No Room for Mercy (34 page)

Bay leaned back in her chair and looked off into the openness of the
pizza parlor and laughed to herself. She would never underestimate
anyone, but these guys were a true bunch of wannabe hard asses. The
thing around Ponca City for those who had nothing else better to do
with their life was to name themselves, go out in their little group,
and pick on other people just for kicks. “What kind of pizza
y’all ordered? Can we have a slice?” one of the boys
asked.

“We ordered two meat lovers, a vegetarian and two pep—”
AquaNina stopped talking when she saw Bay eyeing her with a blank
stare.

“It’s obvious who the man is in this here deal,”
another one of the boys said as he and his friends laughed lightly.
“You be using a strap on when you fuck this one?”

“Why? You want me to use it on your punk ass, boy?” Bay
retorted.

Amidst ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ the young male
knocked the salt, red pepper and Parmesan cheese shakers off the
table and leaned back and smiled.

“Aww, man! Look what you did! Why you do that?” Bay
mocked through laughter just as her and AquaNina’s order was
brought to the front. The two hopped up amid taunts, being called
everything from clit lickers to freaks of nature as they left Pizza
Hut.

Bay may have been laughing and brushing the boys off, but on the
inside she was furious. Time and time again she’d taken taunts
and had let it slide, but when she saw AquaNina in tears and heard
her ask ‘why people treat others that way’, she now felt
the desire to get some payback.

******

“If you don’t move that funky plate of couscous from
outta my face it’s gone be trouble on the home front,”
fifteen year-old Koko told Spoonie as she sat out on the patio with
Kimi and Tyke, the four sisters entertaining themselves by picking
out clothes to order from a Neiman Marcus catalog.

“It’s better than that meat lover pizza Bay bringin’
here,” eleven year-old Spoonie snapped as she poked out her
tongue.

Koko picked up a bottle of hot sauce and said, “Stick it out
again!”

Tyke poked her tongue out that moment and laughed.

“See,” Kimi chimed in as she grabbed her cell phone. “Me
and Koko asked Bay to get y’all a vegetarian pizza, but since
y’all wanna be smart we gone cancel that. Bay pick up!”

“Wait!” Spoonie and Tyke said in unison.

“Ha! Apologize to the both of us.” Koko said.

“I Apologize.” Spoonie said.

“No, ma’am. We need y’all to say we apologize
Misses Koko Dawkins and we apologize Misses Kimi Dawkins.” Koko
remarked.

“We just gone eat the couscous before we go through all that
there,” Tyke ended.

******

“
It’s so good…loving somebody…and
somebody loves you back…and that’s a fact…it’s
so good…needing somebody and somebody needs you back…say
you got seventy thirty…you got sixty forty…talkin’
‘bout a fifty fifty love…yeah…”

Doss’s private room was the place to be at this time for the
men in the family. He and his father along with Mendoza, Dawk and
Walee were hanging out in the room listening to music while playing
chess and eating. Everybody with the exception of Walee was vibing to
Teddy Pendergrass’s song
When Somebody Loves You Back
.

Dawk could appreciate the music, and Teddy had taken Doss, back to
the days when Naomi worked at the law firm in the Sears Tower in the
early eighties. His music was hot during their time before the kids
came along and good memories were being brought back.

DeeDee was reminiscing about Sharona Benson, his love who’d
left him in his old age and Mendoza was enjoying the song while
slicing into to a hearty T-bone steak and challenging Walee on the
chess board.

“Ohhh. This is good stuff right here, let me tell you guys,”
Mendoza said as he chewed on a succulent piece of fat he’d cut
from the meat.

“If you lived here my wife would make no money. You’d eat
every last bull on the ranch.” Doss remarked as he uncorked a
bottle of red wine.

“All eight hundred of ‘em I would.” Mendoza replied
through laughter as he slid his queen across the board.

“That’s some of the wackest music I done heard in my
life!” Walee snapped as he slid a rook into position. “Check,
Mister Cernigliaro.”

Mendoza sat his plate down and leaned forward and eyed the board.
“How did I get myself into this situation?”

“Listening to that dumb music got you in trouble, man,”
Walee laughed as he stood up and cracked his knuckles.

