Chapter 22
Jada was ecstatic and still very much zoned out. It was as if she didn’t understand the true implications of what had just happened. As she sat listening to the fire trucks and ambulances get closer, she felt as if she’d served justice on the young, worrisome tramp in training that had ruined her chance at happiness. The sirens were on the very next block. She could easily tell. Jada was beside herself. For her, it was as if it was Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, and her birthday all rolled up into one.
This is what she gets. Now maybe next time she will think twice about being all up in the face of the next female’s man. That side chick jump-off shit might fly with some bitches, but I ain’t with the man-sharing shit, in the dark or otherwise. Well, I guess my job is done here.
Satisfied she had made her point, the crazed arsonist started her car and drove off. As she passed by the flashing lights that filled Stacy’s block, once again she prayed that death was in the air. In much better spirits than when she had left the house, Jada went through the McDonald’s drive-through and ordered a vanilla milk shake. She wanted an ice cream, but as always, their machine was down, so the milk shake would have to do. After she had eaten all those cookies and burned a bitch alive, a cool treat was exactly what she needed. Sipping on the straw, she drove back to the house and pulled up in the driveway. She parked her vehicle exactly where Kalif had seen it last. Most of the workmen were still there. After the way she had given them the evil eye at the beginning of the day, this time each man ignored her as she approached. But Jada was back to her old friendly self.
“How’s everyone doing this evening? How y’all feeling?” she asked as she pranced by without a care in the world.
The men just nodded hello as all four of them took notice of the strong smell.
One worker asked if the others smelled it. “Hueles eso?”
Another replied that he did and that it smelled like gasoline. “Huele a gasolina.”
“Y por qué huele a eso?” asked the first worker who had spoken.
“Look, don’t ask why she smells like that,” their foreman barked. “Just regresemos al trabajo. Okay? Eso no les concierne! You understand? It’s none of your business! Just hurry up. It’s almost seven.”
With the exception of their foreman, the Mexican workers were all undocumented. The foreman often advised them to keep a low profile to avoid the possibility of Immigration being called. When Jada went into the house, their heads went back down, and they continued to work.
* * *
Very much in need of another shower, Jada jumped right out of her clothes. She simply tossed them in the corner of the bedroom, as if she was immune to their strong smell. Upon noticing the time, she grew sad, realizing it was going on forty-eight hours and still she had received no calls or texts from Kalif. But knowing that she had solved one of the roadblocks that was stopping him from wanting her once again, Jada was content. After turning the knob in the shower all the way to hot, she waited for steam to fill the bathroom. Her hair was already a mess from her first shower, so there wasn’t much more damage that the water could do. She placed one leg in the shower, decided that the temperature was just right, and then climbed all the way in.
As she stood under the water, she broke down. All Jada White had ever wanted was Kalif, and for Kalif to want her in return. In her mind, that dream wasn’t too much to ask for. She’d done each and every thing he’d ever asked of her, and even more. Her loyalty to him in his quest to be a boss had gone unchallenged. She’d stolen for him, robbed for him, fought for him, and now killed for him. There was nothing Kalif could ask of Jada that she wouldn’t do. For months and months, she had been by his side in bed and had not even had sex. She’d waited in vain for him to make a move one night in the bed they shared. And the fact that he still had not called was evidence that her love had been no more than a waste of time.
Leaning against the wet marble walls of the shower stall, she trembled and got chill bumps, although the water was still hot. Jada’s body slid to the tiled floor. Burying her face in her hands, she mourned the loss of being Kalif’s ride-or-die. All she’d done for him was out of love. Why could he not see that? Why could he not accept that? And most importantly, why could he not return that same love and devotion? Hysterical, she couldn’t calm down. But strangely, Jada shed not one tear of remorse for the pandemonium she had caused at Stacy’s house. That type of emotion Jada was not built for.
Once out the sensitive state of mind she was in, Jada lay across her bed, with the belt on her robe tied tight. She felt that when she went to sleep, it would be for hours. She was exhausted. But before she went to bed, she had to check and see if her handiwork had paid off. After taking the remote from under the pillow, where she always kept it, she turned on the television. Before she could get to changing channels, her cousin came in the house and yelled out her name as she climbed the stairs.
“Jada! Jada! I know you hear me calling your punk ass.”
For the first time in the forty-eight hours since parting ways with Kalif, Jada had a genuine smile on her face. Even when times had been crazy while she was growing up, Jewels had always made the worst situations better.
