Black Widow (12 page)

“Let’s get it popping,” Isis said to the hippie-looking lady.

“Let’s go over here to a quieter place,” the lady suggested, and took the lead. There were really no quiet places in any Vegas casinos. They sat at two nickel slot machines and faced each other. Isis held out her palms for the lady to read.

“What do you want to know about?” the self-proclaimed psychic asked. “Love? Money? Family? Work? Health?”

Isis answered, “All of the above.”

“Okay. First, within ten days, you’re going to take a trip,” she said.

Yeah, I am going home,
Isis thought.

“You have never experienced real love in your life.”

“What?”

“The man who will really love you will address you as his princess.”

Okay, step up your game, lady. We both know you just heard Logic call me Princess.

“The first man that you loved…didn’t love you back.”

Warm, but that could pertain to almost anyone. The one we love hardly ever loves us back.

“He thought of you as a sister, and he used you for his own selfish reasons. Then, the second person you thought you loved hurt you, made you do something that you couldn’t really forgive him for. Now he hates that he loves you, and you don’t love him.”

Warmer.

“You are going to marry soon.” She paused. “Within the next six months. And your husband is going to love you unconditionally.”

Six months? To who? Bam and I are never going to get back together
.

The psychic continued. “You just came into a lot of money. Be careful; all money isn’t good money.”

No shit!

“You are also going to be successful at your own business.”

I hope you’re right.

“You had a great childhood, but your mother had to leave you. But when she left you, it was only because she wasn’t in her right state of mind.”

How could she know that?
That hit home. Isis was starting to get a little scared of this woman.

“You were raised in a lifestyle of homosexuality, but you never indulged in it yourself. And you were the life raft for someone who should have been dead years ago.”

Isis began to look around. This wasn’t funny anymore. This lady was getting too deep and way too personal. Isis searched the casino to see if anyone she knew was there to tell this woman the stuff she had revealed.

The psychic was earning her money. “Thirteen isn’t a good number for you. Stay away from anything that has anything to do with the number thirteen. Everything thirteen will forever be a bad omen for you.”

Tears started to well in Isis’s eyes. She was thirteen when her life took a turn for the worse. This definitely wasn’t funny anymore. The things the lady was saying were all too true.

“Our time is almost up, so let me say this to you: I know you think that I am a charlatan, but this is something you won’t be able to deny—someone in your family will have a newborn baby within four weeks by the name of Abigail.”

You done fucked it up now, because ain’t nobody in my family having a baby in four weeks, and nobody damn sho ain’t going to name their child no goddamn Abigail.

“How much do I owe you?” Isis asked.

“This isn’t a game to me, as you seem to think it is. It’s my gift, and God will provide me with my riches. He just uses people like you sometimes to give me financial blessings. So, that’ll be fifteen dollars.”

Isis gave the lady a twenty-dollar bill. She looked away when she noticed Logic coming toward her, and when she turned back around, the psychic was no longer there.

For the rest of the night, Isis kept scanning the casinos for the lady, but she never did see her again. Over the next two days Isis and Logic had a ball until her time in Vegas was up and she had to go back home. Although Logic lived in Miami, he asked her to stay a few more days; she declined. She needed to go back home to pick up the pieces and move on with her life.

Chapter 11

Housejacked

As soon as the big metal bird touched down in Virginia, Isis powered on her cell phone and checked her messages. Most of them were from Bam, talking smack. He went on and on about how she wasn’t shit and how she was going to pay.

“Yo’ stankin’ ass ain’t gon’ live to spend that paper,” he spat in one of his messages.

“Bitch, you better give me my shit if you know what’s good for you,” another one said.

“I got seven words for you: pay me now or pay me later—with yo’ life, bitch!”

The insults didn’t let up. “You think what I did to that baby was bad…bitch, I will suck the life out of you.”

Isis dismissed the messages as idle threats and went to baggage claim, where she retrieved the original luggage she had traveled with, plus the extra suitcase she had had to purchase to lug all of the items she bought during her shopping trips with Logic.

Samantha picked up Isis from the airport; the rain began to pour as soon as they reached the car. The weather had gotten so bad so quickly that Samantha thought it would be best to take Isis to her place until the rain let up instead of trying to make the trip all the way out to Caroline County. Because of a combination of jet lag, the time difference, and the late nights she had kept in Vegas, Isis fell straight to sleep when she got to Samantha’s house. It was her aunt’s voice that awakened her about five hours later.

“Yeah, she’s here,” Samantha said into the phone.

Isis’s first thought was that Bam had tracked her down, but she knew that Samantha wouldn’t have given Bam so much conversation. Samantha had never really cared for any man that Isis had dated, but she especially disliked Bam after he caused Isis to lose the baby. Even though Bam warned her to never come back, Samantha had even showed up at the trailer with her pistol ready to shoot him, but he had left before she arrived.

