The Punany Experience (7 page)

Dream Crow put the child in a waiting room chair and walked up to the reception desk.

“Hi,” she said to the nurse behind the counter. “Is my sister on duty? Her name is Blue Crow.”

“Yes, she’s in the Children’s Health Center.”

“Will you call her please? I can’t stay. Tell her that her sister was here. Tell her that I brought this little girl here,” she said, pointing to the child. “She needs to be fixed up.”

The nurse winced when she saw the little girl with a painted-on
face and festering needle marks. “Oh my God, child! What has happened to you?” She looked curiously at Dream Crow. “How do you know this girl?”

“I don’t know her. I found her like this. I don’t even know her name.”

“My name is Linda,” Pillow said. “Lady, you’re going to be in so much trouble. You took me.” She was slowly shaking her head and waving her finger back and forth. “He’s gonna be mad.”

“Who’s going to be mad?” the nurse asked.

“Titus. Titus is gon’ be real mad.”

“Is he the one who did this to her?” the nurse asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know who did this. I have to go,” Dream Crow said.

“We’ll take care of her. She’ll be okay. I’ll tell Blue you were here.”

“Hey, lady,” Pillow called after Dream Crow in a weak voice. “Do you want your fifty dollars back? I didn’t get a chance to eat your pussy.”

T
HE OLD MAN TOOK OFF HIS SMOKING JACKET AND LAID IT ON THE BED
. He stood in the mirror and straightened his bowtie and took his green paisley tuxedo vest off of the hanger and put it on his body. He checked his profile in the full-length mirror. He checked his watch and decided to give the girl a few more minutes while he had a glass of wine.

In Friday night traffic, it took Dream Crow twenty minutes to drive five miles. She was hoping she hadn’t messed up her opportunity when she pulled up in front of The Bellevue Hotel. She gave her keys to the valet, and got directions to the lobby bathroom from the concierge. Dream Crow stepped into the stall a
hooker, and stepped out a star-in-the-making. Her simple black dress clung to her curvaceous body in all the right places, its neckline plunging nearly to her navel. She tossed her silver mini-dress into her tote, dressed her slender neck with a single strand of black onyx, and twisted her long hair into a French roll. She put her demo tape into a simple black clutch and strutted through the lobby to the elevator with a winner’s stride.

He gasped when he saw her standing at the door of his hotel suite. His appreciation for her stunning beauty was obvious and honest. “Your brother told me you were talented but he didn’t say you were so beautiful,” the man said, handing her a glass of wine. “Name’s Bandarofski; Jerome Bandarofski.”

Dream Crow took the wine and sipped from the glass. “I’m Dream; Dream Crow. Here is my demo.”

“Yes, of course,” the old man said, smiling. He took the cassette tape from her hand but did not look at it. “We’ll get to that. Have a seat. Why don’t we start by you telling me what you want?”

“What I want?” Dream Crow was confident and certain when she answered him. “I want
everything
.”

“What a coincidence,” Jerome said. “So do I.”

Between sweat suits, basketball shoes, nail maintenance, dining, hotels, and movies, Keith figured he had spent a few thousand dollars on Korea, but she was rationing her pussy like she only had a limited supply.
I’m going to have to fix this
, he thought to himself, as he dialed her number. She didn’t answer. He had tried to take Dream Crow’s advice and wait for the girl to call him, but he couldn’t.

His golden skin was naturally tanned and glowed, no matter the season. His thick eyebrows arched down to the corners of his almond-shaped green eyes that were clear and sparkling between thick, long lashes that women envied. His jet black hair had been permed and finger-waved into a silky Lord Jesus-style that cascaded down his neck and lay coolly on his back. Bringing his full lips together in the mirror, he checked his mustache.

Something didn’t look right. Something was off. He tried smiling again and cocking his head left, then right. His mustache was crooked.

“That hoe cut my shit crooked,” he said out loud. He tried the smile again, this time like Billy Dee; wide and sexy-like.

Yep, his shit was crooked.

“Bitches!”

