The Ex Factor: A Novel (5 page)

“Because I'm wondering, if the dick was bangin', would it make a difference with us?”

“Us? Oh, now there's an us? Besides, who said the dick
wasn't
bangin'? Men kill me. Just 'cause your dick game is decent, you swear all others fall behind you.”

“I ain't saying all that.”

“Well hell, you damn sure insinuated it. Let me inform you, a niggah with a big dick and a niggah you want for your man are two totally different things.”

“Really.” Sharief smirked, taking a sip. “I always thought that most women equated a big dick to wedding vows.”

“Oh my God!” Monica rolled her eyes. “You are such an ass-hole.”

Sharief laughed. “I'm an asshole? I'm not an asshole. It's not my fault that ole boy nut in under a minute,” he said with confidence.

“Whatever.”

“So tell me,” Sharief took another sip, “is ole boy coming to your mother and Red's wedding?”

“I invited him.” She took a sip of her beer. “Is your wife going to be there?”

“Don't play.”

“That's what I thought.”

“Anyway… why did you invite him?” Sharief asked.

“Because that's who I wanted to invite as a guest, problem?”

“Yeah it's a problem.”

“Well, sweetie.” She tapped the hand that he had placed on her stomach. “You'll live.” Monica stood up and walked over to turn the radio on. Michael Jackson's “PYT” was playing. “This is my shit!” Monica started moving her shoulders and simultaneously turned the volume up. She started sliding from side to side. “Come on, dance with me.” She placed her beer on a coaster and started doing the snake.

“You are so played.” Sharief laughed, moving his head a little.

“Well, what you got?” She snapped her fingers and moonwalked across her freshly waxed wooden floor. “What—what?” She placed her hands on her knees, threw her ass in the air, and started breaking it down.

Michael Jackson's song continued to play:
“…Always wanted a girl just like you… where did you come from baby…”

She tooted her lips up, swaying her hips from side to side. “Oh, I forgot you a li'l young niggah, you don't know nothin' about this.” She snapped her fingers and twirled around.

“Young?” He frowned. “I'm twenty-eight and yo' ass is only twenty-nine.”

“You still young!” She laughed. She snapped her fingers and tooted her ass in the air. “Woooo… what you know about that?”

As Sharief prepared to take on Monica's challenge, the DJ dropped another Michael Jackson hit and started playing “Bad.”

“Oh hell yeah!” Monica dropped to the floor.

As if the music were speaking to him, Sharief got on the floor and broke out into a Michael Jackson kick, topping it off with a Michael Jackson scream while shaking his right knee and snapping his fingers. Monica danced around him as if he were a pole in a strippers' club. Afterward she started doing every Michael
Jackson dance she could think off including all the dances from the “Thriller” video. “Don't hate, boo.” She laughed, pointing at Sharief. “Don't hate. Watch this!”

Despite the fans being on full blast, sweat dripped down the sides of Monica's face, curled over her neck, and dripped into her cleavage. She loved every bit of it. Seeing Sharief act silly completely turned her on, making the reality of him being her sister's man even harder to withstand.

“I
S IT HER birthday or somethin'? She havin' a party?” Red asked Starr as she pressed her daughter's bell. The music from Monica's stereo slipped through the crack of the front door.

Starr pressed the bell again and tapped her foot. “No, it ain't her birthday. Must be a niggah over here.” Starr was becoming more pissed by the moment. Then she remembered that Monica kept a spare key to her front door under the welcome mat.

As Monica went to bust a split she looked up and Starr, Red, and Jamal were standing in the doorway. “I rang the doorbell about four times but I guess this is why you didn't hear me.” Starr pointed around the room. “I used the spare key under the mat.”

“Ma, you scared me.” Monica placed her hand on her chest while making a mental note to hide the spare key someplace else.

“Uhmm-hmm, now tell me what y'all got going on?” Starr pointed to Sharief.

“What are you talking about?” Monica nervously frowned, standing up.

Starr sucked her teeth as she noticed how short Monica's gown was. “You need to put some clothes on.”

“I'm okay,” Monica said as she diverted her eyes from Starr's. She prayed that her mother didn't see any guilt on her face.

“Now, I asked you a question,” Starr repeated. “What is going on here?”

“Yeah, that's a good question,” Red said, looking around and cocking his head to the side, facing the radio. “Usually I don't say nothing. But I don't appreciate this.”

