August 15th: Brown skin like hot chocolate about to melt. So delicious looking I want to lick it off.
She closed the diary and signed leaning her head on the dirty bench, while waiting on the Nevada Street Bus. Surrounding her was the true perfume of city life in Detroit, Michigan.
Paper that never degraded littered the streets, the stench of garbage that she was so use to and she was positive that thing slithering across the street was not a cat. Maybe a large rat or worse – a possum.
But that was the life of the ground in this city and if it got clean in this part of town, it was only because a strong wind or torrential rain came through and did it naturally. Yet the smell always stayed and after the storm it really didn’t look clean. Just pushed to the side to invite more trash to litter the ground.
Gwenyth Brooks was use to this and had become immune to the gritty life of living in what use to be the Murder Capital, but now only ranked in the top five.
Checking her watch, it was four in the morning and she needed to catch this first bus on the route to get her daughter to school and then get back across town to get to work.
Yet, since this wasn’t the “nice side of town” and Cornerstone semi-private school was a two-hour bus ride back and forth, Gwenyth had to make due. As a single parent, getting a partial scholarship, which didn’t include supplies and uniforms for her five-year-old child was an honor. Yet, it also meant that she couldn’t depend on the system to make sure that her child had a good education. Gwenyth had to get out and work and though she had no skills except what she learned in high school, she did what she could, which meant this low paying waitressing job at the greasy Coney Island Restaurant to pay for what she needed for her daughter.
Living at the low rise Sorjourner Truth’s Apartments or more like projects on a subsidy income and the little she made as a waitress at a Coney Island two blocks from her home, barely gave her enough money to make it every day. Having a child out of wedlock with a man locked away for life was just stupid, but she loved her daughter and she would do anything to give her daughter whatever she needed to live a better life than what her mother was living now.
The living conditions people lived in of ST’s was enough to make the dead woman turn over in her grave twice over, but Gwenyth tried to make the best of it with what little she had. The hard part was keeping the rats and roaches at bay and praying for her daughter’s safety every day they awoke when it was so much violence and crime around them.
Opening the diary again, she wrote, “If he made just one of my fantasies a reality, I would be happy for the rest of my life.”
“I want someone who would make love to me like Jerry, but without all the violence before and afterwards. I remember our first encounter was on top of a washing machine. It was late at night. He raised my skirts from behind and entered me. No foreplay, no touching, except were we were connected. To this day it was the most erotic I’ve ever felt and I long for that again.”
Jerry had been a hit it and quit it man when it came to sex, but on their first time she had not known that. Their relationship had been on and off again since tenth grade for the past ten years because her first love and baby’s daddy gave her a lot of broken bones, scars and mental anguish.
Once he was put away, word on the street was that Gwenyth was off limits. She was Jerry Parrish’s girl and no one touched Jerry’s stuff. Sometimes this was good when she was dealing with the weirdos and psychos, but other times it was a hindrance to her social life. Even if she found someone living out of the neighborhood, Jerry’s boys would find out about him and scare him away. She had no money to move either.
Five years since her last sexual encounter and she was looking at Fat Willy, the cook where she worked like he was Denzel Washington. Just the name alone would tell anyone that he was not the least bit desirous, but Gwenyth was going to turn thirty-one, with an overwhelming sexual drive.
For the past year, her hormones had been outrageously out of control – Hence the dirty diary. Inside the pages, she wrote every sexual fantasy and desire. First it was just a stress relief in the middle of the night, but soon it grew to morning and afternoon. Her thoughts were constantly swimming with lustful intentions with faceless men and to stay sane or wear her finger out she found some comfort with seeing her sexual fantasies words on paper whenever she had a free moment.
Just as she was about to put down another thought, she looked at her four-year old daughter, Jessica.
Gwenyth scolded, “No Jessi. Don’t go through Mommy’s bags.” She put everything back in her bag Jessica had removed just as they heard the loud boom of a radio.
Pulling to the light near the bus stop was a maroon vintage 72’ Oldsmobile Regal decked out with tinted window, beautiful rims and a gold grill. She knew it was the new resident of ST. She didn’t know his last name, but damn if he wasn’t the finest piece of black specimen since Rodin had molded The Thinker.
Gwenyth remembered watching him from her third floor dirty molded window as he moved in a week ago. Damn! She could still vividly imagine every rippled muscle in his body flexing and almost screaming her name to lick it as he lifted boxes and furniture to take inside his apartment.
Opening the journal again, she wrote: “Nick would be good for sex. I wouldn’t mind him giving me something for my birthday today. I’ll be officially thirty-one at ten-thirty AM.”
That was the first time she had actually placed a name with someone she wanted to have sex with in her diary. She prayed never to lose her journal, but for Gwenyth, when it came to finding just a piece of happiness in her life, it came few and far between. Detroit ghetto took, but never gave anyone anything. If it wasn’t nailed down consider it gone. This included dreams.
The Regal slowly rolled by once the light turned green.
Nah, he wasn’t looking at her. She was Jerry’s girl and no one looked twice at Jerry’s girl.
The thought of Jerry made her put the journal down and retrieve the letter she had received yesterday.
Finding time to open it had been difficult, until now.
Dear Baby Girl,
Happy Birthday and I got some good news.
Gwenyth paused in her reading and determined that someone had written this for him because the writing was too neat for a fifth grade drop out.
My lawyers said the charges against me might be dropped cause the police did an illegal search.
Why did her stomach just literally flip inside out? Was that good news?
We’ll be together soon, G. I won’t hit you no more and I promise I’m coming home to take care of my kid and you. I love you.
She was in such deep thought she didn’t notice the bus was puling up until Jessica started screaming, “Bus, Momma!”
Jumping up, Gwenyth grabbed her bag and rushed on. After dropping off Jessica at school, she ran to catch the bus coming the other way.
Jerry’s homecoming was still heavy on her mind. Would her first love be a changed man? Would he really not hit her? Did she want to be Jerry’s girl anymore?
