Black Widow (17 page)

Chapter 20

Embracing Who You Are

Samantha was there to pick up Isis from the airport thirty minutes before the flight was due to arrive. Isis had told her that that wasn’t necessary, that she could have taken a cab or rented a car, but Samantha wasn’t having it. She hadn’t seen her only niece in two months. The least she could do was pick her up.

Isis looked stunning walking down the corridor from the plane. Samantha was impressed with what the Miami sun had done for her. You couldn’t get that out of a bottle or anybody’s tanning salon: Her skin was almost flawless. And there was something else about Isis that Samantha couldn’t quite put her finger on. She was glowing. That was it—Isis had an unmistakable glow. For the first time, Samantha really grasped the fact that Isis was a full-grown woman.

She greeted her niece with a giant hug. “You look so sophisticated. That couture is definitely working for you, baby.” Samantha was proud of the woman she had helped to raise.

“Thanks, auntie.” As they walked down to the baggage-claim area, Isis said, “Take a look at this.” She handed her a photo from the wedding.

“Oh, my goodness, chile, you all look so happy. I’m furious that you didn’t include me.”

“Don’t be,” Isis said. “I just didn’t feel like hearing your mouth.” Then she proceeded to imitate Samantha. “‘Are you sure about this? Do you know what you are getting yourself into? You know marriage is a big step and has to be taken seriously?’”

“Stop!” Samantha demanded. “You’ve made your point.”

“I’ll always love you, Samantha. But I’m grown now and I’ve gone through a lot. Sometimes I’m going to need your support, not your criticism.”

Big bad Samantha shed a tear. “All I want to do is protect you.”

“I know.” Isis put her head against Samantha’s arm.

Samantha changed the subject. “Well, I’m glad I didn’t run into traffic on the way here, because I kinda got sidetracked getting the house together before I picked you up. I put clean linen on your bed just in case you are going to stay with me.”

“Thanks a bunch. I really appreciate it.”

A loud buzzer sounded off, alerting everyone that the luggage was about to start coming down the beltway to the carousel.

“That’s my luggage right there,” Isis pointed out. “The Louis Vuitton.”

Don’t get it twisted, Samantha was dressed in drag, looking nothing less than the glamorous woman that she had strived to be for over thirty years, but she hustled over to that luggage carousel and snatched those suitcases as if they were nothing more than feather dusters. In pumps, she still managed to manhandle the heavy bags and not let a piece of hair get out of place as they headed to the car.

“Damn, baby, you leave with no bags at all and return with two Louie suitcases and a Louie carry-on.” Samantha got excited and started rolling her neck when she said, “And that Louie pocketbook is fierce! I hope your auntie can borrow it?”

“That’s not a problem at all.” Isis smiled while watching her aunt from behind her Gucci frames.

“It just shouldn’t be—all that shit you used to sneak-borrow from me without my permission.”

“I always put it back, though.”

“You did,” Samantha agreed, tossing the bags in the trunk. “But I don’t know if I’ll be able to say the same about that Louis.” She winked as they headed home.

The christening was beautiful, but the after-party was even better. How could it not be? A bunch of gay men and women who used to be men, or still might have been men, were all there dressed to kill, all carrying presents to die for. The pink diamond earrings that Isis and Logic had gotten for Abigail were a big hit, prompting some of the guests to order a few pieces from her.

Isis could only imagine what Little Abigail’s sweet-sixteen birthday party would be like, judging by the way her parents went all out for the christening. They had a full, open bar, and bite-sized caviar, stuffed shrimp, lobster, and crab cakes being served by model-thin women. All of this for a little baby girl who slept through the entire party.

Once the celebration was over, and as Ty and Anthony said good-bye to their guests, Isis and Samantha volunteered to stay and help the doting new parents clean up the mess.

“You know we must love you because, honey, we don’t clean for anybody,” Samantha said.

“We wait to be waited on and served.” Isis plopped down on the plush sofa.

After everything was done, Abigail woke up crying, ready for her feeding. Isis held a screaming Abigail while Ty warmed up the bottle. Isis sat in the nursery with Ty as she fed the baby to get her back to sleep. Once Abigail was asleep, Ty and Isis went into the den while Samantha and Anthony drank and talked shit to each other.

“So,” Ty said, pouring Isis a drink, “I haven’t been able to sit you down and chitchat with you in over three or four years. Now that you’re all grown up, you be on the move. You remember when I used to pick you up from school?”

“I do, and I miss talking to you too! I never told you this, but our talks used to mean so much to me.”

