Page 40 of Quasim: King Inferno

“We’ll see.”

“Don’t be like that, Quasim,” she walked backwards toward the entrance, needing me to be okay with her going with Zay.

“I’m straight… be safe.”

She pushed the door open. “Thanks.”

“Anjo?”

She turned to look at me as I smirked. “I’m making it a problem.”

Blair

Past

Recommendation: Listen to ‘Far away’ Marsha Ambrosius

“You’re high again and sitting in my face lying about it.” I accused Tyshawn as he dragged his ass into the house, looking every bit of high.

It wasn’t a weed high, either, like he always tried to convince me. Tyshawn was high off dope from how slow he moved, even staggering in the process, but never falling. It took him ten minutes to make it up the steps to our apartment because he was stuck in the middle of the stairs, neighbors maneuvering around him.

“Shut the fuck up, Blair,” He whispered like I was talking so loudly, when I was using my regular tone. What use was there to get upset and start hollering at him?

Tyshawn would promise me that he would get clean and then he would be gone for three days and come in with different clothes, high as a damn kite. This had been my life since I decided to stay.

I decided to stay and help him and none of my help was accepted. Every time I tried to talk to him about going to rehab, he would cuss me out so bad or put his hands on me because he accused me of thinking he was an addict.

He was.

Tyshawn didn’t think he was an addict because he did it recreationally, which was a lie. Any given moment, he could be in the bathroom or our bedroom shooting up between his toes or groin. I watched him plenty of times light that crap on that spoon, inject it into the needle and then put his feet up on the bed, getting right between his big toe and second toe.

I’ve never seen anyone shoot up or do any hard drugs in front of me. One of the many foster mothers I had, used to roll her weed in front of me, but that was as far as it went. No sooner than he injected that mess into his body, he would toss his head back and have this silly ass grin on his face.

“You promised me that before this baby comes, you were going to get clean. This is what you want our son to witness, Tyshawn?”

He leaned on the counter with his eyes closed. It looked like he was hovering with the way he was moving, and not moving at the same time. “Chill the fuck out, Blair… I was with my homie, and we got high… I’m getting clean.”

“And you got high? Tyshawn, you’re not smoking weed… you are doing fucking heroin, you damn junkie!” I raised my voice and regretted it the moment the words and bass in my voice left my mouth.

“The fuck did you say to me?” He questioned, with his eyes still closed.

I slammed the pot that I was standing by onto the stove. “You promised me that you would get clean. You promised you would stop putting your hands on me… you full of fucking broken promises and I refuse for my son to be raised around this. I allowed you to hit on me, but I’d be damned if he sees his father being a junkie, and his mother battered… I gotta choose him.”

I stormed out of the kitchen and went into the bedroom to grab a few things. My foster mother, Augusta, had been telling me to come stay with her; she never trusted Tyshawn. She told me he was bad news when he made me drop out of college and move with him to Philly.

Augusta would never tell me what to do because she wasn’t like that. She was the kind of woman that spoke her shit and then allowed you to make your own decisions. I made my own bed, and now I was laying in it, regretting giving up my life for a man like him.

“Fuck you think you going?”

It was bad enough having Quameer Inferno know that his best friend, now ex-best friend, was abusing me. He took me to the emergency room after Tyshawn had broken my nose. He told me that he could take me to his grandmother’s house, so I didn’t have to go back to him.

Meer had always been a good person, too good of a person to be with Brandi, or be a friend to Tookie. As much as I wanted to take him up on his offer, I declined as I sat in that hospital, lying about being jumped by a bunch of women over a fictional man I had made up.

The doctors knew I was lying because that wasn’t the first time I had been in there. I always had some lame excuse. On one of my visits, one of the nurses slipped me a domestic violence pamphlet.

Her eyes showed the concern she had for my life as I walked out of there with broken ribs. Tyshawn had seen some guy helping me with groceries and accused me of fucking him.

He was always accusing me of fucking somebody, including his younger brother. I wore shorts around him, and he slammed my face into the kitchen cabinet, then pushed my face into the dish water.

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