Pawn

Chapter 11

My feet were exhausted from doing all this housework. I never realized how big the house was until now. No wonder Lee wanted me to do all this, don't nobody around here clean nothing. I guess the girls that worked in the warehouse would keep everything clean until I was forced to do it.

I plopped down on the couch to catch my breath. I took my shoe off and gently started massaging it. It didn't help that Drennon had this ankle monitor on me either.

"Smart bastard." I thought out loud to myself.

I leaned back on the couch and rested my eyes for a minute. I still had things to do upstairs. "Let me get up so I can be done cause I don't wanna hear Drennon complaining about nothing."

I grabbed the cleaning stuff and headed upstairs. I took a left into Drennon's room. As usual, it's freezing cold. The last time I remember being in here was when he questioned me about my father.

I started dusting of shelves, dressers, and tables. Some of the dust got in my nose and made me starting sneezing. I looked in one pull out dressers to see there were any boxes of tissue. In the midst of looking, I stumbled upon a thin black journal.

It was like the devil and angel in my ear, one telling me to look in it and the other telling me not to invade someone's privacy. The devil got the best of me and opened the journal. The first page had something already written:

June 18
I feel like I don't know myself anymore, like I'm a stranger in my own body. Sometimes I just want to crawl in a hole and stay in it. Darkness seems like the only place where I fit in. I have nightmares where I'm being killed and tortured. I feel like I have no one to turn to. I just keep my feelings bottled up and to myself. I know one day, that's gonna be the death of me. It's been years since I stopped cutting and I'm not trying to go back to that habit but sometimes, the thought of doing it lingers in my head at times.

I put my hand over my mouth in shock. I never knew this about Drennon. I always thought he was cold-hearted person that only cared about his self but I was wrong.

I would have never guessed he would do that to himself. Inside the journal were plenty more pages of written secrets. I was tempted to take it and explore more of it but I'm not risking the trouble of getting caught so I put the journal back like it was.

As soon as I placed it down, I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. I hurriedly grabbed the cleaning stuff to make it seem like I was cleaning.

"I told Bakari that if he wanted to get with me, he was gone have to show me he worth the time."

It was one of the girls that works down in the warehouse for Drennon. She didn't even notice I was cleaning as she continued to talk on the phone.

"I couldn't get with him cause of that bitch Tommie always up in his face. Shit would irritate me so bad. I'm glad she gone though. She wasn't a good look for Bakari anyway."

I had half of mind to snatch that phone out her hand. The nerve of her to speak on Tommie like that. I knew that if Tommie was still around, she wouldn't be speaking none of that.

I quietly walked out the room trying not to make myself noticeable but I accidentally dropped my cleaning stuff. I turned around and it was the girl who was on the phone.

"So you must be the new maid. Well hey maid." She walked over laughing.

I mentally rolled my eyes cause she thought she was being funny. "I liked it better when Joseline said it." I could tell me and her were going to bump heads already and I've known her for two seconds.

"Oh you think you funny or something. You better stick to what you know and that's cleaning." She snarled kicking over the bucket of water I used for cleaning.