Sex in the Hood Saga (5 page)

“Henry, it's beyond urgent!” Victoria exclaimed outside the bathroom door. She crossed her legs and squatted a little, as if she were holding in pee. She was actually rubbing her clit against her jeans and squeezing the muscles between her legs. The massage sensation teased like a crumb when she was craving the whole cookie.

Henry banged his knuckles on the door. An angry male grunted back. “Yo, let a nigga take a shit.”

“Ugh,” Victoria groaned, standing up. “If I don't get in there, I'm gonna faint. Seriously.”

“Seein' Kay-Kay gon' make you faint,” Henry said, leading her to another door. He grabbed her suitcase from the living room and said, “Anyway, let them fumes air out befo' you come back. Lonnie stink bombs notorious!” Henry opened the bedroom door. Sweet-scented smoke stole Victoria's breath.

“Girls only!” Kay-Kay shouted from somewhere beyond the cloud.

“Iss ma fav'rite cousin!” Kay-Kay emerged from the smoke. Her skinny brown arms were extended, her raisin-colored nipples were hard, pointing forward, and a silver ring formed an “O” at the center of what looked like a black olive in a dark nest.

Victoria gasped. Kay-Kay's marijuana breath was so strong, Victoria could taste it. She stared hard at Kay-Kay's face. “What happe—”

Her resemblance to herself and Mommy was eery and freakish. They had the same big, round eyes with long, thick lashes, same Indian priestess cheekbones, pillowy, puckered lips, and luxurious hair. A center part divided two thick black plaits extending down her bony shoulders. But her skin was horrible, splotchy, with scaly patches. A dark scar streaked across her stomach and upper thigh like a tire track.

“Girl,” another female voice cried out from the smoke. “Why you ain't tell me she
that
fine?” She leaped out of the smoke and put her arm around Kay-Kay. She was a little plumper, with skin the color of corn chips, and nipples that looked like the tips of those snack sausages on the counter in party stores. The girl extended a joint pinched between long, blue fingernails with sparkles and stripes. “New girl, I'm LaKwonda.”

Victoria held her breath. Her eyes burned. They were wide open, staring. As the smoke thinned, bunkbeds came into focus behind the girls. Threadbare, dirty yellow comforters hung over their edges. Nearby, studded jeans and T-shirts covered a wooden chair. Clothes covered the chipped, faux-wood desk, the dusty green tile floor, and hooks on the closet door.

“Dorothy straight outta Kansas.” LaKwonda giggled, sucking on the joint, which glowed red. “Girl,” she squinted, “you in the hood now. Look, she even got red shoes.”

“I have to open the window,” Victoria gasped. To her right, late afternoon sunshine sliced through a rip in the yellowed window blind and dust particles danced in the smoke. No way was she going to jeopardize her health, or the track scholarship she now needed to attend college, by breathing their toxic air.

College, right. She was supposed to be at the University of Michigan
right now.
But the money was gone. So now, as soon as she got settled in this rathole, she would figure out how to apply for a track scholarship and get to the Ann Arbor campus right away. There was no other option; not a community college, or worse, missing out on higher education altogether. No, she had to get up and out. Now. Without breathing all these toxic fumes.

“I can't deal with smoke,” Victoria said, squeezing her pussy muscles to calm her nerves.

“Pull that stick out yo' ass, girl.” Kay-Kay laughed. “Ain't nobody tryin' to be prissy down here. Show some love fo' yo' kin now that you comin' back to yo' black roots.”

Victoria stared. Looking at Kay-Kay was like looking in a carnival mirror that distorted color rather than size. Her face was the darker, drugged-out, unhealthy, and a haunting version of her own. And her mother's.

Kay-Kay had it, too, from her mother Harriette, the crackhead in the kitchen, who got pregnant by a Mexican migrant worker a year after Victoria was born.

All this was silencing Celeste. Numb.

Victoria hated that she could see her mother so strongly in Kay-Kay's face. It was taking her back . . . ten, eleven years, to their big, pretty house, when Mommy took her on her lap on the frilly vanity chair, pointing at the ornate mirror where, in the soft perfumed air of her bedroom, mother and daughter reflected back the identical face—one girl-sized vanilla, the other full-grown caramel brown. Both were framed by flowing ebony hair that shone in the soft light. Both had big, sparkling aquamarine eyes fringed with thick black lashes, natural ruby lips parting over perfect white teeth, and smiles beaming with mother-daughter love.

But Mommy died before she could teach Victoria how to summon and use Celeste. That was okay. Little Victoria figured out that any power so strong it made daddy fall in love with mommy and ultimately kill her, was too strong of a power and Victoria didn't want anything to do with it—neither the race mix that brought it on, nor the sex that brought it out.

