For The Love Of My Sisters Read online

Tee looks at her one last time and walked passed Muscles, still grilling him. He heard from Sasha that Muscles was soft and wasn’t no thug and Tee wanted to test him and stay in the house to finish getting his nut off, but one look at Muscles large muscular frame and arms, he had second thoughts. He wasn’t a fool and getting his face lumped up wasn’t part of the plan. The fact that he didn’t have his gun with him made him fall back.

  Muscles watch the tall brown skin thug leave and he locks the door behind him. He knew the boy wanted to test him and he was ready for it. A lot of people thought Muscles was soft because he worked a regular job and stayed to himself, taking care of his sisters and not running the streets, but he was far from soft or being a punk.

  Growing up in Redfern Projects in Queens, he had to fight to survive or wouldn’t last long. He shot guns at the best of them and went fist to fist with others, but time and situations made him calm down and step up and be a man for his sisters. Tonight was the first night he went back to his old ways and robbed and killed someone. He shot at dudes in the past, even shot a few in the butt or leg but he never crossed the line of killing someone until tonight.

  Muscles walked passed Sasha’s room and the door was open. He didn’t even look in, just kept moving. He couldn’t find words for the pain he felt when it came to her disappointing him. Why she can’t be more like Nina, he thought to himself as he enters his bedroom. He picks all the garbage bags up and throws them in the closet. He left an ounce of purple haze out. He takes a handful out of the Ziploc and walks over to his dresser then opens the top drawer and puts the ounce in it. He removes the nickel-plated gun from the back of his waist and puts it in the drawer next to the weed. He picks up three vanilla Dutch’s and walks to the living room and sits on the couch. He opens his hand and drops the weed on the coffee table. He then busts open a Dutch, breaks up the weed, rolls the blunt and lights it up. He inhales deeply, holding it in and slowly lets it out his nose. He repeated this until he felt high and mellow, letting the weed relax him. He leans his head back on the couch and closes his eyes, while smoking, wondering, how the hell his life ended up so crazy. He felt the weight of the couch shift and he opens his eyes and turns his head to see Sasha sitting next to him dressed in a gray Baby Phat sweat suit, with tears running down her face.

  “I’m sorry Muscles,” she cried while looking her older brother in the eyes.

  “Sasha how in the fuck can you be sorry, you keep doing the same shit over and over. For one, your ass is supposed to be in night school, and two, you know better than to bring men into the house and be fucking them. Shit Sasha!” he yelled. The more he thought about it the angrier he became. “We left the projects because you were doing the same thing. What you’re doing is a crime, you can go to jail for murder, don’t you understand that.”

  “Yes I do,” Sasha cried out, while using her hands to wipe her eyes.

  “If you understand, why do you keep doing it?”

  “I didn’t ask to be born like this,” Sasha said with tears in her eyes and a weak voice.

  “I know Sasha, but you can’t keep living like this, we can’t keep living like this. You know you just ruined that boy’s life tonight, now what’s going to happen when he finds out it was you who gave him Aids? I’ll tell you what he’ll do, he will come back here and try to kill you and God only knows I can’t let that happen, because I love you too much to let someone hurt you. You have to stop having sex with these men raw and let them know that you have a disease. If a man really loves you for you, he’ll be with you no matter what!” Muscles said while looking at his sister.

  “I didn’t ask to be born like this! I wish I was never born. I hate myself and my life, I wish I was dead!” Sasha said while her face was buried in the palms of her hand, crying hysterically.

  All of Muscles anger quickly washed away when he saw the pain his sister was going through. He never really blamed her for her actions, it was their mothers fault. Muscles moved closer to his little sister and wrapped his arms around her.

  “Don’t cry princess and don’t ever say you wish you were dead or never born. I don’t know what I’ll do if anything happens to you or if you weren’t born. I love you Sasha,” Muscles said, while rocking her back and forth in his arms.

  He leans his head down and kissed her on the forehead. Sasha’s crying starts to slow down and turns into sobbing and sniffles. It didn’t matter how much she messed up or hated herself, the love she got from her brother and sister made her life worth living. Muscles always had a way to make her feel special and make her pain go away. She sniffles and wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

  “I love you too Muscles and I promise I won’t do it again.”