A
FTER GETTING HER TEST RESULTS
, K
OREA CRIED ALL NIGHT
. She cried hard and soft. She cried tears of anger and tears of self-pity.
She gasped and whimpered, and nearly lost her breath. She cried until her stomach hurt and her body convulsed and shook. She cried until her crying was merely a noise her mouth made and no more tears would come. She cried until she fell asleep.

In the morning light, she was already beginning to heal. She had showered and dressed and was standing in the bathroom mirror when she heard a knock at the door. Korea didn’t open it but answered, “Yes?”

“It’s Mom, honey,” Gladys said through the closed door. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Was that you that I heard crying last night?”

“No, Mom. I wasn’t crying. That wasn’t me. It must’ve been my television.”

“I guess. That must’ve been
some
program,” her mother said suspiciously.

“Yes, it was, Momma. It was something else.”

“Well, alright then. I wanted to let you know that I’m here if you need to talk about anything…anything at all. I work a lot, but I’m still here for you; even if all you want to do is watch TV together.”

Korea appreciated the gesture and she didn’t mean to lie to her mother; she didn’t share trauma or drama with her mother. Gladys was fragile and given to mood swings that could last a few weeks or more.

“Okay, Mom,” Korea answered. “Maybe we can go get some ice cream.”

“Let’s do that, baby. Ice cream always makes me feel better. I’m going to go ahead and get dressed. I’ll meet you in the kitchen in ten minutes.”

“Okay, Mom.”

Korea didn’t mean that she wanted to go get ice cream right
then. She had a lot on her mind. Walking down East 14th was like taking a cool test. Anything could happen to test your cool. And whenever they went to the ice cream parlor, they walked. The last time Korea and Gladys took the walk, two women had fallen out of a car door, fighting, and had almost knocked Gladys down. Another time, a boy had threatened to sick his dog on them if he couldn’t get Korea’s phone number. To avoid injury or rabies, she had given him a fake number. Once, there was a bum peeing on people as they walked past him. If her mother hadn’t been with her, she would’ve knocked him in the head with the gallon jug of wine he was pissing out. But Korea wasn’t feeling cool and level-headed today.
If anyone does anything to piss me off today
, Korea thought,
Momma might see another side of me
.

Korea stood in the bathroom mirror, trying to see if she looked any different. The doctor said the virus would be manageable; that it may never even return if she kept her stress level down. She had no intention of dealing with Keith ever again. But she wasn’t the type of girl who let offenses to any part of her, especially her pussy, go down without retribution.

“Stop it,” she warned the young athlete looking back at her. “Stop your fucking whimpering. Shit happens. Deal with it. It could’ve been worse. He could’ve been some broke-ass street niggah who gave you his baby, or infected you with that new deadly disease, AIDS. What if I had his baby and it looked just like him, and reminded me of his stupid face every day for the rest of my life? I really need to be grateful,” she told herself. “Just be grateful and walk away.”

Then she thought,
What if I’m one of those people who break out all the time? What if I get it on my face, or on my mouth? Everyone will know! Hell no!

Korea almost started to cry again. She could feel her throat knotting up, and her nose beginning to run. She hardened her
face in the mirror and blew one final time into a tissue. She tossed it into the toilet and watched as it spun around in the bowl, flushing her tears and anxiety.

By the time the toilet stopped running, a light bulb had turned on in her mind and she felt suddenly better. The epiphany had come to her as quickly as a flash flood; the details of her retribution falling into her mind like raindrops, flooding her consciousness like storm clouds, images of Keith’s pain flashing like lightning bolts. He would pay. He would pay with his blood. She could taste it already.

The trip to the ice cream shop was sweet and uneventful. No dudes stopped in their cars to holler at her and disrespect this rare time Korea had talking and walking with her mother. None of the employees at the ice cream parlor did or said anything to set her off, and all the bums had taken the day off.

Her mother ordered black walnut ice cream and was carrying some home in a container for later. They talked while they walked home and Korea revealed enough of her teenage life and adult plans to make her mother feel hopeful. She painted visions of gated housing and security that her mother had only dreamed of. There was a garden in the plan, and a minivan and golden years of nothing to do but plan vacations to exotic places.

“See that building over there, baby?” Gladys asked.

“Yes, Momma, I see it, that little broken-down shack next to the liquor store across the street?”