“Appreciate what?” Sharief asked, trying to erase the look of guilt on his face. “Huh?”

“Don't
huh
me. People who say
huh
can't hear. Now, I do enough old-school concerts to know when somebody is makin' fun of my gig.” Red pouted his lips and started tapping his foot. He was five foot ten with a sprinkle of freckles across his cheeks, a beer belly, and a tired Afro that was thirty years old and contained a growing bald spot in the middle. Red reared back on his legs, his pearlized white cape covered the rip in his catsuit.

As Red tried to speak, his lips folded inside his mouth. He placed his hands on his sides, causing his pudgy stomach to protrude. “I'll have y'all to know that I am very upset.”

“Don't worry 'bout it, baby,” Starr said, still giving Monica the evil eye. “Some people can't appreciate a throwback. We gon' add a li'l rappin' to your gig and turn all these ma'fuckers out!”

“Just calm down,” Sharief said while glancing over at Starr, who was standing with her lips twisted and her hazel eyes in
cuta-niggah
mode. Her short and spiked platinum-blond hair enhanced her attitude. Usually when Starr walked into a room she exuded an aura that let people know she had arrived. She wore rings on every finger, including her thumb, two anklets on each leg, and a series of gold bangles that clapped together every time she moved. She was a five-foot-five, 245-pound butter-colored voluptuous black woman who knew that she was sexy, and tonight was no different. She was dressed in a black satin spaghetti-strap tee, and the waist of her purple spandex pants was decorated with
a gold three-layer chain belt. Her wide feet were stuffed into metallic gold-and-lilac strappy stiletto sandals that tied around the ankle in a satin bow, showing off her French pedicure.

Starr cocked her neck to the side, trying to talk herself out of cussin'. She tapped her foot and took a deep breath; she was down to her last cigarette and needed a puff.

Red looked at her and wiped the bubbling sweat off her forehead. “You see my woman, Sharief, and you telling me to calm down?” Red snapped, his cape floating in the air as the fans blew his way, revealing the rip running up his ass. “You better hold ya roll, Sharief, fo' I been done cripped on a fool.”

“What are y'all doing here?” Monica said, trying her best to ignore Red. “What's wrong? And why do you have Jamal out this time of the night? Where's Imani?”

Immediately Jamal started to cry. Monica looked at his red and puffy eyes and held her arms out. Jamal walked over to her while trying to hold his baggy jeans up.

“Aunty's baby,” Monica whined, giving him a hug.

“Aunty Monica.” Jamal sniffed, giving up the battle with his pants and hugging her around the knees, “I was crying and niggahs was laughin' at me, like they wanted beef or somethin'. I almost told them, you might see me sleep but you don't know me.”

“Jamal, what did I tell you about that street language?” Monica rubbed the back of his head. “Now tell me what happened.”

“My Imani,” Jamal sniffed, “had to wreck shop.”

“Wreck shop?” Monica was confused.

“Listen,” Starr snapped, “your sister done got herself into some mo' bullshit, that's what. Had my grandbaby out there in the street with her and then she gets arrested.”

“Arrested.” Monica was in shock. “Oh no, for what?”

“Like the child said,” Starr pointed to Jamal, “she done whipped somebody's ass.”

“Oh no!”

“She'll be released tomorrow. But I have something I need to do with Buttah in the morning, so I need you to keep Jamal tonight. Now,” she looked at Sharief, “don't you have a wife waiting on you?”

“I'm going home, Starr,” Sharief said defensively.

“Does your wife know that?”

“Like I said,” Sharief reiterated, “I'm going home. It's late and because Monica is close and home is farther away I usually stop here to rest.”

“Impersonating Michael Jackson—” Starr said.

“They was impersonating me, baby,” Red corrected her.

“Whoever or whatever,” Starr said, “y'all was doin' didn't put me in the mind of you trying to rest. Now I suggest that you take a stretch, pull ya drawls outta ya ass, take a shit and do whatever you gotta do, but then you need to go home to the sister you're married to. Understand? Like Mama Byrd says, don't no chicken-coop cock need to be around stray chicks.”

“Oh, Ma.” Monica sucked her teeth. “That sounds ridiculous.”

“Anywho,” Starr continued. “Monica, let my grandbaby stay here for tonight, 'cause when I get with your sister Imani, I'ma hurt her.”

“Why is it that I'm always keeping the kids?” Monica was pissed. “I'm the one who doesn't have any.”

