The Case Manager Read online

  Our thirteenth birthday was the best and worst day of my life. Mom and Dad were getting along like never before. Whenever Dad was away from the house, Mom wasn’t too far behind him. They spent countless hours outside of the house or locked in their bedroom when they were home. Most of the time, Shakita and I were asleep by sunset, considering it got dark around 5:00 p.m. and we were in a home without electricity. In any event, our thirteenth birthday fell on a Saturday, and Aunt Sophia came to town as she did for all our birthdays.

  Aunt Sophia didn’t have any kids. Although she wanted some of her own, Mom said she wasn’t blessed with that gift. She never explained how, or why. My aunt would stay in a hotel room while she was in town. Now that I am of age, I know it was a motel room. She would allow me and Shakita to stay with her before and after our birthday party. Auntie saved money every year to throw us a birthday party at the skating rink, and we’d be allowed to have all the pizza, soda, and cotton candy that we could stomach. The blue cotton candy was Shakita’s and my favorite. Just thinking about my twin sister still pains me.

  Mom and Dad called me and Shakita into the bedroom area of Auntie’s motel room. We could tell something was wrong by the tone of their voices. We were originally told to go into the bathroom while the adults talked.

  Walking over the threshold between the restroom and sleeping area, we could see the tears threatening Mom’s eyes.

  “Mom, are you all right?” we asked in unison.

  “Yes, babies, Mommy is all right,” my dad assured, taking a deep breath before continuing. “Sometimes as parents, we are forced to make decisions for our families that are hard for us. Right now, since both Mom and I have been let go from our jobs, we must make a temporary decision, and it hurts. Deep down inside, we know it’s the best for all of us.”

  Confused and scared about what Dad was about to say, Shakita and I immediately began crying hysterically. We could feel that something was wrong. Before we could question our parents about the decision they’d been forced to make, Mom spoke through quivering lips as tears streamed down her beautiful honey brown face. It was the expression that I’d missed seeing on Mom’s face. It was the opposite of the evil tyrant she turned into when she and Dad were at odds with one another.

  “Girls, please know we tried to find a place where the both of you could stay. Your aunt Sophia was our last resort. We even tried your father’s brother.” She paused. “Of course, his prejudice sister-in-law couldn’t imagine—”

  Cutting her sentence short, Dad chimed in to try to lighten the load for her and lay it on us. “Shakita is going to go and stay with Aunt Sophia for a little while to allow me and Mom to get ourselves together. We cannot keep living the way that we are. It pains us dearly to have you girls in the dark and barely any food because the stamps run out too soon and we haven’t been able to find steady work.” He hesitated as a tear escaped.

  “It’s okay, Daddy. We don’t want to eat a lot. We can share food and will go to bed when it gets dark,” Shakita pleaded.

  Dropping to her knees, Mom wailed like an infant awakening for its feeding. Aunt Sophia ran to her aid as Dad continued ripping our hearts from our chests with each word.

  “My ebony and ivory princesses, please forgive your daddy for not being the man I am supposed to be. Not being able to provide for my family the way I am supposed to is killing me. I love both of you and will do everything in my power to fix this. We won’t be separated long. I just need you to understand that this is temporary and what we have to do to get back on our feet.”

  “Please, Daddy, no. We will be fine,” we pleaded, clinging on to one another for dear life.

  “I’m so sorry, girls,” Mom groaned from the floor as she sat there, rocking back and forth, balled into a knot.

  Unable to bear any more of the agony and pain, Aunt Sophia did her best to pry us apart. As she separated us, we wiggled around and found our way right back into one another’s arms. I was being dragged on the floor as they tried to exit the motel room.

  “Please, Daddy, no,” I begged as he picked me up out of the way.

  My other arms, legs, hands, smile, and heartbeat were taken away from me. It was the last time that I saw my twin sister. On their drive back to Denver, Aunt Sophia fell asleep at the wheel. She crashed into an eighteen-wheeler, causing both of their lives to be taken on impact.

