Butterfly (3 page)

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Sparkle stopped talking when someone banged on the door. She pulled her pistol from her purse and then gestured for me to go to the bedroom. I stood behind the bedroom door as Sparkle yelled to the person outside of her door.

“Who is it?”

“It's Big Ant from the club!”

“What do you want?”

“We need to talk.”

“We don't need to talk about shit!”

“Come on, Spark,” Big Ant yelled, “I know that girl is in there and Mr. Harry wants to talk to her.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way; it don't make no difference to me.”

“Okay, wait a minute.”

Sparkle came into the bedroom to try to figure out what to do with me before Big Ant forced his way in.

“Look, we have to get you out of here!”

“How? You're on the sixteenth floor!”

“Damn!” Sparkle looked around the room over and over again. “Come here.”

I followed Sparkle into her living room and hid in a closet. Sparkle took off all of her clothes and stripped down to her underwear. She put on a robe and then opened the door for Big Ant.

“Damn, what you doing in here?” Big Ant cased the apartment as he walked in. “Where she at, Spark?”

“She's not here.”

“Uh-huhn. What took you so long to open the door?”

“I was about to get in the shower. How the hell I know you were going to be pounding on my door like a fool.”

The door to the closet was opened barely enough where I could see parts of their bodies as they spoke. My heart was beating so fast I could hear it pounding.

“Yeah, right.”

Big Ant went into the bedroom and Sparkle gestured for me to run out of the closet. I tiptoed toward the front door as she went into the bedroom with Big Ant. On my way out of the door, I heard the sound of a loud crash so I ran back in. I rushed into the bedroom and Big Ant had his knee in Sparkle's chest with both of his hands around her throat.

“Get off of her!” I screamed.

“Ru...!” Sparkle tried to speak but Big Ant's grip was too tight around her neck.

“You the one I'm looking for anyway!”

Big Ant jumped off of Sparkle and started chasing me. I turned to run out of the door but he grabbed me and threw me on the
couch. But by the time he reached me, Sparkle had reached her gun and she pointed it directly at the side of his head.

“Get off her!”

“Hey! Hey! Hey! You better think about what you doing!”

“Naw, you better think about what
you
doing, niggah!” Sparkle yelled. “Get your ass up before I put a slug in your big-ass head!”

“Sparkle?” Big Ant said nervously.

“Sparkle, my ass! You think I'm playing with you, niggah?” Sparkle cocked the barrel of the gun and shoved it into Big Ant's head. “Huh, niggah?”

In the year that I had known Sparkle, I had never seen her that angry. Shoot, I had never seen her angry, period. I guess if you back anybody into a corner, they will either fight or flee. Sparkle did not feel like running that day.

“Back up, Sparkle, and I'll let her up!”

“Naw, niggah! You let her up and then I'll back up!”

Big Ant slowly raised his hands in the air and climbed his big ass off of me. Sparkle kept the pistol pointed at him as he backed his way out of the apartment. She followed him into the hallway until he got on the elevator and went down. She ran back into the apartment and screamed at me to move quickly.

“Let's go!
Now
!”

Sparkle snatched a bag that was already packed and ready to go. It was as if she knew someday she would have to make an emergency exit. I ran to the elevator and pushed the button, but Sparkle grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the stairs.

“No! The stairs! Come on!”

“That's sixteen flights!”

“COME ON!” Sparkle screamed.

Sparkle was in great shape because she ran down all sixteen flights without stopping once. I had to take a couple of breathers around
the eleventh and third floors. Sparkle cursed me every time I stopped.

“
Come on!
” Sparkle yelled at me while she was standing at the bottom of the stair. “
Get your ass down these stairs!
”

“I'm trying!” I yelled back as I leaned on the rail for support.

“If you get us killed, I swear I'm gon' kick your ass, girl!“

When we reached the first floor, Sparkle pulled out her gun and slowly opened the door to the lobby area. We could see Big Ant and Mr. Harry standing near the elevator. Sparkle tapped me on the shoulder and I followed her through a rear door, which led to the parking lot. We slipped into her car quietly and unseen, but once she started the car, she put the pedal to the metal! She burned rubber speeding out of that driveway.

“I got to find you a place to stay.”

“I have money, Ida. We can go stay at a hotel.”

“That's not safe, baby. Mr. Harry and his goons will finds us in no time.”

“Well, what we are we going to do?”

“I don't know, but we have to do something quick.”

Sparkle pulled into the parking lot of a Waffle House restaurant and cut the car off. “I have to take you to DFACS!”

“No! I'm not going back there. I'll only end up in a foster home.”

“I'm sorry, Shante, but what else can I do? I have to get out of town for a while, and I can't leave you behind living on the streets.”

“I'll be okay.”

“Like you're okay now?” Sparkle looked at me sarcastically. “You're sixteen years old trying to survive in a world where most adults can't even make it.”

“I have to do what I have to do.”

“
Stop saying that
!” Sparkle screamed. “Living on the street is not what you have to do! There are people who can help you, but you have to want them to help you.”

“Those people don't care nothing about me!”

“Well, you have no choice, baby.”

“I'm sixteen now and I can make my own decisions on where I want to live.”

“Okay, you're sixteen. You think you're grown, so where are you going to live?”

I tried my best to think of an adult answer to Sparkle's question before she hit me with her follow-up response, but I couldn't.

“That's what I thought! So, this is what we're going to do. I'm going to take you to some close friends of mine and they'll take good care of you.”

“Please, Ida, I know you're trying to help me, but I don't want to live with anybody else. I'm too big. They're only going to kick me out.”

“Not these people. They're good people.”

“That's what they always say.”

