The Finale (3 page)

Scar and Fuller were set again to meet at the small restaurant in Bowie. On the way to the spot, as Fuller drove up, he began to feel guilt for playing on both sides of the law by being a cop and partner with a drug dealer. But Scar and Fuller had a relationship that went much deeper than what appeared on the surface. They were blood brothers. Derek Fuller thought back to how thier partnership came about.

 

 

“Mom!” Derek screamed, his small, angelic face turning flush red as he jumped up and down in sheer terror. His brother stood next to him and peed on himself as he watched too.

“I told you before, bitch. You don't play with my fuckin' money!!” a strange man screamed as he dragged their mother by her hair.

The man was so big, and his skin was so black; to Derek he looked like a giant monster.

As the boys screamed, the man hoisted their mother in the air by her throat.

Derek felt vomit creep up his throat, and his bowels threatened to release from the fear he felt.

His mother clawed at the man's hands in a futile attempt to loosen his grip so she could breathe.

“Get off my mommy!” Stephon screamed, the scar he was born with dragging the side of his mouth down, causing his words to slur.

Derek grabbed onto his little brother's shirt and pulled him back. He couldn't risk this monster harming his brother too.

“Please don't hurt my babies,” their mother rasped, begging the man for mercy.

“Bitch, you should have thought about that before you decided to cross me,” the giant said, hoisting her up and throwing her up against the wall.

She hit the wall with a thud and slid down, her body going limp like a rag doll. She continued to scream and beg for her life as the man pounded on her, his fist landing at will, each punch harder than the one before.

“You like to smoke crack? You like to steal from people, bitch?” the man growled as he lifted her weak body up so he could get to her face. With the force of a Mack truck he backhanded her, sending one of her teeth flying from her mouth. Blood covered her face and hugged the floor around her. “Now, I expect to get my money by tomorrow, or you and these bastard trick babies of yours gonna be dead.” The man spewed a wad of spit on her crumpled form.

Five-year-old Derek and his four-year-old brother Stephon cowered in a corner, with Derek trying to shield his brother from harm, as usual. Although he was only five, Derek often acted as if he were ten or eleven. On the nights his mother disappeared or stayed holed up in her bedroom with different men, he would pour cereal or make a sandwich out of whatever was there for him and his little brother, who his mother had nicknamed Scar because of his misshapen head and the scar that dragged down one side of his face, making his head resemble a boulder. He would make sure his brother washed his face and brushed his teeth before they went to bed.

“Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top,” she would sing to her younger son. She would call Derek her “baby genius” and tell him he was destined for greatness.

People often thought Derek and Scar were fraternal twins because they were the same size. Although Scar was a year younger, he was always just as big as Derek.

When he was sure the giant was gone, Derek got up and went to his mother's side. “Mommy?” He nudged her frantically. He thought she was dead for sure. “Mommy!” he called out again, urgency rippling through his words.

Finally his mother shifted and winced in pain. Then she moaned and turned over. Struggling to get up and barely able to speak through her swollen lips, she rushed her boys to put on their coats.

Afraid and visibly shaken, Derek followed his mother's instructions and helped Scar into his coat and put on his own. Their battered mother rushed them out of the apartment, looking around nervously the entire time. Once they were outside, she let her motherly instincts take over. She ignored the massive pains ripping through her entire body and walked at a fast pace to get her children far away from the potential danger.

Derek could keep up, but Scar had a hard time, and he gasped for breath because he had to jog just to keep in step.

After walking for what seemed like an eternity, the trio finally came to a middle-class white neighborhood that Derek had remembered passing on numerous occasions and wishing he lived there.

“Go in there, and y'all stand right by that green dumpster. Don't move until I come back. You hear me, Derek?” his mother said, her words garbled and her face becoming more swollen by the minute.

“When you coming back?” Derek asked, shivering.

“Take care of your brother, okay? He is special, and don't you let nobody bother him about his face. You hear me?” Her body quaked with sobs.

“When you coming back?” Derek asked her again, an ominous feeling taking over him.

His mother shoved them along. “Just take care of your brother.”

As they started ambling forward slowly toward the dumpster, their mother turned and limped away, her heart breaking as she went farther and farther away from them. She knew somebody would find them there and take care of them. She feared that if she had kept them, her addiction would've eventually gotten them killed.

Scar began crying out, “Mommy! Mommy! Don't leave us.”

“Shhhh! Mommy is coming back. I'm gonna take care of you until she comes back,” Derek consoled, squeezing his brother's hand tight.

Derek took his brother and stood right where his mother had instructed him. They stood at the dumpster until the sun came up, and their legs throbbed. Scar whined and cried the whole time, between nodding from sleep deprivation. Derek refused to sit down or allow Scar to sit down. His mother had told him to stand there, and he would not let her down. Several people passed them and stared, but no one said anything to them. It was the trash truck driver who came to empty the dumpster that finally asked Derek why they were there.

“My mommy said she is coming back for us,” Derek had said.

After waiting with Derek and Scar for three hours, the trash man finally called the authorities, and Derek never saw his mother again.

When Child Protective Services workers and the police showed up, Derek still refused to move. “No! I'm waiting for my mommy! No!” He screamed and kicked to no avail.

They had to physically remove him from the dumpster, and he and Scar were whisked away to the hospital for a medical clearance and then off to foster care, where they remained for over a year.