  Chapter Six

  The End: Life and Death

  Nakita

  “Kita, I’ve told you and your mom time and time again. There are things we have to do for the family even when it hurts us. We are all that we have, and your mom and I need our medicine. We need you to just be nice to our friend Frankie,” the man formerly known as my dad, now turned my pimp, negotiated.

  With her usual bloodshot eyes, pupils larger than life, and frail, deteriorated, smelly frame, Mom gazed at me from the corner. She was high out of her mind with a half smirk on her face, chiming in a little above a whisper, “Baby girl, we are all we got. Please do this for me and your daddy. We need our medicine to help us deal with . . .”

  She couldn’t even say her name anymore. They blamed everything on Shakita. Never in a million years would I have imagined that Dad would side with Mom and trade me for drugs.

  Trembling as I walked into the room where Mr. Frankie awaited my arrival, I kept my head bowed down out of fear. I didn’t want the image of his face to haunt me after he did whatever it was he was going to do to me. I told myself if I couldn’t see his face, it didn’t happen.

  Snatching me from my thoughts, Mr. Frankie barked through clenched teeth, “Take off your pants and panties. Now!”

  Tears swam down my face as my shaking fingers undid my plaid button-up shirt, revealing my overused bra. The color was completely drained, and there were holes throughout. The lining material had separated and was peeling away. The most humiliating part was the broken straps that were being held together by oversized safety pins.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Mr. Frankie growled, yanking me by the arm and dragging me back into the adjacent room.

  Because I was being dragged into the room while trying to pull my shirt together to hide my tattered brassiere, I wasn’t aware of what was going on. Looking up, I was blindsided by the most horrifying scene that a child could witness. Right before my 14-year-old eyes, my mother and father were huddled together in the corner like a two-person little league team with crack pipes to their mouths. All I could do was sob. I’d seen the zombies in the neighborhood who had given up on life and their families for a hit. Now I had become a victim of my parents’ hit.

  Annoyed and enraged, Mr. Frankie began to howl at the top of his lungs as he leaped over to my parents. Smacking the pipe out of their hands, he started kicking and punching Dad until his face was completely covered in blood. “You are a poor excuse for a man. How can you give your daughter up for this shit?”

  Adjusting himself and storming over to Mom, who was now crawling at a rapid speed to the other side of the room, Mr. Frankie spit in her face. Humiliating her further, he grabbed Mom by her thinning hair and scolded her like a child, “You dumb cunt. When is the last time you bought this girl some underclothes? The best thing you could have done was bring her to me. I’ll show her what a daddy is and take really good care of her.”

  “No, you can’t have my baby.”

  “You gave her to me,” he shot back, kicking her in the stomach.

  That was the last time I’d seen or heard from my parents. Mr. Frankie told me they both overdosed two months after he rescued me from them. He felt he rescued me from my parents and I should have been grateful for it. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Frankie didn’t lie when he said he’d show me what a father was. I wanted for nothing for the first year that I was in his possession. For instance, the very next day that we left the crack house, he had his friend Ms. Jeanette bake me a cake and cook me fried chicken, biscuits, green beans, and macaroni and cheese. Before dinner, she took me to the Rainbow shop in town and purch
ased tons of pretty bras, panties, shoes, and clothes for me.

  She even taught me how to properly line my panties with a sanitary napkin. Apparently, I’d been doing it wrong. Mom never showed me. She just threw the pads at me and Shakita and said that she better not ever smell us. That was when we had sanitary napkins. Most of the time we cut sleeves off our shirts and used them. In any event, I went to school with a new outfit on every week. Of course, all good things always had a way of coming to an end in my little world. When I turned 15, all the tender, loving care came to a screeching halt. Mr. Frankie said I was old enough to earn my weight, so on my fifteenth birthday, he put his money where his mouth was and taught me the true meaning of the saying, “Everything has a price, even if that cost is not always immediately apparent. To achieve anything, you must give up something else.”

  “Happy Birthday, princess,” Ms. Jeanette exclaimed, carrying a German chocolate cake. She dyed the frosting purple because it was my favorite color. She also came in bearing fifteen purple balloons. I was full of joy, appreciative, and sad all at the same time. God in heaven knew that Mom and Dad never went all out for our birthday. What hurt most was they were strangers.

