Bang-Bang-7

Ms. Jones

Dipped in perfection, her skin is like mahogany. The curves extending from the crest of her breast, to the inlet of her waist and the expansion of her Coke bottle hips - she is S.E.X. captured in a single sigh of ecstasy.

Look at me. 

Do your eyes climb the curves of my body? 

Can you feel my skin tone with your slowly blinking eyes? 

Do your hands crave the touch of my flesh? 

That little smile of yours tells me you thought your thoughts were private. I’m just sharing space with them for the time being.

Allow me to introduce to you, Carletta Jones, once a little girl who wanted to grow up to be a cat burglar, just because she liked creeping around the house unnoticed. 

At age 26, a beauty that is distracting to destruction, she is number one in the world. 

Yes, I know you looked again followed by a flash of guesses: Model, track-star, maybe even a porn-star? 

Well, Carletta isn’t her real name and this picture is just one of her many looks.

This isn't just some story, but collateral for staying alive.

Ms. Jones is the number one MERC in the world.

I can't tell you how I came about this information, but you need to know that she exists amongst us.

She is verse in some-400 forms of weaponry, knows three different killing styles of martial arts, speaks six languages fluently and can fly, drive, and navigate anything with a steering wheel or a throttle.

Everything we know about femme fatales could easily be based on her life in one way or the other, abstract or concrete.

As a baby, Carletta was left in a dumpster in the projects. 

Projects in the United States are a collection of low-income housing in the Land of Opportunity, but projects outside of the United States, have another level of penury.

There are these apartment buildings and I am using the word buildings loosely, nestled on the East Side of St. Thomas. They are far away from the five star hotels, cash rich tourists and the touted island life rivaling any paradise destination. 

This place makes up the worst projects/low-income housing on this 32-square mile island. An island that is U.S. Territory by the way.

A stench stays strong, marking the road into the projects with a putrid mix of dead dog, burning trash and soiled diapers of all things. 

With each dancing trade wind, flies are stirred up to form black sheets in the air.

Most of the apartments are mere shells after derelict upkeep and years of ravaging hurricanes. Weight-bearing walls are missing, yet the structures are standing - real life Tetris.

Welcome to  Bovoni Housing.

In one of these apartments is a Rastaman, squatting next to a pot, not on a little stove, but on coals. From this viewpoint, he sees everything  in Bovoni.

Kids play as they always do regardless of hunger, danger or in this case abject poverty.

“Keith, trow deh ball!”  Keith whirls the ball with his oddly crooked arm - most likely from having it broken and never seen or set by a doctor. 

The ball lands in an overflowing dumpster. Five kids, varying in size, shape and age stand helplessly at the prison of their only ball.

“Mon, yo strupid ass done lost deh ball up inside deh dumpstah!”  Leader De-Facto, but not the obvious choice is Bumpy, the shortest of them all and the heaviest and the loudest and the meanest.

“Getcha mutha-skunt up inside der and geh my ball!” 

Keith looks at  the dumpster that practically overshadows him. 

How quickly things change. From the cool thirteen year old kid, who can buy liquor, looking legal at 5'11 with a scruffy chin beard, to a dumpster diver. 

There is a faint baby’s cry. 

Keith looks back at Bumpy to see if he hears it too.

The cries become louder. Bumpy takes the first back-step.

Without even a shared look, the kids scatter in all directions.

Within moments, rastaman is standing next to the bin and the cries are now bellowing out.

 “Jah! Who done gah an leave a babee chuck ‘way in deh garbage like dis mon?” Rastaman sucks his teeth - a universal response among West Indians.

He whips his head forward, his four-foot long dreads cascade in front and he twists them up into a bun, that is more like a basket on top of his head.

Rastaman disappears between the back of the dumpster and the graffiti tagged wall. He emerges with a baby wrapped in a T-shirt that reads CAHS ATHLETICS (Charlotte Amalie High School).

“Da be your babee?” asks Woody, one of the kids from earlier. He is short for his age with a squeaky voice and big feet. 

Rastaman gives a slight shake of the head, “no” and keeps it moving.

With the sun out of the sky, the tangerine colors of sunset are subtly consumed by a star glazed dome over the island.

Near Waterfront, at the fire station that was once the island’s main Fort during Danish Rule, Rastaman stands in the shadows with the cooing baby. 

A fireman gets up from the recliner posted infront of the station and goes inside for the dinner call. 

With a kiss on the forehead, Rastaman places the baby gingerly in the recliner and makes his way through the shadows.

 Many paths lead to redemption and some of those paths are violent.

Carletta grew up in a foster care system that barley fostered and definitely did not care. Every bad thing that you can think of that could happen to a girl, happened. 

Google scar, it says, “... scarring is a natural part of the healing process.”

By the time Carletta was 18, she was scarred, but healed.

Fast forward to a full ride scholarship to Clark Atlanta University. No, not a sports scholarship, but an academic one.

She got noticed on the national scene of IT when she developed the first App for smart phones. No, it wasn’t under Jobs at Apple either.

Carletta received a very coveted paid internship at Langley. 

Regardless of your political views or conspiracy theories you may subscribe to or not, our government has to get its hands dirty to maintain its position in the global structure of power.

Back in the day, spies died unknown for their service and valor, but the general public’s emerging awareness has caused the IC - intelligence community to publicly acknowledge the heroes once known as secret operatives - spooks. 

Take Seal Team 6 getting full recognition and films like ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ giving a full account of covert missions to hunt and kill enemies of the U.S.

The term covert no longer means hidden from sight, but now perhaps it means, no accountability.

And this brings me back to Carletta Jones aka Ambassador, UN Peace Keeper, Peace Corp volunteer, Doctors without Borders, yes, she has many names as well as many faces.

Our country is not kept safe by just having the strongest military, but for “little” missions that serve the interest of protecting our superior existence.

And Carletta stops at nothing to support this interest.  

This is what I've learned about Ms. Jones so far. She said we'll be in touch, but I have no contact info on her. I guess it's a wait-n-see kinda situation.

Photo by Carey Bradshaw    

careybradshawphoto@facebook.com