I’m in my house when a brick is thrown into our lounge, shattering glass once again.
Everyone screams and takes cover. Brody? I peep out of a window. Is he nuts?
It’s not him, it’s Mrs. Tyson, one of our neighbors – the admin clerk from my school I weeded with months ago. In her mouth is a cigarette, and each time she takes a drag, the cigarette lights up almost to the end. Not only is her surname Tyson, but she looks like a white version of the ear-biting boxer.
Behind her are her two plus-size daughters, Trixibelle and Elly-May, both sporting heavy blonde bangs, both wearing loose maternity-styled dresses (even though they’re not knocked up) and both looking equally pissed.
“Carlene!” Mrs. Tyson’s yells, cigarette still in mouth.
Carlene blanches. “Oh shit!” She darts into the bathroom and locks the door.
Confused and even a bit scared now, I look out of the window.
“Mrs. Tyson, what the hell you doing?” I cry.
“Where’s the skank?” Mrs. Tyson says. “Where the fuck is that whore? She’s sleeping with my Cletus!”
That doesn’t sound right at all. So, before you mistake Cletus for Mrs. Tyson’s clitoris – let me explain: Cletus is Mrs. Tyson’s son. A seventeen-year-old, high school dropout, who believes that he’s God’s gift wrapped up in a white sleeveless T-shirt to women.
A total loser.
“He is jes seventeen!” Mrs. Tyson screams.
“Jes seventeen,” Trixibelle echoes.
“Okay, okay, hold on,” I say. “Let’s talk about it. I’m coming out. Don’t throw more stones. There’s a kid here.”
“Come with me,” I say to Daisy and Lanie. I quickly go outside hoping to God the Tysons don’t beat me up.
Behind me I hear the front door lock. Lanie and Daisy are inside! Chicken shits.
The three Tysons eye me like roadkill.
“Let’s talk about it, okay?”
“You shut your pie-hole and stay out of this!” Mrs. Tyson says.
Not the reaction I expected.
“Carlene!” Mrs. Tyson shouts. “I ain’t got no beef with your nigger here. Jes you. You come on out or I’m calling the poh …lice.”
The poh …lice – shit! Carlene’s in big trouble. Sex with a minor – jail time for her.
When Carlene doesn’t come out, Mrs. Tyson picks up another rock. I grab her arm and knock out the rock.
“Stop!” I say. Fuck, between her and Brody, we have no more lounge windows.
She glares at me. “Touch me again nigger, and I will whip yo ass too, understand?”
“Yeah, Burn,” Elly-May says and shoves me hard. So hard, I fall to the floor, convinced I broke my tailbone.
Although I’m in pain, I scramble to my feet and dart around the house, where I overturn an old wooden table, grab a loose table leg and point the stick at them. All three of them are bigger than me and I have no doubt that they can kick my ass from here to Timbuktu.
“Touch me again and I’ll fucking stick you all, hear?” I say, wielding the stick like it’s a spear and I’m an actor from Lost.
All three of them eye the table leg in my hand and I catch a glimpse of wariness in their eyes.
“Now back the fuck off.”
There’s three of them, one of me – I’m outnumbered. Yet, they take a step back. Hallelujah!
Resisting the urge to sigh with relief, I look behind me at the window. Carlene, Daisy and Lanie are there watching from inside.
I also want to shout, “Daisy, Lanie, you chicken shits, come out here and back me up!” but I don’t.
I look back at Mrs. Tyson. “Look, I know you’re mad – I get it. I will talk to Carlene and I will get her to stop. If she is doing that, that is.”
“Oh, she is, trus’ me,” Trixibelle says. “We then got photos of her, naked photos of her that she did send to Cletus of her …her like, thingi.” She zips her hands across her crotch, “He did send it to all his friends.”
Fuck! How could Carlene do that?
“What did Cletus say?” I ask. “Sending pictures don’t mean a goddamn thing.” I’m playing for time here. Till they simmer down and go home.
“He did say that he wasn’t sleeping with her,” Trixibell says. “Then Emily-Lou saw him come out of here yesterday ’round 2 PM. He was smiling and he was zipping up his ...” She zips her hand across her crotch. Okay, so she has difficulty with certain words.