  However, it didn’t pain me more than not being able to share the day with Shakita. I missed her so much. The only thing I had left of hers was a silver necklace that had her first initial on a heart pendant. We had stolen necklaces from the beauty supply store and gifted them to one another some years back for our birthday. She had my initial, and I had hers.

  “Look who’s a big girl now and all grown up.” Mr. Frankie inappropriately admired me.

  “Please, Frankie! Just let her be. I’ll do whatever it is that you need or want done. Whatever it is,” Ms. Jeanette pleaded.

  With his lips pursed and visible rage boiling through his body, Frankie raised his hand back. He threw it forward and whipped it across Ms. Jeanette’s face, knocking my cake out of her hands. The crack of skin contacting skin was so loud and forceful that it echoed off the walls while sending her straight down to the stone-like, porcelain-tiled floor.

  Collecting herself up from the floor as tears trickled down her now flushed, radish red face, Ms. Jeanette made a dart toward the front door. As she passed me on her way out, she mumbled, “I am so sorry, Nakita.” Our eyes locked in a shared petrified understanding.

  “Carry your sorry ass on out of here. All emotional and sensitive and shit on the damn girl’s birthday. Carry your ass on, Jeanette.”

  At that point, I could feel my pulse beating in my ears, blocking out all other sounds except the breath that was raggedly moving in and out of my mouth. “I . . . I’ll clean the cake up.”

  “No need to. We might need it. Today is a very special day for you and cake is the perfect way to celebrate your entrance into womanhood.”

  Without hesitation, Mr. Frankie slithered himself closer to me. Standing five feet two, I stood eye to eye with him as he was a short yet very attractive man for his age. Mr. Frankie had the kind of face that would make you stop and do a double take. His height, on the other hand, would make you keep walking. Well, some might keep walking. Most of the woman we’d come across while in public stopped and flirted with him constantly. I giggled every time because they were so obvious. Ms. Jeanette said Mr. Frankie had a hypnotizing, nonchalant gaze along with a weak smile that was criminal. She went on to say it was probably the kryptonite that had her stuck with him for the nine years that they’d been together, despite the things she hated about him. Much to my surprise, my gut was telling me that I was now on the verge of experiencing some of the things she hated about him.

  Brushing his wrinkled fingers across my face, he instructed, “Take your clothes off slowly.”

  Like an arctic breeze slicing through me, his words began to cut into my soul.

  With trembling hands, I began to unbutton my blouse as a déjà vu moment consumed me. He wouldn’t take me when my parents gave me up. Why does he want me now? I am not a woman yet. I am still a kid. I am the same little girl with the raggedy undergarments from before.

  Not hesitating or wasting any time, Mr. Frankie began kissing my lips roughly, using force to keep my arms out of his way as he ripped my clothes off me.

  “Please, Mr. Frankie don’t do this to me. You’re supposed to be a father to me,” I sobbed.

  “You can call me daddy, princess,” he retorted, discarding his clothing so that our flesh could become one.

  After removing his boxers, Mr. Frankie rammed himself into me, causing me to screech in torment as I could feel him rip my insides. “You’re hurting me,” I wept. My screams appeared to be stimulating him, because the more I moaned in pain, the more aggressively he dug his hips into mine.

  As per Mr. Frankie, that marked my first day into womanhood as well as the introduction to my newfound desire and obsession to join Shakita in heaven. Every time Mr. Frankie touched me, I wanted to die. I even attempted to take my own life, which brought on another dose of misery.

  “Oh, my God, Frankie, get in here,” Ms. Jeanette cried as she entered the room, witnessing my bloody arm.

  Ignoring her pleas, I kept cutting, and screaming, “I want to die, just let me di—”

  “I will kill your ass dead if you try that shit again,” Frankie threatened through clenched teeth, tackling me to the floor and disarming me.

