Damaged (24 page)

I left to give them some privacy. Nut ain’t seem angry and I wasn’t worried that he’d kirk out in a hospital. I went to the
snack room to get some Doritos and a fruit punch soda. By the time I came back to the room, the nurse had already scrubbed
up and was rushing me. Peaches was about to have her baby, and she told the nurse she wanted me in the delivery room, too.

“Goodness,” I whispered as I went to wash my hands. When I walked in the room, Nut looked weird and out of place. No cane
anywhere. Maybe it was cuz he looked like he was a normal guy for a change.

Peaches was in labor for a long time, screaming, hollering, pissing, shitting, sweating, and pushing. By the time the baby
came, I felt like I had been working out. Nut was grinning so wide when the doctor passed him the baby that I thought he wasn’t
even gonna give Peaches her son.

“What we goin’ name my son?” Nut asked.

“Sean Jr.?” Peaches asked, smiling.

“Nah, I don’t want him to be nothing like me,” he said, shaking his head. Nut looked mesmerized, and I saw a look in his eyes
I had never seen. “He’s gonna be a great man one day. Let’s name him something else.”

“What?” Peaches asked, staring up at her two men.

“Chu?” I said, not sure why. “Chukwuemeka means—”

“God has done something great,” Nut said, looking at the baby. “I know, but no. I don’t think it’s right. Let’s call him Amir.”

“Amir,” she said, reaching for her son. “I like it. Hey, cutie.”

“He look just like me, Peaches,” he said, and he kissed her on her forehead. “I’m gonna try my best to be a good father. You
hear me?”

Peaches nodded and rubbed Amir’s cheek. I hoped for Amir’s sake Nut was telling the truth for once in his life.

FEBRUARY 2007

I
t was so cold outside, me and Shakira was practically walking up the street arm in arm. She had on a black fur and I had on
a brown one, but we was both ass-naked underneath, except our thigh-high leather boots.

“If somebody don’t come buy this pussy soon, I’m gonna rent my own self a hotel room,” she said, holding on tight. “Hey, I
got an idea.”

“Your ass always got ideas.”

“Why don’t you call that nigga Joe and I call Kareem?”

“No, I’m not trying to fool myself about Joe. You, on the other hand, in love with that nigga.”

“No, I’m not,” she said with a giggle.

“See.”

After Peaches had Amir, Nut dropped off the scene. He started charging me, Shakira, and Marcha rent for the apartments. He
ain’t charge that much, but we still had to work the streets to pay for it since we ain’t know how to do nothing else. I had
money saved up, but I knew it wasn’t really enough to do what I wanted to do. Or maybe I just was scared to try to do something
else. I’m not gonna lie—
Shakira was right, this kind of work was easy. We ain’t have to clock in or answer to nobody, and we could work whenever we
wanted to. Marcha had started stripping at the Skylark on New York Avenue. She said it was too hard and dangerous working
the streets. If I was old enough, I’d probably do the same thing.

Now that it was just me and Shakira, we ain’t have rides to Fourteenth Street or protection from Nut no more. If one of us
got locked up or harassed by the cops, we had to deal with it ourselves. We paid for our own condoms, weed, liquor, and even
vaginal exams. Everything. A couple of other pimps tried to step up, but we wasn’t trying to jump into another situation like
that so soon. One day became one week, then one whole month, and next thing we knew, it was almost one whole year that passed
without us having a pimp.

It was scary doing it without knowing Nut was in our corner. But at the same time, we ain’t have to worry about him beating
nobody at the drop of a dime. We had a rough night once when one of Shakira’s regulars tried to get three of his friends to
run a train on her on a sneak tip. The niggas was hiding in the back of his truck when he first pulled up. Shakira ain’t know
until after she finished sucking him off. She heard some dudes’ voices in the back. They was coming to the front, talking
about how they was gonna fuck her, naming all the positions they wanted her in. But when she said the price she wanted, they
started lunching out and they tried to rape her, but Shakira’s regular finally talked his buddies off of her, feeling guilty
probably from hearing my girl screaming like crazy. If he wouldn’t have stopped them, Shakira would’ve been got, cuz no one
was there to help her. It was the first time we had really thought about getting another pimp. Niggas knew not to try that
shit when we had one. We both started carrying blades on us, just in case some shit popped off again.

