Around the Way Girls

by Chunichi

  I rushed to the bus stop. Part of me wanted to walk because the walk wasn’t real long, but I didn’t want people to see me walking. I was probably safer getting on the bus and hiding in a corner. I walked down the street with my head down.

  One dude said, “Here she go, y’all. Skeet, skeet, skeet!”

  Yes, I heard the laughs, but I ignored it.

  I heard a girl say, “She a straight ho!”

  Disregard, I told myself.

  When they started following me and chanting shit, I turned around on they ass. “Aye, y’all better leave me the fuck alone. Don’t worry about what the fuck I do. Y’all fuckin’ hoes just jealous ’cause they chose me and y’all niggas just mad cause I won’t give y’all any pussy!”

  Just as I stopped right outside of Poly’s Burgers, a car skidded up the street and parked on the curb alongside me and the mob that was fucking with me.

  Danada hopped out with Tameka and two other broads I didn’t recognize, and they all came running toward me with bats.

  The crowd around me rushed away, and somebody yelled, “Aww shit! Somebody gonna get fucked up!”

  My heart started thudding in my chest. There was no way for me to escape as Tameka and the other two girls surrounded me and Danada was all up in my face.

  “Talk some of that shit now, bitch!” Danada yelled.

  “What?” My heart started thudding in my chest.

  “Bitch, you heard what the fuck I just said. Talk your shit now.”

  “Why I wanna talk shit about you, Danada?” I knew my voice sounded shaky, and tears were starting to form in the corners of my eyes.

  “I know. Tell me why you been talking shit about me!”

  I shrugged nervously, not really wanting to move.

  “I mean, you said I be hatin’ on you. What the fuck I gotta hate on a ho like you for?”

  I nodded, figuring it out. Tameka had told her all the shit I said.

  “Talk your shit now, bitch!” she yelled. “Say it now. If I wasn’t light skin, what? What?” Spit flew in my face as she was all in my grill.

  I put my hands up in surrender.

  “And, bitch, you knew I liked Li’l Murder, and you go and fuck him. I can’t stand your triflin’ ass, Diamond. I was your friend, but I warned you not to fuck with me!”

  My lips trembled, and I wanted to cry. A crowd was now forming around us.

  Danada laughed. “Y’all, look at this scary bitch, always woofin’ shit, but you ain’t nothin’ but a fuckin’ punk.”

  “I’m coo—”

  “Bitch, shut the fuck up!” She swung the bat at me and connected with the side of my face.

  I dropped to the ground instantly, and all four of them proceeded to give me the ass-whipping of a lifetime. The bats hit me on almost every part of my body. In my face, head, arms, chest, stomach, and legs. I crawled into a ball and hid my face inside of my forearms, but that didn’t stop the assault.

  Danada dropped to her knees and punched me over and over again in my face. I was screaming for my life, but that didn’t stop them from fucking my ass right up. The other three chicks kept hitting me with those bats. My mouth filled up with blood. Blood also poured from my nose, and I knew that knots were forming on my face. I received a couple more kicks before the shit was over.

  “You punk-ass bitch!”

  “Come on, Danada,” Tameka said.

  I could feel their feet slamming against the pavement as they ran away from me, leaving me lying on the ground. Their car doors slammed, and they skidded away.

  “Damn!” a dude said. “They fucked her up!”

  Then some squeaky-voice bitch said, “I wonder who nigga she fucked? You know it gotta be about a nigga, the way they did her in.”

  “Bitch shit, no doubt,” another said.

  I gritted my teeth and picked my ass up off the concrete. Then in all the pain I was in, I proceeded to walk to the bus stop to go home.

  When I got to the bus stop, I heard more people comment about my ass-kicking. I blocked it out by singing, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” in my head. I don’t know why the fuck it was in my head any damn way, at a time like that.