“I know these people and they will take good care of you. I promise.”

“How do you know they will let me live with them?”

“Because I just know, that's how.”

“Shoot,” I sighed, “I'm going to have to go through foster care all over again. I can't stand that shit!”

“Watch your mouth, girl!” Sparkle snapped. “You're tough. You can handle it.”

“I don't mean to whine, but you just don't know what it's like to be in and out of foster care.”

“I don't know about foster care? Let me tell you something, Missy...”

SPARKLE'S STORY:

I was born in Saginaw, Michigan, the eighth child of a young mother
of twenty-eight. She had my oldest sister, Tiffanie, her first child, when she was fifteen years old. She dated an older man who made her addicted to drugs and him. She pretty much stopped taking care of us. My sister Tiffanie fed me; cleaned me and dressed me so many times I had started to call her mama.

Eventually the state took us away from my mother and split us up. In the state of Michigan, they had three different forms of custody for the children of the state, Relative Care, Child Receiving Home, and Foster Care.

Relative Care was when a relative or close family friend assumed responsibility or guardianship of a child. I never had anyone close enough who wanted to take in my siblings, or myself. But I frequented the other two processes.

Child Receiving Home was a place they took children when they had nowhere else to go. I was there often and it was rough. But it still beat living on them damn streets. They gave us three meals a day and even though they bathed us two children at a time, we still got the chance to wash our asses. We slept two to a twin bed, which was quite uncomfortable, but again, it beat sleeping on the ground with a box as a blanket.

When we were in foster care, they would drop us off and pick us up early so that the other kids would not know that we were living at the Child Receiving Home. You know how children are; they were trying to prevent us from public humiliation.

They would closely monitor us during school hours to make sure we did not run away. They would also privately interview us about our mother's past situation and our current foster care situation.

On those rare occasions when my mother was allowed to see us, we would have to go to the Department of Human Services, or DHS for short. Those were the only times I saw my mother and my siblings. We would gather in this small room where the DHS staff would watch us through a glass window and they recorded our every move. I was happy
to see my mother but it felt strange meeting in such a peculiar manner. At the age of eight, the visits stopped and I have not seen or heard from my mother or my siblings since.

At nine, they gave me the responsibility of caring for three of the younger children in the home. I had to dress them, feed them and make sure they did not get into any danger as if they were my own children. If I did not handle my responsibility of taking care of the babies properly, I was severely disciplined. It is odd because as much as I hated taking care of those kids, I think I craved the attention and love they were giving me.

I was twelve when I had my first menstrual cycle. I did not feel comfortable telling my foster mom, so I told a friend who had just started her first cycle as well. She took me to one of our teachers, Mrs. Glenn, who showed me how to use a pad. Mrs. Glenn was concerned and called my foster mom and told her about the situation. My foster mom was mad as hell because she felt I was telling our family business. When I got home, she whooped my ass. I ran away, and never went back. I ended up staying with a nice family for a while, but then they moved out West, and I ended up back in the Child Receiving Home.

Around fourteen, I went to a foster home with a family who had three daughters and a boy. The girls were my age and younger, but the son was three years older than me. He was cute and I had a little crush on him. We would wrestle when there was no one else around and always end up with him grinding between my legs. One day, I came home early from school and he was the only one there. He was lying on the floor when I walked into the living room.

“Hey, Ida.”

“Hey, Andre.”

I sat on the couch and started watching television. I eventually fell asleep and when I woke up, Andre was on top of me grinding. I was startled and wanted him to get the hell up. We had done this numerous
times before, but I was always awake. Finding him on top of me made me feel as if I was being ambushed.

“Get up, Andre.”

“Shhh!”

Although I had a big crush on Andre, I did not want to lose my virginity like that. “Get up!”

“Come on, Ida.”

I pushed his chest with both of my hands but he did not budge. “Get off of me!”

Andre did not respond to me; instead, he held my hands above my head and pulled my shirt up. He sucked my breasts into his mouth and squeezed extremely hard on my nipples. It was anything but pleasurable. I screamed for him to stop but he was like a crazed dog.

He ripped my shirt from my body and then pulled my pants down. I tried to resist him but Andre was a big guy and after a while, I was too exhausted to fight. All that I could do was try and keep my legs closed. He pulled out his penis and tried to force it inside of me. I screamed, cried, fought, but nothing I did was going to stop him from doing what he wanted to do that day.

I squirmed at the point of penetration, and then I felt the total impact of his thrust and I was paralyzed. It was tremendously painful. He was rough and rammed me as hard as he could.

“Please, Andre, stop it! I don't want to!” I cried.

“You like it? Huh? It feels good, don't it?”

“No! No, it hurts! Stop it!”

His body was moving so hard on top of me that it caused me bruises. He moaned loudly and then his body relaxed. He rolled off of me and onto the floor. He breathed heavily with his pants around his ankles and private parts still exposed. I balled in the fetal position and cried hysterically.

“What's wrong with you, Ida?”

Hearing Andre's voice made me go from the mindset of a victim to an angry-as-hell vigilante, and I ran to the kitchen and picked up a knife. I ran back into the living room, put the knife to Andre's neck and screamed as loud as I could,
“If you ever put your hands on me again, niggah, I will kill you!”

I grabbed my clothes and took a long shower. I packed my suitcase and got the hell out of that house...

END SPARKLE'S STORY

•   •   •

“I never stayed another night in a foster care home. It was me against the world. I won a few times, but the world won an awful lot. But over the years I have met others who have had different experiences with foster care homes. Some were adopted and some just felt, great gratitude for the people who took the time to care for them. I just came to terms that some bad people are going to abuse good situations.”