Nut had become strictly legit. He got a loan to start rehabbing houses by using the apartment building for clout. After he
fixed the rundown houses back up, he sold them for twice the money he first paid for them. It was strange to know that he
got his start from the money we was giving him, but hell, Peaches said he was a hustler. I guess he hustled the hell out of
us, cuz we ain’t never see no houses in our names.

Joe had taught me how to open up a bank account and I had nine thousand dollars in something he called a money market account
that no one knew about but me. Deep down inside I knew what I wanted to do with the money, but I ain’t wanna jinx myself by
saying it out loud.

“Call him, Camille,” Shakira begged.

I did like Joe, but it was hard to forget that he was a person willing to pay money just to spend time with me. He ain’t never
try to fuck me, but he did eat me and lick me all over, even my ass. A few times, he stuck his finger inside me, but he never
tried to stick his dick in me. I thought that was strange. Every time I asked him about it, he just said he just wanted to
please me, and then he asked, “What’s so wrong with that?” Of course, I liked that kind of attitude, so I stopped asking.

But he also spent a lot of time talking to me. He ain’t want me to be out on the streets, and he even said he’d put me up
in one of those new condos on U Street. But I was too scared to turn my life back over to another man like that.

“Oh, my God. Hold up,” Shakira said. “Would you look at this shit?”

She was pointing at a men’s magazine stocked on the newsstand. We both screamed at the same time and jumped up and down in
the middle of the sidewalk.

“Trina Boo!” I yelled.

“How much?” Shakira asked the man behind the counter. She snatched the magazine up and flipped through the pages.

“Three ninety-nine,” the man said.

Shakira gave him five dollars. “Oh, my God. It says she’s the new ‘it’ girl for hip-hop videos!”

“Oh, my God. That bitch did it!” I said, reading with her. “Look at all the videos she’s about to be in—Kanye, Young Jeezy,
Jay Z!”

We started screaming again and running in place. I was proud of the girl. She had a dream and she followed it. Seeing Trina
Boo posed up in all different kinds of positions, in her slinky clothes, looking like a black Jessica Rabbit or something,
made me want to chase the dream I had.

I decided to call Joe up right then and there. He seemed happy to hear my voice and then he said he was on his way to scoop
me.

He took me to another hotel, this time at the Ritz Carlton, out in Virginia. This was top-of-the-line luxury like I had never
experienced before. The sheets was so soft and the bed was so plush. Room service was crazy. Food made to order. There was
a jetted tub in the bathroom, and my God, the showerhead rotated and pulsated like a vibrator. “A treat,” he called it.

“I been seeing you for what, like almost two years?” he asked, lying on his back under the sheets.

I nodded.

“And you never told me when your birthday was.”

I smiled. “Well, you never asked.”

“Well, I’m asking now.”

“It’s in January.”

“Shit, so I missed it again?”

“It was just last month.”

“Hmmm…”

“When’s yours?”

“October.”

“Oh, what’s that, a Virgo?”

“A Scorpio.”

“Freak.”

“Yep,” he said, smiling and then flipping me over. He started kissing me down my neck and then down my back.

“Man, you make me feel so good all the time,” I said.

“I’m supposed to,” he said, planting kisses all over my back.

“Why?”

“Cuz, you deserve it.”

“You still want me to stop working the streets?”

“Mm-hmm…,” he moaned, kissing my butt cheeks.

“So what if I told you I wasn’t going back out there no more, what would you say?”

“I’d say that’s good. I’d say that’s great. I’d say about time.”

“Would you help me still?”

“What you mean?”

I turned around and looked him in his eyes. Joe was still real sexy to me. His thick eyebrows and chiseled jaw line looked
so damn good. He was the only guy I kissed on the lips, who paid to be with me.

“I’m just saying, if I stopped, would you help take care of me until I could figure out what I was going to do?”

Joe sighed and then sat up. “There’s too many empty variables in that statement.”

“Huh? The fuck you talking about?”

“I mean, first of all, you don’t have a plan, and secondly, you’re talking about an infinite timeline. What are the parameters
for this proposition?”