  I got on the bus and didn’t bother sitting in the back. I sat on the side near the bus driver. And, sure enough, that old bitch that was on the bus the last time with me and Tameka was on the bus again. She took one look at me and cracked up. I wanted to tell her ass to go eat some fucking prunes but thought against it. Her hands were clasped together like this was really a treat to see me all battered and bruised.

  What made it worse was when the girl who me and Danada had jumped got on the bus. I didn’t even look her way.

  The old bitch said, “Damn! Somebody DT’ed her ass!”

  The passengers roared with laughter.

  “I see that heiffa ain’t got nothing to say now, do she?” she said. “’Cause somebody clobbered your ass. I told you, God don’t like ugly, girl.”

  That was it! I stood to my feet and ran to the door. “Let me out!” I yelled.

  “I ain’t got to the stop yet,” the driver yelled.

  “Let me the fuck out!”

  The doors opened, and I ran out into the intersection, hoping a car would run my embarrassed ass over.

  When I got home, and once I got past Rhonda, who laughed at all the marks on my face, and my daddy, who didn’t bother to look my way, I went to my room, threw myself on my box spring, and cried until I fell asleep.

  Chapter 9

  I stayed out of school for a week. My daddy knew, but he didn’t really care, except until when the school started calling about my absences.

  I was lying in my bed under my frail blanket. I had been in bed for days, only getting up to eat, which I forced myself to do, and to use the bathroom. For some reason Danada kept calling for me, but I never answered it. But I did wonder what her ass could possibly want. I now hated her for ruining my reputation. I would be a laughing stock and labeled a ho for the rest of my life. Long Beach was a small city where everybody knew everybody. And the East Side of Long Beach was even worse. They always said, if you were fucking somebody, chances are, either your sister, cousin, or best friend had already fucked them.

  My dad asked me, “Why you ain’t been going to school, Diamond?” He didn’t even mention the bruises on my face.

  “Why you care?”

  “I don’t. I just don’t want these white folks to keep calling here, threatening to call Social Services.”

  “Daddy, I don’t ask you for much, so can you please take me out of Poly and put me in Cabrillo?”

  My daddy had to have some type of love for me. And when you loved someone, you cared about their happiness, right? And if you could fix it, you would, right?

  I started bawling.

  “Daddy, I don’t want to go back to Poly. Danada hate me and she passed some ugly rumors about me at school. Then her and three other girls jumped me, Daddy.”

  “That’s why you came back all fucked up?”

  I nodded. “I can’t go back there. The thought of going back there makes me want to kill myself. Daddy, please take me out of that school.”

  He stared at me for a long time, taking in the tears, the snot running down my face, and my sobbing. And it wasn’t a joke. It was sincere. I really wanted to die before having to step foot on that campus after what went down.

  “Okay.” He stretched. “Shit. I guess I’ll go down there first thing in the morning.”

  “Thank you, Daddy.”

  He froze when I said that. I didn’t know why at first. But then I figured it was a tender moment for him. I never felt tender toward him. He never represented what I felt a father should represent. He was just there. And he allowed Rhonda to subject me to so much. I guess I wanted to feel fatherly love and he never gave it to me. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him. I always felt that he didn’t love me. And I didn’t get it. I would think that my daddy would give me a double dose of love because he knew my mother had abandon
ed me. But it seemed like he missed his dose as well.

  I pushed that shit out of my head and went to sleep. My sleep was a whole lot better too. I wasn’t tossing and turning, because I knew I wasn’t going back to that fucking school.

  The next morning, I felt a sharp pain in my butt. I spun onto my back and found Rhonda in my room with a shoe.

  “Get your fuckin’ ass up and go to school, Diamond!”

  “But—”

  Wham!

  She swatted me again across the face. “Don’t fucking talk back to me. Take your ass to school.”

  I froze at the pain that spread throughout my face. Although my mouth was open, no sound was coming out, and I could barely breathe. I held my face and sobbed into my arm.

  She stood and stared at me. “You tried to play your daddy because you knew he was drunk. Well, it ain’t gonna happen. Get your ass up.”

