The Ex Factor: A Novel Page 2

  “My mother always said that a woman had to be her man's whore, confidante, and a li'l bit of his mother all rolled into one. But didn't I cook, Sharief ? Didn't I wash your clothes? I never denied you pussy, I just didn't want to be twisted around like a contortionist… and I didn't want yo' dick in my ass, but that was my choice. But I did everything else. I thought moving away from Brooklyn would bring us closer together… ha! Wasn't that a joke?” Celeste mashed the cigarette butt in the ashtray and nervously lit up another one. Taking a pull, she sobbed, “All I'm saying is for you to give me back my shit. And I don't mean the material things, you can keep that. Just give me back what I like to do before I met you. Give me back my independence. Give me back my moves and my grooves. Please un-ass the Anita Baker song I like to sing, my wide smile, the switch in my voluptuous hips, and my nonsaggy tits. It's quite simple, just give me back my shit. Please, take my soul off the abortion table. I'll proudly go back to being a statistic: a black, struggling single mother with a triflin' baby daddy.”

  “Mommy! Mommmmyyyyy!” Celeste's ranting was interrupted by the older twin, Kai, yelling her name. Goddamn, she thought, I can't get my misery on for five minutes. She wiped her eyes and mashed her cigarette in the ashtray. “What is it, Kai?”

  “I sleep with you?”

  “It's can I sleep with you—”

  “Why come? You scared, Mommy?” Kai asked, misunderstanding her mother's statement.

  Celeste wanted to say yes she was scared but she knew four-year-old Kai would never understand. “Kai, it's not why come, it's how come, and no I'm not scared—and no you can't sleep with me.”

  “Peeeesssse.”

  “I said no.” Celeste sucked her teeth. “Now go back to sleep!”

  Kai started screaming and stormed back into her room. “Don't make me beat your ass up in here, now shut up!” Celeste really wanted to wring Kai's neck, but instead she took a quick shower, rubbed her body down with Victoria's Secret Body Butter, and threw on a lace camisole and matching bottom. She looked at herself in the mirror and pinched her full cheeks. She hated that her face was covered in freckles, mainly because she felt they killed the sparkle in her hazel eyes.

  Celeste never felt beautiful but you would never know. She rocked the best gear, always seemed to have money, and most of the time, even on a Sunday morning, she was fly. She wore makeup to cover her freckles, clothes that complemented her big breasts and shapely thighs. After that she kept it movin'. Hell, wouldn't you?

  Anything else would be too time consuming, and you're way too anxious to nurture the pain, you just want it to go away. So you float through life as if you are the ultimate Ms. It, secretly living from one Friday to the next. But you're fly and the gear you're draped in cost more than the amount of money in your bank account…But you were never taught any other way.

  By the time you were seventeen, you were busting at the seams for some dick. So you started checking for niggahs and one thing about your mother is that she taught you how to woo a man and run his pockets. “Don't be a gold digger,” she always said, “but don't be fuckin' with no broke niggah.”

  Never once did she go over her household budget or tell you how much money she made. Never once did she teach you about having a bank account or maintaining good credit.

  Therefore, you went out into the world ill prepared. By the time you were eighteen you moved on your own, but you never knew what was more important: paying rent or buying clothes; needless to say, with priorities that fucked up, the rent killed you. Your mother tried to talk you into claiming three of your cousin's six kids so you could get Section 8, but you were embarrassed and wanted nothing more to do with a system where the caseworker was nasty and thought she was better than you.

  So you were determined to do what you had to do, not to mention your new boo consistently fucked the shit out of you. Hell, the dick was so good that it was almost worth being broke. He would've helped out financially but he was on the come-up, trying to get his legal hustle on… and you understood… until late one night your phone rang and there was a chick on the other end screaming, “Tell this bitch something, tell her!”

  “Who is this?” you yelled, with your heart racing and chest heaving. You felt empty because a part of you died the moment you heard your new boo in the background say, “Hang up the fuckin' phone.” You were infuriated, you were hurt, you felt stoned and you didn't know what to do, so you cried… and you cried. Until he came back…a week later… and apologized with his tongue and his dick hitting all the right places. And by the time he'd fucked his way back in, he forced you to literally come to the conclusion that he lied because he loved you.

  Life goes on until you find out about another chick he's cheating on you with but now you're six months' pregnant and he starts to disappear for weeks on in. Rent is more than late; it's not being paid. And new boo's dick is not hitting it anymore, no pun intended, not to mention that most of your meals are eaten at your mother's house. You can't stand this life because you swore you would never be nothing like your mother but nevertheless you're off to the same start.

  You have the baby. It's a girl and he never comes to the hospital to see either one of you, but you give the baby his last name anyway… because that's what you were taught, that children were to have their father's last name whether he was in their life or not.

  When you come home from the hospital, you find out you've been evicted, so you and the baby go live with your mother. And that's when it clicks: your situation is all fucked up.

