CHAPTER ONE

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The Dead Beat:

    “I need your help.” I spoke anxiously.

    I hated reaching out to my ex-husband for any type of assistance. So, if I had to place a  call to him then yeah, I was in pretty dire straits and had no one else I could phone in for assistance. Shit, these were his kids just as much as they were mine. His ass needed to contribute to their needs just as I did. Sure, I got child support, but those payments were few and far between and didn’t provide anything tangible, hence why I was even reaching out to Marcel in the first place.

    “Fuck, here your begging ass goes. I shouldn’t have even picked up the phone. I’m good by the way thanks for asking. They already take that shit outta my paycheck. Now you want even more money from me?!? Be for fucking real bruh.” Marcel said.

    My name was actually Spencer, not bruh, but my ex-husband, Marcel refused to acknowledge the name my parents graced me with when I made my grand entrance into this world thirty-five years ago. He would call me everything under the sun, but the name they picked exclusively for me. I mean the ugliest shit you could think of Marcel hurled it my way.

 At first it would bother me to be verbally abused on the regular, because there was no reason for him to treat me the way he did; to all people in the world to belittle, he was disrespecting the mother of his two children. It wasn’t my fault I’d reached my wits end with him after years of feeling as though I was a single parent while in a whole marriage, I decided to end the marriage after five years of being in this miserable union. 

I wanted the divorce to be amicable as possible because we had two very young children. I intended for the relationship to smoothly transition into strictly co-parents, because there was no way on God’s green earth I would ever reconcile with him, and I was ok with that arrangement. Marcel, however, instead of being on board he went ape shit all because I put him on stupid child support papers.

    “Oh, you mean the measly fifty dollars I get every once in a blue moon since you can’t seem to keep a consistent job now a days. Well, that money goes towards Ami’s formula.” I said cynically. 

    “Shit bitch, get WIC!” he retorted.

    “Are you going to help or not Marcel?” I shot back impatiently.

    I was not about to sit on the phone and waste my energy going back and forth with him. If he wasn’t going to provide some type of assistance, I had no choice but to go on to the next option.

    “I’ll see what I can do, damn.” he replied.

    “I won’t hold my breath.” I said sarcastically.

    He let out an exasperated sigh, even with being divorced for a year I knew how to get under his skin and guilt trip him.

    “I’m by your job. Come outside before I pull away.” he said.

    I was on my last break at Azul Athletica. We weren’t supposed to leave the site during breaks and lunches, but I did what the fuck I wanted around here, and no one said shit to me about my insubordination, because they knew better than to try me. Grabbing my badge from the worn Formica tabletop I slipped away from the cafeteria. If anyone’s nosy ass decided to ask why I was outside in the first place, I had an excuse ready in the chamber. I was going to tell them I was grabbing a water bottle from the car. 

They treated us like we were in prison at this stupid ass job. All we did was pack clothes and other miscellaneous items to send them out for shipping. You would think we worked at Fort Knoxx protecting top end gold the way they had us on a tight leash around here, we couldn’t do anything, and I mean do anything without permission.

    Outside in the parking lot I looked around for Marcel’s older model white Honda Civic,

    where are u? if ur fuckin with me marcel so help me!!! I texted into my pine green iPhone thirteen.

    I’m sitting right next to your bucket. he replied instantly.

    My eyes scanned the back of the parking lot, hella skeptical. However, true to his word in like forever, I saw him sitting in a newer model candy apple red Honda Accord. It was sleek and I felt a twinge of jealousy because I’d been wanting to upgrade my older model Kia Optima for a while now. Sure, Black beauty had been good to me for the last few years, but she was slowly starting to decline. 

She had over two-hundred thousand miles on the odometer, her right-side mirror was hanging by a thread, there was an oil leak that was leaving her mark at every parking lot I parked in and it took forever and a day for her to crank when I turned her over especially during the colder months. The last thing I needed or wanted was for my car to die while I was rolling with my kids.

