Chapter Two

Something pressed deeply on her inside. It made her chest hurt all over again. She felt feverish and restless all at the same time. If she didn’t feel like she’d let herself down earlier, now she was feeling it and it was intense. Her heart raced like it was on fire.

She had promised herself that she was going to be a size six pretty career woman the next time she had to meet him and here she was, a size six alright, but nothing more. As a matter of fact, in the past five years, she’d lived the greatest fantasies of every woman and lived the worst nightmares any woman could ever have. She’d broken every moral code imaginable and her dirty laundry was already out there for people to see. They don’t speak of it but they definitely knew. The last respect she had, was that pretty face she had on which remained unscathed yet, hid all the bleeding wounds she had survived from her childhood before that time.

Feena was ready for her night’s outing as usual, with her new nameless boyfriend who has been fortunate to last more than two weeks since they first met. She was well packaged in a sleek leather jacket which covered her strapless fitting dinner dress. Her face was all made up like the cover girls on the magazine and she had her hands slid into a pair of classy leather gloves. While checking herself out in the mirror, she heard the door gently open and guessed it’d be her roommate.

“Keisha… don’t wait up for me. I’ll not be returning until tomorrow”, she touched up her lipstick in front of the mirror. Her silent replies were expected. She could count the number of words Keisha said in a week.

Turning to pick up her purse, she noticed something different about her. Before she could ask her what the problem was, she rushed to the bathroom and bolted the door. Her words were stuck in her mouth now and just sighed.

“Try not to do anything stupid while I’m gone!” She yelled. She felt bad she couldn’t stay to keep her company but it never looked like that girl over there cared whether or not she did. Leaving felt harder now for her but she had to leave anyway. She cat-walked her way out and gently closed the door behind her.

This was the second phase of retching. She sat by the toilet on the floor dabbing the red spots that were left on her lips. She knew what that meant- another doctor time and what was she going to hear this time around? Big English she’s not interested in knowing about? She picked herself up from the floor and trudged to the living room slumping down in front of the mirror that just captured the cover girl. Now it was capturing her- and it focused on her eyes, as if it was exposing what she was trying to hide. Shutting them wasn’t going to change that. It’d only give her a closer look at those hideous memories. The worst part was, they were memories she formed with her own hands.

As she wallowed in her thoughts, her phone rang. Either it was her former clients or some random person who wants a piece of her. She didn’t bother picking it up. At the fifth call, she mistakenly picked up when she was trying to turn the phone off.

“Keisha… it’s me, Melly. Are you available? Girl, we have got quite a deal! We could really use you for the night.”

That’s all they knew how to do, use people. She stood on the phone, tired just from listening to her.

“Melly, I thought I told you I quit”

“Oh come on, we all know this is not the first time you’ve said that and still returned. I promise to give you a good cut”, she replied.

She chuckled softly as if in pain. She felt a nudge within her asking her to stay but the other thoughts rushed her to get on her way already. If she was going to do doctor time the next day, she needed some funds to sponsor that. It didn’t matter if it meant propounding the problem she already had. She’d pay for it anyway. And this was her quandary; she had been a bird of passage almost half her life trying to make something worthwhile out of it and to prove herself but she only found herself faced with the same old debasing fates, like encountering Melly, a chief con artist. 

Sitting a little straighter in front of the mirror, she touched her face with her rugged fingers, studying it closely and she remembered what she used to see as a child whenever she saw her face in the mirror.

“One day, I’m going to be a great author! An independent woman Jamal would like and he would propose to me. I’ll be so beautiful he won’t be able to take his eyes off me…”

She recounted the declarations she made in front of her dolly mirror every morning when she was supposed to be reciting the Lord’s Prayer like a daily morning pill. She’d usually confess this with so much glee and hope as if she was already there. If only she knew that’s how faith worked before, perhaps, she wouldn’t have lost it in the first place. How times have changed. Now she sat in front of a mirror that showed her remarkable figure from head to toe and couldn’t think of anything proper to say about who she had become. Being pulled out of school seemed to have dashed those dreams because ever since that time she’s only been a laughingstock both in her own home and the second home she felt she belonged. Most of her colleagues had their flashy lifestyle to show for their worth, while she lived today to buy tomorrow.

It was interesting to find that the only thing she could scrape out of her head as she sat before the mirror was a few words from a fairy tale she was very familiar with: “Mirror, mirror, on my wall…” She knew she wasn’t the fairest of them all so there was no point asking after all. “What do you see when you look at me?” her thought continued. Interrupted by the beep from her phone, she knew that was her cue to leave for The Waiters. Melly must have sent the bio of their new unfortunate client. She got up to dress up and in a few moments she was someone else. If she was a haggard before, now she’s that lady you wouldn’t want to mess with.

