this street”—he stood over Carmiesha stroking himself up. “You make sure you call the station again, okay?”

  Carmiesha scooted backward as far as she could, and when her back was against the wall all she could do was close her eyes as he bent down next to her. She was moaning and shivering in pain and fear as the sweaty cop rubbed his hard dick all over her sweater, over her breasts, down by her pussy, and over the curves of her hips.

  She was in shock, trembling and waiting for him to rip her clothes off, but to her surprise he just kept fondling her, stroking her legs and nipples and rubbing the head of his dick everywhere he could.

  Seconds later his body jerked, then he fell against her breathing hard. Carmiesha kept her eyes closed until she felt the cop rock back on his knees and stand up. She heard his slow footsteps fading as he walked around her desk and headed toward the door.

  She laid there crying for what seemed like forever. She had no idea how much time had passed, and when she heard someone banging on her front door her eyes darted around as she looked for a weapon.

  “Carmiesha!” she could hear a man’s voice calling for her outside. “Carmiesha! It’s Mr. Wade, baby! C’mon sweetie. Open the door!”

  Carmiesha moaned and forced herself to sit up. There were smears of off-white cum all over her red sweater, and she felt like throwing up.

  It took her a long time, but she managed to get through the demolished shop and to the door, mostly on her hands and knees. The moment she got it unlocked Mr. Wade pushed it open and she collapsed at his feet, her whole body hurting and shaking in fear.

  “Goddamn those motherfuckers!” he cursed, gathering Carmiesha in his arms and pulling her back into the shop. “You shot, baby? Are you shot?”

  Carmiesha couldn’t answer. He locked the door behind him and grabbed a stack of towels, cutting on the water and wetting a few of them down in the sink.

  He ran back over to Carmiesha and began wiping the blood from her body. He cried softly right along with her as he cleaned cuts and bruises that would have broken a grown man down.

  “You gone be okay,” he told her after finding no bullet wounds. He grabbed another towel and wiped her off some more. “You gonna be ok—”

  Suddenly Mr. Ward stopped and peered at Carmiesha’s chest and stomach. When he realized what the sticky white substance clinging to her sweater was, he cursed out loud in disgust. “Them sick motherfuckers!” he hollered. “Them lousy no-good motherfuckers!!”

  Mr. Ward never did open up his business that day. Neither did Carmiesha. He stayed with her throughout the morning, and took her home in a taxi after digging pieces of glass out her foot and making sure she felt strong enough to walk.

  “It ain’t right,” he kept saying over and over, as he helped her get in the building past all the nosey eyes in the windows and on the stoop. “It just ain’t right.”

  Carmiesha agreed with him, but she could only nod. Mere’maw damn near passed out when Carmiesha came dragging into the apartment leaning on Mr. Ward with her forehead cut open and her nose so swollen she had to breathe through her busted mouth.

  “Call the ambulance!” Mere’maw screamed. “Call the police!”

  Carmiesha stumbled inside and cried out. “NO! Don’t…Mere’maw. Don’t call nobody…please.”

  Word got around real quick on the streets, and it wasn’t long before Carmiesha had a roomful of visitors. She’d been sleeping and moaning, feeling every single punch, kick, and blow in her dreams, and when she felt a cool hand on her forehead she opened her eyes ready to scream.

  “It’s me, Muddah,” Kathy said, shaking her head at what had been done to Carmiesha’s face. “Remy, Vikki, and Paula are here too. That ho Yasmere been running her mouth up and down the block saying you took a mad beatdown, so we came to see if you needed anything.”

  Carmiesha felt tears slipping from her eyes and all she could do was moan as the four girls sat on her bed and tried to soothe her. Paula ran down to the Spanish store and got a can of chicken soup, while Kathy and Remy washed the blood off of her that Mr. Ward wasn’t able to get. They wrapped ice cubes in a washcloth and put it on her nose, checked the cuts on her foot, and Kathy used her finger to pat some first aid ointment all over her forehead and torn lip.

  Mr. Ward had only been able to get her partway on the bed, and she winced and cried as they tried to slide her over and get her under the covers.

  “Damn, Muddah,” Vikki said. “Why you holding your arm like that? It looks broke like hell. What happened to you, girl? Who fucked you up like this?”

  “Girls,” Carmiesha whispered around her bubbled-up lip. “Some girls on the train.”

  “You know them bitches?”

  Carmiesha managed to shake her head, although it hurt like hell just to do that.

  “No…they was from Brooklyn.”

  Carmiesha stayed in bed for over a week. Kathy and the other baby mamas took turns bringing her and Mere’maw food. Remy took all the dirty clothes in the house down to the Laundromat and washed them, and one afternoon Carmiesha woke up and heard Vikki and Paula in the kitchen laughing over the sound of water running and dishes clanking in the sink.

