Sister Souljah - Life After Death

My mind switched when she said, “Our sons are about to fight over the Santiaga daughter.” At first I thought, Yeah that’s me. Then I sobered up and figured out what should’ve been pretty clear. Midnight had adopted my twin sisters, Lexy and Mercedes, when Santiaga got locked down. So one of them girls had caught the hearts of two of Midnight’s many sons. That’s stepbrothers in love with their stepsisters. I don’t believe in step-anything! Only real blood relations matter. And the fact of the matter is Lexy and Mercedes don’t share one drop of the same blood with Midnight’s real children.

So Midnight’s sons were fair game for them. Since Santiaga’s daughters all know a real man when we see one, ’cause we are the daughters of the realest man, of course one of them or maybe even both of them peeped that that twenty-one-years-young leader of the bare-backed young men in the palace gym was pure fire. Undoubtedly worth scratching a next bitch eyes out over or even putting a knife in her ribs. Who else could the young leader have been other than the son of Midnight? The king of men.

Wait a minute. My math mind was merging with a memory. When I was seventeen years young I definitely had asked Midnight if he had any children. He told me no. Why did he lie to me? He couldn’t have a twenty-one-year-old son now if he was not already born when I first asked him at age seventeen. Maybe I’m wrong with the number twenty-one that I guessed, from what my eyes saw, was the young leader’s age. Now I felt greasy for wanting to jump on his son’s dick. But not too greasy ’cause I didn’t know. And I did fifteen on lockup. I’m allowed to feel a lil’ anxious. But why were Midnight’s two sons fighting over one twin? They each could have had one to themselves. Hey, my twin sisters both look the same! Or maybe not anymore… Maybe one of them had gotten fat or sloppy. I doubt it, though. Maybe one of them was extreme fashion, and several cuts above the other. Maybe one of them had become an undesirable bookworm. But the fact that Chee was even the mother over my twin sisters, and she had all of the answers and info about them that I didn’t know and she had raised and seen them while I was locked in a cage, was another knife…, this time, through my throat.

Experts of art, fashion, and design, like myself, have eyes that are swift to see, survey, and size up the look, the authenticity, and value of all. Of course I had seen through the sheer white ceiling-to-floor curtains that were pretty but not powerful enough to block the sun. I saw their doped-off backyard replete with everything that hood niggas and average everybody else has to go to the park to enjoy with a million other strange motherfuckers doing the same. Aside from the swings and the seesaws, the outdoor brick-oven kitchen and the barbecue pit was to cry for. The collection of off-road vehicles, motorcycles, and exotic whips were lined up in the distance as well. That choked me, strangled me. To think that my father, Santiaga, was locked up in the box in an eight-by-five cell with no way out, while his man who he put on was wearing his crown, fathering his daughters, living his lifestyle and then some, was way too much.

I got even more heated because I did not know how everything went down between Santiaga and Midnight exactly. Santiaga didn’t say in his letters. I’m not stupid. So of course I know Poppa couldn’t say it in writing and also couldn’t say it to my face because we were both prisoners serving time. I do know that Poppa still trusts Midnight and that Midnight still looks out for him. That meant that Midnight never flipped on Santiaga. Poppa was swift with his revenge over anyone who did. Even from behind bars, Poppa he could make that type of shit happen. Still I couldn’t figure. Why was Midnight, who I saw back when I was seventeen years young on the exact day he left New York to move down to Maryland, rich? No not rich, filthy rich… when on the day he left all he had was one suitcase in the backseat of his black Acura, which I saw with my own eyes. Seeing him and Chee’s monopoly over everything and everyone, his wealth, women, property, possessions in great detail, was suffocating me. Now was I supposed to hate him? I already loved him. The fact that he landed on his feet and blew the fuck up like a real motherfucking hustler made me love him even more.

The real headbanger that happened in that master bedroom was when I realized that there had been mirrors in the palace, placed in the usual spots where mirrors belong. I had even looked into those mirrors one by one. It wasn’t till the end when I saw Chee’s vanity table, packed with perfumes and oils, lotions and creams, then looked up and saw Midnight and her in front of me, and looked back and saw them behind me, that I realized that I was staring into a mirror, but a dead bitch ain’t got no reflection.

5.

Must be in my casket now. I’m still. I’m laid out on my back. My face and neck are numb, paralyzed even. The back of my head feels mushy. I’m cold, no longer a ball of heat. I’m stiff, feeling no space on my left or right, over my head or beneath my feet. I don’t know if my limbs are all swelling or if the casket is shrinking. I can hear my own ribs cracking. I don’t know if I am still blind or if this is just the darkest darkness I ever saw. My eyes are glued closed. I can’t scream when I get furious. Someone stitched my lips shut. I feel something tiny crawling on me. Or maybe I’m imagining it. I’m outraged that I can still imagine. If I’m in my casket blind, deaf, and dumb, why isn’t my mind shut off? I want it shut off completely. Who would ever want to be buried deep in the cold dark earth while being 100 percent aware? Not me, but that’s what I am now, nothing else besides thoughts and imaginings. I was never a daydreaming, fragile, action-less vulnerable bitch. Now the tiniest bugs and worms and insects, and whatever else creeps and crawls below the earth, are looking at me like I’m food. On lockup, we had bitches who we treated like food. No one dared to treat me that way.

I’m thinking now, the whole rest-in-peace thing is a sham. I’m dead but definitely not resting and definitely not in peace. I began to think about people who I knew who got dead in my lifetime. One of my closest, tightest Brooklyn fly girls, from way back when we used to say shit like fly girls, was named Nique. We were best friends before I ever met Natalie. Nique was a crazy cutie, a goody two-shoes girl who loved school and was a cheerleader. Because we were both dimes, even though we were extremely different from one another, our looks and mutual popularity pushed and held us together. Only murder could separate us and it did. Nique was killed by her own moms who believed that Nique was fucking her man. Nique wasn’t. Nique wasn’t fucking nobody. And everybody except the donkeys know that fucking and raping ain’t the same damn thing. The night before her moms killed her, I found out from Nique that her momma’s boyfriend was all the time chasing and cornering her, tryna touch, feel, and fuck Nique even though she said no, hated him, and fought back. Her moms stayed stuck on stupid. But I think the crazy bitch was just pretending. She would tell Nique to try and get along with him even though he was not her real father. She would be telling Nique how nice he was and how good he was to her. She even said if it wasn’t for him, their lights would’ve been cut off ’cause she couldn’t afford to pay all of the bills on her own. I think she was on the low trying to convince her daughter that since the asshole was paying a few essential bills, why not overlook “the situation.”

But even she couldn’t take her own advice. She must’ve caught him in the act of lusting or violating Nique. So she mercked her own fourteen-years-young daughter. I was also fourteen, when I lost my fly-ass best friend. The Friday after Nique’s murder, me, Natalie, Simone, Reese, Zakia, Toshi, and Asia all went to school to rep for Nique. We had the wildest, illest “Rest-In-Peace Rally” our high school ever had. We made the whole student body stand up for Nique. We made the cheerleaders cheer for her, the band play for her, the drum line drum for her, and the thugs to feel for her on that day. Now I know it’s all bullshit. I’m wondering if Nique is still laying in her casket umpteen years later, still getting violated by creepy-crawly things same as when she was alive, ’cause now that she’s been dead for years, she can’t move, and her legs and arms are swollen and her casket is shrinking and her ribs are cracking, and the back of her head is disintegrating same as mine.