Secrets of a Side Bitch (4 page)

Tammy

“Well, that’s done.”

             
I sighed heavily as I ended the call with Sprint and rested my head back on the couch. Simone sat beside me as she handed me one of her special drinks, Panty Droppa. She had whipped up a batch of the rum concoction and come over to Donte’s to keep me company. But since she drank most of it, I was really ready for her to go home. I needed someone to talk to, not a drunk chick.

             
I had been cooped up in Donte’s house for a week and a half. Though there was no way that Jimmy could have known that I was there, I was too scared to risk going outside.

             
Jimmy didn’t know where I was, and, unfortunately, the police didn’t know where he was either. That was horrifying me. If the police couldn’t find him, I damn sure wouldn’t be able to see him coming if he ever found me.

             
And I knew he wanted to find me since he constantly called my phone from anonymous numbers leaving me threatening voicemails. The police said that they were tracing the calls, but that would take weeks. So, I just changed my number.

             
“I cannot believe this shit is happening to me.”

             
Simone looked at me with sympathy as she held my hand dramatically. “You are going to be all right, girl. They are going to catch him.”

             
“Hopefully it’s before he catches me! He wants to kill me, girl! They are trying to charge him with attempted murder and I am the only witness.”

             
Tears started to come to my eyes, so I quickly changed the subject. I was tired of crying. I had been crying so much that my fucking eyes were hurting. “Let’s talk about something else. What’s up with you? How is Tre?”

             
Simone immediately frowned and folded her arms. I knew that there was drama.

             
No matter how financially stable Simone was– no matter her education, big house, and nice car– she didn’t know what the fuck she was doing when it came to men. She lost at that game every time.

             
Maybe because she was fucking with a married man. I don’t know why she even allowed herself to fall for Tre.

             
“We broke up.”

             
“Broke up? Were you ever actually in a relationship?”

             
I never once hid my distaste for her and Tre’s relationship. I’d be damned if a bitch like Simone was up under my man prowling for his attention. I didn’t like that she was that type of woman, which is why I kept my distance. She considered us friends, but I considered us barely friends. She had some caring qualities about her, but some of the choices she made with men made me question her morals as a whole.

             
What you’ll do to the next bitch, you will definitely do to me under the right circumstances.

             
“Tre was my man just as much as anybody else’s.”

When she spoke like that, it made my skin crawl. It sounded desperate and stupid. “How is that
, Simone?”

“We were always together.”

“Yea,
fucking
.”

Instantly, I wanted to take that back
because I saw tears in her eyes as she spat, “You don’t know how it is, Tammy!”

“How what is?”

Simone covered her face with her hands, but I could hear her sobs.

This drunk
bitch
, I thought.

I was the one that almost got shot in the head by my boyfriend. What the hell was she crying about?

It was the liquor and I knew it. I didn’t feel like sitting here listening to one of her drunken rants about being broken hearted over this married man.

“You don’t know how it i
s to never have a man want you– to have a man always choose another bitch over you! Look at me! I am thirty years old! I am comfortable! I have a beautiful home! I’m not ugly! Yet, every man,
every man
, that I have been with has always been somebody else’s man. Do you know how it feels to only be good enough to be the side bitch?!”

As soon as Simone realized what her drunk ass was saying, she looked embarrassed.
Her face revealed the fact that she had accidentally told her dirty little secret. I was floored. I knew that Tre was married, but I assumed that that was a special case for Simone. I would have never thought that she always fucked with another woman’s man.

“
Don’t be so hard on yourself, girl. What about Dave and Steve?” I thought bringing them up wouldn’t make her feel so bad. They were the loves of her life in college.

“
Dave was in a relationship with a bitch at Mississippi State! Steve had a woman on campus. The bitch was a cheerleader.” As Simone spoke, she looked so disgusted. It was clear that her disgust wasn’t aimed at herself. Her repulsion and hatred was with the
real
girlfriends of these men.

Again, I was floored. These were men that she had mentioned before as we
became closer and closer. Never once did she mention that she was the side bitch.

