photo by Cfreedom
The Day I Got Killed
The day I got killed was a beautiful day—sunny, seventy-something degrees, the Saturday before a short work week on account of the upcoming Monday was a holiday; our favorite picnic spot in City Park was reserved, and I had stocked up on the fixings for my famous yellow mustard potato salad garnished with olives and pickles, plus I had burned a Frankie Beverly & Maze Mixtape CD, so I guess you can say I died happy although when a person is truly happy they don’t really want to die. But then again, who wants to die when you are sad? I mean I understand how when stuff is really, really messed up, troubles can drive you to jump off the Crescent City Connection or swallow a whole half a bottle of pills whose label says don’t take more than three a day but letting life’s low points permanently hold you down is for the weak minded.
What had happened was that some shit I did a long time ago caught up with me. I had touched Britnee because she was fine and firm and always dancing with half her clothes falling off, and I could see that she was ready to be fully a woman. Mainly what motivated me was the reality that caressing virgin flesh is erotically intoxicating, which is funny because doing the nasty with Britnee wasn’t nearly as exciting as getting down with Ruby—Britnee being so young didn’t have the moves her mother had.
It’s funny how one little moment can mess you up later in life but you can’t see that until it’s too late. What we males can’t do as a baby, what we dream of while we a teenager, stumble in and out of as young men, and fantasize about as we grow old is an eternal question: why is sex such a life-long preoccupation for our half of humanity? I don’t believe even that old dude Freud could explain man’s persistent taste for pussy.
At the time I had no way of knowing that my quickie would lead to a bullet entering my cranium just below my right eye. She could have shot me in the heart but I guess this assasination was just an ordinary getting-back-at me karma payback kind of thing and not about no serious love affair. Maybe Britnee just wanted me to see what I looked like when death caught up with me. Come to think of it, today is just about one year since Ruby-Nell died—I told Ruby she could of lived with it like me if she would just take her meds on the regular, but she didn’t, so she expired. Now it’s my turn. My end came so fast I can’t really tell you what my last sight was, all I can remember is everything turning a bright, bright white like fog set on fire.
I was twenty-nine when the deal went down, now it’s over seven years after I had infected her but her being HIV-positive was not why she shot me. The shooting was behind her mother Ruby-Nell dying; I guess a tall girl still need her mother when she is a teenager in a woman’s body and be needing for somebody to tell her why life’s so hard for a young, black and heavy-hipped female in 21st century America.
Britnee was someone who had never held more than three hundred and fifty dollars in her hand at one time (and that was when I paid for the last of her school budget with the seven bills I gave her from my stash, not like I was paying Britnee for opening her legs to me but more like I was contributing to paying the bills which is what her mama’s boyfriend is supposed to do as the temporary man of the house). Shit, I provided for Britnee to have the latest shoes, a new phone with unlimited texting, and as much Manchu chicken as she wanted to eat. It wasn’t like I was no deadbeat or moocher. So it’s not like what I did was the mark of no beast or nothing.
I remember the sun was shinning when I strutted across the parking lot and Ruby was shouting out the window on the second floor landing something about how Britnee wasn’t nothing but fifteen years old and I was a grown man. Yeah, well where we come from that’s the way it goes, you either grows up quick or dies young. Besides Britnee should of knowed better, I’m sure Ruby told her that all men are dogs, or at least all men got dog in them, but I guess she just didn’t know that some of us are wolves—we will eat anything and anyone.
My body lay crumpled on the cement sidewalk bleeding from a jagged hole where the bullet entered my head. For forty-eight minutes I was ignored. Bleeding bodies crucified in the streets have become so common around these ways that even the mangy neighborhood stray mutt didn’t pause to sniff at my carcass.
In fact it was over a half hour before a passer-by dialed 911 on their cell phone. And suddenly even though the day was warm, I felt cold. That’s my last memory: being cold.
By the time the police arrived Britnee was long gone and all that remained was the echo of those hard words she softly said; she didn’t shout, it was almost like she was just doing her duty or something, not like she was really crazy out of control or nothing, almost quiet, she had said: this for Ruby-Nell, for fucking up my mama with your diseased dick and for fucking me too, this for all the womens what been fucked over by fucked up men—and then Britnee pulled that trigger.
—kalamu ya salaam