Kenneth Hannibal When The Game's Unfaithful
When the game's
unfaithful
By Kenneth Hannibal
Copyright 2010 Kenneth Hannibal
Smashwords Edition
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This book is dedicated to the first woman in my life
my mother Alice Watkins a.k.a. “MA“, second woman Ghana, Noonie, the Hannibal’s, the Stackhouse’s, Johnson’s, Hobbs, Holton’s, Robinson’s, Big Shug, Big Bam, Big Dee, Fat Corey, Big Gozi, Makeena, Nukk, Big Ed, Lil’ Ed, T-double D and the Dunk Ryders, Lil’ Ike, E-Funny, Thang-Thang, Javonee, Man-Man, T- Role, Bo-Deen, Ollie, Wayne Grant, Dwayne Pinnacle, Shelt, Dont’e, Maddox‘s, Murry’s, Jeffreson’s, F.C.I. Miami, DownSouth 305, Dade County, and every Nigga in the streets. And for those I didn’t mention you’re somewhere in this book.
CHAPTER ONE
“ I love you more than life itself. And when I get myself situated, I’ll be back for you, “my mother told my younger brother and me while nervously staring out the front door of my grandmother’s house, praying my Daddy wouldn’t ride up before she could abandon her family of thirteen years.
“Please don’t leave us, Mama!” I cried out, holding on to the strap of her bag so that she wouldn’t go.
“Kenny, I have to go, but I’ll be back for you two, I swear I’ll be back for you , “ she promised, As I stared into her bloodshot eyes, swollen from the constant blows of my Daddy’s drunken fist.
“No, Mama! No! You can’t leave us here with him.
He’s going to kill us,” I begged and pled, to the
point that she fell to her knees and grabbed hold of my brother and I, and held us tight as her 140-pound frame would allow her to.
“Kenny, Tumar, I need you two to be strong for me, I--” “Who’s going to be strong for us?” I interrupted her, not wanting to hear anything she had to say except that she wouldn’t leave .
“Kenny!” she yelled out, trying to shake the frown off my face. But I snatched away from her and ran down the hall, mad that she wasn’t keeping her promise to us, which had been that she would never leave us with the man my father had become since he was kicked out of the Army for reasons my 13-year old brain couldn’t quite understand, no matter how much he would sit us down and tell us to never join the white man’s war, because it was no place for blacks. I jumped in the bed with grandma, who had finally calmed herself after trying to fight my Daddy off my Mother. She wrapped her arms around me and held me tight.
“Baby, stop crying. When he get home and sleep off that shit he’s been drinking, he’ll go get your mama and bring her back home like he always do, “ she tried to convince me. But for some reason, I knew she wasn’t coming back this time, and for that, my Daddy would take it out on us.
As my Grandma’s voice slowly faded, I found myself calling my mother some of the things I heard my Daddy call her, like “ no-good bitch,” ”liar,” “ ungrateful whore.” I fell asleep promising to forever hate my mother for leaving me and my 11-year old brother behind, and my father for beating her to the point that she could leave her only two kids behind, and my father for beating her to the point that she could leave her only two kids behind. My life would no longer be worth living, and that’s how I planned to leave it until my mother came back--that was, if my father or the streets wouldn’t kill me first.
“Kenny, Kenny,” my grandma called, shaking me out of my sleep. I turned to face her, but was frightfully forced to heat the sounds of my brother yelling out in pain, as my Daddy beat him because my mother wasn’t there for him to beat on. Tears quickly filled my eyes because I knew I was next. My Daddy had this thing. If one got in trouble, we both got our butts tore off the frame, and tonight wasn’t going to be any different from the others, except my mother wasn’t here to catch any of the blows for us.
“Your Daddy’s calling you, Baby. Just get it out the way,” my grandma told me as she passed me a second pair of shorts to soften the blows. I got out of the bed and put on the shorts she gave me, and started for the door, but was stopped by my grandma, who popped me on my butt and asked me did it hurt. I forced a smile to flash across my face, letting it be known that the pants helped, but I wished I could have given my bare butt, if it had spared my brother’s. My father had taught us to live or die for each other, and even at such a young age my brother and I had that lesson mastered early in life.
When my brother was only five and I was seven, he and a lil’ boy at his age got into a fight on the playground in Richmond Heights’ Park My brother had swollen up both of the boy’s eyes and split his lip, before a parent pushing her daughter on the swing pulled him of the boy. I knew my brother would tell my Daddy what had happened when we got home, and by doing so my Daddy would know that I hadn’t helped, so I punched the lil’ boy so hard on the side of the face that I knocked him to the ground. The lady who was holding my brother by the arm grabbed her mouth while kneeling down next to the crying boy, and we ran home, only to have the boy’s family come knocking on our door an hour later. After they left, my Daddy beat blood out of our butts while listening to his Al Green records.
