Page 22 of When You Dance
“Whatever, man,” Arrow said, then took a puff of his cigar.
Seneca sat back in his seat and took his drink to the head. Silence fell on us, and the tension seemed thicker than the smoke in this bitch. Ali’s ringing phone broke that silence. When he answered it, he didn’t say hello, and he was quiet for a while until he said, “I’ll handle her. Don’t tell her I’m coming.”
He rolled his eyes and said, “Fuck!”
We all frowned as we stared at him. “That bitch broke the window at Watchful Eyez. I’m gon’ have to take her ass out.”
“Who?” Arrow and I asked at the same time.
“Talisha. I’ve been trying to be nice to her ugly ass, but I’m gon’ have to make good on my threats. Shavozz ain’t fucking with her no more, but I know she wouldn’t want me to kill her, even after that bullshit she did a few months ago. But I don’t know how else to handle her ass. She act like she ain’t scared of me, and that’s a fucking first.”
“Well, ain’t nobody told you to be a light-skinned Big Daddy Kane and be a smooth operator,” Arrow said.
I couldn’t help but chuckle. Seneca took a swallow of his drink, but he didn’t laugh. This shit between him and Arrow was gon’ have to be discussed, because we wouldn’t be able to hang until they squashed this shit. Kaysyn was a grown ass woman, like in-her-forties grown and damn near ten years older than Seneca.
“That’s what I get for getting involved in DJ’s shit. That’s okay though. She finna find out just how serious I was when I told her I was gon’ break her fucking neck. I gotta get back to Beaumont and assess the damage. Then I gotta get a cleanup crew together for her ass. You rolling to Beaumont, Seneca, or you staying in H-Town tonight?”
“I’m staying here. I’ll get wit’chu tomorrow.”
“A’ight.”
He left, so we all decided to call it a night. I was happy about that anyway because Sandrene was calling me. I would much rather be talking to her than entertaining their asses.
CHAPTER10
SANDRENE/OBSESSION
The way Jamel made love to my body had the potential to make me forget my damn name. All parts of me wanted to climb the walls. Sandrene was emotional as hell, and Obsession was feeling nastier than she ever felt in her life. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done in that moment. That was just how gone I was. My body wasn’t my own. It belonged to him.
Thankfully, he didn’t try to get me to agree to things while he was inside of me. I would have agreed to everything… signed my soul over to him to do with as he pleased. I wasn’t sure who all his family was, but the guys that were with him at the club had all seen me naked, and I was more than sure he’d told them who I was.What am I afraid of?I supposed because I’d been under that mask for the past eight years, I didn’t know how to handle being known as Obsession.
Maybe I was hiding from myself. For all these years, I’d blamed my mother and my job, but maybe they weren’t the problem. I didn’t want people to know all parts of me. I wanted to maintain my obscurity to the people around me. Jamel had been the only person to know me and now his entire family knew. Was I ashamed of who I was? No, but a lot of people tended to look down their nose at strippers simply because they couldn’t do it. They judged and talked down on us, assuming all of us were ratchet hoes.
That was the version of us most TV shows and movies portrayed. Most of them that judged had never been in a strip club. Being Obsession every weekend had done wonders for my self-esteem. It made me feel sexy, beautiful, and desirable. Part of my sex appeal had become the simple fact that I was mysterious. Patrons fantasized about what they didn’t know, and those fantasies lined my pockets.
I couldn’t ever think of quitting without a job that would allow me to display my talent. I loved dancing and showing off my body. There weren’t many jobs that would allow me to do that. The ones that would, didn’t seem to want me. That rejection had done unthinkable things to my perception of myself.
I was fearful of rejection. I didn’t want Jamel’s family to reject me or not take me seriously because of what I did on the weekends. Now I would be working four days a week, Wednesday through Saturday. My predicament even had me considering lap dances. With as much money as I made on the weekends, I didn’t want to have to use my savings to pay bills. Owning my own home was something I’d dreamed of for years.
The main reason for that was my dad. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in a good way. My family had never owned a home. With as much as my dad worked, he didn’t consider his family a priority. As a little girl, I didn’t know the difference. I just thought he was working a lot. I got teased at school, particularly by a little girl named Dalonna. She criticized everything I did, wore, and said. I retreated within myself at school.
I went my entire school life alone. No one wanted to be my friend because of her. When I switched schools after my dad died, I was beyond grateful. I wasn’t a fighter or complainer. She never touched me, just ran her mouth about me constantly. She called me a skinny African booty scratcher one time, then kids started calling me Michael Blackson’s little sister because I was dark complexioned.
It never dawned on me how she even knew I was African. It wasn’t until after my dad died that my mother told me he had another family. That little bitch, Dalonna, was his stepdaughter. He supposedly had two wives, but he left more money to the other family because the woman had six children. He left us with only a fifty-thousand-dollar insurance policy. My mama used it to pay for his funeral, move us away from his other family, and get my teeth fixed.
I wore braces for years, and without dental benefits, that shit was beyond expensive. I would rarely smile, though, and my mother knew it was something she needed to fix. She always told me my smile was beautiful, but after the kids told me otherwise, her words no longer mattered to me.
All that history made me somewhat of a recluse. I often had nightmares of people condemning me and shaming me. It always ended with that plane crash and me being on the flight with my dad. We would be arguing about his other family and then something would go wrong with the plane. My final words to him would always be that I hated him. I would always wake up with an engine exploding.
Still, in my mind, I was an only child. He didn’t want his other children to know me. I was my mother’s only child, and to me, that was all that mattered. Because of Dalonna, I didn’t care to know my blood. I was told that woman had six kids with my father. According to my mother, he took another wife after she could no longer bear children. After she had me, she had to have a hysterectomy. My father was totally against it, but he had no choice. My mother would have died without it. They had to have come to the states separately if he was able to marry another woman. That was why I didn’t know whether he actually married her or not. However, I would never know since neither of them were here to tell me the truth.
This situation made me believe that he didn’t love my mother. He was only with her to have his children, and lucky me for being one of them. He could have procreated with her without marrying her. However, they were in Cape Verna at the time, and it was against everything my father supposedly believed in. I didn’t understand it, but at this point in my life, I didn’t even care to understand. Whether he married that woman or not hadn’t been proven, but his directives left her nearly all his money and most of the benefits from his insurance money. When he died, he treated my mother like his side bitch, and for that, he could rot in hell.
It was time to go to the club, and I was hoping that I didn’t tire out this week. I was only used to doing this twice a week, not four. As I headed out the door, my phone started to ring. The only person that called me was Jamel. Since I was no longer working, I didn’t get calls from anyone, not even from the couple of people that I worked with that claimed I was their friend. I supposed I was only their friend at work.
By the time I got to the car, I’d missed his call, so I called him back. He still hadn’t made it back to work because of my fuck up, but he should definitely be back at it next week. “Hello?”
“Hey, Jamel. Sorry I couldn’t answer. I was walking to my car.”