  So you're back home, three years go by, and new boo has turned out to be a no-good baby daddy. And you can't take it. Your mother is doing her own thing and your sisters are following suit, which handicaps you from living your life. And now you've officially gone from being grown to being a miserable playmate for your child. You hadn't seen your baby daddy since your daughter was born, until one afternoon you see him hugged up on some bitch and rubbing her pregnant belly. You get mad. The hurt, the anger, and the embarrassment floods back. So you take him to court for child support and when it's all done you walk away with thirty dollars a week. He looks at you as if he never loved you and on the way out he says, “Either go hard or go home.” Instantly you feel like that's what you need to hear, those hateful, hurtful, yet magical words that force you to face reality. So you begin to get your shit together, you get a well-paying job doing customer service for an insurance company, your baby is now three years old, and you've saved enough money to move out on your own.

  As you go to look for apartments, the first person you see is a honey-glazed and well-chiseled cop walking the beat. You can tell that he's a rookie by his uniform but he seems to be chillin' and the guys you think he'd be arresting, he's kicking it with. You can tell by the smoothness of his face that he's younger than you but he's grown and judging by the bulge in his pants he's been grown for a long time. You try to stop staring but you can't. He reminds you of some of the men your mother has dated: golden brown, nicely built, and strong. He notices you and after you look at the apartment, he's waiting for you outside. You exchange numbers with him and after dating for a month, you bring him home to meet your mother, Starr, and two sisters: Monica and Imani. They all seem to click instantly.

  A year later he asks you to marry him and you feel good to be the first one in your family to actually get married and not just live with your ole man. So now you're the Mrs. and the real shit begins. He likes his dick sucked but you can't stand the smell of pubic hairs. He begs you to stick his dick in your ass, but last you remembered sodomy was a crime. He likes Victoria's Secret negligees but they don't sell your size. He's a neat freak; you throw your clothes around. He likes to save money; you depend on next week's paycheck. He's structured and he likes to eat at a certain time but you never cook. He loves your daughter as if she is his own, yet you keep your third eye open. He's strict and assigns her a bedtime, but if she cries loud enough you let her stay up. He doesn't tolerate her acting grown or being in adul
t conversations, but you try to convince him that she's intelligent and needs a playmate, which is your excuse to get pregnant.

  When you have the baby, which turns out to be twin girls, you talk your husband into moving out of Brooklyn and you find a suburb in Jersey, an hour and a half away from everything.

  At your insistence your husband buys a brand-new, six-bedroom Colonial that neither one of you can afford, but you promise to get a job and help out. Yet before you know it, the twins are four years old, you're still unemployed, Victoria's Secret still doesn't fit, you refuse to suck dick, and fucking you in the ass is out of the question. But now you're up shit's creek, because you feel your husband has found a freak. The possibility of this reality is kicking you in the spine, your knees starting to shake as you stand in the tri-fold mirror looking at three different dimensions of yourself, hating the dull freckles on your face, craving another cigarette, cussing at the air, all while trying to figure out what the fuck is really going on.

  &

  CELESTE STROKED HER short red and natural curls, which crowned her round freckled face to a T. She swallowed the rising lump in her throat. “To hell with Sharief.” She walked out of the bathroom, peeked in Kai's room, and saw that she had fallen back to sleep, while Kori and Kayla, who were in their respective bedrooms, looked as if they'd been sleeping peacefully all night.

  Celeste walked back into her bedroom, dimmed the lights, and turned on the radio. Marvin Gaye's “Let's Get It On” was playing softly. She started moving her shoulders from side to side. Sitting down on the bed, she leaned the back of her head against her wrought-iron headboard. As the song continued to play, she began rubbing her E-cup breasts, massaging her stiff nickel-sized nipples. Thoughts of Sharief sucking them and tittie fucking her raced through her mind as her pussy started to thump. Lifting her arms in the air, she took off her camisole. One breast fell slightly over her navel. Playing with her nipples again, she lifted the right tittie up and began to suck it, bending her neck as best she could. Seductively she pulled her nipple in and out of her mouth. After sucking the right one, she started sucking the left. Twirling her fingers in and out of her soaked pussy, she could feel the nut building. Knowing that she could cum at any minute, Celeste reached under the bed for her beaver dildo. Afterward she sat up, took her bottoms off, and opened her legs wide while letting the beaver lap between her thighs. “Uhmm,” Celeste moaned, “tell me you love this pussy, work it! Do that shit! Uhmmmmmmmmm…I'm cumin', oh yes, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!” As Celeste exploded the phone rang.

  Immediately she came back to reality and for a moment, she felt embarrassed. Reaching for the phone, the cum between her thighs felt like Elmer's glue. “Hel-hel-hello.”

  “Celeste!”

  Celeste couldn't make out the person's voice; all she knew was they were crying hysterically. “Who is this?”

  “Imani!”