I want to laugh. And I want to scream at Carlene.
“Okay, okay, let’s calm down here. Here’s the deal,” I say. “I will ask Carlene to come out so you can talk to her. But you touch her, you throw another brick and …”
Trixibelle shakes her head. “You don’t make no deals with us, nigger. You in no position to make any deals.” As she talks, she creeps towards me.
Okay, so I’m fucked. I’m gonna get my head kicked in by this trio of food-in-motion for defending my skanky aunt.
“Carlene is going to jail, nigger.”
My mind races as I back away. If Carlene goes to jail, Angel and I will be taken out of her care. Can’t have that. “Mrs. Tyson, remember that day in detention when you and I …you know …?”
She stiffens.
“How ’bout I show the school principal that video?”
She turns white. Well, whiter than she is. “You videotaped us?”
I nod vigorously.
“You videotaping my mama when she didn’t know it?” Elly-May says and joins her sister. They fall in step pretty quickly and muscle in on me. “You pervert – making a sex tape with my mama? Like Kim Kardashian.”
“Whaaat?” They can’t be serious.
“My mama ain’t no lesbian,” Trixibelle says.
“Lesbian!” Eeeewww! What the fuck is wrong with these girls? “That’s not what I said.”
“Skanky ass pervert!” Trixibelle says, her voice laced with disgust.
“Gimmee your phone!” Elly-May snaps.
“Yeah, give us your phone,” Trixibelle says.
Luckily, my phone is inside the house. “I don’t have the video on me. I emailed it to my Hotmail account. I will YouTube it and your mama, she will lose her job. And it’s not a goddamn sex tape!”
“She’ll jes find another one,” Ellie-May says.
“Yeah, she’ll jes find another one,” Trixibell echoes.
Shit, now I’m really fucked.
“Yeah? With the reference the school principal gives her? Are you crazy?”
The echoing stops and both mini Tysons halt. They look at each other. Then they look at Mama Tyson.
Her shoulders drop and she puts a hand to her forehead.
“I will sort it out,” I say. “Promise.”
“You do that, nigger. You do that.” She nods to her pitbulls on two legs. “C’mon!”
After throwing hateful glares at me, they stomp away.
Whew! I can hardly believe my luck. When I get inside the house, I don’t have to say anything – both Carlene’s kids are giving her hell in surround sound.
“It was a once-off thing,” Carlene says. “I didn’t know his age. He told me he was eighteen.”
As if that would have been better.
“What about Bobby?” I whisper.
“Don’t tell Bobby,” she pleads. “He’s lousy in bed. I need more, Burn.”
Fuuuuck! Why the hell did I ask?
With a groan, I walk away. No use telling her about how I just saved her ass. She’s just a fucking skank.
****
It doesn’t end there. It’s a week after the Tyson incident. I arrive home to find Mrs. Tyson kicking the shit out of Carlene.
I dive into the fight and pull apart the two women, copping a couple of blows in the process. Thank God her two pitbulls are not with her.
“What the hell, Mrs. Tyson?!” I cry. “We had a deal.” I turn to Carlene. “Did you stop your shit with Cletus?”
“Yeah,” she says, wiping blood off her mouth. “I never saw him again. Ever!”
I turn to look at Mrs. Tyson with my palms out, a what-the-fuck? look on my face.
“Your foster mother is sleeping with my husband!”
“WHAAAAT?!” I spin around to look at Carlene.
“It was just a once-off thing,” she says, avoiding eye contact with me.
Turns out that Mrs. Tyson made a mistake when she showed everyone Carlene’s photo of her … (I’m making a zipping motion with my hand across my crotch.)
After seeing Carlene’s thingi, Mr Tyson immediately made contact with Carlene and they hooked up.
Furious with Carlene, I let go of Mrs. Tyson. She lunges at Carlene and pummels away at her. I make feeble attempts with my refereeing this time.
After that, I do believe Carlene stopped messing with father and son ’cause I didn’t hear from Mrs. Tyson and baby Tysons.
I hope.