For someone who could barely keep a job he sure was rolling around quite nicely I observed.

Approaching the window, I smelled the overly pungent dank even before he rolled down his window. Another reason why I had to let Marcel go was because he couldn’t stay away from bud. He believed he needed marijuana to function and accomplish what he wanted or needed to do. There were days me and the kids would wait hours for him to smoke before we could even leave the house or the two of us would get into a petty argument and in a huff, he would fly to the patio saying he needed to smoke to calm his nerves. Who wanted to live like that? Not me. And yes, I knew he smoked when we first got together, but it progressed into something unfamiliar.

    “Don’t make this a habit.” he said.

    Opening his worn leather brown wallet, he peeled three blue faces away from several others and placed them into the palm of my open hand.

    “Ooh three hundred dollars. I can do sooo much with this.” I said drily.

    “I swear your ass is never fuckin satisfied bruh. I mean we could always go to the store together; you can get all you need during the trip and I’d be willing to pay for all of it that way I know the money is being spent legitimately.” he said.

    “You’re joking, right?” I asked.

    “No, the fuck I’m not. This way I can see exactly what you’re buying, and I am fully aware where the fuck my money is going. With child support being deducted from my check, I don’t have the luxury of knowing what you’re doing with it. I need to keep tabs on your ass just like I had to do while we were married.” he said smugly.

    And this ladies and gentlemen is exactly why we were no longer together nor married. He always said outlandish shit like this.

    When we first got together, I turned a blind eye to his countless red flags, that were being thrown my way, then they ended up biting me in the ass further down the line and I no longer had the patience to deal with his ideocracy.

    I knew another reason we were at odds was because I was the one who had left him and, in his absence, I was flourishing big time which caused him to resent me for being successful and not begging him to get back together to make the family work. I would rather pick every grain of sand on the beach before I gave him the satisfaction of leading him to believe I needed him, because I didn’t. Once he realized I wasn’t coming back, his agenda from that point on had been to sabotage my progress in any and every capacity, but like the mighty phoenix I continued to rise.

    “No thank you.” I said honestly.

    “Or you could always give me some ass. I know it’s been a while since you’ve been able to bust it open for someone or in your case any nigga who has a pulse.” he said snidely.

      “Eww, so now you’re trying to prostitute me to fulfil our kids’ needs? That’s a new low even for your bitch ass.” I said icily.

    “I’m trying to do your ass a favor by killing two birds with one stone.” he said defensively.

    Yes, it had been quite a while since I’d been dicked down by an attractive ass nigga, but I was not going to give Marcel the satisfaction of him being privy to that tidbit of information.

 Shit, was it that obvious I was going through a drought? Nah, he was phishing to see if I would tell him I was seeing someone. He’d cast that lame shit out there to see if I would take the bait. This clown right here! I wasn’t, but even if I was with someone, I sholl wasn’t telling his ass. We were divorced and nowhere close to being friends. Even if things evened out and we became cordial I would never allow myself to communicate on something like that with of all people...him.

“Get the fuck outta my face Marcel! Not once did you ask how your kids were doing, but you’re all too eager to offer me a proposition to slide inside of my pussy. You pull up in your fancy car and hand me three hundred lousy dollars when you have several hundreds inside of that tired wallet of yours. You’re a dead beat in every sense of the word.” I said angrily.

I couldn’t believe this nigga! I was barely making ends meet while taking care of his two seeds! Not only was he rolling in a brand-new car, but he had a stack of money. I was beyond disgusted. Letting my anger get the better of me, I threw the money in Marcel’s pecan brown face. I had a feeling I was probably going to be remorseful about this shit later as the money floated from my hand into his blue jean-clad lap. I needed that money in the worst way, but at that moment I did not give not one fuck about returning his little funky three hundred dollars to him.

“You’re going to regret what you just did, bitch.” Marcel said.

Moving myself from the window before I became a casualty, Marcel threw the car into drive, stomped on the gas and peeled away from the parking lot. 

Me and my big ass mouth.