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squinted her eyes, and stared at me. The muscles in my throat clenched tightly. I hadn’t seen her since I was nine, when I spit in her face and Aunt Cookie beat my ass.
    I sat in my car and watched Rowanda watch me. Despite the fish frown that she had acquired from years of being in love with dope, she looked identical to me. There she stood, watching me with my eyes, my hands, and with the same brown-sugar color in her skin. She watched me and she smiled.
    I left her standing there. I left her crooked lean, rotten teeth, and her smile standing there watching me as if she knew me, as if she and I were familiar with one another. I hated this bitch, and there she stood, crooked, nodding out but watching me, tilted to the side, but never touching the ground, giving the illusion that one leg was shorter than the other. Standing there as if I belonged to her, forcing me to remember why I spit on her.
    When I returned home and parked on my dimly lit street, I saw Taj sitting on my front stoop. I was relieved as hell that he was there, despite the fact that we had just had an argument.
    â€œWhere’d you go?” Taj said as I walked up the steps. His white polo shirt was half open, and his tie hanging loose around his neck.
    â€œI went home,” I said, walking up the steps and standing in front of him.
    â€œWhy’d you do that?” he asked.
    â€œBecause I needed to find me.”
    â€œDid you find you?” he said, pulling me close and placing his arms around my waist.
    â€œNo,” I admitted. “Instead, I found a buncha dopefiends and their memories. I heard too many voices, and I saw too many faces.”
    â€œYou know I can’t leave you, Vera.”
    â€œThen just be my friend. There’s no room for anything else.”
    He bent down and pressed his forehead softly into my stomach and said, “You know you don’t mean that.”
    I shot his ass a look, shook off the electric sparks that his hands were shooting up my thighs, took my heart out, and had a talk. I said, just like Aunt Cookie used to tell me when I was a kid and went to the grocery store, “I don’t care how much you like it, or how much you beg, don’t look at shit, don’t touch shit, and don’t try to convince me of shit, ’cause you ain’t gettin’ shit.”
    Taj was beginning to tap into a part of my life that I couldn’t control, so, in an effort to maintain my composure and keep myself from crying every day, I knew I had to let him go.
    Hold on now. You know we’re just getting started, so sit back, relax, and get yo’self a drink or two, ’cause I got some Spike Lee, Hollywood, Oprahfied shit fo’ yo’ ass.

Step One
    â€œI’ma cut the nigga!” a harsh and cold female voice said into the receiver as I struggled to hold the phone to my ear. It was three o’clock in the morning, and Taj’s raspy voice, breathing heavy in my ear, asking me, “Who is it?” didn’t help any.
    Then I heard it again, “I’ma cut the nigga!” and then she hung up. The caller ID said the number was unavailable, and *69 said that whoever was gonna “cut the nigga” was out of the area. I said a quick prayer and hoped that whoever got sliced would survive.
    Two hours later, the phone rang again. Taj was looking at me like I was disrespecting him and shit, talking about, “You need to tell ole boy that when I’m up in the spot, to tame his midnight phone calls.” Despite the fact that Taj was super fine, I was this close to tellin’ him to shut the fuck up, but the recorded operator interrupted my thoughts, informing me that I was receiving a collect call from an inmate in the county jail.
    Immediately, I wanted to know what the hell was going on. The last time I dated a nigga in jail, he was ballin’. I had beat him for his money, and he was calling to inform me that when he “hit the brick after doing