“Ahhhhh!” she’s yelling.
And the doc too. “Ahhhh!”
Get the fuck off of me!
“Sue Ellen, are you okay?”
“No! I think you really hurt me.”
“Okay. We are going to have to stop. I can’t keep doing this. We may really injure you internally.”
I hear Mommy start to wail and moan. Hey! Who’s the baby here, bitch!
I beat them again! You don’t fuck with Super Foetus. Nobody messes with me, man.
Nobody!
EIGHT
“Jesus Fucking Christ! Why won’t this baby die?” Sue Ellen screamed underneath the cover of the hot shower. She felt horrible about how that sounded, but she yelled it again anyway. “Why won’t this baby die?” She looked at her stretched-out stomach and shook her head. It was all she could do. Shake her head back and forth and ask herself, “Why? Why fucking me?”
She felt awful to be talking this way about her unborn child. After all, she had three kids. Even when Kimi-Sue pissed her off something fierce, she couldn’t imagine wanting her dead.
But this was different. This baby was not like the others, fuck that maternal instinct bullshit.
“Die! Die! Die!” she shouted while punching her stomach. “Die!” She punched it again and again and again.
As if answering her, her stomach punched back. It was in there punching back at her as if pounding on a wall. Let me out, Mommy! she could swear she heard it say. Stop punching me, you bitch!
Sue Ellen sat down in the tub and let the water flow from the showerhead onto her face. “I am losing it. I am losing my fucking mind.”
“Mommy!” she heard a shout, but this time it wasn’t coming from inside her tummy, thank god. “Mommy I have to make pee-pee.” It was Elie-Dre.
Did she lock the door? She couldn’t remember, but she sure didn’t have the strength to get up.
“Mommy! I really gotta go!” Elie-Dre kept on.
“Oh, Elie-Dre,” she mumbled. “Elie-Dre. Elie-Dre.”
Little Elie-Dre was her baby, and boy could he be a pain in the ass. But it wasn’t easy for him.
Sue Ellen thought back to that weird night. She went to Bart’s Biker Bar, Bowling Alley and Boot Repair, just a few weeks after Elie-Jay’d been born. She kicked back ripple while Roxie ogled the beer-bellied bikers and buttcrack-showing buffoons in bowling wear.
“Look at him,” Roxie said. “I think he is staring at you and he is cute, cute, cute.”
Sue Ellen looked over her shoulder to see a big dude with a jiggly gut and Harley Davidson t-shirt. When he saw her looking his way, he raised his eyebrows and puckered his lips.
“That guy?” Sue Ellen asked.
“Yeah,” Roxie said while elbowing her. “Why don’t you go talk to him.”
“I don’t think so.”
He walked towards them with a very confident walk and a cockeyed look on his face. “Can I get you two darlings a drink?”
“No thanks,” Sue Ellen mumbled.
But Roxie spoke over her and said, “You betcha, big man.”
“What’ll it be?”
“Something strong,” Sue Ellen said without looking at him.
“Do you have any friends with you?” Roxie asked.
“Sure, my whole gang’s in the back shootin’ pool.”
“Come on, Sue Ellen. Let’s go meet the fellas.”
“Nah. I’ll stay here.”
Roxie looked over with her head turned sideways and a frown on her face. “Fine,” she said, then followed the biker to the back of the bar.
Sue Ellen put back a few more drinks when three odd-looking men came in. Their skin looked burnt; she didn’t know what to make of them. Two guys had on shiny shirts and baggy pants. The third guy, walking with a limp, two steps behind the other two, had on a multi-colored moo moo like her momma used to wear, a sequined top hat and the biggest pair of sunglasses Sue Ellen had ever seen.
There were two empty stools at the bar next to her, and they walked towards them. The two guys sat down and the third one strutted on up behind. Sue Ellen realized he was wearing a boot on one foot, and on his other was just a holey white sock. He was cute.
The cute one slapped his other boot on the bar and shouted, “What’s a nigga gotta do to get a boot fix ‘round here?”
Skip, the bartender walked over with squinty eyes and said, “You fellas from around here?”
The three guys looked at each other. The cute one was biting his lip in a seductive way.
“Don’t worry, Skip,” Sue Ellen said. “They’re with me.”
“You know these guys, Sue Ellen?”
“Yep, they’re my friends. Get them a round on me, Skip. Please.”
“Okaaaay,” Skip said while throwing up his hands. “You know I’ll do anything for you, sweetie.”
“Thanks,” the cute one said while flicking at the backs of his sunglasses underneath his ears, making them pop up and down. He smiled and his teeth sparkled like shooting stars.
“What are we doing in this here cracker bar, anyway,” one of his friends said. The guy had a lot of cheesy gold and silver jewellery and a yellow-toothed smile.
The cute one said, “Can’t you see I need my boot fixed.” Then he called out, “Yo, Skippy? Where’s the shoe man?”
Skip brought over the drinks and said, “He’s off tonight.” Then he turned to Sue Ellen and said, “You best take your friends elsewhere. The boys in the back are lookin’ funny. And they’ve been drinking since they got here at five o’clock.”
“Are you kicking my friends out, Skip?”
“Of course not, Sue Ellen. Just a friendly warning is all. I don’t need no trouble tonight.”
“Don’t worry about me, Skip. I’ll be just fine.”
The third guy, a short and stocky kid turned to Sue Ellen and said, “Girlfriend, you must be a frosted lucky charm.”
“What?”
“A frosted lucky charm, because you look magically delicious!”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
The cute one said, “Don’t pay him any mind. He needs to learn some manners.”
“Hey, Andre. You dissin’ me for this white bitch?”
“Come on, knock it off.”
“Fuck you, man. Bros before hoes. Shit. We out.”
The two guys walked out, leaving Sue Ellen alone with Andre. She liked what she saw. His sleeveless moo moo exposed big, solid forearms. His hands were big too.
“So, can a nigga get table dance?” he asked.
“Huh?”
He laughed.
“What are you laughing at?” she asked.
“Nothing. Nothing,” he said but kept on laughing.
“Stop it,” she said as she playfully punched his shoulder. “Stop!”
“No. No. I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing at me. What I meant was, you pretty.”
Sue Ellen smiled, then said, “Like a frosted lucky charm?”
“Nah, nah. Ignore that dumbass. They’re my boys and all, but they just can’t get out of the hood, you know?”
“The hood?”
“You know, the neighbourhood.”
“Where’s that?”
“Huh?”
She leaned over and sniffed his arm.
“What you doin’?”
“I was just wondering, do you mind?”
“Huh?”
Sue Ellen leaned over again, this time licking his exposed arm.
“What the…”
“I just wondered if you tasted like chocolate.”
“Girlfriend, ain’t you ever seen a brother before?”
“Brother? I don’t have any.”
“A black man? Ain’t you ever seen a black man?”
“I don’t know. Maybe on TV. I ain’t never been out of Hokeyville.”
“Girl, you sure are strange. But you pretty too. Let’s have another round.”