“She would love to see you too,” Samantha said into the phone. “She’ll be here when y’all get here. Bye-bye.”

“Who was that?” Isis said as she rolled over on Samantha’s bed. She wiped her eyes to try to focus on the clock.

“Ty and Anthony. They’re on their way over,” she said. “They want to see you.”

Ty and Anthony were like Isis’s uncle and aunt. They had been friends with Samantha since forever and had even helped raise Isis. Ty didn’t work, so when Isis would get sick, he would go pick her up from school and take care of her. Ty was the woman in his and Anthony’s relationship. He cooked, cleaned, kept the house in order, and was one of the best-dressed men, women, or transsexuals Isis had ever seen. Anthony was all man: tall, dark, and handsome and highly sought after by many straight women, but he lived with and loved a cross-dressing man.

Isis was still resting when she heard her surrogate aunt and uncle walk into the house.

Samantha walked into the bedroom. “Aren’t you going to come and say hello?”

Isis sat up in the bed. “I’ll be down in a few.”

Once Samantha left the room, she lay back down, but only for a few minutes to get herself together, and then she got up. When she finally did make it to the front room, she was surprised to see that Ty and Anthony had brought another guest with them.

“Oh my goodness, who is this little sleeping bundle of joy?” Isis asked, walking straight over to the baby that was nestled in Ty’s arms.

Anthony answered first. “This is Abbey,” he said with a big simple smile on his face.

“This is your little cousin Abigail,” Ty added.

Hearing the name
Abigail
sent every single hair on Isis’s body sticking straight up.
This can’t be!

The entire room went into a blur, and all she could hear were the psychic’s words replaying in her head:
I know you think that I am a charlatan, but this is something you won’t be able to deny—someone in your family will have a newborn baby within four weeks by the name of Abigail.

Isis went right to her aunt’s bar, made herself a drink, and drank it straight down. She then made herself another one.

“Did two gay men having a baby drive you to drink?” Anthony asked.

“No, I’m happy for you, Anthony, for both of you.” But regardless of what came out of Isis’s mouth, she couldn’t control the sweat being released from her pores. “It’s much, much deeper than that.” She gulped down her second drink and poured a third.

“Care to share what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours?” Ty asked.

“No, not right now,” she said, dodging the question. “Tell me, when did y’all get Abigail?”

“We adopted her from China,” Anthony said.

“And we decided to name her Abigail after the lady who approved the adoption,” Ty said. “We were running into so much red tape. After that angel of a lady made it happen for us, we had to name the child after her.”

Isis chitchatted with the doting new parents for a while before making her way back to that comfortable spot she found on the queen-sized bed in her old room. The alcohol she’d consumed, along with the bad weather, took hold of her. Sleep came quickly.

The next day, Isis wasn’t sure how long she had been asleep, but the constant ringing of her cell phone wouldn’t allow her to continue. She tried to block out the incessant noise, but it wouldn’t go away. Whoever it was was determined to be heard. She reached for the source of the rest-killer, and the caller ID read: blocked caller.
It was probably Logic. I guess what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas.
She wished anyway.

She answered the phone. “Hello.” The grandfather clock struck noon, and the chimes on the antique time keeper sent roaring pain through her head, reminding her that she had been drinking the night before.

The voice on the other end of the phone said, “That dumb-ass clock gave you away. I know that you’re at Sam’s house. Are you ready to apologize and give me my money back?”

“What?” She was still a little disoriented from the cognac she had drunk after finding out about Abigail.

He laughed. “I know you don’t want to be living there, listening to that faggot-ass mu’fucka telling you how he told you so.”

Enough was enough. Isis refused to sit on a phone and listen to a psychotic murderer refer to Samantha as a faggot. The next voice that Bam would hear would be the operator telling him that his call had ended. She closed her phone, got up, took a shower, gathered her things, and borrowed Samantha’s spare car to get home.

She made a mental note to get Samantha’s car washed before returning it, because the red mud in her neighborhood was something awful. The car may have been an early model Lincoln, but Samantha kept that baby in tip-top condition, and Isis didn’t want to hear her mouth.

Once she turned onto the road where she lived, something felt out of place. The closer she got to home, the more intense the feeling got. From a distance it looked like someone had left trash bags and debris all over her yard. But as she got closer, the picture got clearer. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing—or wasn’t seeing: The lot that she had called home for almost two years was now just that, an empty lot.

The trailer was gone. Isis thought her eyes were deceiving her.

“Fuck!”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. Isis saw some of her clothes scattered about and sticking up out of the mud as if they were trying to save themselves from drowning or something, but it was too late. Everything was either gone or destroyed. Nothing was left. Was it a storm? No one had told her about any bad storms while she was away, and even if that was what had happened, why wasn’t anyone else’s trailer gone or messed up?