So, Victoria vowed to stay a virgin forever. Despite overwhelming adolescent hormones and a pleading boyfriend, Victoria made a deal with herself. As long as she controlled her body and never shared Celeste's power, she would never risk killing herself, or someone else. And she learned to channel this magic power. While masturbating, she would envision a goal: winning the 100-yard dash at the school track meet, getting an A on her chemistry final exam or being a perfect, charming lady in formal gowns at all those black tie events Brian's parents hosted in their ballroom. As she orgasmed, she would hold that image in her mind in perfect detail.

Life imitated eroticism every time. She never failed to win track medals, straight A's, and praise from Brian's parents. Victoria never outright made a mental call to Celeste in the way her mother had described, like an angel or a fairy godmother.

“Vic, what you been smokin'? I don't want nothin' that make me that spaced out.” Kay-Kay and LaKwonda giggled then dove onto the bottom bunk.

The stillness and silence snapped Victoria out of her flashback. The girls came into focus. Their limbs were tangled together and they were French kissing.

Victoria dashed from the room. A swath of light shined from the bathroom. She ran in, closed the door. Whether it reeked or not, she'd never know. She pulled the top of her sweater up over her nose and inhaled the soft floral scent of the perfume she abandoned at her house. The doorknob jiggled when she turned the lock from horizontal to vertical.

“Oh my God, finally.” She unzipped her jeans, pulled them and her pink satin panties off, and hung them on a hook on the back of the door. The filth of the bathroom barely registered as the cool air hit the steaming hot gush between her legs. With her sandals on, Victoria raised her right foot onto the chipped blue tile of the sinktop vanity. She balanced on her left foot, spread-eagled with her right leg bent at the knee to expose her red-hot, throbbing pussy. She washed her hands. There was no soap, but she scrubbed them together hard under hot water. She balanced her right fingertips over her swollen clit.

Why was that music so loud? And those guys's laughter.

One of them was saying, “Whoo-wee!” She scanned the wall
. Oh my God!
Hank's dark eyes flashed in a hole in the wall between the toilet and the mirror. About the size of a man's fist, chipped plaster ringed a circular peephole into the kitchen.

“Excuse me!” Victoria exclaimed as she bent at the waist to cover herself. If questioned, she would say she was about to insert a tampon. “Never complain, never explain,” Daddy used to always say. So no, she wouldn't say anything. Instead, she stepped to the wall, pressed her back against the hole and raised her foot onto the lid of the toilet.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Touching her clit was like pressing a button that released tiny purple lightning bolts from a super-charged warehouse between her legs. Each bolt shot with tingling intensity, zigzagging up to every inch of her skin, making it tickle. And as her fingers made little circles round and round the swollen ball, the lightening bolts danced behind her closed eyelids in streaks of orange, red, yellow. Her pussy was pulsating so hard it was like her heart, pumping, pounding, beating the life through her. And that sweet, salty smell was so intoxicating, she pulled her shirt off her face so she could inhale loudly.

She would use this energy, the most powerful energy available to humans, to conceive an idea, a plan, and a vision for how she could escape this inner city nightmare immediately. Without violating her vow of celibacy for Celeste. For a second, she remembered Dildo Dick in Kay-Kay's lesbian lair. He would make this all the more awesome, but no way was she about to go back into that room. She'd have to make do on her own.

Victoria shoved her left middle finger into the hot, tight hole while her right fingers rubbed away angst and anxiety. With all the questions quiet, her brain was a silent workshop where innovative ideas could stand up and shout.

Celeste,
Victoria thought as wonderful shivers rippled through her flesh.
I am calling on you right now to give me the power to leave here and live like I'm used to.

“Your mix-race woman powers,” a voice answered. Victoria's fingers stopped midstroke, even though she was about to cum.

A voice answered! She moved her finger in and out of her slick hole, rubbed her clit with perfect precision, so that her body was trembling.

“Mix-race woman powers,” the voice said, “will get you up and out. But you—”

Victoria's every cell exploded in orgasm. Her arms and legs convulsed. Her nipples poked through her pink sweater. The sensuous intoxication was so strong, such a relief from the horrors of the day, her face twisted into a sob.

The voice screamed in her mind, “But you have to share your sex.”

“No!” Victoria cried. Alice found the little pill to pop and escape from Ghettoland, but the bottle was marked with a skull and crossbones! “No!” Victoria was gasping and sobbing and saying with a tone that was erotic and anguished all at once. “No! No! No!”

The bathroom door burst open. Henry's eyes bugged. A silver gun flashed at his side. “What the fuck, Vee! Sound like somebody hurtin' you, but you in here havin' a freak party all by ya damn self! Shit!”

