Suck-Slam Storm: The Art of Living Negatively Positive Part Ii

By Sunman

The Suck-Slam Storm is a very thought-provoking sequel to the book The Art of Living Negatively Positive.

It continues to follow the saga of four characters, dubbed the Chocolate Gang by the media.

Many questions are answered from the first book, and more secrets are revealed in this one.

The Chocolate Gang, while going through the physical turbulence of the suck-slam storms, clings on to reality by a very thin emotional thread.

This is a real thrilling novel to read, and if you like dramas, you will love this one. No matter what your race or religion, it will make you love and enjoy life that much more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503586147

Sunman

The Sunman was raised in a rough neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. He became addicted to reading and had a passion for writing at an early age. He read authors from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Maya Angelou. He attended PS 274 and PS 26 in Brooklyn. He became a writer at JHS 125 in Woodside, Queens. There, he and his friend Marc won trophies for track-and-field. He fell in love with Mother Nature and all her creatures. He attended Manhattan Vocational and Technical High School, where he was an editor for the yearbook. He jumps into all the sciences like an Olympic diver. He attended CCNY in Harlem, where he became exposed to many scholars and political and environmental activists. He loves to swim, fly, make kites, and play chess, and he is a commercial truck driver. He also listens to and DJs all types of uplifting music. He is a member of South Bushwick Reformed Church in Brooklyn, New York.

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Copyright © 2015 by Sunman.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015911309

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5035-8616-1

   Softcover   978-1-5035-8615-4

   eBook   978-1-5035-8614-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/30/2015

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

713043

This book is

dedicated to all those people who

continue to help the Sunman shine.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to give glory to God. Special thanks to my mom and dad for giving me life.

I want to acknowledge the people I was able to spend time with as well as those I wasn’t able to spend enough time with but nevertheless contribute to molding me:

My brothers Errol, Val, and Chris

My sisters Hevon and Erica

My love Monica

My gifts from God—Donovan, Jonathan, Imani, Dushonne, Shanaya, Jayden, and Jayla

All my nieces and nephews

I also want to acknowledge the memories of loved ones in my family that are gone but will never be forgotten:

My father Eric, my uncle Clarence, my uncle Bird, my uncle Louie

My sister Beverly and my nephew Douglass

I also want to give special thanks to the wonderful people at J and G Delivery,

and a very special thanks to Ms. Felisha H and Mr. A Karpf.

I need to give a very, very, very special thanks

to

Jessica Care Moore

for her inspiration and words of encouragement.

As the cousins watched the distant storm out the window, the television in the background showed an eerie sight. The Statue of Liberty looked very spooky. The head had been trucked back from Long Island and remained at her feet. Sarah Darnell, Kari Motley’s replacement narrated as the monitors showed the scenes from different locations of the devastations of the last suck-slamming storm. She said the World’s Fair globe was put back after five helicopters were used to pick it up and fly it back to Flushing Meadows Park, where it was being held in place by three high-tension telephone cables. The Queens Courthouse on Queens Boulevard was nearly destroyed.

Cars in the parking lot were squished like silly putty, and the Van Wyck side of the courthouse, which had jail cells up to the roof, were left exposed with dead inmates. The side of the building facing the expressway looks like a sand castle on the beach when the wall slides down after a wave.

Lawrence, come look at this, Lewis said as he pointed at the television newscast.

What? said Lawrence.

Look what happened while we were in jail.

The sight was gruesome. The Williamsburg Bridge was leaning at about a forty-five-degree angle to the southwest.

How many days do you think it will take for that bridge to fall at that gravity-favoring angle? asked Lewis.

Before Lawrence could answer, the monitor shifted to a scene where a train was suck-slammed off the Williamsburg Bridge. The train left Marcy Avenue for Delancey Street when the suck-slam storm started with that fading rainbow. Seven of the eight cars were suck-slammed southwest into the bridge. Some passengers were suck-slammed through the train windows and glass doors and got minced and sliced up.