When we got out of the bathtub, he told us we did a good job by jumping on the little boy , but I couldn’t see any good in it. Hell! I would have rather the boy beat both our butts than us beat him, than face my Daddy afterwards. I guess you could say we were in a “lose-lose” situation.
When I reached my Daddy’s closed room door, my legs were shaking so bad I could have been having a seizure and been to scared to know it. My heart was racing so fast, I had to take deep breaths in order to stay upright. He had stopped beating my brother by this time, but I could still hear him crying behind the door, so I grabbed the knob and turned it. I needed so bad to get my brother out of the room, and if I gave my Daddy some fresh butt to abuse, he would send my brother to the tub and work on my flesh.
When I opened the door to his candle-lit room, which smelled like a cigarette factory with a touch of bull to funk it up a notch, my brother’s eyes shot straight to mine. He sat on the floor rubbing his back, arms, and legs, as if he was putting lotion on his body, but I knew all to well that the water hose my Daddy stood over him with was eating at his pain, and that I would soon be trying to rub the fire out of my body as well. “Get your ass in here!” he yelled over the radio, and snatched my brother up by the collar of his torn T-shirt to send him to the shower, which he wasted no time doing. When my brother left the room, I closed the door and stood behind it, staring at my Daddy’s sweaty bare back as he put out a Kool in a tire ashtray. His bell-bottom slacks were unbuttoned and rolled up just below his knees.
I never got the chance to find out if he was wearing any shoes or socks because the two-and-a-half-foot water hose slammed into my shoulder and neck with the impact of a bat catching a baseball at 70 miles per hour, knocking me to one knee. By the time I grabbed the spot where the water hose had hit, I caught another blow across my back, which brought me to my feet, reaching for the hose, but I caught a straight left instead . I went backpedaling until I slammed into his record player next to the door, and sent the needle racing across the album, bringing the room to a dead silence.
“I’m going to tear your ass up,” he promised, swinging the water hose uncontrollably, catching me across the face and head. I tried to shield myself, but my entire body was suspect, so I covered my face in hopes that I could prevent a tooth or eye from getting knocked out. By the time he stopped slamming the hose into my bruised, numb and swollen flesh, I could hardly feel any part of my body except my feet.
“Now get your ass in the tub, and I better not find a speck of dirt on you when you get out!” I opened the door and attempted to leave, but he refused to let me walk away without hearing the after-effect of his work.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
My brother must have heard my Daddy asking what was taking him so long to get out of the shower, because he was nervously trying to get into his Star Wars underwear, while looking at me with fright written across every corner of his face.
“Get back in the tub,” I told him, stepping on his underwear so he couldn’t pull them up.
“Daddy’s going to beat me again!” he said, trying to retrieve his underwear, but I grabbed him by the arm, causing him to snatch away in pain.
“Stop! Daddy’s going to beat me, “he cried. I made him a promise I was willing to give my life to keep.
“Fuck him! He’s not going to hurt you any more. Now get back in the tub. If you go out there, there’s no telling what he’s going to do. Now get back in the tub.”
“Brother, is Mama coming back to get us? I don’t want to stay here. I’m scared.” “When we get to school in the morning, I’m going to tell the principle that we’re being abused, and they’re going to take him to jail.”
“Mama said, if we tell them that Daddy’s beating us, they’re going to send us to a foster home,” my brother said, instantly changing my plans for seeking outside help. He sat between my legs while I softly washed the welts on his back and shoulders.
“If Mama’s not home when we get back from school, she’s not coming back for us. But if Daddy tries to beat you for no reason, I’m going to kill him.”
“But he’s our Daddy, brother.”
“He’s not our Daddy any more. Our Daddy wouldn’t be beating us for any reason.”
“But we be bad sometimes. Don’t kill him,” he pleaded with me, as if I really had it in me to do it.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to make sure he don’t ever hurt you. Now clean behind your ears, and pull the skin back on your thing because that’s were he’s going to check.”
“I did.”
“Well, do it one more time.”
CHAPTER TWO
School was a living hell the next morning, for both my brother and me.
It was uncomfortable and painful for us to sit on the bruises that covered 65 percent of our bodies, and I was extremely hot in the wool sweaters my grandma had dressed us in this morning to hide the bruises.
Palmetto Middle School was a little ways from the lower-middle class neighborhood of Richmond Heights, a school that was surrounded by houses starting at two hundred thousand and up, which meant I was surrounded by hundreds of white kids that didn’t know the first thing about struggling or abuse. But I was selfishly showing them how I was feeling before I left eighth grade, which was in three days.
This was supposed to be a good thing, but not for us. Being out of school for the weekend was hell, but being out for weeks at a time was pure torture. I never looked at any of the kids with a hateful eye, because all my hate was towards my father, but I was starting to dislike everyone outside my brother and my friends. I even wished death on my whole family, including me, but excluding my brother.