A Taste of Honey Read online

  I didn’t know why he was telling me all of his business all of a sudden. “I just wanted you to know because I’m planning on moving to Atlanta in a couple of weeks. My wife is pregnant and I need to think about my future. I never planned on staying in this game too long.”

  As he talked I could see the fear on his face. “So are you going to jail?” I asked.

  “No. My lawyer is great and the charges against me were dropped. Cheron, unfortunately though, she might have to do a little time if things don’t work out. She got caught red-handed. She’s a trooper though. She didn’t drop dime on me and I love her for that. It’s all about loyalty, Hailey.” I was impressed with her and how she had his respect.

  For the first time we actually talked about life. I didn’t know much about him before this point but listening to him I got to know that he was truly intelligent and a caring person as well. What shocked me was when he apologized to me. “Hailey, I feel like I took advantage of you and I’m sorry.”

  “No need to apologize. We both got something out of the deal.” I smiled. “I’m not mad at all.”

  He nodded. “You learn fast, I see. Well at least I taught you something, but I’d like to warn you though. Stay clear of guys like me. Street niggas like me. Most of ’em won’t be as nice as me and they’ll ruin your life and not even look back. Fortunately for Cheron, I’m going to look out for her. I posted her bail and I’m planning on paying for her lawyer. She may not get anything but probation, but still she’ll end up with a record.”

  “Well, let me ask you this. If you weren’t afraid of her snitching on you would you have looked out for her?”

  “You know what the good thing is?” he asked. “She was smart enough to put herself in a position where we didn’t have to find out. Always use this as well as this,” he said pointing at his head first then his crotch. “In the opposite order you’re headed for disaster.”

  We talked for a little while longer and he asked me about college. I told him that I wanted to go away somewhere, maybe California or New York. He suggested Spelman or Clark. I knew why.

  I was about to leave when he asked me if he could make love to me one last time. The next time he came by this apartment, he said, he’d be moving. Who could resist him, so I said, “Okay, but it’s gonna cost you. I don’t do charity cases.” Then I smiled.

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He laughed. This time we got in the shower together and he took his time. Once we were in the bed he was so passionate that he almost took my breath away. I was surprised that he lasted five minutes this time.

  When we finished he went into a spiel about how it was still unbelievable to him how I could make him erupt so quickly. Fifteen, twenty minutes, he claimed he always took with other women.

  I slipped my jeans on without putting back on my panties and bra. I held them in my hands as I was just going in the house to shower again. Manny kissed me at the door as if he knew it’d be the last time he’d lay eyes on me. “If you are ever in Atlanta, look me up,” he said.

  I nodded. “I will.” He opened the door and when I turned to walk out, Tank was standing in the hallway, waiting like a guard dog.

  “This is how you repay me, Honey? You bitch,” he growled.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “Your girl Rorrie told me you was in here fucking this nigga.”

  My head began to spin. “Rorrie? What?”

  “Yeah, she been trying to creep with me for weeks, ever since the concert I took y’all too. I shoulda’ gone ahead and tapped it since I see how you rolling.” Tank had moved up on me. His eyes were ferocious and he looked unstable. I thought he was going to hit me so I backed up.

  He must have sensed that I was going to run so he reached and grabbed me by the throat. I gasped and tried to pry his hand loose to keep him from choking me. Again, Manny had to come to my rescue. He slid around my body and pushed Tank into the wall. “Main man, you need to chill.”

  Tank immediately began to throw punches. His were wild but the ones Manny threw in return were precise. He knocked Tank to the ground with the second punch and told me to get back inside.

  I glanced over as Manny reached down to punch Tank some more, but then it happened. Amid the barrage of blows, Tank reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. Almost simultaneously I heard Manny’s cries then a thud. I slammed the door before Tank could get to me.

  He began to kick the door. “Honey, I love you. Please, open up. I love you,” he yelled out as I began to cry. He’d gone mad.

  “I’m calling the police,” I yelled. “Get out of here.”

  The next twenty minutes I barely remember. I heard sirens then a knock at the door. Paramedics, police, a stretcher, a sheet over Manny’s body. All followed by confession. He’d died because of me.

  It seemed as if my mother hated me once she found out what had happened. She didn’t look me in the eye from that day forward. She was furious when the police advised us to move, since they hadn’t yet apprehended Tank, but my mother wasn’t having it. “I have a job right up the road. I don’t have the time or money to move because her hot ass can’t keep her legs closed,” she told the detective.

  Instead she shipped me out to her sister’s home in Columbia, Maryland. Denise was four years older than my mother and even more religious. Still I had no choice.

  Ironically, going from the hood to the nice neighborhood turned out to be hell for me. I went to a new school with a bunch of white kids that I had nothing in common with and I stood out like a sore thumb. I tried to forget the life I’d left behind in the city, the best friend who’d betrayed me, and the murderer who’d flipped my life inside out.