Some passengers did not get sucked all the way out. Their flesh and exposed bones looked like sliced slab bacon on a butcher’s block. In the last car on the train, which had people heading to Coney Island amusement park, riders got more than they paid for. It did not get suck-slammed against the bridge. Instead, the coupling broke asunder, and the last car got suck-slammed against and into the face of the landmark clock in Downtown Brooklyn. Once the train was suck-slammed stuck in the clock, the last car riders all got suck-slammed sliced together, squeezing out the glass. One man breaking the law, drinking his bottle of wine, had the half pint bottle suck-slammed in his throat and came out in shattered fragments through the back of his neck. Then like all the others, he got amputated or beheaded going out the broken glass windows resembling sharklike teeth. The news lady did not narrate that part. She was too sick to her stomach. Besides, that picture showed more than a thousand words. She did come back on screen to say, with the Queens Courthouse now in her monitor, that the state was forced to send half of Queens’ cases to Brooklyn, and Brooklyn would have to increase its efficiency in granting speedy trials.

As Lewis grinned at the sight of the porcupine-looking gang, dead, being transported to the morgue and hospital replay at Lawrence’s apartment, Accua Naomi turned off her television set and sat down next to Kwame in the lounge office.

What are you thinking? she asked.

If you want to know, I’ll tell you. The DA will probably try them all together. And if he finds one guilty of something, he will press the jury to consider acting in concert. And with the system overcrowded and backlogged, he’ll press them to plead guilty to at least one felony and get a minimum year in jail. I shouldn’t even be telling you this. You know I don’t mix my work with our marriage, said Kwame. I noticed you are taking a liking to my clients.

Yes, said Accua. I don’t know why, but they remind me of us in some ways.

Well, don’t get too attached. According to Scott’s investigation, Juanita and Lawrence stand the best chance of doing the most time.

Why? asked Accua Naomi.

Well, Juanita is on probation for murder already and now being charged with almost killing an officer, corrupt or not. Lawrence is running away from the military and not telling me the whole story. Not only does the army have representative, but the navy does as well. And they want to make an example of him, said Kwame.

Meanwhile, Juanita’s, her mother’s, and her sister Sonia’s hair were slowly rising from static electricity, along with the rest of the city.

Close all the windows, Sonia said to her mother as the sound of distant rolling thunder was heard.

"A dios mio! It seems like the sins of the world caught up with us," said Rosa Hernandez in Spanish.

After Ms. Elle-Mae got off the phone, she went to the hospital to check on her sister and to tell her what Rosa told her not to tell anybody because she still wasn’t sure.

Mr. Dunbar, Elle-Mae’s husband, was an over-the-road tractor trailer driver and had left early that morning for another thirty-day stint.

The cabbie was honking his horn while Elle-Mae spoke to Rosa Hernandez. And as she rushed off the phone, she did not hear the part of Mrs. Rosa Hernandez not being totally sure of their pregnancy. Lawrence and Lewis knew that she was going to the hospital. The Chocolate Gang was barred from the hospital as a condition of bail. The four were considered dangerous and revengeful, and all had a victim in the hospital, except Lawrence. His victim was in LA.

After Elle-Mae had closed the window in her apartment, she rushed out to the hospital to sit with her sister. She closed the hospital windows and sat near her sister, Thelma-Louise. There was a rolling thunder blast that scared Elle-Mae, but it did not faze Thelma. She just looked at her sister and smiled. She still had not spoken a word and did not all the while her sister spoke. Then there was a flash of streak lightning that made both ladies close their eyes momentarily and put their hands over them.

Elle-Mae said, I hope the girls are OK. They’ve been through a lot, and now Lewis and Lawrence got them pregnant.

Did you say they’re pregnant? asked Thelma-Louise Jolyson.

Oh god, you can speak, said Elle-Mae.

Her sister paid her no mind about the return of all her senses.

What do you mean they’re pregnant? Oh lord. Is this why you brought me back here? she asked with both hands extended toward the heavens.

I don’t know, said Elle-Mae. I’m glad you’re back. You were right when you said that every time our sons get together, they get in some kind of trouble. They got those girls drunk and then pregnant and naked on national television. Their mother’s right. Our boys can act like devils.

