A Poetic Retelling of an Unfortunate Romance

Tears of rage formed within Ella’s eyes as she stood in front of James, holding the bag of cocaine in her hands accusingly in front of him while she screamed for him to tell her what the hell he was doing with that processed poison..

“Answer me!” she cried furiously, throwing the bag across the room. “What the fuck are you doing with that crap?!”

“Ella, calm down.” James attempted to calm her.

“Calm down?!” hissed Ella. “How the fuck do you expect me to calm down when I just found a bag of cocaine underneath your bed.”

“It’s not my shit!” James lied. “I'm holding it for a friend.”

Ella’s eyes narrowed in disgust. “Do you think I'm some stupid little girl that’s going to believe that lie?! You’re not holding it for some friend, you’re dealing it and I want you to tell me with your own mouth that you’re peddling this SHIT ON THE STREETS!”

“Just shut up!” he yelled, growing frustrated by her screaming.

“Fuck you!” shot back Ella. “You don’t tell me what to do!”

“This is my house!” James thought that would get her to calm down, he was wrong.

“Then I’ll fucking leave!” Ella grabbed her backpack from his chair. “I’ll leave you with your drugs, wouldn’t want to get in the way.”

“Awe come on Ella, don’t be like that,” pleaded James, grabbing hold of her arm as she walked by.

“Like what? Tell me!”

“So dramatic!” he exclaimed. “It’s just a little dealing. I'm not fucking hurting anyone!”

“You’re not hurting anyone?! What about the people that are putting that poison into their bodies? What about the fact that that product is produced in third world countries by cartels that massacre anyone that tries to stop them?! And you have the balls to say that you’re not fucking hurting anyone!”

“Those people seek me out! They want the drugs and they know what happens!”

Ella freed herself from his grasps. “Don’t try to justify your actions!”

“It’s the truth though! I can’t do anything about where the products are made! I'm just the dealer!”

“You’re just an idiot that’s going to end up dead on the side of the road, that’s what you are!” she spat, the tears finally spilling from her eyes.

“Snow White. . .”

“I don’t want you to die, James! I don’t want that to happen!”

James wiped the tears from her eyes. “I won’t die.”

“Yes you will,” whispered Ella, stepping away from him. “People get shot for dealing coke.”

“No they don’t.”

“YES THEY DO!” Ella blew up on him. “Dealers want control of good neighborhoods so they’ll kill someone to gain control of that corner!”

“That’s not true Ella that stuff only happens in movies.”

“You’re so stupid if you think that’s true.”

James sighed. “Ella, I think I know a little more about dealing than you.”

“No you don’t,” she wiped away her tears. “I know more about dealing than you could ever imagine and I know what I'm talking about because when I was five my uncle Pedro was gunned down by rival dealers.”

His eyes widened at her words. “What, you never mentioned that.”

“It’s not something I share, it’s personal but since you’re being a dumb fuck I want you to know what happens to people that want to make easy money by dealing that poison so shut up and sit down.”

James did exactly as he was told.

“My parents came to America from Mexico and they worked hard to establish themselves in this country. Once they were settled they began sending for my aunts and uncles, paying the traffickers to bring into America. All of them worked hard to get by; they’re good hardworking people that never broke the law, well, all except for my uncle Pedro.”

Ella sat down on the floor, her back against the wall as she stared at her hands, trying hard to keep herself from falling apart.

“He was the youngest, only seventeen when my dad got enough money to pay for him to come over,” Ella chuckled darkly. “Traffickers charged him five thousand to bring my uncle in and my dad paid it in full, wanting his youngest brother to have a chance at the American dream but my uncle didn’t want my dad’s version of the dream, he wanted his own.”

James heart clenched at the sight of his sullen Snow White.

“So my uncle joined a gang, I can’t tell you what the name of it was, I don’t remember, but I do remember the fights. I remember hearing my dad begging him to stop dealing, to stop that life and go to school but my uncle liked money, he liked being able to buy whatever he wanted with minimal work so he kept dealing and dealing and the fights became more frequent, sometimes ending with blows but my dad never kicked him out. He knew how much I loved my uncle and refused to part him from me, even though in retrospect maybe that would’ve saved his life because he loved me like his own daughter, maybe losing me would’ve helped him, but we’ll never know. . . we’ll never know.”

“You don’t have to keep going Ella . . .”

“You need to hear all of it. I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet,” muttered Ella.

James lapsed back into silence.

“For about eight months he was a dealer, working ever corner he could in Los Angeles but one day some cops picked him up. By some miracle he wasn’t deported but he was in prison for one year, two months, and five days.” Ella laughed. “I remember because I counted. I couldn’t wait for him to get out of jail and I always made my dad take me to visit him whenever there was a chance and every time we visited him he would give me a lollipop. Cherry flavored. They were my favorite and even in jail he remembered that. Fuck, I totally got off topic right now, I'm sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“Yes there is, I'm supposed to be scaring you not sharing a heart warming memory,” snapped Ella fiercely. “As I was saying, my uncle got out of jail and swore he was going to be a new man. He started working doing construction, he was okay for awhile; we all thought he was better but he wasn’t. He’d just gotten better at hiding everything.”

Without warning Ella jumped up from her place on the ground, throwing over his CD rack which sent hundreds of cases stumbling out of the vertical plastic container.

“We all BELIEVED him! He lied to us! HE FUCKING LIED TO ME. I was just five and he lied to me, he told me that he wasn’t going to make me sad anymore and I fucking believed him like an idiot! I bought into it.”

“Shh, Ella,” cooed James as he tried to wrap his arms around her but she refused to be held.

“Don’t try to calm me down! I'm telling a damn story so LET ME TELL IT!”

“Alright, alright.” He went back to his seat.

“The day before his twentieth birthday he told me that we were going to go to Disneyland the next day so we could celebrate it at the happiest place on earth. Then he kissed my forehead, right here,” Ella pointed to the spot where his lips had touched her flesh with a trembling hand, “And told me I love you my little snow white and I’ll see you tomorrow. The next morning I awoke to a house filled with people crying, everyone in the family was there and they were bawling their eyes out and I remember telling them not to cry because we were all going to go to the happiest place on earth with my uncle Pedro.”

That was the moment when Ella completely lost it and fell to the floor, her body shaking from the intensity of her sobs. James immediately rushed to her side, cradling her in his arms as he rocked her back and forth.

“My uncle was gunned down by rival dealers, he was twenty years old and I remember not being able to understand what was happening when people told me that he was gone. I fell apart. I went ten months without saying a word after he died and I was just kid then so when I found that smack underneath your bed the first thing I thought was, how am I going to react to a death of that kind now that I'm older?”

“Ella. . .”

“It’s true, you may not want to think about your mortality but you’re going to die if you keep dealing that shit and as much as I love you.”

That was a phrase that she’d never told him before and hearing her say that for the first time made his eyes go wide in shock.

“That’s right I love you, there, I said those fucking three words that we’ve never told each other!” Ella slithered out of his hold, standing up immediately after. “I love you but I'm not going to sit around waiting for you to die like my uncle did! I REFUSE to lose another person like that, so you better tell me right now what you plan to do because it’s me or the drugs. It’s as simple as that.”

“It’s not that simple, I made a promise. . .”

“Well then I hope you’ll be very happy with your drugs,” Ella picked up her bag from the floor.

Slowly, she walked towards the door hoping that he would stop her but he didn’t.

He let her leave.