Hunt For Her: Black & White by Xyla Turner

Chapter One

Kizzy

“I don’t wantto see you around these here parts no fucking more,” my stepfather, Willard, barked with a slur in his speech and pants hanging low with his fly opened. “You hear me, bitch!”

He was drunk as usual, and my mom was probably already passed out. Lately, there seemed to be nothing that I could do to help her anymore.

I tried.

I really did.

God knows I tried to get her away from him. Even as a fourteen-year-old kid, when she first decided to date him, I told her that I did not like him. Mom would not hear any of it. She said that he made her happy and she really needed someone to make her happy. Of course, that was during a semi-drunken episode of hers. Before my first day of high school, Willard had bought me a bookbag filled with notebooks, colorful pens, and some dollar folders. However, he also had that familiar, yet poignant, whiff of alcohol on his breath. One might have thought I would be used to the aroma, but the familiarity of the scent was repulsive. Somewhere, deep down, I knew it wasn’t right. It caused a different person to manifest, and it was not good.

For about a month, Mom tried to get me to like him. He’d take us out to the Pancake House, but then he’d make the three of us share one meal. Even, at the age of fourteen, I was almost fully grown and could eat a whole meal alone. He was a grown-ass man, and mom was a full-on adult. The three of us should not be sharing ONE meal. Anyway, I did not warm up to him, and one night, Mom told me to get over it because it was a done deal. That meant there were no more dinners, which was fine with me because I always left still hungry anyway. I overheard her telling him that I was an only child, so I was used to getting all the attention. He grunted the acknowledgments of her words, and then a few minutes later, the headboard was banging against the shared wall.

Needless to say, by the end of my freshman year, they married, and mom’s drinking increased and so did his. They were drunk most of the time and passed out the other half of the time. I was barely going to school because there was no one checking in on me. The counselor would say that she was going to call home, and I welcomed her to do so. Then by my junior year, I came to school maybe twice a week. I never ate the free and reduced lunch because that shit was gross. Plus, why would anyone want to publicly acknowledge that they were poor? I didn’t do any activities in school because that was just dumb and by the end of my junior year, I found out what else mom was hiding, or I missed because I was never there.

I had come home early one day from school because there wasn’t shit to do there. I left my money home and Tiff, my best friend, wanted to go to the mall and get piercings. Therefore, I startled mom when I walked through the kitchen door and mom jumped up and yelled, “The fuck, Kizzy!”

The dishtowel went flying in the air as she reacted.

It was then that I saw her face. Her right eye, to be precise. It was swollen with a mix of deep purple and blue that completely engulfed her right cheek. Damn, even though I knew my own mother had cast me aside for that man, but this shit was not okay. Seeing her with a black eye was when I turned my indifference about Willard, into actively giving a whole fuck.

“What the fuck?” I exclaimed as I ran over to her.

“Oh, Kizzy, it’s fine. Just a bruise.” She sighed as if she was annoyed with the conversation already.

Dipping down, a grunt escaped her as she picked up the dishtowel.

“Mom, that is not a bruise! Your eye is swollen shut. Did Willard do this to you?” I was screaming as tears formed in my eyes.

How could I have missed that? He was hitting my mom, and I missed it because I wasn’t in the house half of the time. I wasn’t doing much of anything except hanging with Tiff. We’d go to the athletic games, ride around in her parent’s minivan and point out the cute boys who we wanted to be our baby daddies. We’d smoked weed sometimes, but neither of us had jobs, and gas came before weed.

“He was just upset. I said some shit, I shouldn’t have.” She tsked with her teeth while the frail-looking woman of only thirty-five years old stumbled to the refrigerator. “He’s out, cooling off. So...”

She opened the side door and pulled out a cold beer. It was ten-thirty in the morning in late Spring, and the first thing she did after waking up from a hangover and a knock-out fight, was grab beer.

“Mom, I think you have a problem,” I told her, trying to remember the things the health teacher talked about with alcoholism.

I didn’t believe it then, but something about this scene I knew would be embedded in my mind.

“Don’t start with that shit again. I’m fine. Will’s fine. He’s just an emotional man. Don’t make him a bad one. Learn the difference. I drink, so what!?! Everybody fucking drinks. It’s America. Everybody got a vice Kizzy. Mine don’t hurt nobody. You alright.” She tilted the beer bottle towards me, causing it to drip out a big onto the snagged, yellow-ish linoleum floor that needed to be redone badly.

“You are sitting here talking about nobody being hurt, and you have a black eye the size of a man’s fist,” I shook my head as I tried to process her words. “Mom, this isn’t okay.”

“He ever hit you? Shit! Tried anything with you!” She snapped. “No! He ain’t interested in you. You know how many women out there competing with their daughters for a man. I don’t have that problem. He ain’t hanging around your room, looking for a piece. I don’t have to worry about that.” She put the bottle to her swollen eye, winced and continued. “This ain’t shit. And even if it is, I’d take this over him trying to fuck my daughter. Understand. Now lay off this shit and mind your manners.”

Wow.

I’d never forgotten that conversation so many years ago. At the tender age of 17, is when I realized there was more to life than getting hitched by some man who made you feel happy. I lost my virginity that year, had a few pregnancy scares, but thanks to my best friend, Tiff, she took me to the clinic so I could start getting on birth control. She had more experience with men than I did, and I mean she had a whole lot. The entire basketball team knew her, and I mean in the biblical sense of the word, ‘knew.’ This made her the best teacher at the time, so I thought.