What do you mean ‘their mother’? asked Thelma-Louise.

I thought you understood us when we squeezed your hand. said Elle-Mae.

Sometimes I did, but I couldn’t tell if what I heard or saw was a dream or reality.

Juanita and Sonia are sisters. They have the same father.

That’s funny, said Thelma. I had a dream that Sonia killed Juanita. But I’ve never met Juanita. What does she look like?

She looks like Sonia, just two shades lighter. When you see them together, you’ll be amazed.

What’s their mother like? asked Thelma.

She looks like them. You’d think she’s Sonia’s biological mother.

That’s wonderful, but I don’t know why Lewis never listened to me. I told him several times ‘Don’t do no sinning with that girl.’ Did he listen? No. He had to get that girl pregnant. He don’t want to go to church. He just keeps saying ‘God knows my heart.’ God do knows his heart. Well, fornicating will not help God in judging him.

Don’t be so hard on him and Juanita because Lawrence and Sonia are married didn’t make them right either. Besides you and I were both pregnant before we got married, said Elle-Mae.

Well, that may be true, but you and I did not have a career. Sonia has a license and a husband. Juanita was so close to her mother. She told me many times on the phone that her mother made her promise not to get pregnant until after college. I know her mother and her father must be crushed, said Thelma-Louise.

Well, her mother maybe, but remember, Juanita’s father was killed in a car accident and left Sonia in the hands of that antiblack-minded woman.

While the sisters talked about their sons, Mr. Davis and his wife were home watching television—the late morning news. After several rumbles of thunder and flashes of lightning, Mrs. Gloria Davis began unplugging everything, including the television set.

Oh, come on, said Gregory Davis. This is ridiculous, Gloria. You are probably the last one on earth who would get struck by lightning.

Oh well, I don’t care what you say. Did you forget about Accua Naomi’s business partners that quickly?

Mr. Davis declined to respond. He just sat and looked at the blank screen. As he watched his own reflection, he thought about Accua Naomi’s ordeal that his wife had just mentioned. He knew his wife had a sixth sense for lightning storms. Gloria grew up in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country with a black father who was a farmer and a Susquehanna, fair red-skinned and black-haired Indian mother. She lived without electricity and modern luxuries as a preadolescent child. When they caught up with modern technologies, her mother felt that God was punishing them with electrical thunderstorms after a toaster and electric stove wires burnt and shorted out.

The family would plug out everything and turn off all farming machines. They drove at least twenty miles to town, and to make that trip, you’d better be taking some grain or some fruit to sell, not just a toaster and a blown fuse. They lived near rural mountains that made storms take that path over her South Central Pennsylvania farm. As a little girl, she always felt that the storms were coming to get her for lying to her mother. Once, her mother caught Gloria eating some pineapple preserves she had made but were not yet bottled and told her If you are lying, God will do to you what he did to that girl in Canada.

She told her about an Indian girl in a Canadian tribe that got struck by lightning and had no physical impairments other than a burnt, chewed-up tongue, which made her speechless and unable to tell another lie, or anything else for that matter.

Gloria, said Gregory to his wife. Your mother told you that she knew you ate the preserves and had forgiven you. You need to stop this and forgive yourself.

Just then there was a distant rumble of thunder again.

I’ve forgiven myself, but I don’t think God’s forgiven me, she said as she screamed and ran to her husband.

As he held her tightly, he played with her Afro puffs and noticed that they moved by themselves. He knew what it was from. He also knew that if he told her, she would swear that the lightning gods found her and would probably give her own self a heart attack. He thought about what his own mother told him about keeping secrets. It was one day back up in the Bronx, up in Castle Hill. His mother gave him a good backsiding for telling a secret he promised his sister he wouldn’t tell. His sister did not like the doll she had and ripped the head off and threw it into an alleyway. She told her brother Gregory not to tell their mother. This way, she’d get a new doll after saying the headless doll was of inferior quality. She made him promise to keep their secret. But one day his sister broke his Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, so he told his mother the secret. He got an ass whipping and his sister got a new doll. It just didn’t seem fair to him. Then he thought, Life’s not fair. Look at all what’s going on around me. He thought about how Kwame was unfair to him in the hospital situation. He thought about how unfair he was to Kwame in not telling him the whole truth about the dead victim in the frame-up case. The cops killed him! That night’s events were still clear in his head. He remembered seeing the body quivering and left for dead by the police officers who shot him. Then they came back and waited for a gang of joyriders to come by and find the body and then blamed it on them. Instead of the gang coming by, Davis just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time.