****

Jamal fumbled at everything. It was obvious that he was distracted and something ate at him. Marissa was helping to tuck Darren in hoping that she’d be returning to an almost tidied bedroom but she arrived and found Jamal dropping almost everything he picked to arrange. 

“Are you alright, honey?” seeing how he struggled to keep a firm grip on anything.

“I am, baby” he smiled softly and they both knew it wasn’t true. Marissa didn’t say much and just took care of the rest of the task while Jamal tried to get a grip on himself and do the same. 

“It’s been a long day, why don’t you get some rest? You have barely a week of rest before your shift begins at the hospital.”

“It’s alright, I can help with a few things “

“No dear, you rest up a bit and I’ll join you in no time,” Marissa told him, gently tapping his hand. 

 Marissa picked up the trash, swept the carpet and tried sorting out some of the other junk boxes from their old apartment. Most of them were Jamal’s huge medical books from college.

“Looks like the dust flipped through all these pages while we moved,” she sneezed, picking up one of them. It was thickly covered with dust which could cause a flu. Laying hold of the closest towel to her on her makeshift vanity table she started wiping and saw a leather bracelet neatly tucked in between one of its pages.

“That’s a beautiful bracelet. How come I’ve never seen this?” She tossed it this way and that admiring the details of the work of art on it. Jamal quickly snatched it from her before he realized he may have acted a little bit weird, seeing how Marissa had her eyes opened in surprise. 

“Sorry…I never knew you fancied these stuff,” she said, finally getting back to her cleaning.

“How much did you get it for?” She dusted off the dirt on another book. Before he could reply,  she got distracted by something else.

“Oh what do we have here?  A cute box full of notes here as well. They must be from your many crushes,” she savored the idea of Jamal being only hers now. She reached out for the box and Jamal tried to take it away from her too but she wouldn’t let him.

“Just a sneak peek at what those girls wrote to you wouldn’t hurt, hun.” She giggled.

“And if you kept them then they must be good,” she chuckled, jerking it away from him totally but the box tilted a bit through the struggle and caused a few sheets to fall. They all looked identical, in paper design and in handwriting.

“I think these are all from one person,” she hesitated at the thought. Jamal picked as many of the sheets from off the ground and stashed them in the box. Marissa spotted a few by the junk box and opened them up.

“Today, I aced my English literature test. Ms. Brown told me I may not be as dumb as people think!”

“Jamal, did I tell you I’m able to pick a bus by myself now? I tried it yesterday and it wasn’t scary at all… Sometimes I wish my mother and my father wouldn’t have to fight because of me…”

“Jamal, I’ll be waiting for you at our spot….”

“Jamal, you promised…”

Marissa felt a bit restive after reading those notes and wasn’t sure what to make of them. What bothered her most was why Jamal chose to keep them. She felt it would be safer to assume they were from a younger sister but everyone knows Jamal was born a hustler and alone.

“Who wrote these?”

“An old friend,” his voice grim.

“And you’ve had them all these years. It must be a precious friend” she stuttered, silently hoping he’d say something to erase the tons of stuff running through her mind. He said nothing but he had to say something if he was going to secure their marriage. He put the box aside and walked up to her. She shivered slightly, groping at everything as a result of the things she felt inside. It appeared the two of them tend to get clumsy when anxious. Jamal took her quivering hands in his and pulled her close.

“These notes aren’t as precious as you are to me,” he kissed her forehead. She wanted to believe him but her guts wouldn’t. However, she still chose to, after all, they were married. 

****

The glam girls sat at the open garden lounge on the 13th floor of The Waiters hotel, sipping champagne with legs crossed on high stools. It was an unlikely name for a prestigious hotel like that. The CEO would later explain in an interview that good things came to those who wait. 

After several months of making that place her hub for swindling senior citizens, she wondered if the likes of them came there to wait for their deaths. Because if that was the goal, then she was playing her role very well. Night after night she’d be disgusted at the lengths men would go just to have her lend some part of her to them. She usually took breaks to the toilet just to puke it all out and go for her own therapy at the club after those icky experiences.

“You’re a genius with this thing, girl!”

“Wait till you hear from my family,” Keisha sipped. Indifferent towards the compliment she was just given.

“No seriously, you are”, Melly added with her dreamy eyes.

“Yeah and apparently a genius in all the wrong stuff” she sighed and gently set the champagne glass on the high table.

“But how did you get it done so fast?”

“Simple. These old men aren’t interested in your résumé. Tell them what they want to hear and let them touch what they want to touch and just get those docs signed up. After that, you don’t have to see them again”, she replied monotonously.

“I see. Anyway, what do you say we get down to Night’s Mare and find us some cute playthings?” Melly’s eyes lit up, hoping her friend would agree. “It’s never boring at the club when you’re anything but alone”, she added.

“I beg to differ but alright. Was heading there anyway” she took the last sip of her champagne. A few minutes later, they picked up their purses and in the next minute, were out of sight.

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