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Desdemona walked over and hugged her tightly to her side. “I’m thankful you’re okay, Plum,” she said earnestly.
“Me too,” she said.
“I honestly love you, Plum. Out of all my girls. I love you,” she said, biting her lips as she felt her composure begin to slip. “You are the sweetest person I know.”
The woman’s shoulders began to shake.
Desdemona reached for her chin and raised her head. “Thatshit will change you,” she said, twisting her head to make her look down at the heroin packet. “I would hate for it to change one single thing about you.”
Tears rolled down her plump cheeks as she closed her eyes.
“I’ve never metanybodythat everybody loves, Plum, except for you,” she stressed with conviction. “You walk into a room and everybody smiles,butyou gotta see your own light. There is nothing but darkness and death in that shit. You hear me?”
Plum nodded, looking at her and then looking away in what she assumed to be shame. “I messed up,” she said, her Dominican accent present.
Desdemona wiped her tears away with the sides of her thumb. “Throw that shit away, Plum,” she requested, stepping back from her.
Plum eyed it and then her and then stared at it again.
With longing. With love. With hate. With reservation about breaking its hold on her.
Fight it, Plum, she silently urged from the sidelines of the battle between addiction and a desire for sobriety.
Patiently, Desdemona stood there. She lost count of the minutes that passed. She didn’t rush her. She’d seen this fight before . . .
Desdemona danced around the apartment to Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Woman” as she opened all the windows and set about cleaning up the empty liquor bottles, containers from take-out food, ashtrays packed with cigarettes, and even a few used condoms. Majig’s Friday night parties were infamous, making her Saturday morning cleanups a task she didn’t look forward to.
But it was a part of her duties—her many duties.
Whore. Maid. Punching bag—verbally and physically. Drug mule. Flunky. Footstool. Fool. Etcetera, etcetera.
She placed her hands on her hips in the frayed denim skirt she wore with a fitted white tee with “NO BUSH... in the White House or between your thighs!” Everything was back, polished and in its rightful place. She couldn’t deny that Majig had good taste. The black décor with colorful accents and chrome tables was dope.
A beautiful prison.
She hated it.
Not the amenities, clean surroundings, and never walking the streets again trying lure tricks, but the confinement. She only left the apartment once a week to run errands; other than that she was here. With him.
She looked over her shoulder and eyed the door to his master suite.
It was hell never knowing when she would get a slap, kick, or be cursed with venom. And she still turned tricks in her own room, with him charging her for half the bills. She didn’t think she would ever be free of the debt or of him. When she thought of how he had lured her with lies of love, she used to ache with the pain and betrayal.
Now? After three years, the pain had faded and was replaced with her fear of him. Her slow simmering hate of him.
For the hitting.
For the tricks.
For the other young girls she watched him woo into prostitution the same way he did her.
There were moments when she felt numb—either from the neck up or the waist down. Whatever it took to survive the particular moment.
From one devil to another,she thought, thinking of her stepmother and her early days living on the street after she ran away.
I will never forgive her.
Knock-knock.