“Grandson, someday you’ll understand these songs we’ve
been listening to all day,” DeeDee chuckled. “When you’re
alone with your woman about to get it on? You would want some Teddy
and not that b-bop you be listening to all the time.”

“What would I do alone with a woman?” Walee asked
sarcastically.

“If you have to ask, then you’re not ready, son.”
Mendoza remarked as he moved his king out of harm’s way.

“What’s the big deal about females? Have any of you ever
even seen a woman naked? Stuff hangin’ off they chest and long
nails that dig into your skin. And if they ain’t clean they
smell like rotten fish.”

The men laughed aloud at that moment. “Where’d you learn
all that?” DeeDee asked.

“Cable TV has it all. Real Sex on HBO tells me all I need to
know. Sex is yucky.”

“Sex is yucky?” Dawk repeated. “If I remember
correctly, you used to take my Penthouse magazines and stay in one of
the bathrooms for like an hour.”

“I was doing research,” Walee snapped. “You ain’t
have to say nothing about my research, Dawk.”

“Yeah, research. It gets better when you study the real thing
you know, il mio amico?” Mendoza said as he leaned back into
the sofa cushions.

“I’m a be by myself. Women cost. And I ain’t coming
off none of the loot the family owns!”

“Oh you right about that,” Doss chimed in as he poured up
glasses of wine. “You most definitely gone pay for your own
woman. Now, your grandfather can help you out with that because he
done paid for nearly every woman in his life.”

“And they were worth every dollar,” DeeDee said proudly.

“That’s why you be having a knot of money when you going
see Oneika and Jordan, Dawk?” Walee asked.

“Stay out my business, boy. What’s it to you?”

“It ain’t nothin’ to me. I’m just tryna learn
how not to go broke that’s all.” Walee said as the men
laughed aloud.

“It’s gone be fun watching you come of age, son.”
DeeDee ended through laughter.

*******

Meanwhile, upstairs inside the master suite, Francine was showing
Naomi, Martha and Twiggy her implants. She’d had her double
mastectomy in November of last year and had completed her plastic
surgery several months earlier and was doing well, having beaten her
bout with breast cancer.

“One hundred and seventy-three thousand dollars out of pocket
for the entire process ladies,” Francine said as she stood
naked from the waist up in front of a large mirror.

At age seventy-three, Francine still had a nice physique. A few
wrinkles around the eyes and the corners of her mouth with slightly
greying hair, but she was in good shape for a woman her age and
looked years younger. She wasn’t afraid to share what she’d
been through, either, and forty-seven year-old Naomi, and forty-three
year-olds Martha and Twiggy were all concerned about breast cancer
given their ages.

Francine discussed her fears, treatment and the feelings she’d
encountered once she’d made the decision to have her breasts
removed and gave valuable insight to the women. “My best advice
is to you ladies is to have your mammograms done annually or
bi-annually. Naomi, I don’t know if you know if cancer runs in
your family or not for certain, but it is a contributing factor.
Along with diet and exercise of course.”

“Serena discussed those things with me, but I never paid it any
mind, really. Now that it has hit close to home I’ll heed the
warning.”

“As you should. You all should. I went to the doctor often, but
he didn’t catch the cancer until the latter stages. I was angry
over the mastectomy because I didn’t feel like a woman
afterwards. But these are better than the real ones. Look how they
sit up,” Francine said happily. “Mendoza can’t keep
his hands of them. He touches the fake ones more than the real ones,
that’s for sure.”

“Okay, I’m done.” Twiggy snapped as she walked away
from the mirror.

“Did I upset you, Irene?” Francine asked as she turned
towards Twiggy. “Here, let me cover up and stop discussing my
bedroom.”

“No you didn’t upset me, Francine. I’m just
going…well, shit I can just ask you. I been a part of the
itty-bitty-titty committee all my life. Can your doctor just throw a
couple of thirty-four Cs up in here on GP?” Twiggy asked while
pointing to her small breasts.

“Why not just go all out and get the forty-four double D max
package like I got?” Naomi said as the woman burst into
laughter.

“And tip your light ass over every time you lean forward,”
Martha ended through laughter.