The first thing Gregory Davis did was pick up the dying man’s head. The man was forced to walk away from his truck after the police had stopped him. Kwame was able to prove that Davis may have had teenage gang days but that he was not a murderer. The cops never did get charged. Davis had made a promise with the dying man that kept him from telling Kwame the whole truth. The dying man’s secret promise and the ass whipping that his mother gave him over the doll-secret incident lay heavy in his heart. He could have revealed what the truck driver told him about the police, and they surely would have went to jail for murder. Instead, after Kwame got Davis off the frame-up, the officers’ lawyers convinced the jury and the judge that if it wasn’t Davis, then a gang must have hijacked the truck and killed the driver for monetary reasons, which made sense to them.

Davis held his wife tightly as he thought deeply into his mind’s eye, and wondered whether he would be forced to be questioned by Kwame or he would be questioned by Scott. If Kwame questioned him on hostage situations, he could handle it. But if for whatever reason the past came up of Kwame being his old attorney, he must tell the truth, especially if Kwame asked him to tell the truth while opening his eyes in a preacher-like way. He just finished telling his wife about her electrical childhood hang ups, and he still had his, except she did not know what the dead man told him. His heart skipped two beats as the dying man clutched on to life and spoke his last breath.

The police, the police, said the dying man in a gargling-sounding voice.

The police did what? said Gregory Davis to the cold bloody driver.

You must promise not to tell anyone, said the man, trying to talk with blood getting in the way. I can’t take this to my grave. I must tell you, but you must promise not to tell anyone or else they will kill you.

I promise to keep your secret, said Gregory wanting to do anything to make the dying man feel comfortable in his last few minutes.

The police and army are doing tests with a deadly VC chemical. It was outlawed by the international chemical warfare court. They forced me to haul it once. I refused to do it again, and they said ‘You can leave here, but you will never get home with our technical material in your head.’ My boss is a corrupt trucking man. He took shortcuts and the army helped him. The man stopped speaking and spat up some blood. A police car pulled up, and by the way the dying man looked at the cruiser, Davis knew that those officers shot him.

As the officers got out of the police car and got closer, the man grabbed Davis’s ear and whispered, Remember, VC, but don’t say it.

The man went into a spasm, which caused him to gasp and bite off a small piece of Gregory Davis’s ear. Then he died of heart failure after drowning in lungs half filled with blood. He still had a scar on his ear. Just then he came back to the present when Gloria kissed him and tugged on the ear, which made him pull away.

That encounter with the dying trucker was one of the reasons he joined the force. He figured that somehow being on the inside would get him answers the dying man left unanswered.

What’s the matter, Gregory? You let me touch you anywhere except your right ear, said Gloria. I’m not going to pull or bite it. You need to forget that dying man. I know my mother embarrassed you when you came with me to PA to meet them.

He thought about that day. After greeting her parents, who were down home country-loving and had a variety of good eats, the day was only spoiled when her very spiritual Native American mother said to Greg, I don’t know what you know, but I know the ancestors. That mark on your ear means you made a pact to tell what’s not to be told.

Between what his mother told him and what his mother-in-law told him and the promise he made to the dying man and not telling Kwame the whole truth, as his wife kept troubling and touching his ear, he wished he had a mediator to arbitrate his guilt and anxiety. After a few flashes of lightning, she hugged her husband and stopped talking.

Meanwhile, the Juanita and Sonia reunion continued. The sisters were laughing at their mother as she passed the television set. The static electricity ambushed her. Not only did her dress cling to the floor model television, but her long hair did as well, which made her slap the TV and said Cono like she was speaking to a fresh man. She walked off to her room and left the two sisters to reminisce.

