Hero

better instead of getting up and taking what you want. You drop out of school and then blame him for not handing you an education. You get drunk and use drugs and commit all kinds of crimes against one another and then hold your little marches when the cops kick your nappy heads in. Oh, you’ll take from each other. It’s easy to rob and kill and rape and sell drugs to another nigger. But you won’t stand up to the White man. You won’t do shit to really improve your position in society. You’d rather kill each other over drug turf.”

Rachael’s eyes grew angry. Natsinet held the gun steady.

“Well, she stood up! She stood up to the White man. She stood up for all of us!”

Natsinet looked back at the old woman slumped over in the bed behind her.

“She didn’t do shit but get her dumb ass arrested and wind up right back in the shithole that spawned her. She fought for you alright, but what good did it do? You have the right to vote, to get an education, to own property, to do any job White people can but what do you do? You rob from each other, sell drugs, work for minimum wage or else get on welfare and sit around making more illegitimate crackbabies. So what good did she do?”

Adelle moaned and slumped over on her side. A trickle of blood dripped from a cut on her lip and dribbled down her chin.

Rachael was looking into the master bedroom in anguish. “Oh Lord! What did you do to her?”

“Nothing White folks haven’t been doing to you ignorant bastards for centuries.”

Rachael turned to Natsinet. She looked scared and confused. “What are you talking about?”

“It doesn’t really matter now does it? Pull your stockings down.”

“What?”

“I said pull your fucking stockings down or I’ll blow your nappy ass head all over the room!”

Rachael hesitated only a second before doing as she was told and pulling her stocking down to her knees.

“Now lie on your belly.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to stick this gun up your fat ass and pull the trigger! Now lie on your belly!”

Rachael again complied.

“Put your hands behind your head. I’m pretty sure you know the position.”

Rachael laced her fingers behind her head.

Natsinet pulled a couple rolls of surgical tape from the drawer in the nightstand and began taping Rachael’s wrists together. She sat on the woman’s back as she wrapped her wrists and was satisfied to hear the wind burst out of Rachael’s lungs as her weight came down on her. After she was done with the wrists she spun around, still seated on the woman’s back, and wrapped her ankles.

“Now just lie there while I figure out what to do with you.”

She knew she had to kill the woman. She had no other choice. She just had to figure out how she would get rid of the body. The woman was far too heavy for her to carry down the steps herself. And there was nowhere in the tiny apartment to hide a body. At the very least she’d have to chop it up and carry it out piece by piece.

“I need a hacksaw.” She said out loud and Rachael began to squirm, trying hard to get her hands and legs free.

“Don’t kill me! I ain’t done nuthin’ to you! I don’t even know you! Please, don’t cut me up!”

“You ain’t done nothin’ to me huh?”

“No, I ain’t done nuthin’ to you. What have I ever done to hurt you?”

 “Well, it was a Black bitch like you that took my daddy away! That’s right, a fat, stinking, nappy-headed Black bitch just like you who sweet talked him, seduced him, and then got him killed.”

“But it wasn’t me! I didn’t do it! I didn’t even know your daddy!”

Natsinet stood up and kicked Rachael hard in the gut. She kicked her over and over again relishing the feel of her shoe sinking into the nurse’s soft flesh. Then she began to stomp on her, jumping up and down on her face and chest, smashing her nose into a bloody smear across her cheeks. Rachael moaned and screamed as Natsinet struck her over and over again.

“But it was you!” Natsinet yelled. “It was all of you! It was your whole twisted fucked-up culture. You killed him! All of you!”

Natsinet calmed herself, realizing that she was making too much noise. The walls in this place were paper thin and there were still those hooligans hanging out across the street. She walked over to the window and peeked through the blinds. They had rap music blaring and there were now a few young girls mingling amongst them. They were all preoccupied. All except one, the big one, the one who seemed to be in charge. He was staring directly at the house, right up at the window, right at Natsinet. She quickly backed away from the window and rushed back over to Rachael who was still lying on the floor moaning. Her lip and nose were busted and she was bleeding onto the carpet. Natsinet tore off another piece of surgical tape and slapped it over her mouth.

“You really want to know what you people did to him? How you killed him? Why I hate you worthless motherfuckers so much? When my father came to America with my mom they wouldn’t accept his medical license, wouldn’t let him practice medicine without an American degree. They made him go back to medical school at almost forty years old. My mother’s family didn’t like the fact that she was with this African anyway and then when they found out that he wasn’t even a doctor anymore, that he was unemployed, they started making life really hard for him. See, in their minds he was one of you. They looked at him and saw your people. They didn’t see an Eritrean. They saw an African American.” Natsinet slurred the word as she spoke as if it were something distasteful she was trying to wipe from her tongue. “They threatened to disown my mother if she didn’t get rid of him. See, in their minds he was less than a nigger. He was African. For her to have married him was a disgrace to them. Oh, they talked real liberal around their friends, but they were secretly ashamed. My mother stayed with him until the money ran out. Then she took me, packed up all her things and left him. She moved back to Chestnut Hill with her family and he moved to Mount Airy.

“Mount Airy wasn’t a bad neighborhood. Not like this warzone. It was middle-class, decent. My father worked as a security guard at night and went to school during the day, trying to get his license to practice medicine. I went to see him on holidays and during the summer. He used to talk about my mother a lot, talk about winning her back and us being a family again. Then he started dating this Black social worker named Lisa who lived down the street and it was like he forgot all about my mother.”

“Just let me go and I won’t say nothing. You don’t have to kill me. Just let me go. Please, let me go.” The tape had fallen away from Rachael’s mouth.

Natsinet squatted down next to Rachael and tapped her on the head lightly with the butt of the pistol. “You asked me a question. I suggest you let me finish my answer. Because when I’m done talking, I’m probably going to kill you. At least as long as I’m talking, you’re still breathing.” She smoothed the tape back over Rachael’s mouth.

Rachael began to weep. She looked around the room just as Adelle had been doing for the past two weeks, looking for anything that she might use to save her life, and just as Adelle had before, she came up empty. She turned back to look at Natsinet who was still kneeling beside her with the gun. Natsinet’s eyes were no longer hard and cold; now they looked wild as emotions from her childhood flooded back in like reopened wounds bleeding once again. Rachael sobbed louder, realizing that she was at the mercy of a madwoman, a madwoman with a gun.

“Now, where was I? Oh, yeah…Lisa had two daughters about my age. They hated me because I was half- White and I spoke with an accent. They teased me constantly. They’d even beat me up when no one was looking and threatened to beat me up worse if I told anyone. I never understood why they hated me so much. My father kept going to medical school and was just about to graduate when he was murdered. I kept thinking that momma would take him back once he was a doctor again and he’d leave that Black bitch and her little hellions and we’d be a family again. Then Lisa’s drug-dealin’ ex-boyfriend got out of prison and started coming around. He would come by to see his daughters and then he’d try to talk Lisa into leavin’ my daddy and coming back to live with him. One day he was in the house when my father got home from school. He’d beaten up Lisa and was trying to take the kids. Daddy confronted him, told him to get out, and that bastard shot him. He shot my father right in the chest, killed him instantly.”

Natsinet stood up and walked over to Adelle’s bed. She checked Adelle’s pulse to make sure the old woman was still alive and then removed a syringe from her pocket and shot her up with Demerol to make sure she’d stay unconscious. Then she walked into the next room to get a pillow for the gun. Rachael’s eyes followed her as she