*******

Back down in Doss’s private room, Walee was the only one still
not understanding the music and the conversation over women. He was
ready to hear some more Slick Rick and Ice Cube, something he could
relate to at his young age, even if the raps were from the nineties.
Tired of hearing the adults and his older brother tell him he just
didn’t know women and good music, Walee got up to leave the
room.

“The game isn’t finished, you know?” Mendoza called
out.

“I had you beat, man,” Walee said as he left the room. He
was headed to the patio when he met Bay and AquaNina coming through
the front door with stacks of pizza in their hands.

“’Bout time, man! Where y’all been?” Walee
asked as he rubbed his hands together.

“Never mind. Where Dawk and T-top?” Bay asked as she
marched past the grand staircase.

“Dawk in daddy private room listenin’ to garbage with
grandpa ‘nem. Tiva takin’ a nap in her room. Why?”

“Never mind,” Bay said as she hurried off into the
kitchen and sat the pizzas on the counter. She then climbed the back
stairs and walked into T-top’s room and shook her from her
slumber.

When Bay told Tiva what was up, she jumped from her bed, threw on an
old pair of Jordan’s and placed a baseball cap onto her head
and the two headed back downstairs where they met Kimi, Koko, Spoonie
and Tyke in the downstairs kitchen.

Tiva had already called Dawk on his cell phone and he met his sisters
as they were headed towards the front door. “Y’all
ready?” he asked.

“Where y’all goin’?” Kimi as she followed her
siblings towards the front door.

“Bay, no!” AquaNina cried, realizing what was about to go
down.

“’Nina they done tried us for the last time! You take it
if you want, but I’m not puttin’ up with it!”

“Oooh!” Koko snapped. “Them five boys got at y’all
again?”

“Damn straight! They at Pizza Hut right now and we goin’
back over there and whip that ass!” Bay assured.

Kimi and Koko knew a couple of the boys that hung out in the group
personally and had a vendetta out on them. The boys had asked the
twins to have sex one day while they were at Spoonie and Tyke’s
ball game a few months back and both were insulted and appalled. The
boys, after being read their rights by Kimi and Koko, spread a rumor
around the park and on the west side of town that the two gave it up
easy. Ever since then Kimi and Koko had been looking for some get
back. The day had finally arrived and they were overjoyed.

“Let me get my purse,” Kimi quipped happily as she
trotted up the stairs.

“Whoever ain’t in the car when I pull off gettin’
left so hurry up,” Bay said as she ran towards the front door.

“They goin’ fight! Tyke, come on!” Spoonie said
through a wide smile as she grabbed a slice of vegetarian pizza and
ran and caught up with her oldest sisters and brother.

While the adults were talking the day away, another portion of the
Holland-Dawkins clan was preparing to ride into town and cause some
major conflict. The kids were emerging from the house at random, each
eager to claim a seat inside Bay’s ride in order to partake in
the upcoming festivities. And everybody had his or her own reason for
riding—Bay, who’d had it up to her neck with the
harassment, Tiva, who would ride side by side with her twin to the
depths of hell and back. Dawk, for added muscle and to make sure his
sisters handled their business, Kimi and Koko, mad at two of the boys
for asking them for their precious kitty cats and spreading a rumor,
and then there was Spoonie and Tyke, who were going along just for
the sheer thrill of it all.

Walee wanted to go, but he was in the kitchen trying to keep AquaNina
from going hysterical. She was crying and worried Bay was going to
get hurt or worse and he was doing his best to calm his sister’s
girlfriend down and prevent her from walking down the hall that lead
to his father’s private room.

“Listen to me!” Walee yelled as he slapped his hands
together and stomped his feet. “You can’t go around here
crying and carrying on because you gone get Bay and everybody else in
trouble. Shut up about it!”

“You shut up, Walee! Bena gone go and get herself and everybody
else in trouble! Mister Dawkins!” AquaNina yelled as she ran
out of the kitchen.

Walee ran up on AquaNina and turned her around. “If you tell my
daddy about this? I’m gone tell Bay I saw you with another girl
while she was up in Chicago!”

AquaNina paused at that moment. “That’s a lie and you
know it,” she cried as her lips trembled. “I would never
do that to Bena.”

“Bay don’t know that. She told me to keep an eye on you
and she’s gonna believe everything I say.”

“Why would you do that to me?”

“Why would you do what you’re about to do to Bay?”