  “Okay princess, I just need you to think before you act. Now grab one of those Dutch’s and roll a blunt, the weed is on the table.”

  “Why can’t I finish smoking the blunt you have in your hand,” Sasha replied while smiling.

  Muscles use his finger tips to wipe the last tear and looks at her beautiful smile. “Because bighead, this is my blunt you can roll your own!” He said in a playful manner.

  Sasha quickly got free of Muscles hug and grabs a Dutch and began to roll herself a blunt.

  “While you smoke I’m going to cook us something to eat.”

  Sasha grins ear to ear. There were two women in the household, but none of them could cook better than their big brother. Sasha loves when Muscles cook for her. Muscles eased off the couch, went in the kitchen taking out pots and pans to begin cooking.

  “Mmmm,” Sasha moaned, “This is some good ass weed, where you get it from.”?

  “Don’t worry about that,” Muscles replied while a flashback goes through his mind of what he did a few hours ago.

  “This has to be some haze, it taste good.”

  “Girl will you shut up and just smoke it and stop talking about it.”

  Muscles didn’t really want his sixteen year old sister smoking weed, but Sasha wasn’t your normal sixteen year old, and weed helped her physically and mentally with the pain she was going through. He decided it was better to let her smoke in the house than outside on the street where she could get locked up or God knows what else. He didn’t want to have to worry about that, he already had enough on his mind to deal with, between paying rent and other bills and buying Sasha’s Aids medication that came up to a thousand dollars a month. Buying clothes and paying for two car insurances, one for his hooptie and the other for his sister Nina who was in college studying to be a nurse. She goes to school at night and Muscles didn’t want her taking the ‘A’ train too late.

  Forty-five minutes later, Muscles walks in the living room with two plates of food.

  “Here girl take this plate it’s hot.”

  Sasha quickly grabs the plate and placed it on her lap. She looks at the yellow rice with baby shrimp in it, then jumbo shrimp on the side next to fried chicken wings. She smiled and dove right in grabbing a piece of chicken and stuffing it in her mouth.

  “Hold up girl, let me get you a spoon and something to drink”. He places his plate on the coffee table and went back in the kitchen and then to the bathroom and returns with the spoons and two cups of apple juice. “Sasha here, take your pills.”

  Sasha looks up from eating and take the spoon and apple juice. Muscles opened his hand and there were several pills in it, blue, red, green and white. Sasha took them from his hand and pops them in her mouth, washing them down with some juice then continues eating. Muscles sat down next to her and watched her eat before he started. He enjoyed seeing her eat. When she was younger he couldn’t get her to eat anything. Her disease was weakening her body and she had no appetite, and lost a lot of weight. These were one of the many reasons he let her smoke weed, she get the munchies afterwards. They both sat in silence and bust down their food. Afterwards, they turn on the TV and the movie ‘Next Friday’ was on so they watched it and laughed together, enjoying Ice Cube running around on the screen. Sasha lay on Muscles lap and fall
s asleep. Muscles gently rub her hair while she slept. Times like this he wonders about her. How could she go from being a little girl, his baby sister, to having her ass in the air and letting some man fuck her raw. He let out a heavy sigh, ‘She’ll always be a baby to me, but I don’t blame her, I blame Tyasha,’ he said to no one in particular.

  Thinking about Sasha, his mind conjured up memories and flashed back to how he would always find his mother Tyasha the same way, with her ass in the air and some strange man behind her that wasn’t his father. He was nine years old when he first walked into her room and seen this Jamaican man fucking his mother.

  “Mommy, what are you doing and who is he?”

  “Get the fuck out and shut the door!” Tyasha yelled.

  “Leave suh mi can finish mi business!” the Jamaican man yelled in an angry voice scaring Muscles making him leave the room.

  Hours later she and the Jamaican man called Jon-Jon would exit the room.

  “Don’t you go and tell your father what you saw today,” Tyasha yelled.