“Remember, I used to always call you the chosen one? Well, I’m still always here for you.”

“Yes, you always said that,” Isis said. “But how come I feel like I am the cursed one?”

“Cursed? Why do you feel like that?” Ty asked as she got up to shut the door so that they could talk in privacy.

When Isis was growing up, Ty was always the person she ran to when Samantha got on her last nerve or when Isis couldn’t have her way. She was always comfortable talking to Ty and knew that Ty always had her best interests at heart and wouldn’t go running her mouth to her aunt.

She sighed, focusing on the long piece of hair that always seemed to find a home over Ty’s left eye, and just blurted it out: “It seems like every man I love has their life taken from them one way or another.”

Ty took a sip from her drink. “How so?” she asked.

“Every man I ever loved either is killed or has life as they knew it taken from them. I feel like I have the curse.”

“That’s kind of extreme. Don’t you think?”

“But true.”

Ty moved the hair from her eye. “Can you give me an example?”

“Well, it started with my father,” she said. “He was the first man I ever loved, and my mother killed him when I was thirteen years old. Then there was Dave. I know a lot of people say that I wasn’t old enough to love like that then, but I did. And we both know what happened to him.” This time Isis took a sip of her drink. “The state executed him.”

“None of that was your fault, Ice.”

“There’s more. I lived with this guy name Bam for two years before he was sentenced to life in prison. He was a no-good piece of shit, but that don’t change the fact that I loved him, and now he has to spend the rest of his life in prison.”

Ty raised one of her eyebrows and continued to listen.

“But I didn’t really start paying attention to it until I met this psychic.”

“Psychic?”

“I met her when I was in Vegas. She told me that someone in my family would have a child named Abigail. That I would be married very soon, and my future husband would call me Princess. She also told me that everything about the number thirteen was bad luck for me. And guess what?”

“Sometimes those psychics are nothing but fakes,” Ty said.

“And sometimes they’re not. I got married to a man that called me Princess from the first day that he met me, and he was arrested—facing life—thirteen days into our marriage.”

“Okay.” Ty stood up. “Since you are listening to perfect strangers who call themselves psychics, do you want to hear my take on these things? Someone who loves you, someone who has known you since before you were born and watched you grow into a woman?”

“I’ve been waiting all night to hear it,” Isis admitted.

Ty cleared her throat first and then said, “I honestly felt like you were one of the chosen ones ever since you were a little girl. There was, and still is, something special about you.”

“Probably because I was the only one in the family with a curse. I feel like the Black Dahlia or something. Maybe Dave put it on me?”

“I don’t think so, Ice.”

“You should have seen the execution—how his expression
changed
on his face once he was dead.”

“Maybe when they pronounced him as dead, he wasn’t really dead,” Ty shot back quickly.

“But I got this deep letter from him the morning after he was put to death.”

“Dave probably mailed that letter out the day he was executed. Ice, all he probably wanted was to just
rest in peace
.”

“Well, I have my own feelings. I think that all of these men are all somehow connected.”

“Yes, they are, through you. You connect them.”

“But it has to be more. Bam told me I would be cursed for taking his money. He said it was blood money. And guess how much money it was, Ty?”

“Thirteen dollars?”

“No,” she said. “It was $313,000. And the bad part was that he had someone break into our house and stole most of it back from me.”

“Bam is a crazy son of a bitch behind bars that’ll do anything to make your life as miserable as his is. And you let him get under your skin like that?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I don’t know what to believe, but I know what I would do.”

Isis looked at Ty. “Okay, I’m waiting.”

“I don’t want you to think I am trying to be mean, but I feel that maybe all this is a sign. Maybe…let’s say maybe you
are
a black widow.”

Isis didn’t like the connotation of the words
black widow
. “A black widow kills men. I don’t kill; their life is just taken in some kind of way.”

“Well, listen; just hear me out.” Ty rubbed her temples so that she could begin to explain what her thought process was.

“Okay.”

“Well, let’s say that you are the black widow.”

Tears filled Isis’s eyes.

“Listen to me before you get all emotional,” Ty warned.

“It’s hard not to get emotional.”

“Why? What does being a
black widow
mean to you?”

Isis answered slowly and sadly, “That happiness will never come to me.”

“I disagree.” Ty put her hands on Isis’s shoulders. “Get all of that stinking thinking out of your head and focus on what I am trying to say to you, nothing else. There’s a difference between hearing and listening.”

“I know. I’m listening to you,” Isis said.