  Two weeks later she was back in her shop. Mr. Ward had
hired somebody to get it cleaned up, and Carmiesha was grateful. Her left arm was in a sling and by the end of the day she had to use one of Mr. Ward’s canes to walk, but she told everybody, including Ya-Yo, that she’d gotten jumped on the train by a bunch of girls from Brooklyn.

  “Them Brooklyn bitches are crazy,” Toya said, shaking her head. The shop was full, and she was working overtime trying to handle Carmiesha’s clients and her own too.

  Carmiesha just nodded and looked down at the floor.

  That Friday evening after everybody left and the shop was closed down, Carmiesha took a long white envelope from her desk drawer and stuffed a bunch of bills in it. She licked the flap, and then put some tape on it just to be safe. With tears in her eyes, Carmiesha limped over to the counter and took a pen from a holder. She wrote a single word on the outside of the envelope.

  It said TRIPLE.

  But not everybody bought that bullshit lie Carmiesha told about getting jumped by some girls on the train. Ya-Yo had listened as Carmiesha described her so-called girl-beating and the more she talked, the more she could see Ya-Yo getting swole.

  “It’s over, baby,” Carmiesha insisted after he grilled her with questions for the fifth or sixth time. He was asking her all kinds of shit like, “So what stop did you say they got on the train?” and “How many of them was it, again? What did them girls look like? How you know they was from Brooklyn if you was riding the train to the Bronx? And how your foot get all cut up and shit, Carmiesha? What? You was on the train fighting with your shoes off or somethin?”

  No matter what Carmiesha said he was still suspicious. She knew Ya-Yo was a good man, and he wasn’t hard like a lot of these niggahs out on the avenue was. He could hold his own and he wasn’t nobody’s bitch, but his heart was too big to be gangsta, and he cared about old ladies and respected black women like they was queens.

  Pimp and his street soldiers woulda ate Ya-Yo’s ass up, Carmiesha knew, and she had to get stank with him to make him stop questioning her.

  “Aiight, Meesha,” he said after she cursed him out real good and told him to stop making her relive that shit over and over again. “You can tell that story all day long and it still won’t come out sounding right. I don’t know what the fuck happened to you, but my mind is working to figure that shit out. Everything in due time.”

  A few weeks passed and Carmiesha’s bruises faded and her bones stopped aching so bad. She kept what had happened to her a secret, and even stopped going next door to get fish sandwiches from Mr. Ward. She was just too embarrassed about him seeing her all fucked up with that niggah’s cum all over her clothes. Every time she thought about it she got enraged and scared at the same time. Cause if Pimp and his crew had that kinda pull where shiesty-ass cops was covering for him, then there was no need in telling nobody shit. She was born and raised right here in Harlem, and she knew the runnings like the back of her hand. If she opened her mouth again and started making noise there wouldn’t be no more ass-kickings and dick-rubbings. The next time they’d find her ass raped and dead in somebody’s alley or abandoned lot, and that would be the end of that.

  So Carmiesha did the same thing every Friday evening after she closed the shop. She took the money she’d held back during the week and put it in the envelope she’d gotten that morning, then put that shit under the mat in the back alley.

  But one night right before the shop closed there was a commotion on the street outside, and one of the female boosters who sold clothes on the corner came busting through the doors of the salon.

  “It’s about to be on and cracking out there! Them motherfuckers getting ready to get out the gats and spray this whole damn street up!”

  Of course everybody ran over to the door instead of running away from it.

  Carmiesha looked out the window and was surprised to see Ya-Yo’s UPS truck double-parked outside. This was about the time he usually swung by every night to pick up her bank deposit, and she got worried when she realized he wasn’t in the truck.

  By now people were spilling out on the sidewalk up and down the street. When Carmiesha walked out and saw who was beefing, she damn near panicked. It was Ya-Yo. Up the street beefing and threatening one of them grimy niggahs who rolled with Pimp.

  Carmiesha couldn’t think of anything worse that could be happening.

  But if she went out there and tried to calm Ya-Yo down, she’d punk him in front of Pimp’s boy, and that would be catastrophic. If she stood there and watched and didn’t do shit, her man might get hurt.

  “Don’t you worry, Carmiesha.” Mr. Ward had come up behind her. “That young brother ain’t doing nothing but being a man. He ain’t stupid, and he ain’t blind. He doing what any man worth his drawers would do if he thought somebody mighta fucked with his woman the way them boys fucked with you.”

  Carmiesha just stood there looking and feeling worried. “But I never told him nothing, Mr. Ward. I would never put him in no spot where he had to go up against them crazy niggahs over me.”