  I was scared and relieved to get far away from Mr. Frankie as the ambulance arrived. Closing my eyes, I let out a sigh as the doors to the ambulance were snatched back open as they were being closed. He entered and eyed me as if his bullshit meter were ticking in the red zone. I was trying to do everything I could to avoid his gaze. Somehow, I was paralyzed by his stare. His bluish brown eyes seemed to freeze me in my tracks, as if he were staring into my soul and reading my mind. Moving closer to the gurney that held my fragile body, Mr. Frankie surprisingly soothed my fear as he stroked my hair, which was braided in two cornrows. Much to my surprise, it was a ploy to get my attention. While the paramedics were on the verge of completing their series of questions and began to phone triage, Mr. Frankie’s face grew cold.

  Lowering his head to my ear, he threatened, “You better not try nothing like this ever again, or you won’t have to worry about killing yourself because I will kill you.”

  * * *

  It appeared I didn’t do as much damage to myself as I thought I could or did. After a few stitches, it took about four hours for them to evaluate, admit, and transfer me to a nearby psychiatric hospital. The admission process was painfully slow. They kept asking me the same endless questions over and over while Ms. Jeanette sobbed and Mr. Frankie stared through me with his face hardened in concentration. Finally, at 10:00 p.m., they gave me a gown and took me away. I could now feel a small sense of relief.

  It was release day after spending ten days in Bergen Regional Medical Center in Paramus, New Jersey. Every single day I took up residence there I was asked repeatedly what brought on the suicidal thoughts. Out of fear, I told a half truth. I didn’t want to be here without Shakita. I was prescribed medication and IOP, Intensive Outpatient Treatment, where I was to go to group counseling and share my feelings as if I was some kind of drug addict. All of this was my parents’ fault. Had they been normal parents who took care of me and Shakita and not turned into crackheads, I wouldn’t be going through any of this. I hated them so much. If they weren’t already dead, I thought I’d kill them myself if I had the chance.

  Chapter Seven

  Motherhood: The Journey

  Candice

  Five months pregnant and I was fat and ugly. My nose was spreading, my backside has gotten bigger, and I could not fit in a stitch of my clothing. “Mom would have a field day right about now calling me every name in the book,” I sighed. It had gotten so bad that I’d been borrowing T-shirts and sweats from Nakita for the past few weeks. Thank God, my stipend finally came in and I now had extra money outside of the allowance Ms. Nancy gave us. She declared we were the children she wasn’t able
to have and gave us a $50 weekly allowance.

  Sadly, Ms. Nancy’s little boy died from SIDS. Dominic was only 6 months old when he passed. Ms. Nancy said she put him down for his afternoon nap, and when she realized he had been asleep longer than usual, she went to check on him and he wasn’t breathing. Per her, he didn’t have any medical problems at all. They believed it was due to him sleeping on his stomach opposed to his back.

  The nursery/day care area where supplies for our infants would be stored was now stocked with five Halo Bassinest Swivel Sleepers, one for each of us. All courtesy due and owed to Ms. Nancy. Ms. Nancy said that special sleeper for the babies would help prevent sudden infant death syndrome. It moved to allow the baby to sleep close to us as if it were in the bed with us, much closer than with a traditional bassinet.

  The other necessities such as diapers, baby lotion, powder, bottles, Similac, receiving blankets, and pacifiers were donated by different charities and people within the community. This helped out and contributed tremendously. It would alleviate a lot of the burden on us as per Nakita. At the moment, Nakita and I were preparing to go to the maternity section of Target, or Targé if you were talking to Nakita. I was in desperate need of new clothing, and Nakita wanted to pick up a few things for her bundle of joy, or pain, depending on how you looked at it.

  Without question, preparing to go to the store led to us having a disagreement. Nakita wanted me to pick up maternity clothes, and I declined considering. Sweats and T-shirts had always been my wardrobe of choice. I had never been one to spend an enormous amount of time in the mirror or shopping. In fact, I didn’t remember the last time I really looked at myself in a mirror. It just wasn’t that important to me. I was stuck with this body and face, so why try to change it? Instead, I concealed it.