To Tiff, sex wasn’t anything but a way to relieve some stress. It wasn’t personal, affectionate, and according to her, she did it well. My first time was with stupid ole’ Matt who fumbled around, sweating and shit all over me. I didn’t know what Tiff was talking about when she said he was a virgin and not to get my hopes up because he wouldn’t know shit. Watching pornos made no one an expert. Therefore, she hooked me up with another guy, who was a senior and slept with everyone. Her only warning was to wear a condom. Actually, she said, wear two because he was a fertile mother fucker. Therefore, I did, and he was no fucking joke. I mean, he made Matt feel like a whole child. I came several times, learned how to take him orally, and the second go-round with him, he taught me how to ride a man.

He needed to go into sex education. That was for damn sure. However, he was entirely too popular. After rumors of the clap, Tiff gave me the eye, as her reminder to wear two condoms was not just because he was fertile, but on fire.

School became a thing of the past as I had no interest. Once and a while, I’d grace the place with my presence but eventually dropped out and earned my GED. My mom didn’t even know. Her habit overtook her, and it was when one of my counselors did a home visit, did the school know, that she birthed me, but she was not a mother. At that point, I just slept there. That was it.

Then I had no interest in seeing my mom like that, and after the black eyes and bruises grew more frequent, so did my small interventions. Mom wanted nothing to do with me nagging her about her husband. One time she threatened to kick me out. As soon as I turned eighteen, I signed up for section-eight housing, got a job, and eventually moved out. It was hard for me to witness her destruction. The self-inflicted demise and the one by her punk-ass husband. I would get wellness checks done periodically when she wouldn’t take my calls. I figured maybe the asshole wouldn’t beat the shit out of her if he knew the police were stopping by at random times. Even when I came over when he was out with the boys, she was jumpier than a jackrabbit or drunk as a skunk. She would tell me to leave Willard alone, and moved the conversation over to me.

The truth was, I had nothing to talk about. Ten years later, I was just doing alright. I was working as a food prep assistant at a public school, and God knows, these kids were so fucking disrespectful, and so were the managers. This was not what I wanted to do in life, and I didn’t want to live like this anymore. With a GED, there was only so much I could do. The last man I had in my bed asked me for ten dollars, so he could get home, and the one that was supposed to be coming over tonight just needed a place to stay. His stupid ass was probably married or something, but he always left enough money to pay a bill. My seven dollars and fifty cents job was enough to buy lunch. When the first of the month came, I could pay my reduced subsidized rent, set aside enough money to get some gas and make it to work.

That was it.

Tiff was still trying to go out, and party, but that shit was getting old, too. She kept calling me an old grandma, but she didn’t seem to get that we were about to turn fucking thirty years old. What the fuck was we going out to find in the same stupid ass clubs, with the same stupid-ass ninjas. More guys to fuck?

Something had to give because there had to be another type of life for me.

It just had to be.

As I threw up my middle finger at stupid-ass Willard, I hopped in my beat-up Toyota Corolla and sped off. Stopping at the minimart to get a Turkey sub, beer and some chips. This night would be a sad movie night, was what I figured. Nothing new and nothing too dramatic. There was enough drama in my life to last a lifetime.

Flipping through a channel, I saw something that made me stop. It was a movie about a female warrior. Just as I was about to click the play button, my phone rang.

It was Hunt.

He was one of the guys I was sleeping with. Actually, he was the odd one out of the bunch. Well, for one, his name was Hunt. Two, he was white. And three, I swear he’s a criminal or some shit. But the man was ruggedly cute, though.

We met at the grocery store, in the bread aisle. Some lady was trying to hand me a flyer to vote for some politician, and I told her I wasn’t interested. She proceeded to tell me why it was important to get the President out of office, and every vote counted. I told her that I didn’t quite care who the fuck was in office because that shit did nothing for me. The last President didn’t do anything, nor the one before. So, she could shove that flyer up her tight ass. Well, I didn’t know I had an audience, which included a man by the name of Hunt.

A white man, who followed me to the next aisle after the lady scurried off and asked if I’d have a drink with him. He looked normal enough, rugged but normal. White guys never paid me any attention, so I nodded and gave him my number. That was almost a year ago. He’d stop by, maybe once a week, we’ve had great sex, and then I’d hear from him the next week. I had about two guys off and on like that, but not as frequent. Hunt was hands down, the most consistent. He’d bring food, we ate, and then we fucked.

“You free tomorrow?” Hunt asked.

“Yeah, I’m free.”

“What do you want to eat? I was thinking of trying something different. Maybe Highlanders.”

“I love their seafood,” I told him.

“Perfect. I’ll see you tomorrow ’round six, yeah?”

“Okay,” I agreed, and he hung up.

That was our typical, I’m coming to eat and fuck message. Tonight though, Ed was coming over. Except he didn’t bring food, he just brought a medium-sized dick, tobacco-smelling breath, and a lazy tongue. If I had to cut anyone, it’d be him.

I was really getting tired of this shit, though. Something had to give.

After forgetting all about the movie I wanted to watch, I had to re-heat up my sub, eat it and then prepare for Ed to come over, when he showed up earlier than expected. He kissed me upon entering with that breath of his and then proceeded to thank me, but for some reason, I lied to him.

“Sorry, it’s that time.” I lied, as my period came once every three months since I was taking the shot. I just didn’t feel like having sex with him and his weak ass tongue wiggling back and forth on my clit, as I pretend to have an orgasm. That night, I was not up for the theatrics.

“Oh, okay. You know, I don’t really care about shit like that. Pussy is pussy, bleeding or not, but if you do. I get it. Plus, I’m tired as fuck anyway. Mind if I crash?” He asked.

“Nope,” I tried not to sound too relieved. “Night.”

“Thanks again. You’re a lifesaver.”

For some reason, I knew this would be the last time he would do this. Well, the last time, I’d let him do it. Because I really was sick of this shit.