Niya Read online

  That maybe I could buy her.

  But some shit just can’t be bought,

  Like the feelings that drive me crazy, and that shit is a fact.

  See, the moment that I laid eyes on her, I stopped in my tracks.

  There was something about her, and right then and there, I was caught,

  Caught up in everything she had to offer, not realizing that everyone loved her.

  I was one of many who sought her.

  I would also be one of the few who would get close to her,

  Giving me false hope that I would be the only one really to have her.

  See, so many love her, but only one can have her.

  The shitty part is, I’m the one who will never have her.

  And the one who does, that shit shouldn’t even matter, but it does . . . to her.

  And in the end, that’s all that matters, ’cause I’ll never be that one, although I found her.

  Niya

  Chapter 22

  Niya

  Silence carved through the air like a newly sharpened knife as we walked back to our building. Jamilla had just made a promise to me that I prayed she would keep. There was nothing binding us to the city we called home. Her family was shit, and as for me, the only person I had to worry about was my granny. The morning’s events played over in my head as if they were part of a film. Jamilla’s stepfather was the second person I didn’t kill this morning, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. Both he and Roxie deserved to eat dirt, to waste away, and to be considered casualties of the mean streets of Brooklyn. Although Roxie had met her Maker, it wasn’t by my hands, as it should have been.

  “Niya . . . Niya?”

  I wasn’t sure how long Jamilla had been calling my name, but I really didn’t hear her until she yelled.

  “What’s up, boo?” I asked. We were at the entrance to our building when I took her hand. Something in her eyes was different, though. She seemed guarded and fearful of me. I felt it the minute our hands touched.

  “We need to talk. I would say let’s go back to your place, but Smiley is sleeping. I just . . . I just . . . we need—”

  “Niya, mi amor, where have you been? Mommy’s been waiting for you.”

  I froze when I heard her voice. It was as if the warm air had turned into a winter chill. I was afraid to turn around. With her, you never knew what you would get. Sure, she never looked right, but sometimes, it was worse than others.

  “Is that your mom?”

  The shock was written all over Jamilla’s face. I knew that it was going to be bad. Slowly, I turned around to face the person who used to be my mother. The lady before me was dirty, she was too thin, had stringy hair, and she looked sick. The last time I saw her, she hadn’t been this bad, but standing there in front of me, she was just a shell of who she used to be.

  “Niya, mi amor, I had an accident. I need a shower, and I’m so hungry, honey. Is Mama upstairs? Maybe she can make us some nice breakfast, just like she used to.”

  My fucking heart was breaking. Who was this woman? I asked myself as she got close to me. I looked into her eyes, but the glaze from the drugs wouldn’t let me penetrate her state of mind. As she reached out to me, my first reaction was to pull away. She was just so dirty, and she smelled of shit, but I just couldn’t pull away from her. She was my mother, the woman who had birthed me. I let her touch my cheek and watched her smile before she spoke.

  “You are so cute, mi amor, just like your papi. You look just like me, but with his eyes and lips. Can we go upstairs now?”

  I couldn’t move; I couldn’t speak. All I wanted to know was if the woman standing in front of me was really my mother. She used to be so beautiful, so proud. Now she was just an empty shell. I couldn’t help but stand there and cry.

  Chapter 23

  Jamilla

  I didn’t mean to look so shocked, but I was. I had seen her mother here and there over the years, but she had never looked this bad. Most knew that she was a drug addict, but she had managed to look a little decent, until that moment. My heart ached for Niya. She looked like a little girl, just broken and so hurt. I watched as she crumbled from within, and I knew that I had to step in.

  “Hi. I am Jamilla, Niya’s friend.” I extended my hand to her and waited for her to shake it. She took it and smiled.

  “How about we all go upstairs?” she said.

  I nodded, stepped aside, and pulled Niya with me. Her mother was in front of us as we followed. As we went up the stairs, that was when I realized where the smell was coming from. She had defecated in her pants.