  “Yea bwoy kip ya bloodclot mout shut,” Jon-Jon said in his strong Jamaican accent.

  Muscles would just stare at him coldly as his mother walks him to the door and kisses him on the lips. Even though Muscles was young he knew his mother wasn’t supposed to be kissing anyone else but his daddy.

  His father, Shawn Stephen was born in Jamaica and came to the United States to better his life when he fell in love with an American woman named Tyasha. He quickly married her and started a family. He was a big, dark skin man, 230 pounds, 6’2” tall and handsome in the face. He worked two jobs just to support his family and Muscles loved his father. He did everything for him and his little sister Nina and their mother, but every time his father went to work at night, the Jamaican man name Jon-Jon would come over and Muscles and Nina was forced to stay in their room where they could hear loud moans and screams coming from their mother. That’s when things start to go from better to worse. Out of nowhere Tyasha got sick really bad. She would throw up all over the place and wouldn’t want to get out the bed. Muscles’ father Shawn took her to the hospital with his kids by his side. The doctors kept Tyasha for days and ran all kinds of test on her. Shawn stood right by her side never leaving, not even for a day. With the last of his money he paid for a babysitter for Muscles and his sister. He even lost one of his jobs from not showing up. When the test results came back, Muscle’s father’s world came crashing in, the doctor told him Tyasha was pregnant. He jumped for joy until the doctor told him the rest. Your wife has full blown Aids, and we need to test you to see if you have it too.

  “How could that be, I don’t cheat on my wife and she doesn’t cheat on me, your test must be wrong,” Shawn responded.

  “No, I’m sorry sir they are not, they’re 100% right, one of you have be having unprotected sex outside your marriage. Please step into the next room so I may draw your blood,” the doctor ordered.

  Shawn did what the doctor asked, praying that he was wrong about the test and everything else. Two days later the test results came back and his heart was broken. The doctor told him he tested positive and had full blown Aids. His heart was broken because he knew he never cheated on Tyasha, and that meant he only could’ve gotten it from her and that she was cheating on him. He cried for days, but had to stop and stay strong for his family, they needed him. Nine months went by and Tyasha haven’t once seen Jon-Jon. He just stop coming around once she called him and told him she was pregnant and had Aids, he just hung the phone up and she never heard from him again. She had so many questions for him. It was his baby she was carrying and she knew it. She calculated the times she had sex with her husband and Jon-Jon and knew Jon-Jon was the father. ‘Why didn’t he tell me he had Aids, or does he know?’ she wondered every day.

  When she gave birth to the baby she was carrying, the doctor informed her that the baby was born with the disease and there was no telling how long she would live. Tyasha could have cared less for the child. It was Shawn who stepped up and named the baby Sasha after his dead mother and took care of her, feeding her, cleaning and playing with her and making sure she got her medication. Tyasha wanted nothing to do with the child. She refused to even hold her. She sunk into a deep depression.

  When Muscles was fourteen years old he watched his father get real sick from the disease. He watched how his father went from weighing 230 pounds all muscles to 90 pounds. Finally, his father was put in a morphine coma to block the pain of his Aids related illness and then died. Muscles and his sisters cried hysterically for days, but their mother never shed a tear. The doctor told Muscles his father died because his body could no longer fight the disease, but Muscles knew the truth. His father died from a broken heart from what his wife did to him.

  Four years later Tyasha died from the disease. Only his sisters cried when she passed away. Muscles refused to cry for a woman who hurt their family so much. After his mother’s death Muscles knew he had to quickly step it up and take care of his sisters. He was eighteen and his sister Nina was sixteen and Sasha was ten years old. He had to become a man and start working to pay the bills to keep a roof over their heads and food in their stomach. He didn’t want his sisters to end up in foster care, so he worked any and every job he could get. That was six years ago.

  Just then Muscles heard the front door open to the apartment then shut. That snapped him back to reality. Nina walks in, “Hey baby girl how was your day?” Muscles ask.

  Nina looks over at her brother on the couch and sees Sasha sleeping on his lap. “It was ok, it was a lot of hard work at school today, but I can handle it,” she replied while putting her bags full of books down.