Rosa Hernandez was glad that her daughters were reunited before they killed each other. As she sat down, she thought about the many fights Juanita and Sonia had in the past in Puerto Rico over the littlest things. She remembered once, Sonia took a lollipop from Juanita—they had about ten lollipops between them, but each wanted that orange one. The girls had run out of the store to a little shady hill around the corner. Then they divided up the lollipops between them. Juanita grabbed the orange one, opened it, and put it in her mouth. Sonia yanked it out of Juanita’s mouth, causing her to chip a tooth, which made a soft whistling sound when she spoke certain syllables before it was capped.

The girls dropped all the lollipops, stomped them all into the ground, and started fighting. They scratched and they screamed and they bit each other. When other kids parted them, they beat up the good Samaritans and went back to fighting each other. After she heard the commotion outside, Mrs. Hernandez ran out of the store toward the crowd. She ran out of the store thinking the crowd was watching drunks fighting, but it turned out to be her daughters. They did not stop fighting until she yelled Sonita, Sonita, Sonita, you two, stop that fighting. Then she pulled them up by their hair.

As Mrs. Hernandez prayed that the lightning storm outside would be short and mild, she also prayed that her daughters would get along. She knew from that day that the fight the girls had in Puerto Rico would have been deadly if they had not loved each other so much. She knew her daughters had her husband’s traits. It took a lot to set them off, but when you did, you regretted it. How funny, she thought, I met my daughter again fighting her little sister. The sisters were still laughing until a flash and a small thunder boom blast made them jump on Juanita’s full-size bed.

I never thought I would see you again, Sonia said to Juanita. Mommy would cry when I asked her where you were and what were you eating for dinner. So I stopped asking her about you and Poppy and just pretended that you were there.

I knew I was going to see you again, said Juanita. Poppy used to say he knew where my black baby doll sister was, said Sonia.

Then why didn’t you come with him and see us? asked Juanita.

I don’t know, but I bet it has something to do with my white mommy, said Sonia.

If only we knew, said Juanita, you would not have to live in Highland Park for a week.

Yes, said Sonia but then I would not have met Lawrence, my chocolate fudge.

I guess you’re right, but maybe if you lived here, you might have met Lawrence through Lewis, said Juanita.

I don’t think so, said Sonia. You and I would either have fought over Lawrence or Lewis, or long before that, we would have killed a lot of girls in Spanish Harlem.

Yes, said Juanita. "I’d beat up your Dominicans, while you’d beat up my Puerto Ricans.’

They both smiled, but the thought of them having sex with the other’s man frightened them. Just the thought made them want to kill the other and their partners. If anything came close, the girls looked into each other’s eyes then hugged and called it a truce. They each had their own chocolate pop. Juanita knew she was treading on thin ice but knew she had to get some answers from Sonia. Juanita walked to the window and looked out and opened it halfway and said, Oh it’s misty rain. Juanita loved misty rain. She walked in it many times on the beach with her invisible sister.

Sonia knew Juanita was smart and even more scientific. Why would she open the window with another suck-slamming storm approaching? Being with Lawrence made Sonia cautiously optimistic.

Sonia, why didn’t you tell me you were family to Lewis? asked Juanita in Spanish.

"Lo siento, Juanita. You never gave me a chance. You just snatched the basin away," replied Sonia, also in Spanish.

The girls’ tone was that of gang warlords negotiating peace. If you’re going to roll with the enemy, you have to know what they have got. There is always a chance of a double cross.

Give you a chance to do what? You looked eager to get to him, said Juanita.

Yes, I was to do my job—a job I promised my mother-in-law to do. To take care of her nephew, said Sonia.

Juanita looked at Sonia then back out the window. She knew they had a lot in common but each identified with their Dominican or Puerto Rican culture. It would have been nice if they had never parted, but be that as it may, the decision was made.

Were you and Barbara friends? asked Juanita.

I wouldn’t say she was a friend, but I couldn’t call her an enemy either, responded Sonia.

What did you call her? asked Juanita.

A coworker, said Sonia.

Barbara grew up in Europe. Do you flock together like birds of a feather? asked Juanita.