I watched her tears
in repulsion and wasn’t trying to hide it. I knew that Simone was willing to do anything for a piece of dick, but she just confirmed just how far she would go.

I had never seen a woman so
obsessed with having a man, especially with having one that didn’t belong to her.             

Luckily, Simone soon took her drunk ass home. I think what she said had settled in and
embarrassment sent her home.

So, I was left to
wallow in self pity. I lay across the bed in Donte’s guest bedroom holding a pillow tight while a rerun of R&B Divas played. I looked at Syleena Johnson and Nicci Gilbert have it out while the TV was on mute.

I wished for problems as simple as theirs. I had gone from minute issue
s to my boyfriend trying to kill me. Just a few weeks ago, I thought my life was over because I couldn’t get rid of a nigga who was bringing me down. Now, I wished that I had never left him, because my life was much worse now than it was with him.

Then, just as the
reluctance of my choices came into my mind, Donte appeared in the doorway wearing basketball shorts and a bare chest. Soon my reluctance turned into assurance.

Leaving Jimmy was
definitely the right thing. However, whether living here while hiding from him was a good idea had yet to be determined.

“Simone finally took her drunk ass out of here?”
             

I giggled slightly
. “Yes.
Finally
.”

“You okay?”

I didn’t even bother masking my pain. I felt captive – hiding from a man that I once would have never walked away from. Seeing my sadness, Donte climbed into bed with me. Effortlessly, he spooned his body with mine and wrapped his arms around me. We had been sleeping like that for the last week and a half. It was his way of protecting me. Only he didn’t know that he was making living there even worse for me.

F
ive

Thursday
, July 18
th
, 2013

Omari

What Ching wanted me to do was fairly simple. Instead of running the risk of getting caught in the streets or in the air with weight, he and his connect wanted to arrange for the weight to come through UPS shipments.

             
The connect in Texas would ship weight stuffed into compartments of appliances through UPS. Then he had the appliances shipped to an address that was on my route. I was sure to get the package and deliver it. Ching even shipped weight to a few niggas he supplied to across the city.

             
Like I said, fairly simple. It was keeping Ching and any of his runners off the streets and his work under the radar. No one would suspect a UPS truck. It was a hell of a risk for me. If ever caught, I would lose my job and more. But I was making five hundred per kilo that I delivered, so it was way too profitable to turn away from.

             
The summer was always poppin’. More drugs exchanged hands during “Summertime Chi” than any time of the year. Ching’s business was booming. He had three trap houses on three different blocks on the Westside, Laramie/Jackson, Racine/Halsted, and Damen/Halsted. So on average, I made about two to five grand a week.

             
I wasn’t balling but I was able to dig myself out of the financial hole that I was in. I didn’t splurge because I was saving enough bread to buy a crib and pay off my mom’s crib.

             
I finally felt like things were coming together for me. I had even put more focus on Aeysha and less on my dips. All except one– Simone. The chick had my head, for real. She was different than any of my other dips. She was older, so more mature, established, and secure. She knew what she wanted and she didn’t play games trying to give it to me. I had been able to take her out a few times, to nice places that I could have never afforded to before. I wasn’t balling on Ruth’s Chris, but she was pretty impressed with J Alexanders.

             
I hadn’t gotten the panties yet, but that was all coming in due time. Her eyes told me that she wanted me. She was being a lady, but I knew that all it took was for me to act like I wanted it for her to open them legs for me.

             
As I rode my truck down Damen listening to the
Yeezus
album, I planned on that night being the night. I was making a drop for Ching to the trap on Damen. Then I was heading back to the factory to change, shower, and pick up Simone for dinner and drinks.

             
I had been doing this shit for three weeks, so the routine was fairly simple for me and the block boys. I approached the apartment building where the trap house was carrying a washer machine on a dolly. I was delivering about five kilos of coke and ecstasy powder that the block boys would make into pills. Since I was UPS, I had a key to get into the security gates. I entered the building like normal. Only this time, when I entered the hallway, I was ambushed.

