“Knock yourself out. What brings you all the way over here to the Black Beverly Hills?”

“Well . . .”

“Wait, let me guess. Mr. Fuck Fuck Fuck done fucked your little girl, too. Now, tell me I’m wrong?”

I cannot believe my ears. I didn’t expect anything close to this to come out of this young woman’s mouth. But all I can say is, “You’re not wrong.”

She claps her hands together hard. “He just won’t quit, will he?”

“So—you’re saying that he did this to you and your sister, too?”

“Oh, hell, yeah.”

“When?”

“When we was kids and when we was teenagers.”

“Why didn’t your mother stop him?”

She cuts her eyes at me like a knife. “Stop him how?”

“Didn’t you tell her?”

“How long did it take your daughter to tell you?”

“Actually, she didn’t. I found out the hard way.”

“See there. He blackmails you, making it so hard for you to say anything that when you finally just get tired and say ‘fuck it’ and drum up enough nerve to tell, you realize you got a mama who’s so goddamn stupid and so in love with the motherfucker that she swear up and down you making the shit up just ’cause she don’t wanna believe it, even when you finally turn fourteen and get pregnant by your goddamn stepfather and you say, ‘Now do you believe me?’ and she just accuse you of being a little ho’ and make you get a abortion and all you know is this ain’t the way you fantasized losing your virginity and you never dreamed in a million years that the first time in your life you’d get pregnant it would be by your fucking stepfather, and since he ruined everything that was meant to be precious, after that you get pregnant again but this time you don’t know and you don’t care who the daddy is ’cause you been giving it to anybody who want some and that’s only because you said, ‘Fuck it, fuck everything,’ and the next thing you know you ain’t got nothing in you that wanna get up and do shit so you just let your mama take care of you and your baby since it’s her fucking fault you got like this and you just kick it and take it easy and watch TV and eat as much as you want to and let the days pass by and wait till things get better but you know that that ain’t never gon’ happen, so here I am. Chillin’.”

I don’t say a solitary word.

“Say something.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“I know. This some of that Sally Jesse shit, ain’t it?”

“George isn’t your father?”

“Oh, hell, no. You didn’t know that?”

“No, I didn’t.” For a few seconds, I’m at a total loss for words here. “How old were you then?”

She closes her eyes and opens them real fast. “Five or six, I guess, ’cause she married Mr. Fuck Fuck Fuck when I was seven. He used to live downstairs in our building. He was married to wife number one, and then Mama took him from that woman.”