I sat up and started looking for my stuff. Clearly, all this time, Joe was just talking shit.

“What, Nectar?”

“Nothing. I need to go back.”

“Why? You mad at me?” he said, sitting up on one arm.

“You know what I just realized, Joe?” I said with one hand on my hip. “The minute I started playing with the idea that everything
you been saying all this time was sincere, you just let me know in one sentence that you are full of shit, just like the rest
of them!”

“Come on, Nectar, don’t do me like that. What am I supposed to do, treat you like a trophy wife? Pay all your bills and chauffeur
you around town?”

I put my boots on and zipped them up as he rambled.

“Nectar? Are you really going to leave? I want to see you do better and everything, but…”

I put on my fur and grabbed my bag. It was crystal clear he never cared about me. I was kidding myself.

“Come on, don’t be mad. Let’s talk about this like two adults.”

“My point exactly. I’m still a minor, remember? And my muthafuckin’ name ain’t Nectar!” I said, opening and closing the door
before walking out.

I could hear him walking down the hall behind me.

“Okay, okay. Let me at least drive you back.”

“Back where?” I asked, stopping to look him up and down. “Back to the street? No fuckin’ thank you!”

A
few weeks later, I was walking to the corner store on Benning Road to buy a pack of Newports and a grape Dutch when a skinny
short woman who looked like my mama walked to the bus stop at the corner. I had to do a double take, cuz I knew it was her.
She just looked a whole lot older than she was supposed to look. Gray short hair combed straight back, wrinkled skin, missing
teeth. She had glazed-looking eyes.

I told myself if she was still at the bus stop when I came out the store, that I would call my mother’s name out and see what
happened. When I walked out, the woman was still sitting there under the glass shelter with the big Heineken beer ad on the
back. I took a jack out the pack and lit it. I needed the smoke to calm my nerves before I tried to talk to this woman.

I inhaled and walked over to the bus stop. “Shelly?”

The woman looked up and smiled. Just then, I knew it was her. I could see the face I remembered hiding behind her eyes, but
I asked again just to make sure she heard what I said. “Are you Shelly?” I asked.

“Yes, why? I know you?”

I could tell she ain’t recognize me, and I ain’t feel nothing about that. I just asked, “Do you have a daughter named Camille
Logan?”

Her smile faded and then she started rocking back and forth, real slow. I sat down beside her.

“She hate me,” she said, staring at the ground. “I know she do. And I can’t blame her. I left my baby. I left her, and it’s
nobody’s fault but mine.”

I glared at Mama, though she looked like a messed-up version of the woman I remembered. Her hands looked ashy and scarred
up, like they belonged to a woman twice her age. She looked hard, like she’d seen things only her and God knew. But behind
her eyes, I could tell she was the same woman who used to braid my hair and tell me stories about when she was little and
living in North Carolina with Nana.

“My baby girl hate me,” Mama said, nodding.

She looked like a person who ain’t need me to hate her. But I couldn’t offer her my love, though, either. I just knew I ain’t
hate her. That was for sure.

“You seen her?” she asked, looking me in my eyes.

I shook my head. How could I tell her who I was? I knew it would break her heart that she ain’t recognize me.

“When the last time you seen her?”

“A while ago,” I mumbled.

“She doing okay?”

I nodded.

Mama smiled and stared back at the ground. I puffed the cigarette and stared at the ground, too.

“Next time you see her, can you tell her I’m sorry. I ain’t mean to leave her,” she said, letting tears fall. “Tell her I’m
sorry. I swear to God, I ain’t mean to leave my chile. I was gonna come back. I was gonna come back.”

I nodded and fought back the tears creeping up. I took another puff of my cigarette and stood up.

“You got another Lucy, honey?”

I passed her the cigarette and walked away. I couldn’t take any more. The tears poured out as I rushed back to my apartment.
I bought a dime bag from one of the dudes around the way and rolled up as soon as I got in the house. I started blazing until
Shakira tapped on the door, asking if she could hit it, too. I opened the door and let her inside.

“You okay?” she asked, squatting on the floor and sitting down in front of the couch.

I nodded.

“You look like shit, though. You sure?”

I nodded again and blew smoke out.

“But you look like you been crying.”