“Liquor store? Now when did that get there?”

“It’s been there for a little while, Mom.”

“Nothing around here really looks like much now, but that little place used to be a clubhouse…a kind of meeting place. That’s where I first saw your father.”

“My father?” Korea repeated.

Korea was more surprised that her mother had conjured up her father’s memory than at the fact that they met directly across the street from where she and her mother now stood. When she was younger, she used to ask about him, but it always seemed to upset her mother. They hadn’t discussed him in years. All that Korea thought she knew about him, she had heard in the streets. And what they said in the streets was that he was a drug dealer that had gotten himself killed. Korea hadn’t been interested enough to know much more than that.

Suddenly Gladys stopped walking. She watched the little building as a man wheeled a dolly stacked with boxes of liquor to the door. When the door was open, she could see that the place had become a liquor warehouse. She shook her head and asked her daughter, “When did you say that liquor store got there?”

“Oh, he just opened a few weeks ago. He’s pretty cool. His name is Hasaan.”

“That’s Mr. Hasaan to you.”

“Mr. Hasaan,” Korea repeated. “Anyway, he and his brother own it. They’re Egyptian. I didn’t know Egyptians had nappy hair, did you?”

“You’ve been inside that liquor store, Korea?”

“Yes, Momma; all the kids go there. They sell pickles and candy and chips and stuff,” Korea answered defensively.

“Listen, I don’t want you inside that store or any other liquor store. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” Korea answered.

“You don’t know what that shit can do to you. Those men aren’t selling candy and pickles. They’re a couple of ghetto farmers, cultivating a crop of future clientele.”

Gladys was getting that look in her eyes that always made Korea nervous. She was sensing her mother was getting ready to have
one of her anger or sadness episodes. Korea changed the subject.

“Let me guess, Momma. My father had on one of those polyester shirts with a collar out to here?” Korea touched her mother’s shoulder, snapping her out of the glazy gaze she had fixated on the building. “Momma, your ice cream is going to melt.”

“Huh?” Gladys replied. “Oh yeah, I was just thinking.” Gladys took her eyes off the building and put them in front of her and walked with her daughter.

“Oh, oh wait, I know,” Korea said. “He had on some platform shoes and bellbottoms!” Korea made her mother laugh. It was nice to see her mother laugh. It didn’t happen a lot. “I bet he had a big ol’ Afro, too…with a fist in it.”

“Well, even though it was 1966, your father never dressed like a clown,” Gladys said. “The day I first saw him he was looking real fine, dressed in all black. Everything was black; beret, turtleneck, pants, belt, all the way down to his jump boots.”

“What are jump boots?”

“A special kind of military boots. He said they were for jumping out of helicopters or planes.”

“Was he in the Army?”

“Only in his mind,” Gladys said. Korea laughed at that. “And for your information,” her mother continued, “your father had a very small, very neat Afro.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And…What about the fist? You know the Afro pick with the fist on the end.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that.”

Gladys burst into laughter. “Korea, child, I’m telling you…if it wasn’t stuck in his head, it was in his back pocket. I was passing
by the place, and he was standing outside handing me some papers. He asked me if I was ready for the revolution. Well, I giggled a little, because he was so cute, but I wasn’t about to join up with some Black Panthers or any other color panther. I told him that my daddy would kill us both. Then, he would march down there and burn the building down. My father was like a one-man army. He had strong principles that weren’t available for compromise. You remind me of him, Korea.”

“My father was a Black Panther?”

Gladys didn’t answer; she kept talking and walking with that glazed look in her eyes. “I don’t guess I cared anything at all about police brutality in Oakland, or the war in Vietnam. Except for the free lunch program, I didn’t personally get involved in much of it. I was like a lot of the women. We were there for the men. I got involved because it was so nice to see Black men standing up for themselves. Actually, it was nice to see them standing up for anything. It was attractive. And they were dedicated. I got a few turtlenecks and a really nice black leather jacket. I even rocked an Afro for a couple of years, but I never did really join or anything. I went to enough meetings and read enough literature to understand what it was all about. The deeper I fell in love, the more I defended the organization to my father. I tried a few times to explain to my folks that the work they were doing was important.