  Once she walked out of the room, I stood to my feet.

  When my daddy walked into my room, I didn’t bother telling him what Rhonda did. He wouldn’t do shit. I shook my head as he stood in the corner of my room, pulled out his dick, and pissed. Then he fell to the floor and crawled out my room.

  I pulled something out of my stack of folded clothes on the floor. Then I went in the bathroom and brushed my teeth. In the mirror I could see the shoe had left an imprint on my face. But I didn’t care. It just went well with my busted lip, black eye, and the knot on my forehead from getting my ass beat.

  I put on some deodorant and walked out to the bus stop. I ended up dozing off on the bus.

  And I almost pissed on myself when I saw the old lady on the bus. Shit! I wondered how I hadn’t spotted her. And to make matters worse, I had missed my stop. Damn! I pressed the buzzer, prepared to get off on Long Beach Boulevard, instead of Atlantic Avenue, and now she was getting off on this stop as well. I didn’t even look at her. I knew if I did, she would let me have it.

  I simply put my head down and walked the two extra blocks to my school. I knew if I ditched, the school would call home, and it would be another beating for me.

  I crossed the street toward Atlantic, and she was walking with her cane, right behind me. What’s the purpose of getting off on Long Beach Boulevard if she’s going to walk toward Atlantic?

  “You want a donut?” she asked me.

  I looked at her surprised.

  “You want one or not, girl?”

  “O-okay,” I stuttered.

  “Then come on.”

  I followed after her into the donut shop that used to be Winchell’s, but some Koreans took it over and called it 24/7 Donuts.

  “What kind do you want?” she asked me once we made it inside.

  I shrugged.

  “Girl, what kind of goddamn donut do you want?”

  “A twist,” I said in a nervous voice.

  She ordered that and an orange juice for me. She handed it to me, and she took her cream cheese muffin and coffee and sat down. “Sit down. You got time, girl.”

  I tried to keep the frown off my face.

  Before I could even take a bite out of my donut, she asked, “Why you so angry, girl?”

  “Lady, you don’t know shit about my life.”

  “I know it won’t get good at the rate you going, beating people up and whatnot. You always reap what you sow.”

  I hated to be preached to. Especially when those who preached didn’t know shit about shit and wasn’t prepared to do nothing to help me. That’s why I stayed the fuck out of church. Wasn’t nobody there when Rhonda was trying to pass me to drug dealers for dope. Wasn’t nobody there when she beat me. Wasn’t nobody there when I was raped at twelve. And, most of all, wasn’t nobody there to stop my fucking mama from leaving me. So, now that I’m all fucked up, people got so much to say.

  I laughed at her comment. “You know what, ma’am? I may be young, but I listen a lot when an older person talks. The problem is that people around me that are older often don’t have anything important to say. You talk about how it takes a village and shit, but y’all see. All of y’all see the shit us girls around the way go through, even if you pretend you don’t. We get used up like a fucking Kleenex, and in the end, like a fuckin’ Kleenex, when there is no use for us ’cause we all tainted up, we better off in the trash. Y’all wanna come around and ask why we are the way we are. Tell me this—How can a fucked-up person make good choices?”

  She was silent.

  “Then y’all sit back and talk that reaping-what-you-sow shit.”

  She couldn’t say shit. I had her old ass. My appetite was gone. I stood from the table and walked out of the donut joint.

  Amazingly, when I got to school, everybody was off my shit and on to somebody else. Some other chick was caught sucking dick, and they had that on their phones. I still tried to keep a low profile.

  I was surprised as hell when Danada came to me during computer class. “What’s up, Diamond?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing.”

  She gritted her teeth. “Murder want us to meet him at King Park after school.”

  That got my heart beating. What the fuck did he want with me? Aside from getting my ass whipped, I didn’t do anything to anybody. Unless Danada told some lies on me. I prayed she didn’t. I didn’t want to go toe to toe with Murder. That man scared the hell out of me.

