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“Oh shit. Why?”
“Why the fuck you think? Because of all the shit that happened! And Keisha ain’t make the shit better,” Bacardi snapped.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie said.
“Fuck it! It’s just a fuckin’ job, right? I ain’t like it anyway,” Bacardi said. “I need me a fuckin’ drink.”
“I’ll get you something,” God said.
Bacardi expressed a faint smile toward God. She was happy he was around, especially now that she was unemployed. Seeing Charlie in her robe and God in his boxers, Bacardi knew what they were doing before she arrived. Hey, whatever to keep God happy, because now they needed some extra income.
“I’ll be in the bedroom,” Bacardi said sadly.
She walked off down the hallway. Once she was in her bedroom, the full weight of her circumstances hit her. She was forty years old and unemployed. She didn’t have a job anymore, and she didn’t have any money saved. She had to take a seat at the foot of the bed, where Butch was still sleeping like he was dead to the world. She had a lot to think about—or worry about.
She had taken the civil servants test seven years back and scored reasonably high, but there was a hiring freeze. They’d called her four years ago, and things had turned around for the Brown household. Bacardi found herself bringing in more money weekly, and she had health insurance for herself and her family, and she kept on bragging about how much her pension would be worth by the time she retired. She figured if she worked for ACS from when she was thirty-six and retired around sixty-seven or seventy, she would have a healthy package for her retirement. She and Butch could move to Florida; her dream. But now things done changed.
Before she started working for ACS, Bacardi was a bartender at local bars, but being a
bartender in her thirties became a tiresome gig, and it was a young girl’s hustle. The young bitches with butt implants, breast implants, and beat faces squeezed out an old pro like her. Tips and jobs became scarce, and it was hard making ends meet taking care of three girls and a husband. It was Keisha who had forced her to take the test years back. Shit, Keisha even woke her up and drove her there.
Now, their relationship was estranged and she was jobless.
A few hours later, Charlie opened her mother’s bedroom door to find her passed out on the bed alongside Butch. On the floor was an empty bottle of Hennessy. The room was dark with an odor. Charlie didn’t judge her mother or say a word. She understood that Bacardi was going through a difficult time.
***
Bacardi was coming unhinged. The weeks following the killing of the cop, she sunk into a deep depression and started to drink more with her husband. Now the girls would come home and find both of their parents drunk. But the drinking wasn’t the only thing the girls had to worry about with Bacardi. Sometimes after downing half a bottle of Hennessy, Bacardi 151, E&J, or Jack Daniels, Bacardi found herself worked up and angry. She would sloppily get dressed and march toward the front door with a knife in hand. When either Charlie or Claire would confront her, she would curse them out and shout, “Get the fuck out my way, bitch! I’m gonna fuck that bitch up! She cost me my fuckin’ job, and that bitch still owes me five hundred dollars!”
“No, you can’t go over there, Ma! You need to fuckin’ chill out!” Charlie would shout at her.
Charlie would sometimes have to wrestle her mother away from the front door. They couldn’t afford to make things worse for themselves, especially with a criminal case still pending in the courts.
With Bacardi unable to take out her anger and frustration on Keisha, she went to the next best thing. Chanel. The more depressed Bacardi got, the more she took it out on Chanel. She would burst into her youngest daughter’s room at random and throw venomous threats and insults at Chanel. But it didn’t stop with words. Sometimes she came at Chanel with a belt, a shoe, or whatever she could get her hands on and tried to beat the black off her. She would call her daughter black and ugly even though they were the same complexion.
Today was a day that Chanel decided to take Landy’s advice and defend herself against Bacardi’s unrelenting foul mouth. It all started over a Twinkie.
“Who drank the last of my Pepsi?” Bacardi asked as she stared into the almost empty refrigerator.
From the living room, Chanel rolled her eyes and said, “I did.”
Bacardi snorted and slammed the refrigerator shut before sauntering over to the cupboard looking for something sweet. She reached for the Twinkies, only to grab an empty box. She looked inside, shook it, and then turned the box over as if it was a magic trick and a Twinkie would magically drop to the floor. The rage began as a slow, simmering emotion slowly coursing through her body. Just as Chanel placed the last Twinkie bite into her mouth, she could see her mother looming over her from her peripheral vision.
“You ate my muthafuckin’ Twinkie?” Her voice was an unwavering, accusatory growl.
Wide-eyed and frightened, Chanel stopped licking the cream from her fingers. She swallowed hard and simply said, “Yes.”
Bacardi’s rage was still on pause. She knew that if she pressed play she might kill her daughter in there. She continued with, “What . . . the . . . fuck . . . I tell your greedy ass ’bout touching my personal shit?”
“You didn’t even buy the Twinkies; Charlie did. So, technically, the food belongs to my sister.”
“Oh, so you Claire now? You think you’re a smart bitch?”
“I’m only playing the game you started.”
Bacardi placed the palm of her hand to her forehead and simply breathed in and out to calm her nerves. There was always one child that gave each parent hell, and Chanel was it.
“Chanel, tread muthafuckin’ lightly. I’m tryin’ to be nice here, bitch, ’cause I’m on my menstrual. But if you ever eat my fuckin’ Twinkies I will break ya fuckin’ neck. Do your ugly li’l black ass—”