With the mandatory expiration on parental rights, after eighteen months, they were put up for adoption. Every Wednesday, Derek and Scar went to the agency along with about twenty-five other kids for display for prospective parents. Derek would always hold Scar's hand and secretly tell people that they were not going to be separated, and that if they wanted him, they would have to take Scar too.

With one look at Scar's disfigured face, the potential parents always turned away and found other kids to adopt. Derek's plan had worked for weeks, and each week he and Scar would go back to their foster home.

After a few weeks, the social workers couldn't figure out why at least one of the boys couldn't attract an adoptive family. The workers finally started sitting close to Derek and Scar and listening to what Derek was saying to the people shopping for children. When the workers got wind of what he was doing, the following Wednesday they put him and Scar in separate rooms, and Derek was picked immediately. He was seven, with the cutest dimples and the prettiest smile. Scar, on the other hand, had been overlooked again and again.

The day Derek's new family came to pick him up—a father who was a cop and a mother who was a teacher—he refused to leave without his brother. He had fought and cursed and even locked himself inside the bathroom.

The social worker had lied to Derek to coax him out of the bathroom so his new parents could grab him and get him home. “Your brother will be coming along soon,” she said. “Go ahead. You'll see him again.”

Derek reluctantly went. He wouldn't see his brother for another fifteen years, by which time they had both landed on opposite sides of the law.

In Derek's new adoptive home, everything seemed to be perfect. His father fought crime, and his mother taught him everything there was to know in any book imaginable. They were a real family. They ate dinner together and had fun movie nights on Fridays, his father's day off.

Derek lived like a kid that had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He wore the finest clothes, had every toy before it even became popular with other kids, and most of all, he had a real family life with both parents.

But everything wasn't as peachy as it seemed. Derek's father worked the midnight shift, and when he left home at ten o'clock after tucking his son in and kissing his wife, things would take a dark turn in the house.

Derek's adoptive mother would creep into his bedroom at night and shake him awake, standing over him in a see-through nightgown. Longing for her husband's touch and affection, Ms. Fuller was lonely and desperate. She would climb into bed with her adopted son and stroke his hair. Then she would tell Derek that she loved him more than anything in the world, and that if he wanted to see his brother again, he would have to touch her and she would help him find his brother.

At first it started out as touching. She'd take his little hands and guide them around her body. She would make him touch her breasts and put his fingers in her vagina. And by the time Derek was eleven, she had begun to make him have full-blown intercourse with her. She would always perform fellatio on him first then make him perform cunnilingus on her. Then she would take his still growing penis and force him to put it in her sloppy, oversized pussy. Most of the time Derek felt disgusting and dirty; sometimes he wanted to vomit.

But as the years went by, things changed and he felt differently. His body would betray him, and he started to experience sensations he didn't quite understand. Derek had conditioned himself to fight the good feeling that he started to get as he got older. He told himself the faster he got to that feeling the better, because his turmoil would be over. Derek would ejaculate after a few minutes, so he wouldn't feel so guilty. It was ingrained in him as a coping mechanism. “Come quickly, and it will be over,” he used to tell himself.

Although at his adoptive home in the posh northern Maryland suburb of Bowie; Derek had every toy, private school education, went to church, and lived in a beautiful home, none of it was good enough. All he wanted was to see his biological mother and brother again.

 

 

Meanwhile, Scar remained in the foster care system in the hood of Baltimore. After years of enduring teasing and beatings at the hands of other kids in group home after group home, Scar grew angry inside. On most days he felt ruthless and often had visions of killing the social workers and the other kids with his bare hands. It wasn't long before Scar was on edge.

“Hey, ugly,” a boy had called out to Scar one day, throwing a ping pong ball from the day room and hitting him in the head.

Scar bit down into his cheek and ignored his tormentor.

“You so ugly, we could probably win a world war just by showing your face to the enemies.” The boy continued garnering laughs from the other kids sitting around. “Look at that scar and those saggy lips. I bet your mother must have fucked a gorilla to get something as ugly as you.” The boy let out a shrill, grating laugh.

That was it. Scar snapped. His ear seemed clogged, and the room started spinning around him. He'd never tolerated anyone talking about his mother or his brother.

“Arrrggh!” Scar screamed out, suddenly lunging at the boy with a pocketknife he had stolen. Scar had buried the pocketknife deep into the boy's neck, hitting his jugular vein.

The boy's eyes popped open in shock. He didn't expect the “ugly monster kid” to ever fight back. Screams erupted in the room, and some of the other kids ran out into the hallway to get help, as the boy backed up from Scar's contact, holding his throat and gagging.

Scar stumbled backward at the sight of the boy's thick burgundy blood spewing like a fountain from his neck. Before any of the group home administrators could help, the boy bled to death within minutes, right at Scar's feet. And though Scar was scared to death, something inside of him felt powerful, almost invincible. The group home security quickly tackled Scar to the floor and held him there until the police arrived.

Scar spent two months in a mental institution because of that incident. After the psychiatrist cleared him, he was placed in a juvenile detention center, where he stayed until he was eighteen years old. It was at the detention center that Scar learned all of his criminal ways, so by the time he was released onto the streets of Baltimore, instead of being rehabilitated, he had become a ruthless dude with a nothing-to-lose attitude.

Derek went away to college and only returned to his adoptive home when his father was laid to rest after a long battle with cancer. When the funeral was over, he told his adoptive mother she would never see him again.