Sonia did not like what Juanita was implying and would have slapped her but knew the window was open.

Is it customary in Europe to work with a tight short skirt and have your button blouse expose cleavage then have confidence enough to work without panties? asked Juanita in a jealous way.

I’m not Barbara, Juanita, said Sonia. Barbara is crazy.

I know she is, said Juanita. I saw her try to rape Lewis. I hope they asked her why she didn’t have any panties on in the trial.

If we all tell the truth, we’ll win, said Sonia. Did you bite or scratch off her nipple?

Why would you ask that? asked Juanita.

Well, Sonia said, we both know that Barbara has a superstar body and a sex craze for men, but she has other outlandish idiosyncrasies as well.

Sonia paused a few seconds.

Well, said Juanita, are you going to finish telling me or just stand there like a Panamanian puppy?

What did you call me? asked Sonia.

A Panamanian puppy, said Juanita.

Only my mother-in-law ever called me that, said Sonia.

No offense, but she called me a sick sad-eyed Panamanian puppy after she caught me lying for the first time, said Juanita. I kept asking myself how she knew I was half Panamanian.

"Well, maybe she saw me in you. I don’t know, but please don’t ever call me that again por favor," said Sonia.

"Lo siento. Finish telling me about Barbara," said Juanita, who was looking at her sexy almost-twin sister.

Well, said Sonia, "about the second or third week after Barbara started, I tried to be friendly with her. One day I was changing in the nurse’s locker room. I was in my bra and panties. Barbara walked over to me with nothing but high heels on and told me ‘Let’s have a beauty contest for the best black body in the hospital.’ I told Barbara I would win for the best black body, but she’d win for the best body, period. She came closer to me and said ‘Does that mean you like my body?’ I did not know how to respond to Barbara, so I kept silent. She then pushed me back against a locker and said ‘If you like my body, you could have it.’ Then she shoved her breasts in my face. I said, ‘Barbara, when I was a bambino, I used to enjoy my mommy’s breasts, but that’s as far as it goes.’ She tried to make me suck them, but I grabbed them and squeezed them so hard it made her drop to her knees. I thought she was in pain, but she started saying ‘Harder, harder,’ and she tried to lick my legs. She was actually enjoying the pain. I was going to kick her, but I figured she might get an orgasm from that. A nurse’s aide walked in, which made her stop. As I got dressed, Barbara modeled for the young nurse’s aide, who screamed and ran away. Several days later, rumors were going around that Barbara and I were in a masochistic bisexual relationship. Then the week before that aide left, she told someone that Barbara and I were in a competition to see who could screw the best-looking patients."

A dios mio, said Juanita.

That’s not the only thing, said Sonia. One day I was sitting down for my lunch hour and I had made a fruit basket. I was trying to eat nothing but fruits for that week. So I opened the basket. A Jamaican and Puerto Rican nurse aide sat with me. We shared the fruit then we had a disagreement over what to call a fruit.

What fruit? said Juanita.

You know, that fruit that looks like a grape. We used to suck it and then save the seeds to throw at people after covering it with mud. said Sonia.

Yes, said Juanita. Mommy called them ganapas.

OK, said Sonia. The Jamaican nurse called them gnapes. And Poppy said some Dominicans called them lemonsitas.

So what? said Juanita.

As we continued to argue over the proper name, Barbara came over and grabbed a banana. ‘What y’all talking about?’ said Barbara, trying to sound black. ‘What to call a fruit,’ said Maureen, the Jamaican. Barbara peeled the banana and sensually placed it into her mouth slowly and did not stop until she had the whole thing in her throat and mouth. We all watched her pornographic-like table manners. After she swallowed it all down, she grabbed a lemonsita.

You mean gnapas, said Juanita.