  “Why are you calling me screaming? And furthermore do you know what time it is?”

  “Just shut the fuck up and listen. I'm locked up.”

  “Again?” Celeste snapped. “What did you do this time, Imani? And if you're locked up why aren't you calling collect?”

  “First of all I didn't do shit, just like I didn't do shit the last time. And furthermore this bitch-ass pig let me use the phone at his desk.”

  Celeste could hear the officer snarl at Imani, “You need to be getting to the point.”

  “Don't call cops pigs,” Celeste snapped. “I can't believe this, what are you locked up for? Oh don't tell me, it was Walik's shit again, right, and he asked you to take the fall because you would get less time?”

  “Celeste—”

  “No, shut up. Didn't you get enough of being locked up for the first six months of your pregnancy? Now you're back in jail? Well, if you think I'm coming to get you, you're in for a surprise. Call your mother, or better yet Monica. 'Cause this Cinderella, over here, ain't trying to hear it.” Celeste paused for a minute. “Where the hell is my nephew?”

  “I can't stand your fat miserable ass!” Imani's head felt as if it would explode. “You think I wanted to call you? If Monica had been home, I wouldn't be talking to you. Look, don't worry about me, I just need someone to come and get Jamal. I'm downtown Brooklyn.”

  Celeste sucked her teeth.

  “You know what,” Imani hissed, “never mind, fuck it! I'll call Monica back.”

  Celeste rolled her eyes as the phone clicked off. “Goddamn!” She flicked the light on. “Stupid ass! Let me try and find somebody to go and get this broad.” She picked up the phone and called Sharief. Instead of hanging up when his voice mail came on, she pressed 2 and text messaged him, “9-1-1.”

  (Monica)

  TIRED OF THE phone ringing nonstop, Monica knocked it off the hook. She was in the middle of bustin' a serious freak.

  No longer having to taste, lick, and fuck herself with her finger-tips, Monica cried into the pillow's edge stuffed into her mouth. Before she was seduced by her brother-in-law's dick, Monica was playing with herself on a regular. Flicking her clit, feeling it rise and fall was the only way she could make certain she obtained a nut. Otherwise she was up shit's creek. The square, Chauncey, just wasn't doin' it, and Monica grew tired of fucking him, so she prayed for a change. But God never seemed to hear her prayers for a rock-solid stiff one that she could grip between her pussy lips and ride into the sunset. He only seemed to hear the parts about the light bill, phone bill, car note, student loan, and mortgage being paid on time. Somehow, in between Jesus' name we pray and Amen, God ignored, Please make him black like the stroke of midnight, with chocolate-glazed lips, and dreads. Okay scratch the dreads, maybe a bald head or a faded Caesar with a hook part.

  Thrusting her neck forward as best she could, Monica took the pillow out of her mouth and held her neck down as far as it would go, trying her best to get a bird's-eye view of Sharief drinking the fresh juice from her pussy, something they both got off on. While trying to see, Monica struggled to hold her pussy lips open as Sharief licked his way from the bottom of her pussy to the tip of her melting clit. For a brief moment she studied Sharief's face and imagined that her being in love with him was an open invitation for all hell to break loose.

  I know this is fucked up, Monica thought as she watched Sharief lick between the slit of her dripping-wet pussy lips, causing her clit to go through convulsions. But I can't help it.

  Sharief continued to suck Monica's clit while she studied what she could see of his face. His skin was the right mix between gingerbread and apple butter. He reminded her of the rapper Common with chestnut eyes and a strong, royal, and fierce stare that rested underneath perfectly arched eyebrows. His wide nose lay nicely between his chiseled cheekbones and was more than a perfect match for his beautiful face. He had a smooth bald head with lightly faded-in sideburns that connected to a well-groomed and perfectly lined beard and mustache. His entire stance commanded attention. The energy in his face told the story of a brother who didn't play or fuck around with life, but instead was a black man who handled his shit and was confident when doing it.

  Monica closed her eyes; she could feel ecstasy building. Her hands started to shake as her chest began to heave up and down. She swore that Sharief must've taken a special class on how to suck a clit, because he was knocking all other niggahs outta the box. No man, unless he was born to do so, would be able to compete with Sharief. Slowly Sharief dipped his long fingers in and out of her welcoming slit, his manicured fingertips racing the swiftness of his warm tongue, playing in the thickness of her creamy cum.

  Goddamn he got me goin'! Monica thought while feeling Sharief press his tongue against her clit and then watching it spring back for more. He licked it around the base, at times favoring one side more than the other, causing her legs to spread and flutter against the sides of his bald head like an erotic butterfly.

  “Talk to me, Monica,” Sharief said between licks.

  “What?” she asked, surprised, failing at her atte
mpt to stop panting. “Right now?”

  “Tell me how it feels.”

  “Like heaven…”

  “No, talk nasty!” he demanded, softly biting her clit. “Kick some shit to me.”