  After being a loner for the first month of school, eventually I tried to fit in with the uppity kids, but my interests had changed so much in the last year that I couldn’t connect with most of the girls I met. I missed the money and the clothes. I often thought about Manny and the things he’d shared with me. Within two weeks I began sneaking out to hang out with guys I’d met at Columbia Mall. None of them captured my interest. They simply didn’t have enough money. That was until I met this one kid with rich parents who had his own credit card. I gave the kid a sample and in no time flat he’d maxed the card out taking me to all of my favorite stores.

  One evening after I came in two hours after my silly ten P.M. curfew, my aunt was sitting in the living room talking to a man she introduced as a detective.

  “You’re late again,” she bitched.

  “I know I had to stop off and…”

  “I am so sick of your excuses.” She’d cut me off. “Come here and sit down.”

  My aunt looked as if she’d been crying. The detective began to speak. According to him they’d apprehended Tank. This made me happy as I immediately thought of my return home. Then the detective went on to say that he’d been caught while fleeing the scene of another murder. As they’d suspected he might, Tank had come looking for me again. Of course I was nowhere around, but my mother was.

  6

  KHALIL

  After a while I got used to Tenille’s abuse. I actually came to not only expect it but almost enjoy it. She had begun to convince me that she was the only one in the house that loved me. It just so happened that the only attention that anyone paid me came in the middle of the night. Deep inside I knew it wasn’t right. It just didn’t feel natural. Oftentimes she hurt me by being so rough. Sitting on my face, nearly smothering me at times. “Boy you need to get stronger,” she’d say. “Give me fifty push-ups.”

  I did them every day until fifty became too easy, then I did a hundred. I did get stronger and angrier every day at my life, which proved to be a dangerous combination. I attended Powell Middle School on 129th Street, in the heart of Harlem. With my home life a wreck, I began to act out in school, bullying other kids and being insubordinate.

  This morning I hadn’t been feeling well and for no reason in particular, I decided to stick my foot out and trip a p
asserby as we headed to the cafeteria for an assembly. Some rapper-turned-activist by the name of Chuck D was coming by our school to give a speech to what they called the at-risk youth. I was quickly becoming one of them.

  When the student I’d tripped fell on his face and busted his bottom lip, the only thing I was going to be permitted to see was the principal’s office. I got there and it was overcrowded as usual. Being the last to enter, I wound up having to take a seat in the back with the nurse. After an hour of sitting, waiting to see the principal, I began rocking back and forth in my seat as I fought the all-too-familiar feeling.

  “Son, what’s your deal? Do you need to use the bathroom? You’ve been rocking in that chair for thirty minutes,” the nurse said.

  I ignored her and tried to stop rocking but started again a few minutes later. Again she started. “What is your problem?”

  Finally I spat, “I do have to go, but I don’t want to.”

  “Why not? Do you need privacy?” I assumed she meant to take a dump.

  “No,” I responded. “I just don’t want to. Lately every time I try to go it hurts.”

  “What do you mean it hurts?” She frowned and looked down the nose of her glasses at me.

  “It hurts like hell…I mean it feels like I’m shooting razor blades out of my hole.”

  Her face showed shock. She asked me my name first then she started with a bunch of questions.

  Have you been having sex? Are you sure? Your symptoms say such and such. If you have had sex, then it’s your partner’s fault. They have done this to you; they gave you a disease. If you don’t tell the truth I can’t help you. You should know that in some cases where venereal disease occurs that it’s possible to develop septicemia and die.

  None of it scared me until she said, “Khalil, that feeling you have it’s going to get worse and worse if you don’t tell the truth.”

  I put my head down and continued to fight the urge to urinate until I could bear it no longer. I went into the bathroom and braved the pain as indeed it was getting worse every time. I stood on my toes and grimaced as I was almost dizzy from the pain.

  I had begun to sweat from the ordeal. When I came out of the bathroom I sat back down and began to tell my story.

  Then she left the office for about three minutes and came back in with the guidance counselor. Ten minutes later we were on our way to Harlem Hospital.

  The antibiotics coupled with the IV they administered at the hospital had kicked in and after a few hours I was able to use the bathroom without pain. This would be the only bright spot of the day.

  I would later learn that the police and child protective ser vices had shown up at my house, finding my father both drunk and high. Tenille was there and when they announced the charges and put the cuffs on her he attacked her and wound up getting locked up too. The only one who didn’t get arrested was Tina.

  I was taken to a youth center on the East Side for the night, where they had a dormitory for children waiting to be placed into foster care. My case worker sat with me until midnight and assured me she’d be back first thing in the morning to take me to school.

  The next morning I learned I wouldn’t be going back home. My father was being charged with neglect. It turned out that to protect herself, Tina had ratted my father out and given the authorities drugs that he had in the apartment as well as a handgun that he kept in his closet.

  I didn’t shed a tear even though I was torn apart inside. Everything was happening so fast. Even though my world had been rough, it was all I knew.