Victoria glared at him through tears. Her lips trembled as she shouted, “Get me out of here!”

As Duke wove the Porsche through the clog of trucks and cars on the Lodge Freeway, Beamer sat in the passenger's seat, popping another Godiva chocolate truffle into his mouth. It was like lobbing a Cocoa grenade into his gut to blow up and sugarcoat the fucked up feelings he had right now about Duke and that almost-white chick.

But he had to speak. Couldn't hold it in no longer, even though there was no tellin' how Duke would react. “Yo, dude, that's some whack shit about makin' Snow White your partner,” Beamer said. “I been yo' devoted servant two years now. Time to make me Lieutenant o' Babylon.”

Duke tossed back his head, opened his mouth wide to the sky. A deep laugh busted out. Beamer's heart rattled. Duke's laughter was like poison fangs stabbing every inch of his skin. Rage seeped into his blood. He was dizzy.

“You workin' on a routine for open mic night down at the comedy club?” Duke laughed.

Beamer hated that emotion was making his voice sound shaky. “I'm serious as a heart attack, dude.”

As he laughed, Duke's big, white teeth flashed along with his diamond “D” ring on the hand holding his stomach.

Beamer had to state his case. “I know how e'rythang at Babylon work. Top to bottom. The B'Amazons, the Barriors, the Secret Service, the Sex Squad. Now, I'm puttin' you on notice. Beamer up for promotion in the biggest way.”

Duke's big hand gripped the steering wheel. Other than that and his foot moving on the gas pedal, he was still as a statue, even when he sped up to squeeze through what looked like the eye of a needle between two cars to get into the fast lane. The speedometer moved from ninety-five to ninety-seven to ninety- nine. Beamer put on his seatbelt. “Yo, dog,” Duke said with that smooth, deep voice that always made everybody in the room shut up. Now he mimicked a game show host. “Mr. Beamer, you're the lucky winner of two choices.”

Beamer laughed and popped another chocolate into his mouth.

“Choice number one,” Duke said, “you can keep kidding yourself through the helluva magnifying glass you got between yourself and reality. Or you can focus in on the twenty/twenty now, before the hindsight at your last breath makes you see you were fucking up in grand style.”

Beamer sucked the chocolate, laughing loudly, but he spoke in all seriousness. “Ain't squat distorted. I'm speakin' for Milan too.”

“Now you really in the comedy zone. Milan look at the world through eyes so greedy and jealous, half the time she don't know a dolla from a dick.”

“Dude,” Beamer said, “she know Babylon even more 'n me. She—”

“She a professional ho. Two kids and knowin' her my whole life, b'lieve me, Milan ain't nobody friend. She out fo' num'a one. And damn the foo' who think she ain't gon' back, front, and side—stab 'im to get her way.”

“So, you diss yo' girl but think Miss White Thang gon' want some thug love? Milan'll kill bof y'all.” Beamer popped another chocolate into his mouth.

“All that chocolate mus' be helpin' you grow some balls,” Duke said. “That's good, but dig this: You ain't my partner. You my assistant. Helper. Servant. You owe me your life. You oughta wake up every morning and kiss my feet before you take your first breath.”

Beamer froze. The chocolate melted on his tongue.

“I am God, ma'fucka. I gave you life. I give you life e'ry day. I'm the king. You're the servant. When I get my pretty-ass, half-white Duchess, who prob'ly got more brains and balls than ten o' you put together, you gon' serve her too. So, get that scheme outta your eye.”

Duke stared hard, right into Beamer's eyes. “To put it on repeat fo' ya. You my servant, not my partner. I'm the king. I need a queen, and she it. And so it is written, and so it is done.”

Beamer was already spinning back, remembering vividly the carnage that Duke spared him from, working as second in command for Duke's archrival, whom he dominated and defeated. But when it happened, Beamer had vowed to someday reign over Duke.

“Know why it was so easy for me to bring Pinks down? 'Cause you was holdin' him up. Some people was born to lead, some to follow, some to serve. You serve me. Now, what was the exact words?”

Beamer said, “I promise to protect and serve you with my life forever.”

“And what is the punishment for breakin' that promise?”

“Finish what you was about to start.”

“Cool. Now that we got that refreshed, shut the fuck up. Speak to me when spoken to, ma'fucka. Speak about me, schemin', we gon' hopscotch back to square one wit' my gat up yo' ass.”

He glanced at his savior. “Duke, man, lemme call an' set up yo' manicure and pedicure,” Beamer said. “Hit you wit' a facial too?”

“Yeah, gotta be soft as black satin when the Duchess rub her face all up in mine,” he said raspily, turning onto Babylon Street. “Now, do it quick. We almost there.”