“When I realized that I was a gay man, I spent years pent up, suffocating in the closet. I was lying to everyone, including myself. But the minute I realized who I was, a woman trapped inside of a man’s body, everything got clearer. I knew that and understood that the universe somehow had made a genetic mistake, but I was no longer afraid to announce it to the world. I embraced who I was! And no matter how much money Anthony brought home to me or how many diamonds and furs I had, I could never be at peace until
I embraced who I was
.”

“So…what are you saying to me?”

“I’m saying, if you feel you are the black widow, then admit it to the world, embrace it…and most of all, profit from it. Make it your trademark. Make other women wish they could be you. Make them wish they had the balls to be you.”

“Profit from it?” Isis was puzzled.

“Girl, if you know the niggas gon’ die, at least start taking life insurance policies out on ’em,” Ty joked.

Isis smiled.

“You need to be in power,” Ty said. “Don’t worry about men! They don’t run shit. Make your mark doing whatever it is you want to do and know that we are all rooting for you!”

That night Isis couldn’t sleep thinking about the pieces that Ty had dropped on her. She lay in bed anxious about what life had in store for her. As the new day came in, Isis was reborn. And so was her new jewelry line: the Black Widow.

Chapter 21

Born with a Veil

Isis was booked on a flight leaving Richmond International Airport at 5
PM
en route to Miami, but before she headed out, she went to the prison to visit her mother again. Sandy had been locked up for ten years, and this would be only her second visit from her daughter, but it wouldn’t be the last. The process she had to go through at the prison to see her mother went a lot smoother than it did the last time she was there, which was odd because there were a lot more people this time. She didn’t even have to wait as long for Sandy to come out, which was great because Isis couldn’t wait to put her up on all of the crazy stuff that had been going on in her life since the last time that she saw her. Well, maybe not everything.

Sandy listened to her daughter intensely and enjoyed every moment of it. She offered a little advice here and there but mostly listened. Sandy did tell Isis that she had gotten a few more letters from her ex-lover Ruby and that it would mean a lot to her if she called Ruby one day just to say hi. Isis said that she would.

Thirty minutes into their visit, corrections officer Wilma Buster walked up to their table and announced, “I’m sorry, but because of the overcrowding, all visits have been cut in half. I’m going to have to terminate your visit.”

“Buster,” Sandy said, “I’m not in the mood for your stuff today.” All the prisoners knew that Buster could be a real a-hole when she wanted to be.

“Sandy, I know you don’t see your daughter very often, so I wouldn’t disrespect you like that. I’ve already put a couple of people out ahead of you.” The guard looked at Sandy, at Isis, and then back to Sandy. “The best I can do is give you an extended visit the next time,” she promised.

Isis cut in. “Ma, I need to get out of here to make sure I don’t miss my flight back to Florida anyway. Call me sometime tonight, after eight, so that I can finish bringing you up to speed, okay?”

Sandy agreed, they hugged, and Isis hit the highway.

Besides the little boy who was sitting behind her making noise, Isis’s flight wasn’t that bad. The minute the plane landed and she powered her phone, it rang. She didn’t recognize the number, but she answered. She didn’t want to take the chance of missing a call from Logic just because she didn’t recognize the number—maybe he was calling from somebody’s three-way. “Hello?”

“Hey, Isis, this is Sly,” the voice on the other end said.

“Girl, don’t let me find out that you and Logic got a monitoring device on my ass somehow. I just got back in town.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Sly half joked, “but if your
ass
is bugged, I’m not privy to it.”

“I was joking,” Isis said.

“Well, I spoke to Logic earlier today. He wants me to meet with you.”

“Meet with you for what?” Isis said, offended. “And why do I have to get messages from my husband through you?”

“First of all, the tier Logic is being held on had some type of riot or whatnot. Now the whole building is on lock, so he can’t use the phone. Well, he’s not supposed to use the phone, anyway, but he snuck to use the phone to call me,” she said. “I know you don’t know me from an ant on the sidewalk, but Logic and I have been friends for a long time. He’s like a brother to me. He’s really worried about you, and he’s on my butt, hard, to make sure you’re okay. So I beg of you to please let me help you out in some way: run some errands, drop some clothes off at the cleaners, watch your back ’round these shady-ass niggas…whatever.”

Although Isis wanted to hear Logic’s voice, she was also relieved that she didn’t have to explain just yet why she almost turned his associate, Fonz, into a eunuch. Sly’s plea touched Isis. “Okay, Sly, if you’re like a sister to Logic, then you’re my sister too.” They made arrangements to meet in a couple of hours and ended the call.