Whatever, said Sonia. She took one up and said ‘What is it, and what can it do for me?’ ‘You’re supposed to suck it, but don’t swallow it,’ said Myrna, the light-skinned Puerto Rican. Barbara took it and popped it in her mouth then spat it out. ‘What is this, some joke?’ said Barbara. No, I said you’re supposed to take the skin off first. Then she followed our example. We all had one in our mouth. But then Barbara started sucking it and made sounds like it was a sexual experience to her. We all stared at her. She walked off and left us, sensing we didn’t like her company. She walked back a few minutes later. Maureen said, ‘I hope you did not swallow it.’ ‘No, I did not. Thanks, sugar. That’s almost the best thing you let me suck on,’ said Barbara. The girls were speechless. Then she said, ‘I’m going to call it the suck and tuck fruit.’ ‘Barbara, what do you mean tuck?’ I asked. Then she lifted up her pantieless skirt and said ‘Take a guess.’ I got up and grabbed the rest of my fruit basket and left with Myrna and Maureen. Maureen and Myrna left for another hospital, and the rumors about Barbara and me remained. What if it comes up in court?

You must tell the truth even if it hurts, said Juanita.

What if Barbara enjoyed her nipple being ripped off by you? asked Sonia.

I don’t know, but in court, we must tell the truth if asked, said Juanita.

What if they ask me about you, Juanita? Should I tell them that you had no panties on that morning and made Lewis literally come out of a coma?

You won’t have to tell them. Lewis and I will. How did you know anyhow? asked Juanita.

Well, you might as well open the window all the way ’cause you’re going to want to kill me. But when you opened the door for breakfast, I was already horny from your moans and groans. I heard myself in you. I had to pry myself away from the door. Then about two hours later when I bought you ham and eggs, the smell of sex was all over you. I noticed how carefree you were. Then when I noticed your damaged hair, I felt a strange attraction to you. I just wanted to hold you and stroke your hair. I got frightened. ‘I was no Barbara,’ I said to myself. Then you made sure I saw Lewis, and from what I saw, he had a monumental resemblance of Lawrence.

Well, said Juanita, opening the window all the way. She knew her sister was not a lesbian and also would not try to take her man. She decided to play a joke on Sonia. You know, said Juanita in an agitated voice. "I should kill you. Not only do you want to put your Dominican dirt on my man, but you also want to put your Panamanian flesh on mine. She then jumped on the bed, and Sonia screamed and jumped off. As Sonia ran into the corner, Juanita sat up on the bed and fluffed up her hair, which looked spooky with the electrical storm approaching. Just when Sonia gave out the loudest scream of her life, Juanita lay down on the bed faceup and burst out into uncontrollable laughter.

Sonia jumped on top of Juanita and decided she would tickle her until she cried since she wanted to laugh so much. Mrs. Hernandez ran into the room, flung the door open, and said, Sonita, Sonita, you two, stop that fighting.

Juanita was screaming and laughing while trying to get Sonia off her, which made Juanita’s breasts come out of her bra, which reminded Mrs. Hernandez of that television butt naked foursome. She then slapped Sonia off Juanita. Then when Juanita sat up, she slapped her back down.

Mommy, said Sonia as she sat down next to the now crying Juanita, what’s that for? We were not fighting.

Well, what was that screaming, and why were you on top of your sister like a man? I’m not used to Lawrence and Lewis yet, but that’s better than you on top of your sister.

Mommy, Mommy, said Juanita, we’re not like that.

Then why was she on top of you trying to kill you?"

No, said Juanita. We agreed not to fight anymore.

Why is that window wide open? asked Rosa.

I was tickling her, said Sonia.

And I opened the window to let out that burnt garlic smell, said Juanita.

What you mean garlic smell?

You know, sometimes smell from the kitchen comes out my window.

Well, that slap you each got was for parading naked on TV.

I’m sorry, they both said.

Juanita, why did you open the window all the way? asked Sonia, still holding her face.

I knew the vortex was coming.

What? asked Mrs. Hernandez.

A vortex, said Sonia. It means anything that spins like a hurricane or tornado.

Well, said Juanita, I remember the last one had a real big boom blast with it before it started sucking. I wanted to get the spice out first.

Why? asked Sonia.

Well, I don’t want anything bad to happen. But if I got suck-slammed, I didn’t want to be smelling like already seasoned meat for the vultures, said Juanita. Then Sonia and Juanita started