             
Before I knew it, there were two guns to my head and a young nigga in front of me pointing a nine millimeter right between my eyes.

             
“Don’t move, nigga.”

             
My natural reaction was to get a good look at these motherfuckas to make sure that they weren’t Ching’s block boys. I knew I had never seen the one in front of me before, but as soon as I acted like I was about to turn my head, I felt the gun whip across my face.

             
I was bigger than these lil’ niggas, so he couldn’t pistol whip me to the point that I fell. But, since they were little niggas, lil niggas with no souls and no appreciation for a life, I stood still and listened to ‘em.

             
“Now this what we gone do,” the one in front of me ordered. “Me and my man gone take this work from you. Then my other man gone escort you back outside to your truck. Just leave with no problem and I won’t pop yo’ ass. Understood?”

             
I slowly nodded my head as I took surveillance of this young motherfucka. Besides a black hoodie and bandana covering his face and head, and despite me spotting dreads peeking out of the hoodie, he wore black jogging pants and LeBron XPS joints. These gym shoes were loud colors of green and damn near three hundred dollars. Not too many young niggas could afford them shoes. As he and one of his dudes carried the washer out of the back door of the apartment building, I knew that it wouldn’t be hard for Ching to find out who these little niggas was by them shoes alone.

             
Luckily, they kept their word and didn’t pop me. As the last dude walked me out of the building with a gun in my back in broad daylight, I was pretty relieved that he just let me walk to my truck once we got to the security gate.

             
“Guilt Trip” was pumping through the speakers as I hopped into the truck. I could see the back of dude’s Abercrombie hoodie as he ran back into the building. Admittedly, I breathed a sigh of relief, but I wasn’t trippin’ about the work that I’d lost.

             
I was only the middle man. This was Ching’s work. And it was apparent that somebody in his camp was leaking information on the deliveries.  So, I knew he’d take care of it.

Aeysha

Eboni invited me to a Thursday night prayer service at her church, Whole Truth Church of God in Christ.

             
Things were at there worst for me. After weeks of job searching, I hadn’t gotten one call back. Not one. That was heartbreaking because I was putting everything into finding a job. I felt so lost and scared that this was going to be my situation for the rest of my life.

             
Things seemed to be getting worse for me as they were only getting better for Omari. He had been so happy for the past few weeks and things were looking good for him financially. He was working lots of overtime and paying off bills that were in the red. I was happy for him, but I was becoming even more scared for myself. There was more and more distance in our relationship. He was gone all of the time and I knew that he was hiding things from me.

             
So, I prayed. I was on my knees in a pew next to Eboni. I could hear her praying and crying, asking God for several things for herself and her children. As she continued to pray, her cries became more intense, so I held her hand tight as I prayed for things of my own.

             
They say that storms of life don’t have to destroy you, but my storms were wiping me out. I wasn’t the secure woman that I use to be. I was run down. I felt useless. I felt ugly. I felt insecure. I asked God to turn all of that around and give me back what my tribulations had taken from me. I asked him to give me back my relationship. I asked for my happiness back. I asked for job security and a means to educate myself.

             
These were little things to pray for. I could hear the preacher at the pulpit demanding the healing of disease for the sick and shut in and to take away the pain of those dealing with bereavement. I felt insensitive for begging God to give me what seemed insignificant compared to Eboni kneeling next to me begging God to allow her to take care of her three children in better ways. I felt even more useless because I was asking God for things that I should have easily been able to give myself.

             
As I spoke to God, I could feel my cell phone vibrating as it lay on the pew in front of me. I had to check it because I was waiting to hear back from Omari about meeting up for dinner in thenext hour. I quickly checked it and it was a text message
:
Doin’ some overtime. Sorry, gotta cancel. See you at home late
r
.

             
The pit of my stomach began to turn. My women’s intuition was on fifty. But instead of getting angry, I continued to pray; hoping that God would show me a sign of where to go and what to do.