Isis was happy to be at the condo again. Although she had been staying in first-class hotels, they were still hotels. She could never really feel comfortable at those places. People just stuck the key card—which no one but the assigned guest should have—in the door at all times of the day, asking if you wanted your room cleaned or the bed turned down.

This was the first time that she had been there since the police had arrested Logic. She was surprised that the place wasn’t in shambles, but then again, they didn’t have a search warrant—only a warrant for his arrest.

The first thing she did was forward all the calls from her cell phone to the house so that she could charge her cell phone. Then she started unpacking and separating clothes that needed to be washed from the stuff that had to go to the cleaners. She hit the power button on the television remote control and turned to the news to have a little background noise in the house. She hated when it was too quiet. In the movies, things got really quiet when something bad was about to happen.

The house phone rang.
Well, that didn’t take long
, she thought. It was an out-of-area number. “Hello?”

An automated recording came on. “You have a pre-paid collect call from…” and then she heard her mother’s voice say, “Sandy.” The recording picked back up. “If you want to accept this call, press three. If you want—”

Isis hit the mute button on the seventy-inch television, and then pushed the number three button on the phone. “You got good timing; I just got in a few minutes ago.”

“How was the flight?”

They laughed together when Isis told her about the bedeviled little white kid that kept throwing his toys at people and how he wouldn’t stop crying when his mother took them away. They even found humor in the whole Wilma Buster thing, and how their visit got terminated early. Then Isis got quiet and changed the subject. “Mother, I need to talk to you about something serious.”

Sandy was still envisioning the bad little boy on the flight, clunking people upside of the head with G.I. Joe men, or whatever it was the kids played with these days. “Okay, honey, what is it?”

Isis just put it right out there. “I think I’m a black widow.”

Sandy hoped her daughter wasn’t going crazy. “You think you are a spider?”

“No, not exactly,” Isis said, and sighed.

“What’s goin’ on then, baby?” Sandy lowered her voice and said in a whisper, “You didn’t murder anyone, did you?”

“Of course not, Mother.” Isis explained all the things that had transpired in her life regarding the men she’d loved and the conversation she had with Ty. She told her everything, even the part about Ty thinking she was the chosen one—the whole nine.

Sandy was stunned by what she was hearing. “Baby, you are special, but that don’t make you a bad person, nor does it mean that everything that has happened to those people is your fault,” she said. “How can you blame yourself for what happened to your father? You were just a little girl.”

“Of course you are going to say I’m special; you’re my mother.”

“Well, baby…” Sandy paused. “When you were delivered, the nurse at the hospital told your father that you were a baby born with the veil.”

“What the heck does that mean?”

“It means that you are special.”

“It means that I am possessed, that’s what it means.”

“No, it doesn’t, but—”

Isis jumped in. “I mean, Mommy, it’s like once I love a man with all my heart, giving him a part of me, it’s his destiny: life in prison or no life at all.”

“If you’re going to convince yourself that you are cursed,” her mother said, “at least tell me what you plan to do about it.”

“For starters, I’m not going to run from it. It’s like when someone’s dog charges at you; the owner usually says that if you don’t run, then it won’t bother you. Well, that’s how I feel about this,” she said. “I’m going to embrace it. I’m not going to run.”

“And how are you going to embrace it?” Sandy wanted to know.

“I’m going to make this thing pay off, that’s how. From now on, I’m going to call all of my designs Black Widow Jewels. And in all of my pieces, I’m going to put a spider web where the gold stamp would normally go.”

“That’s a great idea, Isis.”

“And from this day forward, I’m only going to wear all black or all white. I do wear a lot of black and white now, but I am going to not half-step on it—only black or white.”

“Okay.” Sandy smiled although she didn’t quite think that this is what the person who created the old cliché “If life hands you lemons, make lemonade” had in mind. But at least her baby was creative.

“If I am feeling shitty or in a kick-ass mood, then I will wear black. But if I am in a good mood or whatnot, I’ll rock all white.”

“I get it,” her mother added. “It’s like a ‘white reveals and black conceals’ type of thing.”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way, but…yeah.”

“I think it’s a great way to flip something negative into something positive.”

Isis was distracted by the television when she saw a conservatively dressed lady who looked very familiar to her walking from the courthouse. Then a mug shot of Smooth Breeze flashed on the screen. Next, they showed a small piece from one of his concerts. Isis searched for the remote. “Ma, hold on.” She took the television off mute and turned the volume up.