  At one point, Niya just stopped climbing the stairs. I looked at her, and each one of her emotions was on her face.

  “Come on, Niya. We are going to get through this,” I assured her. I took her hand, got behind her, and nudged her up the stairs.

  When we got to her grandmother’s apartment, Niya’s mother, Gloria, spoke up. “Can you go in and see if Mama is up? If so, make her go in her room until I am clean. I don’t want her to see me like this.”

  Niya did what her mother asked of her.

  Chapter 24

  Niya

  If it weren’t for Jamilla, I would have just stood there in tears. When she said, “We are going to get through this,” it gave me the strength to carry on. I was just so embarrassed. My mother was too good for that shit, yet there she was, knee-deep in it.

  When I stepped into the apartment, it was quiet. I looked in on my grandma, and although she wasn’t sleeping, she had not left her room yet. Smiley was still asleep, so this was perfect timing. I went back to the door, let Jamilla and my mother in the apartment, and led my mother straight to the bathroom. I stepped in to help her, but she asked for some privacy. I kind of gave her the side eye, but in her current situation, I could understand. I backed out of the bathroom and pulled the door closed behind me. In the hallway, I just stood there at the bathroom door. The last twenty-four hours were starting to catch up to me, and I just wanted to jump in my bed and sleep.

  “I can help you clean her up. When my grandma came from Haiti, I used to help my mother take care of her. I’m used to this,” Jamilla said as she stood by my side.

  I turned to her, and as badly as I wanted to remain strong, I just couldn’t. I had never liked to cry in front of people, but in that moment, right in that hallway, I felt safe enough to let her witness my tears. I broke down in her arms, silently, though. I didn’t want my granny or Smiley to hear. She didn’t say a word, but the silence spoke to me. In her arms, I found the comfort I wished I got from my mother. In her arms, I got the love I was always chasing, the same love that I would chase for the rest of my life.

  As I got myself together, my bedroom door opened and Smiley emerged. I instantly wished she hadn’t slept over.

  “What’s that smell? It smells like shit and smoke. Y’all don’t smell that?” she muttered.

  I had been so caught up in dealing with my own emotions that I hadn’t noticed the scent that I had come to know very well. The minute Smiley finished her sentence, I sprang into action. I rushed through that bathroom door, and boom, there it was. The potent smell of shit and crack filled my nostrils, and I started to gag. My mother had removed her clothes and was as naked as the day she was born. Shit ran down her legs and sat in the pants she still had around her ankles. Her eyes were wide as she pulled the smoke from her pipe.

  “Ma, what in the fuck are you doing?” I asked between gags.

  I knocked the pipe out of her hand and tried to get it before she could get to it, and that was when she started to scream.

  “You stupid little bitch! I am going to kill you!”

  “Come on, Ma. You got to stop this shit.”

  There we were, eye to eye, heart to heart, so I waited as I looked deep into her eyes, just hoping that my voice would bring her back to reality.

  “You are going to buy my shit back for me, bitch. You think it’s free. Well, it’s not. You think I’m selling my pussy just t
o have you knock my shit out my mouth?”

  “What is going on?” came a voice.

  My grandmother had come out of her room, and when she made it to where we all were standing, she grabbed her chest. “Ay, Dios mio, why you here? Why you so dirty?”

  “This little bitch just took my shit, and I want it back,” my mother screeched.

  Between my mother and my grandmother, I couldn’t take much more. I knew that this was killing my granny slowly, and it pissed me off.

  “Why you come like this? You so dirty. Why you come like this?”

  “Fuck you, old lady,” my mother yelled. “I’m tired of always hearing your bullshit. All my life—”

  I walked up to my mother and slapped her. I just couldn’t help it. I couldn’t take her disrespecting the woman who had stepped up and taken on her responsibilities.

  I was not too sure what happened next. A tussle between my mother and me started. Right there, on the bathroom floor, mother and daughter fought as if we were enemies. She kept calling me a bitch and asking about replacing her drugs. My grandmother’s cries hung in the air like thick smoke. As for me, I shouted from the heart. With each strike I landed, I begged my mother to stop this madness. I begged her to free herself and love her family, but all was in vain. When it hit me that she wouldn’t give in, I lost it. She was no longer my mother, and I beat her as if she were just a dopehead on the street.

