It was a good idea, Bacardi felt, since caseworkers’ phones had tracking and the supervisors were known to do call checks. However, Keisha was against it. She flat-out refused to go along with the plan.
“We can’t do that, Bernice. Plus, I need the overtime. Did you forget? I got to pay you your money back, right?”
Bacardi grumbled and sighed again. Keisha wasn’t going to budge, and she did need her $500 back. Bacardi dragged herself away from the cubicle with her mink coat in hand and her feet on fire. Her toes ached so badly, she was ready to walk out in the street barefoot. She didn’t care if it was cold outside.
The traffic going into the Bronx seemed longer than the Great Wall of China. The roadways were a parking lot, with brake lights stretching for miles and miles. Every minute Bacardi sat in the traffic was a minute closer to her boiling point. She blew air out of her mouth and frowned.
“We’re almost there, Bernice,” Keisha said.
“We should have been fuckin’ there. I swear, this city is a fuckin’ mess! I hate this fuckin’ city!”
“We’re just doing our jobs.”
“I fuckin’ hate this job too!” she griped.
Keisha decided to keep quiet and just drive. Bacardi was bitter. Keisha felt it was best not to say anything else to piss her off.
The five-story brick building on Jerome Avenue looked like a mountain of trouble. Their assigned removal was on the top floor. There was no elevator, so they had to take the stairs, which agitated Bacardi even more. Her dogs were barking like the mailman was outside. She grimaced and cursed every step and every floor. When they finally reached apartment 5D, Bacardi said to Keisha, “This bitch better not give me any problems.”
Bacardi knocked several times on the apartment door. She could hear music playing and the kids inside, sounding loud and disorderly. It was taking a while for the occupant of the apartment to answer the door and Bacardi was growing impatient. What made it worse was the fact that she could smell weed burning from inside and she couldn’t take a hit of it when she needed it the most right now. Bacardi clenched her fist and once again rammed the bottom of it against the door.
“I got a bad feeling about this. Maybe we should wait for our police liaison,” Keisha said.
Bacardi looked at her like she was crazy. Waiting for an escort meant more time, and it was time she didn’t want to waste. She wanted to get the shit over with. Protocol was that every caseworker would be required to seek entry orders when denied access to a home of a child suspected to be at risk of neglect or abuse. But this was an immediate removal, and every minute was valuable.
Finally, the old, brown door was swung open by the children’s mother. She stood barefoot in front of Bacardi and Keisha looking a ghetto mess in tight blue pum pum shorts, a tattered bra, a red scarf covering her head, and a serrated knife in her hand. Both of her arms and chest were swathed with tattoos. She scowled at the caseworkers and placed her hand on her hip, looking at them like, Bitch what? “Y’all fuckin’ bitches ain’t coming up in here takin’ any of my fuckin’ kids!”
Her unruly kids were behind her, running around the messy and foul smelling apartment. They were 10, 14, and 16. There had been reports of the ten– and fourteen-year-old girls being physically and sexually abused by the mother’s boyfriend, who also lived in the home. The sixteen-year-old daughter was a known Blood gang member in the neighborhood, and it was alleged that she was pregnan
t by a man old enough to be her father. It was total chaos inside the two-bedroom apartment.
“Y’all bitches need to get the fuck away from my fuckin’ door! I ain’t fuckin’ playin’. I will fuckin’ cut and kill y’all muthafuckas if you try to step foot in this apartment and disrespect me and my fuckin’ kids!” shouted the mother.
It didn’t take long for her kids to join her at the door and emulate their mother. They too started to curse and threaten the caseworkers.
Keisha immediately took a few steps back from the apartment door. She didn’t want that kind of trouble, so she got on the horn to call for backup.
Bacardi was livid. She thought, The audacity of this bitch pulling a knife out on me! Her hateful scowl matched the threatening mother and her kids. Bacardi was a bitch from the block, and a dumb ghetto thot with a kitchen knife didn’t intimidate her.
“You need to fall the fuck back, bitch, or get fucked up,” Bacardi retorted.
“You stupid lookin’ big bitch, fuck off!” the mother shouted, while wildly waving the knife around in the air.
The shouting echoed through the hallway. A few neighbors opened their doors with inquisitiveness.
The oldest daughter was up in Bacardi’s face too, furiously wagging her finger and threatening to have both ladies fucked up by her peoples. The mother egged her daughter on. They were two peas in a pod, and they were ready to tag team Bacardi. It soon became a shoving match at the doorway, and Bacardi saw her moment and abruptly charged at the mother with two rapid punches to her face, somewhat dazing her and catching her off guard. Then Bacardi grabbed the arm that carried the knife and she made sure it was flung from the woman’s hand. Bacardi outweighed the lady by fifty or sixty pounds. A violent fist fight between them ensued inside the apartment. The sixteen-year-old daughter jumped in and tried to protect her mother from the pit bull of a caseworker.
“You dumb fuckin’ bitch!” screamed Bacardi as she strongly clutched a handful of the mother’s hair and nearly dragged her around her own apartment like a ragdoll.
The daughter started punching Bacardi on her back, and Bacardi elbowed the young girl in her face, spewing blood. Keisha stood in the background in absolute shock. It was chaos. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. The two younger daughters were crying, and a few neighbors had gathered at the doorway to observe the violent fight inside the apartment.
Bacardi had lost it. She repeatedly punched the mother in her face and tossed her around the living room something serious. The daughter was no match for Bacardi either. They were giving it their all, but Bacardi was a beast, giving them both hell. Those bitches had pushed her buttons, and that violent street thug came out of her.
Finally, two uniformed cops arrived at the scene. They charged into the apartment and broke up the fight before they killed each other. The mother was highly upset and shaken. She screamed at Bacardi, “Yo, arrest that bitch! She came into my fuckin’ home and assaulted me!”
“You lying fuckin’ cunt! Fuck you, bitch!” Bacardi retorted.
The mother looked like she had gone some rounds with Floyd Mayweather—a bloody face, a torn weave, and a bruised eye. The daughter was in a similar condition. Bacardi was breathing heavily. The situation had turned into a disaster and a nightmare all in one. Seeing the police in the room taking statements from people, Bacardi knew she’d fucked up. She had lost her cool and reacted. She mouthed to herself, “Shit!”