The anchorwoman said, “It could be a while before the highly anticipated junior album from Smooth Breeze is released because of the startling charges filed against the Grammy award–winning rapper today. He’s being charged with sexual battery and forcible sodomy of a college student named Chrissie Berry, who was interviewed earlier by Jaqueline Doss.”

“He was my favorite rapper,” she cried. “All I wanted was an autograph and a picture. He took my virginity!”

“Oh my God,” Isis gasped out loud, recognizing his accuser. “I can’t believe this shit! Ma, I gotta call you back…I mean you gotta call me back…. Just call me back later, Ma.”

“Is everything okay?” Sandy was worried.

“No. I mean yes.”

“Which is it, Isis? You’re scaring me.”

“Okay.” Isis took a deep breath. “You remember the rapper I told you I went to see? I saw this little hoochie throwing herself at him, and now she’s taking him to court for rape.”

“Rape?”

“Look, Ma, just call me back tomorrow.”

She hung up the phone and flipped the TV channel to another news broadcast. They were covering the same story. The reporter stated, “The camp that rapper Smooth Breeze sponsors for the underprivileged children of Dade County has canceled a banquet in his honor pending the outcome of these charges, and the parade scheduled for next week to give him the key to the city has been postponed until further notice. It looks like the only numbers that he is going to be counting if found guilty are the jail numbers stenciled on his state-issued jumper.”

Isis was stunned. She ignored the ringing phone until she viewed the caller ID and saw that it was the number of Phoebe’s mother’s house. What was her sister doing back in Richmond? The last time Isis had checked, she was supposed to still be in Texas.

“Hey, sister,” Isis answered.

“This isn’t your sister, Isis. It’s Brenda.” This was the last person Isis thought would be calling her.

Hearing her sister’s good-for-nothing mother almost made her teeth itch. Isis didn’t have anything to say to that woman, and she didn’t want to hear anything that woman could possibly have to say to her. Isis was about to hang up the phone dead smack in her ear until a thought entered her head:
What if something has happened to Phoebe?
Brenda had always hated Isis because she was Ice’s child by another woman, and she was jealous of the fact that Isis had a stronger relationship with her own daughter than she did.

“What’s wrong, Brenda?” Isis asked. “Has something happened to Phoebe?”

“Yes,” Brenda replied. “Your sister has lost her mind, that’s what has happened to her.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You need to talk to her,” Brenda said, ignoring Isis’s question.

Isis was tired of Brenda jacking off her time. If something was seriously going on with her sister, she wanted to know. “Talk to her about what? Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“She’s down there in Texas messing with that guy, and he’s whipping her ass. That’s what’s wrong.”

“W-whaaat?” Isis’s voice got louder.

“I don’t know what to do.” Brenda broke down crying. “I think he’s going to kill her,” she said in between sobs. Although Isis disliked Brenda with a passion because of how she’d tried to keep her and Phoebe apart by hating on their relationship, it wasn’t until Isis was older when she really understood that if Brenda hadn’t been such a bitch that day Sandy had showed up on her doorstep, then that day might have turned out very differently. Even so, Isis almost felt kind of sorry for Brenda just then because she had never heard Cruella De Vil show any kind of real emotion except hate and anger. But not quite. Fuck Brenda. All she wanted to know was the business with her sister.

“Brenda, how do you know that this man is puttin’ his hands on Phoebe?”

Brenda wasn’t really feeling the fact that Isis was asking her all these questions. She smacked her lips and replied, “Because her cell phone called me by mistake last week and I heard it with my own ears, him fighting her, although I’ve suspected it for a couple of months now.”

Isis couldn’t believe that Brenda had withheld this information for an entire week. “Why did you wait this long to let me know?” Isis wanted to know. “What if he
had
killed her?”

“It’s all my fault,” Brenda said.

Isis thought,
You’re probably right.
But she said, “No, it’s not,” trying not to make her sound as bad as she was probably already feeling.

“Yes, it is. I’ve nagged at her so much that it drove her away. I taunted her about everything: getting a career, going to college so she can meet a rich man, doing something with herself. And when she didn’t make the cheering squad, I rubbed it in.” She paused before continuing, “She’d rather stay there with that guy and get her ass whipped than come home and listen to me tell her ‘I told you so.’”

Isis’s jaw tightened and her eyes became moist with anger. Just the thought of her sister getting smacked around was enough to make her blood boil. And the fact that all this time she’d thought that her sister had made the squad.