One of the neighborhood kids whom she occasionally watched after school when his mother was running late from work spotted her. The young boy came running toward her—calling her name, “Ms. Isis, Ms. Isis.” He was happy to see her, yet he wore a long expression on his face. “Ms. Isis, I’m not going to have anybody’s house to go over since you let them take your trailer somewhere else.”

At that very moment it hit her: She had been housejacked. Bam had moved the trailer. And the picture kept getting worse. Her car was vandalized. It was tireless; sitting on four bricks. The windows were broken, the doors were off the hinges, the engine was smashed, and even one of the seats was missing.

She wanted to respond to the little boy’s remark, but all she could do was fight back the tears. She had seen worse. She could dare to cry over a missing house…right? Once again, her phone started ringing. It was probably Bam calling to gloat. She peeped at the screen. The area code read 305—Miami. Bam was real crafty; he’d been trying to reach her by using blocked and out-of-town numbers for the past two weeks.

The phone kept ringing.

The phone continued to ring and she continued to fight tears, ignoring the intrusion. Then something inside of her, something that she would never be able to explain, told her that she should—no, needed to—answer the phone. In a way she was wishing it was Bam so that she could at least cuss him out and let go of some of the frustration she was feeling inside.

She answered with an attitude. “Yes?”

“Is that the way you answer the phone for the man who just showed you the best time of your life?”

Hearing Logic’s voice took her back to her trip to Vegas and away from her current madness. “No one can ever accuse you of having low self-esteem, that’s for sure,” she shot back. “How are you doing, Logic?”

“Why the sour voice?” he asked, sensing that something was wrong. “I did show you a good time, didn’t I?”

“It’s not you. I’m sorry, but I just got something going on here,” she said. “I’m going to have to call you back.”

“Nope. Talk to me now.” He wasn’t going to let her get away that easy. “I miss you and I want to see you. Why don’t you take a flight down to Miami?”

With the back of her hand, she dried some of the moisture that had earlier started to form in her eyes. “I can’t.”

“
Can’t
isn’t a word; it’s a device designed to hold you back.”

“My shit is real fucked up right now, Logic. I’ma have to call you back.” She hung up. But just when she thought that she would have a nervous breakdown, her phone rang again.

It was Logic calling back. She ignored the call, but he kept calling and calling until she picked up.

She finally did. “Hello?”

“Listen, Princess, you need to know that I’m not a big fan of chasing women that don’t want to be caught, but I know something isn’t right with you right now, and I’m not going to stop calling until I help you fix it. Everybody needs somebody every now and then,” he said, “and I think you need me right now.”

“I’m going to get it together. And when I do, I promise I’ll call you back,” Isis assured him.

“I got a better idea. Pack a bag and hop on the next flight smoking to Miami. My treat,” he offered.

“It isn’t that easy.” She broke down and confessed, “I can’t pack anything because I don’t have anything to pack.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t have shit to pack.”

“Is that all?” Logic said. “For a minute there, I thought that you had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. This is what you do: Go home and book a flight, and we’ll go get you everything you need when you get here.”

“I don’t have a home.”

“What you mean?” he questioned, not fully understanding.

Isis sighed. “I’m homeless.”

“You ain’t never homeless,” Logic sympathized with her. “You always got a place…with me.”

“Look, Logic, I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, but the last nigga that told me that just took the fucking trailer back, and that’s why I am homeless now.”

“I don’t have anything to do with the last clown you fucked,” Logic said. “Just come and see me and we’ll sort this shit out. Then we’ll find a way to get back at that bitch-ass nigga. I promise.”

“But you don’t understand everything.” Isis was still rationalizing why she couldn’t go.
You think I’m going to go to a place I ain’t never been before, to see a dude who I don’t really know anything about? You could have two wives, three girlfriends, and a number-one hooker. Or worse, you could get me down there and kill me.

“Yes, I do. The sucker you were dealing with took a damn trailer back. I get it,” he said. “That’s some bitch shit right there. Bitches take shit back, not men. Real men move on.”

Logic was making a lot of sense to her at the moment, so she kept listening.
Maybe he can help.

“Princess, you’re not homeless; you’ve just been victimized by a sucka. It ain’t much to it. We gon’ get you a place to stay—a much nicer place.”

Isis was quiet. Listening to Logic helped her to calm down and pull it together.

Logic took the phone away from his mouth for a second as he hollered at his boy real quick. “Jacob, call the travel agent and see what time the next flight leaves Richmond, Virginia, to get here.” Then he came back to the phone. “Princess? Go ahead and bounce back to the airport and I’ll call you back in a few with your confirmation and flight number.”

“Logic, do you understand that other than the clothes on my back and the stuff in my suitcase, I don’t have shit, nothing, nada, zero?” Isis did have $20,000 left in her suitcase. Other than the money she had given to Samantha and the money she spent in Vegas, the rest of Bam’s money had been hidden in the trailer.

“Baby, you ain’t said nothing but a meatball. Now hang up the phone and get to the airport.”

Isis looked around at her lot. What did she have to lose?