Chapter 7
Rosalyn
I can honestly say that in the past two weeks, the feelings I’d been hiding in the pit of my heart for Ishmael quickly rushed to the surface. So much so that when he called and told me to get to his East Memphis home ASAP my nerves immediately turned to mush! With him being in the streets, my first thought was that something was wrong. Fifty million possible problems began to swim around in my head, the main two being he was about to go on the run and wanted to see me one last time or he’d gotten shot and had a hood doctor at his place.
Okay, so I can admit that both things were extreme, but hell. I don’t know! I got to his house as quickly as I could, and when I pulled up and saw several cars in his driveway and in front of his house that made it worst. The motor hadn’t even finished shutting down all the way before I was slamming the door and rushing up the driveway. I already had my key to his place in my hand, so I wasted no time using it to let myself in.
“Baby?” I called, unsure of where in his house he was.
“I’m in the kitchen,” was his reply.
In order to get to it, I had to go through the living room, and that’s where I saw five women seated. The moment I entered the room, all eyes were on me. They were talking and laughing amongst themselves, but when I came in, all conversations and laughter ceased. All of them wore lingering smiles as they stared at me.
“I know he didn’t bring me here for some weird ass orgy shit,” I mumbled, thinking I said it in my head.
“Shut up crazy ass girl.” I could hear the smile in his tone before I turned to face him. Ishmael placed a kiss on my cheek before walking around me and setting a tray of drinks on the coffee table. The women grabbed a drink simultaneously, leaving two behind for me and Ishmael.
“What’s going on, Ishmael?”
He handed me the drink, smirking with a calm expression on his face. Ishmael wrapped his arm around me and kissed my forehead before commanding loud enough for only me to hear, “Sit down, love.” Briefly, I looked up at him before sitting in the recliner that was to the right of his sofa. Once I did, he sat in the one that was across from me on the opposite side of the table.
One by one, the ladies introduced themselves as Tiffany, Courtney, Belize, Rhyan, and Shara.
I listened intently as Rhyan and Shara explained that they were the owners of a closet organizing business and that they would like to help me with my business. Confusion rippled through me almost immediately, but I kept a blank face as they continued to take turns talking.
All five of them were the wives of drug dealers, and they wanted to use my shopping service. I looked over at Ishmael, and he was just sitting there with both of his arms resting on the arms of the chair with a smug grin on his face.
Courtney was a website and graphic designer, Belize was a clothes vendor, and Tiffany was a serial shopper who owned a few non-profit organizations that she always needed outfits for events for.
After telling me that they wanted me to shop for them, they also told me that they wanted me to help clean their husbands money. In exchange for my services, they each told me what they had to offer me outside of money. By the end of their spiels, I realized what Ishmael was up to. He’d called these women here to give me a chance to make a business out of shopping like I told him I wanted to do.
For once in my life, it felt nice to have a man in my corner who believed in me. He not only believed in me, but Ishmael took the initiative and put forth the effort necessary for me to be able to see and envision the possibilities with this new business.
Over the next couple of hours, the ladies and I worked intently on the basics such as applying for an LLC for my business, getting a website set up, and coming up with a business and marketing plan. We followed each other on social media and shouted each other and our businesses out. By the time they left, I already had quite a few people inquiring about my service.
Excitement was bubbling up within me as we said goodbye, because for the first time in my life, I felt like I was doing something that my grandmother could boast about and be proud of. When she found out that I was following in my mother’s footsteps, she spat at my feet and told me she didn’t want to see me again until I came to my senses. Of course that didn’t last long, and we ended up seeing each other again after she’d calmed down, but I would never forget the pain in her eyes and hurt in her voice when I told her about my decision.
The craziest part about it was, my grandmother was a hustler too. She would never call herself a prostitute or escort, but she never fucked with a man until he paid her rent or a bill. My grandmother, Sally, was the neighborhood bootlegger. Whatever you needed she got it or a cheaper version for you. But I guess her denial of how she made her money and handled her men is what allowed her to feel as if she was better than my mother and me.
And if you asked my mother, she would tell you that my grandmother was the reason she started using her body to her advantage anyway. Sally was one of those women who were blind to what their men did with their children. She didn’t believe that the boyfriends she paraded around my mother as uncles were molesting and raping her from the age of twelve to sixteen. At sixteen, my mother snapped and finally killed one of them, and it took that extreme for my grandmother’s eyes to be opened to what was going on right in front of her eyes.
Because my mother killed him before he had raped or molested her that day, they didn’t want to let her free on a self-defense plea. It took other girls coming forward confessing that they’d been raped by him too for them to even consider giving my mother’s story enough thought to investigate it. She ended up doing two years for voluntary manslaughter and got out on her eighteenth birthday.
When she got out, her entire mind frame had changed. She stopped looking for anyone for protection, connection, and direction. And instead of allowing a man to ever take something from her again, she started learning how to use her pussy, his weakness in her opinion, as her power to her advantage. For three years it worked, and she was on top of her game – until she met my sperm donor. He was a man fifteen years her senior who manipulated the hell out of her and somehow convinced her to lower herself and work for him.
But that didn’t last long. Eventually, she got us both out of there, and that’s when she started teaching me the game.
My grandmother tried her hardest to pull my mother out of that lifestyle, and she legit tried to beat my mother’s ass when she found out I was doing it too. But unlike with my mother, my grandmother softened her approach with me. She made it clear to me that she didn’t respect the choice I made, but she accepted me and the money I sent her way on a monthly basis.
“Where you go?”
My head turned to the left at the sound of Ishmael’s question.
“Huh?”
“You left me. Where did you go?”
My shoulders relaxed and I smiled as I stepped into his personal space. He immediately enveloped me in his arms. I never thought I would ever get this comfortable with a man, but there was no part of me that felt like I wasn’t safe with Ishmael – physically, mentally, and emotionally. The thing was, I couldn’t say the same about him with me.
“I was thinking about my grandma. I’m probably going to run by her house and tell her about this. Thank you for helping me give her something to be proud of.”