  I heard Jamilla asking for help that would never come. “Help me, Smiley. Help me pull them apart!”

  “I’m not touching them. They are rolling around in shit. Ugh. I have to get out of here. I can’t. I can’t,” Smiley answered.

  Once my grandmother stepped in, her voice brought me back to reality. “Niya, mi amor. Please, Niya, stop.”

  Slowly, with my mother still hanging on to me, I stood up, picked her frail frame up, and slammed her into the tub. I exited the hall bathroom, covered in her shit, and headed for the bathroom in my grandmother’s bedroom. I stripped, jumped in the shower, and stayed there for an hour.

  Chapter 25

  Jamilla

  Everything happened so fast. Before I knew it, it was a full-out brawl. At first, I didn’t know what to do, but as I watched Niya’s fist slam into her mother’s face over and over again, I knew that I had to step in. I just couldn’t do it on my own. When I asked Smiley for help, I really thought that she would step in. I was already trying to pull the women apart, so all she would have to do was hold one while I held the other. When she declined because they were covered in shit, I stopped for a quick second and just looked at her. It took everything in me not to walk over to her and slap the shit out of her. Who cared what they were covered in? This was her friend, her lover. How could she just stand there and watch? What was even more shocking was that she just got her clothes and left. Worse was the look on her face, as if she was totally disgusted. Sure it wasn’t a beautiful situation, but damn, how could she just leave?

  While Niya was in the shower, her grandmother and I had managed to calm Gloria down. I knew that it was wrong, but telling her that Niya had left to get her drugs did help. Gloria asked her mother for a few of the pills that she had lying around the house. Her mother always favored her weed instead of the pills.

  “Okay, but afterward, you let us help you clean up, okay?”

  After Gloria nodded her head, Niya’s granny left the bathroom and returned with a few pills. Her daughter swallowed them down without water and, as promised, stepped into the tub and sat down in it as if nothing had ever happened. After we got Gloria clean, her mother walked her to Niya’s bedroom and gave her a pair of Niya’s pants and a T-shirt. I peeped in and watched as her mother dressed her as if she were a five-year-old kid.

  “Is she okay?” I asked as I watched Gloria start to nod off.

  “Si. I give her sleep pills. She need sleep.”

  I waited and just watched. It was sad; it was beautiful; it was a sight to see. You could see the love she had for her daughter, and you could see the pain that dwelled in her heart. It leaked from her soul and found its nesting place in her eyes. She hummed as she brushed her daughter’s hair before laying her down on Niya’s bed.

  “Okay. I clean now,” she said.

  “No,” I told her. “Stay with her. I will clean up. Just tell me where everything is.”

  At first, she just stood there and gave me a strange look. But soon after, she walked toward me and pulled me to her. I fell into her arms and cried for her.

  “Thank you, mi amor. You no have to do this. Now you call me Granny, like my Niya. No cry, okay?”

  With tears in my eyes, I shook my head up and down. She told me where to find the cleaning supplies, and as I left the bedroom, Granny got in the bed with her little girl and just held her in her arms.

  Chapter 26

  Niya

  I would have killed her, and that wasn’t cool. I thanked God for my grandmother’s voice. I thanked God for Jamilla, as she had tried, but that Smiley shit kind of hurt. I really didn’t feel the impact of her words until I was under the hot water. I was in a battle within. Sure, I could understand her feelings. The situation hadn’t been a normal one, but her words still stung. I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle things with her after that. I wanted to forgive her, but where were the love and understanding when I needed them the most?

  As I got dressed, I thought about facing them all. Once again, I had slipped to the dark side, the dark side that seemed to run through my blood. My mother, my father, they both lived within the realm of that darkness, the same darkness that would find its way to me from time to time. The only thing that seemed to soothe the pain from so much gloom was my weed and liquor. So as I prepared myself to leave the safe haven that was my grandmother’s bedroom, I rolled up a blunt from my granny’s stash.