“And keep it that way.” Starr kissed Jamal on the cheek. “We don't need no unclaimed egg in the chicken coop.”

“Why do you keep talking about chickens?”

“Bye, Monica.” Starr waved and Red simply grunted on his way out the door. As Starr and Red got into their yellow-and-white ragtop 1974 Deuce-and-a-Quarter, Starr glanced at Monica's door once more. In the pit of her stomach she felt sick and for some reason wished Monica were still a kid so she could beat her ass.

“Don't let them bother you, baby,” Red said as he started to drive.

Starr looked at him and wondered if he thought the same thing. “Bother me about what?”

“About them making fun of me. They just jealous because they think I'm getting all your attention. They'll get over it.”

“Yeah, baby.” Starr turned the radio on. “I hope so.”

“W
HEN ARE YOU coming home, motherfuckah? I've been calling you all damn night!” Celeste screamed as Sharief groggily answered his cell phone. He'd fallen asleep on Monica's floor next to Jamal. Sharief wiped the corners of his mouth and looked at his watch. It was six am.
Damn
, he thought as Celeste went on,
she just never shuts the fuck up.

“See how you lie?” Celeste screamed.

“Do you ever shut the hell up?”

“Answer my question!” she demanded.

“I'll get there when I get there.” Sharief rose from the living room floor and stepped into the bathroom.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Celeste screamed. “Do you know how long I've been calling you! Huh, motherfuckah?”

“Whoool, slow down.” He sat down on the toilet lid. “I ain't gon' be too many more mafuckers. Ai'ight? And don't call me screamin' in my ears, carrying on around my girls.”

“Oh, now you're concerned? Where've you been, Sharief ? Huh, answer that, where have you been?”

“Celeste, I'm not in the mood to argue with you, okay? You know I'm at Monica's. I just got off work and I'm tired. Now, what you need to understand is, the last thing a black man who's been workin' for twelve hours needs to hear is you naggin' him.”

“Well guess what …” Celeste lit her cigarette and took a drag. “Let me inform yo' black ass that I don't give a damn!”

“Celeste, kill it. You know my hours. And you know how far we live.”

“And so do you!” she screamed.

“You want me to come home now? If you do, I'll leave here and come home. Never mind that I've had no sleep so I'm taking a chance of falling asleep at the wheel, I'll be there.”

“Well, if you fall asleep at the wheel, just let Lil' Kim know that Faith was the wife and she got all the death benefits.”

“I'm hanging up.”

“Look, Sharief.” Celeste didn't want him to hang up; she knew she wouldn't hear from him anytime soon if he did that. “There was an emergency last night with Imani. Her wannabe gangstress, ride-or-the-fuck-die ass is locked up again. She's downtown Brooklyn. I called my mother so she could get Jamal. Imani is such a selfish-ass bitch!”

“Damn, chill with the name-calling.” Sharief frowned.

“Chill with the name-calling? My nephew was in that dingy-ass precinct where that crab-apple-bottom bitch receptionist must be suckin' yo' dick since you telling me to chill!”

“Yo, there you go again.” Sharief placed his hand on the side of his neck and massaged the thumping vein that he felt would explode.

“Fuck you!” Celeste screamed. “Punk-ass fuckin' spook!”

“I gotta go,” he hissed, “you on some crazy shit!” And he hung up.

Celeste sat on the edge of her bed. Her eyes burned and her chest hurt. She kept thinking that it may have been last week
when she started to notice a change in Sharief…but then she thought,
Maybe not last week, maybe the week before …
or the week before that… Celeste sat back on the bed with her knees pulled to her chest. That's when she realized there was no specific time she could think of when all hell broke loose…

F
OR HOURS MONICA stared at the ceiling, drifting in and out of deep thought. She thought about her father, whom she didn't know. She thought about her mother, who barely knew her father or her sisters' fathers. And for a moment she thought about the father of her stillborn baby, and wondered where he was.

Monica placed her hand on her stomach and felt an unexplainable hardness in her abdomen. She squinted her eyes as she pressed on her stomach, wondering what the hardness could be. When she was seventeen she suffered from fibroids. Everyone told her that she had to be mistaken; “It only happens to women in their thirties.” Well, they were wrong, she had two tumors pressing on her left fallopian tube. A week after the tumors were discovered, they, along with her left fallopian tube, had to be removed.