“Hector, you know who comes to my house,” I said. “And not a one looks like this bitch. Thanks a lot.”
I immediately went to a pay phone and called my big sister Kelly. “COME GET ME NOW,” I demanded, and I sat in the parking lot for the half hour it took for her to drive from San Jose State, where she was going to school. When I saw her, I stood up, waving like some castaway flagging down a helicopter.
“Where the hell is she?” she said, flying out of the car and darting her eyes around sniper style.
“She left,” I said. “But she’ll be back.”
“We’re gonna wait for her.”
“Uh, no!” I started screaming. “Take me home!” I was not giving this girl a chance to come back and kill me.
“Nickie, you have to face her,” she said. “Otherwise you’re a coward.”
“You stay, then,” I said, getting into the car and locking the door. I waved. “Tell me how it goes!”
When my mom got home I kept talking about how I was traumatized by “the day’s events.” I practically needed a fainting couch after what I had been through. But my teen/girlfriend priorities kicked in, and I asked my mom to take me to the mall because I still needed to get a Christmas gift for Jason.
We went to a Structure and I picked out the brighter of two Cosby-esque sweaters. I was smug as hell, having turned the day around. As we were getting ready to leave, I half-heartedly hummed along to the mall Muzak’s “Jingle Bells.” My mom and I went down the main escalator and I decided that crazy Queeshaun chick had the whole Christmas break to figure out she had me mixed up with another girl.
Midway down, my self-satisfied haze cracked. I saw my nightmare come to life in the form of Queeshaun standing at the bottom of the escalator, talking to, of all people, my freshly minted ex-boyfriend Tyrone, with his FUCK THE POLICE cast. They both looked up, and I immediately began trying to run up the down escalator.
“Nickie,” my mom yelled, grabbing me by the back of my coat to stop me.
“Mom, that’s her,” I yelled. “That’s her.”
She turned and stared at Queeshaun, who couldn’t believe her luck.
“I can’t believe,” Mom said, “you are scared of a girl wearing a bullet bra.”
I had no idea what Queeshaun’s bra had to do with me, since I was going to die at the bottom of that escalator. “I’m gonna whip yo’ fuckin’ ass for Angela,” Queeshaun yelled, as we slowly moved toward her. “I don’t care if your mama’s here. I’mma whip yo’ mama’s ass, too.”
As we reached bottom, Tyrone tried to drag Queeshaun away with his one good arm. I took the opportunity to run past them, but my mom stayed behind and got right in Queeshaun’s face. Once Queeshaun said “I’ll fight your mama,” my mother—who is absolutely not this person—started nodding like Clair Huxtable about to school Theo, right there in front of Mrs. Field’s Cookies. Mom wasn’t about to fight this girl, though Queeshaun certainly would have come to blows with my mother. As Tyrone held Queeshaun back, my mother stood as tall and straight as can be. She was trying to show me the importance of standing your ground. Meanwhile, I was halfway down to McDonald’s, yelling back, “Just come on!”
Finally, Mom relented and followed me. The whole car ride home I was shaking, but my mom had no sympathy whatsoever.
“That girl,” she said. “She’s got that fool bullet bra on. I can’t believe you would be afraid of a girl like that.”
“Mom. She came up to my school to kill me and she just tried again. Of course I’m scared.”
“You should never be afraid of anyone. Certainly not the likes of her.”
By the time we got home from the mall, Queeshaun had left a string of messages on our answering machine. This was one of those old-school answering machines, and my dad walked in to hear Queeshaun’s threats.
“We’ll just call her parents,” he said. He then made a big deal of looking her family up in the phone book and calling her mother.
Satan’s mom was not impressed.
“What are you gonna do? They’re kids,” she said. “Let our daughters handle it.”
He hung up and right away, Queeshaun started burning up our phone. Cully Union told her to stop, and when she wouldn’t, we just let her run out the answering machine tape. “Your monkey-ass dad is a snitch, bitch,” she said. “I’m gonna kick his ass, too.”
Dad being Dad, he decided to bring the whole answering machine to the police station. He played the tape for the all-white Pleasanton PD, and at first they were concerned. Then, as Queeshaun’s insults and craziness took on the feel of a stereotypical crazy black woman comedy sketch, they couldn’t stifle their laughter.
“Yo’ monkey-ass daddy is a motherfucking punk nigger snitch” put them over the edge.
“Wait,” a blond cop finally said, trying not to smile. “You don’t even know her?”
“No,” I said. “I swear.”
“Why would she do this?”
“Apparently I hurt her feelings, because I started dating her best friend’s boyfriend. Excuse me, ex-boyfriend.”
That did it. The whole station erupted into guffaws.
“Look,” said the blond guy. “This is not enough for us to go on. If she physically touches you, call us.”
If she physically touched me, I knew I’d be dead. I took a break from imagining my funeral, lavish with tears, and called Jason to ask him about Queeshaun. He told me Queeshaun was rich and had a huge house. That came as a shock. It made no sense that someone rich would have dookie braids and want to kill me. One or the other I guess I could have comprehended, but both were overkill. The irony is that my initial assessment of her was exactly that of my white peers: If she has dookie braids, she must be poor. If she is a big black girl, she must be angry. Although in this case, this bitch really did want to kill me.
Jason thought it was funny that she was acting so crazy. “She’s harmless,” he said.
“Say that at my funeral,” I told him. “This bitch is nuts.”
Jason and I were still dating right into league basketball season. My team was set to play Angela’s twice, and of course the first game was on her home turf of Livermore High. Angela stared at me on the court, and Queeshaun looked like she could barely contain herself in the stands, where she was sitting not so far from my “monkey-ass dad.” I had begged Jason to come, but he couldn’t because he also had a game. My sister was supposed to get off early from her job at the Limited so she could be there to protect me, but no such luck. My whole team was terrified, because everyone and her white mother had heard about Queeshaun.
I was a mess the whole game, unable to function as my hands shook in the layup line. Then I airballed so bad that my coach benched me. We lost, of course, and my teammates and I lingered inside as our coach went to bring the bus. Queeshaun paced back and forth, whispering to Angela. We knew that as soon as we left the gym, Queeshaun would follow us out and go in for the kill.
The stalling tactic was becoming embarrassing when suddenly the gym doors burst open. In walked my sister Kelly, in full Foxy-Brown-bent-on-vengeance mode. My hero, she had sped over straight from work, still in her black Limited blazer with the huge shoulder pads. I’d always loved my brilliant, take-charge sister, but never more than in that moment.