“Girl, I’m up here in my damn bed, chilling. But what up, doe?”
“What up doe is all this, bitch,” Jewels said as she entered the room. She dropped an armful of clothes with the tags still on them on top of the bed. “Me, Euri, and Nia hit a dope-ass lick. I tried to call your ass so you could get on, but you ain’t pick up or at least get back with me. So yeah, it was fuck you the long way. Let a bitch get all she can.”
As she went through some of the expensive clothes, Jewels was distracted. But then she started waving her hand in front of her face. She frowned. “Girl, what in the entire fuck is that shit? It smells like straight-up gas in this motherfucker. Your room is lit!”
Jada laughed. “Dang. You right. My bad. It’s my clothes over there in the corner, the ones I had on today. I probably need to throw them in the washing machine.”
“Washing machine? Hell to the naw! You need to burn them stanking motherfuckers. Which probably won’t be hard, as strong as they smelling,” Jewels saw a wet towel on the floor and threw it over Jada’s tracksuit. “How your ass get that shit like that anyhow?”
“Shhh. Be quiet. The news coming on.” Jada turned up the volume on the television.
The first story was about a suspicious house fire that had left one elderly woman dead and her granddaughter fighting for her life. Then Channel Four News went live and showed the severely damaged home in the nearby suburb of Madison Heights. With smoke still visible in the rear area of the dwelling, officials permitted the cameras and reporters to get only within thirty feet of the front door. The neighbors who were interviewed had nothing but nice things to say about the woman who had lost her life and her young caregiver and granddaughter. At this point, they were not certain, but the authorities believed arson played a part in the tragedy.
Jewels knew her cousin all too well, and the way Jada was looking at the TV screen was almost a dead giveaway. “Jada, I asked you a question, and you still haven’t answered it. I said, How did you get that gas on your tracksuit?”
Jada smirked devilishly, pointing the remote at the television. “That’s how.”
Jewels was speechless. She was stunned. She couldn’t believe her ears or what her eyes had just seen on the television. If what her cousin had said was indeed true, then Jada was more than a hustler, a go-getter, and a con woman. She was now a murderer too. Praying that what Jada claimed was no more than a bad joke, Jewels asked her once more about the tracksuit, this time demanding the truth. “Look, crazy girl, stop fucking around with some serious bullshit like that. How ya clothes really get soaked?”
Jada sat all the way up on the bed. With her knees pointed to the ceiling, she casually explained what she had done. “Oh my God, is you going deaf or something? I ran into that little bitch Stacy that was all up in Kalif face. Her and her girls called theyself clowning me, so I burned the ho up. Case closed. Well, I guess I burned her and her old granny up. Case closed!”
Jewels had known since they were kids that her cousin had problems, but she had never thought they were the kinds of problems that would cause Jada to do something as wild and crazy as burning people alive. Since Jada wasn’t thinking clearly, Jewels would have to do it for her. The first thing she did was run to the linen closet and get a pillowcase. After stuffing the strong-smelling clothes inside the pillowcase, she rushed down the stairs and out the back door. Then she lifted the lid on the barbecue grill and tossed the pillowcase inside. After drenching it with lighter fluid, she started a fire. Flames leapt up, and the clothes started to burn. With bandos on most of the block, there was no one to question her as to why she was grilling at such a late hour. Once the fire burned out and the grill cooled off, Jewels would drag it down the alley, dump the ashes in one vacant backyard, and discard the grill itself in another.
After rushing back upstairs, she lifted both of Jada’s windows so the room could start to air out. She then sprayed damn near an entire can of air freshener in the room. After that she asked for her cousin’s car keys so she could park her car down the block.
Before she left the room, Jewels said, “Did anyone see you do that shit? I mean, you know if they can ID you, it’s only a matter of time before they come this way.” She then thought about herself and all the stolen goods inside the house. “Oh shit. Damn, bitch. You done messed around and made us all hot over some dick you ain’t never had, not once. And you do realize they said that old woman is dead, don’t you? Dead as in ain’t coming back and your ass going to jail!”
“Girl, bye. Ain’t nobody about to go to jail.”
In the middle of Jewels’s next rant, Jada reassured her cousin that she had not been seen at the scene of the crime and that Jewels could relax. But hours later, Jewels was wide awake, looking up at the ceiling fan and thinking she heard police cars pulling up, with officers ready to kick the door outta the frame. Jada, on the other hand, was snoring, sleeping just like an innocent baby.