  Audrina or Nina as she liked to be called, worked as a medical assistant in the day to help Muscles with some of the bills, but he wouldn’t take her money. He always told her to save it in her bank account for when she really needed it. At night she went to college to be a nurse, it was her first year. The plan was for her to become a nurse and find a way to get Sasha’s medication for much cheaper and to find a new way to help her.

  “I cooked, there’s a plate of food for you in the microwave.”

  Nina smiled from ear to ear. Muscles grinned; he loved Nina because they think alike and look alike. He would joke and call her his twin because of her dark complexion. She had a sexy chocolate complexion with jet black hair that came down to her shoulders and a voluptuous body that looked like ‘Buffie the Body’, that drove men wild.

  At 5’3” tall, 140 pounds and a sharp mind, Muscles knew dudes were always hollering at his little sister. People in Redfern Projects said they had the same skin complexion as their father. Muscles, a spitting image of his father at 6’2” tall, 230 pounds with a muscular body wore his hair in twisted thin dreads that came to his shoulders, but he always kept in a ponytail. If his father was alive today it would have been hard to tell them apart, except for the fact that Muscles arms were way bigger from all the labor jobs he worked to keep a roof over his sister’s head.

  Sasha was the only light skin one out of all of them, with a honey skin complexion she looked more like their mother. They used to tease her when they were younger saying the only reason she was lighter than them is because she had a different father. Sasha would cry out loud uncontrollably. Muscles quickly realized how much that hurt her so they stopped. He knew the only father she knew was Shawn and she loved him. He and Nina knew what they said was true, but they still loved her.

  Muscles picked Sasha up in his strong arms and placed her in her bed then he covered her with the sheets and went back in the living room to talk to Nina. Nina was at the kitchen table eating.

  So why aren’t you sleeping, don’t you have work tomorrow?” Nina asked.

  “Naw, I took the day off tomorrow,” Muscles lied not wanting to tell her he lost his job at the Pepsi factory, loading up the trucks. “Yo Nina, she’s at it again. I found her in the room tonight fucking some young thug raw. I don’t know what I’m going to do with her Ni
na,” Muscles said while shaking his head in stress.

  “Damn! Again, I’ll talk to her, but you know her head is messed up and I know that’s not a good reason to be doing what she does, but she wants the world to feel her pain,” Nina replied.

  “But Nina, if she keeps going like this the world will feel her pain and will give pain right back to her. Only two things can come from her actions and you know this, one she’ll go to jail for murder or attempted murder for the rest of her life, and we will be lost and hurt without her. Or two, one of those thugs she fucked will come back to hurt her. She only likes thugs Nina! And what you think one of those thug niggas is going to do. They’re not going to no cops when they find out it was her who gave them Aids. They’re going to come, gun blazing at her ass and it will be us stuck in the crossfire.” A tear ran down Muscles face, “And you know I’ll die before I let anyone hurt you or her.”

  Nina felt that the conversation was getting too deep and serious. She loves her brother and hated to see him in pain, so she decided to change the topic. “So what’s up with you and your white girl?” Nina said smiling ear to ear.

  Muscles laughed, “I wish you’d stop calling her that she has a name.

  “I know, I was just joking. I like Amber, I think she’s sexy.”

  “Hey, hey, don’t be getting any ideas,” Muscles said playfully. He knew his sister was bisexual.

  “I was just saying. All that screaming and moaning she makes you do, maybe I should get a white girl.” They both bust out laughing.

  “Well she’s ok and supposed to come by tomorrow and spend the night, so I guess you’ll hear some more of that screaming and moaning,” Muscles said with a smile on his face.

  Nina finished her food and took her plate to the sink and began to wash all the dishes in the sink.

  “Damn! Muscles make sure you and Sasha air out the place better before I come home, I still can smell the weed in here and you know I can’t have that shit in my system.”

  “My bad, but what you’re really mad at is because your ass can’t smoke any weed when you want and you’re stuck smoking Newport cigarettes,” Muscles said. He got up and went to the bathroom for the air freshener and returned spraying the living room.