Sister Souljah - Life After Death

“That feels so good,” she said.

“Put your hands up,” he said.

“Am I under arrest?” she replied so softly that you knew her ass wasn’t under no fucking arrest. Niggas getting arrested either don’t say shit or say something foul.

“Your turn,” she said on some sexy shit. They were kissing again. I was ready to leave. “I like it better when you do it for me,” she said softly. I could hear their bodies moving but not leaving the bathroom area. It dawned on me that it didn’t matter that I was ready to leave. A dead bitch doesn’t control the action. I don’t even know where I am or who I’m with. Picture a grown-ass Brooklyn bitch who don’t know even that!

“Draw the curtains,” I heard him say. The sound of their voices and bodies was back in their bedroom.

“Why? No one can see in.” She paused. Then I could hear the curtain fabric dropping down. “I always thought that’s the reason we have no neighbors.” She laughed.

“I don’t even want the birds peeping at my wife,” he said calmly.

“Impossible!” she said excitedly.

“Impossible what?” he asked coolly.

“Impossible that you could still love me that much,” she teased, then added, “After I have given birth to seven of your sons and two of your daughters.”

“What fool would not love a woman even more than he loved her before, after she pushed out nine of his children?” he asked her and he sounded serious. But she was still playing.

“Um let me see,” she laughed. “Maybe a guy who has three other wives, two of them younger than me. One from Sudan, one from Oman. Then there’s the first wife from Korea…” she teased.

“Come here,” he said to her, and the sound of the way he said it turned my rising anger to intense desire as though he was saying, “Come here,” to me.

“And one from Japan,” he said and kissed her. I’m feeling burnt. “Who flies freely in and out of all of those countries and follows me all around the world wherever I go,” he said.

“I do not!” She laughed, and I definitely knew she was lying.

“Who follows me even when she’s seven months pregnant, no matter how far I go? A girl so pretty, smart, loyal, loving, helpful, that I built her a private palace. A queendom, and I put it right here in the UAE, a perfect peaceful place. Made it of everything precious to show her how precious she is to me. But the pretty pilot won’t stay put in her palace unless I am right here beside her. So now, to please my second wife, the pilot, the wildcat, I moved all of my wives and all of our children and even my friends and their wives and children to where she is, so I could be right by her side.”

My vision clicked on. I thought it was cruel. She had her naked body pressed against his body. Her hands clasped at the back of his neck. I walked up behind him and pressed my body against his back. I put my hands on each side of his waist and tried to pull him away from her and on to me.

“True,” she said softly. I could tell she was about to re-seduce him. “And…” she said playfully then kissed him. “After you do ‘that thing’ to me one more time,” she giggled. “We can talk about how two of our sons are about to fight over the Santiaga daughter.”

Santiaga daughter! That’s me! I thought. I ran around to face him. And over her shoulder, I could see clearly what I had already sensed and known. I tried to swipe her out of his grasp but my hands had no impact. I tried to yank her long black braid, choke her with it. My hands couldn’t clasp it.

“Hey, what are my heels doing up here? I left them outside on the rack,” she asked softly. I couldn’t tolerate any more. I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Midnight, Midnight, Midnight!” but obviously he couldn’t hear, feel, or see me. It didn’t matter anymore. I overheated and instantly, I dissolved.

Furious on several levels, I was back to being a ball of heat. The bitch he had was perfect. She knew it. He knew it. I knew it. She was golden-skinned, my same complexion, ’round my same height. Her hair was black and long. She wore it in one thick braid down the center of her head. It was real, not purchased, same as mine. Her silver-gray eyes gave her the advantage. They looked stunning like the sterling silver door lit up by the sun. And I could tell she had him hypnotized. Like me she had that diamond-cut body, unbelievably tight and lean especially after pushing out seven boys and two girls. A pilot, well what the fuck? Who’s gonna beat a bitch in a jet or better yet a helicopter? Men like foreign cars and like foreign bitches even more. I hated that. Four wives? And they all cool with that? They’re fucking up the game. What am I supposed to be, wife number five? Picture dat, never, ever, ever.

I had thought that after my victorious prison release, emerging out a snitch-free, time-served, real million-dollar bitch, which even though Midnight wasn’t scheduled to be there, he would without a doubt be watching me on his wide-screen TV, then I could get rid of his wife. Not kill her of course. Just replace her, because I’m obviously the better choice! How am I supposed to dispose of four bitches? Who come to find out are all from separate faraway places that nobody ever heard of, been to, and where nobody would ever want to go. What the fuck is Oman? Sudan? UAE? UAE! I was tryna figure that out the whole time we were all three in his bedroom. He said that’s where we were standing in the palace he built for Chee.

What is UAE? Is it United African Empire? Ah hell no! When I was whizzing through the darkness it was a longer journey than the other two times it had happened to me. But it wasn’t long enough to have traveled all the way to the African jungle. And when I arrived, there was no safari! And, I didn’t see no broken-down huts or bald-headed ashy babies with flies chilling on their noses, their fingers so weak from starvation that they couldn’t even swat them away. I didn’t see no braless pygmies lined up to get one bowl of cereal from some foreigner scooping it out of a metal trash bin because they pitied them.

So that’s that. It definitely wasn’t Africa. Yeah, I heard of Korea before because they the ones who owned a lot of markets in Brooklyn and who shined up the fruit and stacked it in neat rows before any other grocers started doing it that way. They were the originators or champions of the open-twenty-four-hours salad bar. They was also the ones who was quick to say something slick to a nigga shopping in their store and set off a whole heated situation.

Of course everybody in the whole world heard of Japan. The Japanese got sushi. Any real top bitch has not only heard of it, she’s been served it, and has tasted it. Plus the high-end Japanese restaurants flaunted wicked architecture. Even their interior designs was doped off with separate grill stations at each customer’s table and a personal Japanese chef doing a knife show as he prepared steaks and shrimps and shit like that.

However, Chee definitely didn’t sound like a Japanese bitch. She didn’t look like any Japanese bitch I ever seen while chilling at Benihana. She was above them. See what I’m saying? And, once those foreign bitches, who got our same look, start speaking in different languages, showing the fuck off, how a hood bitch gon’ keep up? How she gon’ shine?

I was cool hugging his back. I had somehow blotted her out. I just wanted to get my moment, my feel, have my way with him without him being able to resist. I had always wanted to suck his collarbone since I was thirteen. Press my nude body up against his. Trace my prettiest finger lightly over his incredible jawline. Hold his face in my hands and feel the pleasure of his thick lips. More than that, he was the only man worthy of me marrying him and whose children I ever wanted to push out and keep and say these are his and my babies. Babies who were not a burden, but a treasure. But when I looked up while hugging him, her hands were dangling there on the backside of his neck. I could see her unusually precious pear-shaped diamond wedding ring. That sent me over the edge. It was the same as if she had stolen my life, was wearing my jewels, was living in my palace, was the mother of my sons, and was loving my man and apparently he was loving her back even more. Of course he was. They were both standing there glistening from the oil I’m sure he had massaged onto her skin. Her wet silky freshly braided long black braid, that after I put two and two together, and from what I had just overheard, had been braided by him. That infuriated me. But when she asked about her shoes, the Jimmy Choo’s crystal pumps, I felt stabbed. With one simple question she had highlighted for me that hey she’s right. This all her shit not mine . The silver, pearls, platinum, palaces, gold, and diamonds were all hers! Worth more than all those precious jewels was the man she had wrapped around her finger. How am I supposed to deal with that? It was as though she had hit the local number, the lotto, and the mega!