29
Arjen
Mecca’s blank stare was focused on the wall, no doubt contemplating how much, if anything, she wanted to share with me. While nestled into me, she had gone rigid at my request to know more about her past. Her deep inhales and exhales had me squeezing her tighter, hoping she was preparing to tell me something.
“I ended up on Raymond’s doorstep a few months before I turned four. I don’t think the transition of where I had come from was bad even though, I don’t have anything but a hand full of memories of that time. Desiree and I were a few months apart in age, and I remember sharing a room with her. The first thing she did when I arrived was give me a hug. No matter how young my mind was, that was a memory I’d never forget, and one that makes me smile every time I think of it. I remember that we had bunk beds, but she would always crawl into the bottom bunk with me at night.”
The smile at the memory of her and her cousin made me smile. It didn’t take but a second of seeing the two together to know that they were close.
“My male cousins were a few years older, and for the most part, we all got along. Despite how he is now, Raymond actually tried to be a good father. He made sure there was always a decent caretaker with us while he worked. He took us to the park, made sure we were clothed, and fed. He’d even sit with Desiree and my cousins and help them with their homework. He didn’t have that same caring spirit towards me as he had with my cousins. There was no helping me with my homework and no kind of extra attention. His lack of attention seemed to make me try harder to prove to him that I didn’t need his help. He was closest to Desiree. She was always his little advisor, reminding him about things he’d forgotten.
“Raymond had a way with me that always made me feel like an outsider, even though my cousins treated me like I was a little sister. He was tough on me. I figured his behavior was because I wasn’t his biological child. Even though I was the youngest, Raymond drilled it in my head that I was responsible for protecting my cousins when he or the help wasn’t around. It was like he knew I could take the harshness of his attitude, the pain of an ass whipping, and any other emotional trauma that went along with being the protector.”
He was turning her into his soldier. The lack of showing her emotion and care was the number one sign.
“By the time I was seven, I was peddling crack, modeling myself after the bigger dope boys. I never received parental guidance or shared any emotional connection with Raymond other than him teaching me how to become a success at the dope game.”
She paused, and I could tell by the heaviness in her gaze that the weight of that world, past and present, never stopped pressing down on her.
“I went through every phase, cooking and cutting, packaging, selling, collection, and distribution, and later when I was a teen, I graduated to going with Raymond to meet with the supplier. Out there on those streets wasn’t a place for a kid, especially not a little girl. But, it was the only connection Raymond and I shared, and I was one of the most determined things walking. I got my ass beat so much that they eventually stopped fighting me when they figured it was useless. By the time I was eleven, carrying a gun had become a norm. Seeing people get shot, stabbed, and all manner of death and human destruction was a part of my daily routine.”
We may have grown up in different worlds, but the conditioning was similar.
“The longer I was in it, the more desensitized I became to violence and death. By the time I was twelve, I had a body on the gun that Raymond didn’t even know about. All of my friends were years older than me, teenagers between fourteen and nineteen years old. I ended up killing a twenty-three-year-old man who would have beaten my fourteen-year-old friend to death if I hadn’t killed him. He accused her of being a tease and became enraged when she wouldn’t have sex with him. She and I are still close friends, went to college together. I stopped after receiving my bachelor’s degree in business, but she continued and went to medical school studying pathology. Getting my doctorate on the streets was more beneficial for me anyway.”
The statement made me chuckle and there was a wide smile spreading across her lips also.
“None of us had any real rules, just kids taking on adult situations. I had no clear-cut goals in life other than wanting to be the best in the dope game and to someday become a boss. For a female, that was a tall order in that world, but I was never one to shy away from a challenge. I went on soaking up the streets like it was the air I breathed.
“At fourteen, I reached a turning point. I was robbed and beaten to within an inch of my life. The two guys that did it, assumed that they had killed me because they tossed my battered body in a dumpster behind their building. I don’t know how long I was in that dumpster, praying and hoping that someone would help me. I woke to day light and night fall and with barely enough strength to keep rats from eating me alive. It took people dumping their trash on me for me to scratch and claw my way out of there before I ended up buried alive.”
She had me so riveted in her world, that I was afraid to move or comment because I didn’t want her to stop. Knowing her past and how she had become so tough and fearless was a piece of history I’d wanted to know since the day I met her.
“I made my way out of the dumpster and then the alley. I begged for help, but people ignored me, passed by me, jumped over me, one even kicked me, mumbling that I was in his way. The streets were a savage beast that knew no mercy, and the people who grew up in it, absorbed that same savagery. One of my eyes was swollen shut, and the other was not far behind, so I had tunnel vision. I ended up crawling onto the highway where I was almost hit by a car before I received help.”
I couldn’t help squeezing her to me because the image was so brutally clear in my mind.
“The guy who was driving the car that almost killed me was who picked me up off the street, tossed me into the back of his car, and took me to the hospital. I had no idea how much damage was done to me until I was in recovery. My jaw was wired for weeks, cracked ribs, broken wrist, and a concussion. I was stabbed twice, once in my left side, and once in the lower back, but was lucky that nothing major was damaged.”
Like everything about her, I had noticed those scars and a few others, and the three tattoos she had, but had never commented, preferring that she tell me about them on her own. She tapped the top of her head at the back right side.
“Ended up with a piece of a metal plate in my head to help the bone heal where they had hit me with a bat hard enough to crack my skull.”
I cringed before I kissed the top of her head where she had pointed, making her smile through the stress etched on her face. She was painting a picture so vivid I felt a touch of her pain creeping into me. The notion that the metal plate may have explained a bit of her crazy made me smile.
The sheer volume of physical violence inflicted on her defined a large part of why she was so determined and hard-charging. The list of injuries she named would have kept some of the strongest men I knew in that dumpster.
“Raymond came to visit me in the hospital only once, and he had the nerve to ask me if I had allowed the distro money to be taken. My cousins Raymond and Rayland came to see me a few times, but the one person that was by my side every day was Desiree. She flashed the hospital staff one of the fake ID’s we’d gotten made to sneak into clubs, telling them she was eighteen so she could stay with me. She ended up missing nearly a month of school because she refused to leave my side. We had always been close, although she was more into school and art, and I was into the streets. But, having someone be there when I was at my lowest, at my weakest, meant everything, and it’s one of the reasons she and I have always remained close.”
Her and Desiree’s relationship reminded me of me and Khane’s.
“Once I was released from the hospital, I became obsessed with finding the guys who had jumped me. My uncle tried to get the information out of me so that he could find them, but I kept my mouth shut because I was determined to avenge myself. It took months, but I found them, stalked them, and added them to my body count. No one ever knew how they died, or why, because I never told a soul, until you.”
The knowledge of that revelation chilled me to the bone. It wasn’t that she’d killed. It was that it wasn’t forced on her, but something that she had chosen.
“I think that was the birth of quiet chaos,” I whispered more to myself than her.
She flashed a weak smile at my statement. “I guess you can say that. The notion that I could kill and get away with it wasn’t the surprising part. I’d been witness to a number of murders and still know the murderers to this day. The thing that bothered me the most, was that I didn’t have any guilt about it.