Jordan Belcher - Status

I eased my fingers back out the holes. “Deja, I wasn’t teasing you to be mean. I was trying to motivate you to lose weight. You always complained about being big and I wanted to help you. Look at you now. I helped you get there.”

“No, I did this!” she screamed at me, flowing her hands over her curvaceous frame. “Don’t try to take credit for this. That’s all you do is take. You took my self-esteem. You took my dignity. And you took my man!”

“Them bitches is fightin’!” someone yelled from behind.

I turned for a second, then—

Bam!

Deja punched me so hard I don’t know which side of my face she hit, as I found myself fighting with gravity. The wall of the building saved me from going down. Right when my eyes started working again, I saw Deja—clenching her teeth in rage—charging towards me. I covered my head as she swung at me again and carelessly struck the brick wall behind me. She howled in pain, and I seized the opportunity to grab her throat.

“Bitch!” I snarled.

She grabbed my throat too. We were choking each other.

Biting my lip in anger, I pushed her up against a parked car and made her do a back bend, slamming her head down against the hood. I squeezed harder and she started wheezing. Impulsively, she grabbed my wrists and tried to pry them off. She couldn’t.

I wanted to kill her. “I’m tired of people fuckin’ me!” I screamed. “No more! And it starts wit’ you!”

There was a crowd around us now. I could hear the taunts and the laughter. Someone yelled out, “Don’t break it up! I’m getting this shit on video!”

I grabbed her hair and slung her to the concrete. Deja looked furious. She kicked her heels at me but I got ahold of her ankles and threw them to the side. I dropped down on top of her and rained punches down on her savagely, with my bare fists.

The bridge of her nose split first.

Then her left eye turned bloodshot.

“Don’t break it up! Get back yall! Let ‘em fight!”

Fedbound Marleyand 107 otherscommented on a video Tyesha816was tagged in.

August 17 th, 2:00 p.m.

Deja Michelle tilted her head back and let the second eye drop drip into her left eye. She blinked repeatedly as she dabbed the excess moisture with a tissue. Staring at her stark naked reflection in the mirror, she could barely recognize her face.

Her left jaw was swollen red. There was a half-inch gash on the bridge of her nose that was now sealed with a butterfly closure. On her neck, where Tyesha had stomped her, there was a nasty brown bruise. And her lip was busted.

She pulled her hair back and saw another bruise behind her ear. Titling her shoulder toward the mirror, she saw red scrapes on her back from the concrete. It looked like a tiger clawed her.

“I should press charges,” she said.

“Deja, don’t talk like that,” Rodrick said. “Yall fought. It’s over. Don’t bring in the law.”

She turned around immediately. Rodrick was sitting on the ruffled bed Indian-style, trying to figure out the operating system on his new phone. He didn’t have on any clothes either.

She quickly snatched the phone from him and tried to log into The Site.

He shot to his feet. “What the fuck are you doing?!” he said, as he wrestled the phone back out of her hand.

“I was changing your status!”

“You not about to change shit,” he retorted.

“Why not? You said you was, nigga! Are you gonna continue to make her think yall still together? Or am I the one getting played here?!”

He plopped back down on the bed and lowered his face into his palms, sighing.

“You need to make up your mind,” Deja said. “Is it gonna be me or her?”

He kept his face buried, didn’t say a word. She crossed her arms and waited. Since Junior High she had wanted Rodrick Brown to be her man. But he had never dated big girls back then. She waited until he got locked up, after he’d already had a child by Tyesha, to confess in a letter that she’d had a crush on him. To her surprise, he wrote back and said he’d liked her too. But not sexually, because he couldn’t see himself sleeping with her because she thought lowly of herself. He told her if she didn’t like herself, why should he? The very next day after she got his letter she started exercising with Tyesha. She saw improvements within a few months’ time, and when she sent Rodrick pictures, he gave her glowing compliments and motivation. He taught her that God’s Spirit dwelled within and that she simply had to let His spirit shine outward. What once was a crush became an intense desire to have his love. She sent him money weekly and went to see him every day Tyesha or his family wasn’t there.

Deja’s tear ducts began to well up.

“Me or her?” she asked again.

“Hold on,” he said. “I’m waiting on God to give me an answer.”

She thumped him in the head. “I’m tired of waiting, Rodrick! I need you!”

“I can’t think. Now is not the right time for this shit. Why did you make that post on my wall? You fucked everything up.”

“That was my intentions. It forced you to make a decision.” She touched the sides of his face and forced a kiss. She laid him out on the bed and straddled him. Her huge booty enveloped his whole waist. “And I need you to make the right decision, baby. Please?”

She arched her back and lifted her tush slightly. She reached around and grabbed ahold of his beefy member, but it was flaccid. She flopped it around in her fist, trying to agitate it.

“You can’t get hard again?” she asked. “Is it my face?”

“No,” he said. “It’s Tyesha’s face. I keep seeing it when I close my eyes. It’s my daughter’s face. I don’t even have to close my eyes to see her. I can’t do this no more, Deja. I have to go.”

He shoved her to the side and started putting his clothes on.

Deja grabbed his arm desperately and hugged it to her busty chest. “Don’t do this, Rodrick! Please, baby! Don’t leave me!”

He pulled his arm free to slip into his LV zip hoodie. He walked out the room, and Deja would have chased him but the thought of him leaving made her nauseous and she made a dash for the toilet. She dropped to her knees and vomited into the bowl, crying hysterically as she heard her front door slam shut.

“Momma, it itches,” Kylie whined.

I was driving on the highway and couldn’t do much to help my daughter right now. “We’re almost home. Stop scratching it, okay?”

“But it itches.”

“Rub it. Don’t scratch.”

There was no way in hell I was going to let my daughter spend the night at her grandmother’s house again. Kylie had an inch-long razor cut on her forearm from digging in one of my mother’s boxes. As she pulled out, a blade sliced her open. Velma Fenty said it wasn’t that bad of a cut, but any cut on my daughter was bad. And how old was the blade? My daughter could be infected.

First thing tomorrow morning I was going to put her back in daycare. I took her out of the last one because the ghetto staff there didn’t feed her adequately. She was always hungry when I went to pick her up. I hated that I might possibly have to choose between hunger and harm, but I’d choose a little hunger any day. Hopefully this new daycare off 350 Highway that one of my Site friends recommended would be a great facility.

“I saw Uncle La’killer today,” my daughter said.

My brow creased in confusion. “You saw who?”

“Uncle La’killer .”

I prayed I was hearing her wrong. “Did you say Ladykiller?”

She nodded.