  A week later, after I’d been temporarily assigned to live in a group home, I was on the train headed to Brooklyn. Once I’d gotten word that my grandmother had told the case workers that she was too sick to take care of me, I’d made it my business to find out from my social worker where Frannie lived. I’d asked if I could send a card to her so she wouldn’t worry about me, to which she’d given me the okay. I had no intention of sending a letter or a card. I was going to show up in person. It had been almost ten months since I’d seen her and it felt like ten years.

  I walked up Third Avenue toward the address that I had written on a piece of paper. I was scared I’d come to the wrong neighborhood, because all of the houses looked like rich people lived in them. Still, when I came to the address in my hand I knocked on the door. It was then I realized that it was an apartment building and not a house. I didn’t have an apartment number so I looked at the buzzer and found no names that looked familiar.

  I waited for someone to walk out of the building and I walked in. I began knocking on each door. I was on the second floor, third door, when Frannie opened it. “Khalil,” she said, looking more surprised than happy. “How did you get here?”

  “Hey Frannie,” I said. I was set to tell her how I’d skipped lunch so that I’d have money for the train ride and that I’d come because I wanted her to take care of me now that my father was doing twelve months in jail, but instead, I burst into tears. She looked out into the hallway, almost as if she was trying to make sure no one was around, and reached for me and embraced me. Feeling her and smelling her again after all this time was too much.

  I cried in her arms for what seemed like thirty minutes in between telling her bits of my story. She cried almost the entire time as she begged for my forgiveness. She couldn’t believe what had happened.

  Then her husband came home.

  Our reunion was short-lived and together they drove me back uptown to the group home. As she walked me back in she assured me that she would do everything she could to gain custody of me. The only thing about it was that I didn’t believe her when she said it.

  That was the last time I ever heard from Frannie and the last time I ever believed that anyone would do something to help me. My childhood ended that day as I watched their Cherokee drive down Malcolm X Boulevard. From that day on I knew that life was about survival and it was every man, woman, and child for themselves.

  7

  July 2006

  HONEY

  I snatched the phone off of the counter as it began to vibrate. “Yes,” I answered.

  “Priest apologizes for the delay but we are now en route.” “Okay,” I said, and hung up the phone.

  I’d rushed to make sure that I was ready for him when he arrived; now I had time to spare. I decided to take a drink from one of the bottles of wine that he’d had sent up. I stepped out onto the balcony of the penthouse suite. I had an ocean-view suite at the Shore Club, one of South Beach’s poshest hotels, while I was in town working for two days. Priest had come down for the African American Film Festival and to hang out with a few of his fellow athlete friends at Alonzo Mourning’s annual fund-raising party weekend.

  He always sprung for the best, I think to make up for what he lacked in personality; nevertheless the luxury was nice and I didn’t hate hanging out with him as I did with some of my other clients. The fun part had been all the shopping I’d done earlier; now it was time for business.

  Moments like this always gave me pause. As I stared out into the Atlantic Ocean I thought about my life and how it had all changed so drastically. I thought about my mother and how she’d died at the hands of that maniac, who I’d hate forever but whose name I never dared speak.

  I especially thought about Manny, and the unborn child he left behind because of me, almost every single day.

  When the wind blew behind me, it didn’t matter whether it was a breeze coming off the Atlantic like tonight’s or a gust shooting up from behind on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Manny was with me and often I could almost hear his half-apology for the journey he’d sent me on. Hey Honey, do you like who you’ve become? I’m sorry for my part in turning you out to a life of materialism and sex for hire. But at least you’re still here.

  True, I was still here but I sometimes felt like I should use the word barely. I walked around with a hole inside of my spirit that I tried to fill with cash, Birkin bags, and a host of Oprah’s favorite things. It was strange: ev
en though I knew that what I was doing would ultimately prove futile, I couldn’t stop. The temporary rush of pleasure I felt when I traded a piece of me for fortune, in what I always felt was a lopsided exchange, was the only surefire method I’d ever come up with for dulling my pain.

  Instead of turning myself around when my mother was killed, I got progressively worse. I didn’t make it through my senior year of high school before my aunt grew tired of me staying out all weekend and bringing home fur coats that cost more than her car. On New Year’s Day of my senior year she put me out. I didn’t graduate high school, but when I officially quit, my GPA had been a 3.85, which in itself was a tragedy, when I look back on it.

  I left Aunt Denise’s house and immediately moved in with Gerry Monroe, a rich white man who I’d met at a bar in downtown Baltimore. I refused to sleep with Gerry the first time he’d taken me to dinner. At that point I wasn’t pressed for money and I wasn’t sure if I could sleep with a white guy, but I knew he was loaded so I kept in touch with him until I did wind up needing him. Of course I never had to ask to move into his five-bedroom home. All I had to do was tell him of my situation with my aunt and he begged me to come and stay until I got on my feet.

  The longer I refused him the more desperate he became to keep me around. I eventually left him, but not until he’d purchased me a brand-new BMW, in my name of course, and I’d secured enough money to pay my rent for six months. All of this and he never so much as smelled the promised land between my thighs. I almost felt sorry for him, but I didn’t.