  Mr. Ward shook his head. “Some things a man just knows, Carmiesha. You didn’t have to tell him the truth. That don’t mean he couldn’t still smell your lie. Let him do what his manhood is telling him to do. You his woman, and it’s only right.”

  Chapter 21

  Carmiesha had never hit Jahlil in his life, but right now she felt like kicking his little ass up and down the street.

  “Boy,” she told him as she tried to control herself. By now he was taller than her, so she had to look up at him to fuss. “You really need to think about what you just said about Ya-Yo. That man has never done nothing except try to be cool with you. For you to say he ain’t nothing but a square bitch just ain’t right, Jahlil.”

  Ya-Yo had swung by to take Jahlil to get a haircut, and instead of being grateful and rolling with him, Jahlil refused to go, saying he wasn’t gone walk around Harlem with no square bitch cause playas might think he was a sherm too.

  “Come on, Carmiesha! You even said yourself that Ya-Yo ain’t down with the streets. The dude drives a big brown UPS truck! How gangsta is that?”

  Carmiesha shook her head. “First of all, you need to realize and understand that UPS is a real good business. They pay their people decent salaries, and they don’t have to sell no drugs or pimp no women to earn it. Second, I did say Ya-Yo wasn’t down with the streets, but I meant that shit as a compliment! It ain’t no diss on him for me to say that. I’m proud to see him rolling down the street in that big-ass truck! It tells me and the rest of the world that here comes a black man who ain’t hustling backwards! He’s hustling on the legitimate tip. Working for his! Paying his damn taxes and setting an example for knuckleheads like you, which is a whole lot more than your crazy-ass da—”

  Carmiesha bit down but it was too late.

  Jahlil looked at her with rage in his eyes. “More than my crazy-ass daddy? Is that what you was getting ready to say, Carmiesha? You was gone say that niggah Ya-Yo is doing more than my crazy-ass daddy is doing? I thought you said my father was in college. Don’t that mean he’s doing a lot too?”

  The boy was smart, Carmiesha had always known that. He could pick up on things and figure shit out far faster than the average twelve-year-old.

  “Jahlil,” she said gently, “all I want you to do is pay more attention to brothahs who are living right, instead of studying hustlers on the streets so hard the way you do. Ya-Yo wanted to take you to get a haircut today, then take both of us out so we could show you a good time. I think you could learn something from a man like him. That’s all I’m saying, aiight?”

  He just shrugged. “Aiight, Carmiesha. But I’ma find my father one day, I don’t care what you say. I don’t see why he don’t want nothing to do with me. I ain’t never did shit to him.”

  “Don’t curse,” Carmiesha said. “And I never said he didn’t want nothing to do with you, Jahlil. He’s just real busy trying to get his career right. He’s trying real hard to get in the NBA, and you know that.”

&nbs
p; “He got any other kids?”

  The question surprised her and she didn’t know how to answer it. “Uhm. I don’t really know, little man. We don’t stay up with each other like that no more, so I just don’t know.”

  Jahlil set his face in a hard, bitter mask. “He better not be having no other kids,” he said, “not if he left me back here and forgot about me.”

  Carmiesha was so unprepared for that kind of quiet fury that she didn’t know what to say. So she kept her mouth closed and just walked away.

  Carmiesha was spending the night with Ya-Yo at a nice hotel in Midtown. They could never really chill at his crib because his mother had a shitty attitude toward Carmiesha, and taking him into her bedroom with Mere’maw in the house was out. The only man who had ever been allowed to lay up back there was Andre, and Mere’maw didn’t go for that shit too often neither.

  Ya-Yo had taken her out for hot wings and fries, and then they walked around Midtown before deciding on a hotel. The room wasn’t phat or anything, but it was clean and quiet and it was good to be out of Harlem for a while.

  They’d just finished having sex, and Ya-Yo was spooning her in his muscular arms. The sex was kinda boring, but he had tried his best. Still, Carmiesha loved laying up with him. He was sweet and open about everything, and Carmiesha knew she could trust him because he was honest and had truth in his character.

  Shit, Carmiesha thought to herself as Ya-Yo’s hand moved up and down her bare leg. It was better to have half-assed sex with a guy who wasn’t feening under the skirt of every bitch in Harlem than to get her back twisted out by some guy who pushed his dick up in everything that smelled like perfume.

  She sighed and enjoyed the way her man’s hands felt on her thigh. Ya-Yo was stroking her, but not in a sexual way. He was touching her because he liked to connect with her like that, and Carmiesha appreciated it.

  “You feel okay?” he asked, turning Carmiesha toward him and putting small kisses all over her forehead. “You hungry? You want something to drink?”