  When I open the bedroom door, I could no longer smell the foul stench of shit. Instead, the scent of bleach and Pine-Sol clogged my airways. I thought about my granny and pictured her on her hands and knees, cleaning up after the daughter she loved so much. I was almost too ashamed to leave her room. What I had done was beyond disrespectful. I knew that she wouldn’t be happy with me striking my mother, but I had to face the music. I walked down the hallway and was ready to face my granny. When I turned into the bathroom, it wasn’t her on the floor. It was Jamilla.

  “You don’t have to do that. Let me.” I felt so bad. This was not her problem, and she didn’t have to clean up our mess, literally and figuratively. I stepped into the bathroom and tried to pull her up, but she wouldn’t let me.

  “Get out of here. I’m almost done. You already showered. I got this.”

  The look in her eyes told me that this was a fight that I wasn’t going to win. I told her that I would be in my room, but she told me that my mother was in there.

  “What? She didn’t leave?”

  That was a damn shock. I thought that she would be out of the door, looking for her next hit, by then.

  “She’s sleeping. Your grandma is in there with her.”

  I turned around and opened the door to my bedroom. When I walked in, my mother lay peacefully in my granny’s arms. Instantly, I wanted to cry. My grandmother loved my mother so much, and so did I. I wondered what my granny was thinking about as she held my mother. Did she think about the good old days, before the drugs? Did she replay the days of laughter and the love that had filled this apartment before it all went to shit? Did she think about the seven months my mother was clean two years prior? These were the thoughts that flashed across my mind as I watched my mother sleep in her arms.

  “Granny?”

  My grandmother turned her head and looked at me with a smile.

  “Granny, I am so sorry. It’s just that . . . well, she made me so mad, the way she was acting, the things she was saying. She—”

  “Niya, mi amor, no need for you to be sorry. I know. She make me mad too.”

  I walked over to my grandmother and kissed her forehead.

  �
��I know you sorry. Never do that again. She your mother, mi amor. You love her no matter what, like I love you, okay?”

  I told her yes, that I understood, although I didn’t quite agree. I grabbed my bottle of vodka and my notepad and left her to her thoughts.

  My mother had called me names; my mother had even stolen from me, from both of us. She had made false promises. She had abandoned me and had forced my grandmother to raise me. How could I just love her, no matter what? It wasn’t fair. I didn’t ask for a family like this, one with an absent jailbird father and a drug-addicted mother. They, both of them, should have loved me enough to get it together. They should have loved themselves enough to go straight and leave the drugs and the crime behind.

  At times, I hated them, truth be told. It hadn’t been easy to watch my friends with their parents. Or to grow up and have other kids ask me why I lived with my grandmother and not with my parents. I hated them and loved them and wanted them at the same damn time. My granny used to always say that she wished she had a daughter like me. No matter what my mother did, no matter how long she had been gone, I still loved her and needed her. When I was younger, no matter how many times she broke my heart, I had still waited for the day I would see her face, for the moment she would kiss me and comb my hair. For the days she would come home for a few hours and almost seem normal. I had known that it wouldn’t last long, but having her, really having her for that brief moment, was all the happiness in the world.

  Things with my father were a bit different. He had kicked his drug habit a year or two after I was born. He just hadn’t been able to kick his crime habit. He would always say, “I have a thing for fast women, fast cars and, most of all, fast money.” He had always said that fast money was the best money, and he’d lived by that code. He would rob a bank just because he didn’t have bus money. I had always thought it was more about the thrill, the unknown. Not knowing if he would get away with it. He was a thrill seeker, and in some ways, I was the same way. I must say that he had been around way more than my mother. He just hadn’t been around enough. There was one thing I had always been thankful for: he had passed on his love of music to me. So when times were bad, I would put on the radio, sing to the tunes, and forget the pain that grew within.