  She met me right after school at the back gate.

  “Kings Park ain’t that far, so we can walk,” she told me without looking my way.

  “Okay,” I mumbled.

  And, boy, was that an uncomfortable walk. When me and Danada used to hang out together, we talked nonstop about clothes, boys, and shit. Now it was nothing but a long, uncomfortable silence, other than an occasional sneeze, cough, or one of us clearing our throat.

  She didn’t offer any apology, and neither did I. I wondered if either one of us would get over this shit and be friends again. The way I looked at it, we were even. I had fucked the guy she liked, and she had fucked me up. Sounds like a fair exchange to me.

  As we approached the playground and walked farther into the park past the statue of Martin Luther King and toward the picnic tables, my heartbeat speeded up when I saw chicks over there. I didn’t recognize most of them, with the exception of the three that had jumped me. Murder was there, and Li’l Murder, Gutter, and two other dudes were standing near him. I prayed I didn’t get jumped again. With all them bitches that were there, I just knew, if they did it this time, I would probably end up paralyzed or dead.

  “Why are so many people up here?” I asked Danada.

  “It’s a meeting,” she said.

  Before we even got a chance to say anything, Murder exploded on Danada. “Bitch! Who in the fuck gave you authorization to jump on somebody in my muthafuckin’ hood?”

  “I—”

  “Bitch, shut the fuck up! I let Diamond get put on. You got a fuckin’ problem with that?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “’Cause it’s one thing that I can’t stand, it’s a hatin’-ass bitch!”

  She pulled her bottom lip in.

  “Apologize to that bitch now!”

  She turned to me quickly. “I’m sorry, Diamond.” She then turned back to Murder.

  I kept my head down and didn’t speak.

  “You ain’t runnin’ shit. And, since you wanna be so fuckin’ ambitious, you about to take a muthafuckin’ beating!”

  Her eyes got wide, and her lips started to tremble. She looked from me to Murder and nodded.

  As soon as Murder and the dudes walked away, all of them bitches rushed Danada. She went up in the air at the impact and quickly fell to the ground. Then I could no longer see her. All I saw were bitches crowded around her, throwing punches and kicks to her little body. But she didn’t cry; she took the ass-beating like a woman.

  When they were finished, Danada looked three times worse than I looked. Her face was all red, she had black eyes, a busted mouth, and patches of her long hair lay on the ground near her. The
whole nine yards. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

  Chapter 10

  “You ready, D?”

  I shrugged. “Shit, I guess as ready as I will ever be.”

  Danada just looked at me and laughed. “Who can ever be ready for the shit we about to do?”

  We both hopped out the car. We rushed to the door and knocked.

  “Boy, don’t answer that door without asking who it is first!” a lady said.

  But it was too late. Danada had put her gun to the side of the little boy’s head and pushed herself in the house. I followed behind her, my gun also drawn, pointing to whatever I thought moved in the house.

  “Don’t say shit, bitch! Just get all your little bastards and have a seat on the couch!”

  The lady nodded and gathered up all of three of her kids. The boy who answered the door looked to be the oldest, about five. The other kid, a very prettly little girl, with two Afro puffs in her hair looked to be about three, and the youngest was still in a diaper. The sight of me and Danada rushing in their house with guns terrified the fuck out of them kids. But Murder made us do this home invasion to prove we could put in work.

  “Diamond, you watch them, and I’ll find the shit.”

  What shit? One look around the house and I knew that lady didn’t have no dope or money. It seemed all the shit she had was under her Christmas tree.

  The oldest boy buried his head in his mother’s lap, while the three-year-old girl wouldn’t take her eyes off me, and her lips wouldn’t stop trembling. Her trembling matched the trembling in my fingers as they clutched the gun, as I continued to aim it at them.

  “It’s okay, babies,” their mama told them.

  I kept quiet, while Danada rambled through the rooms in the house.

  A few minutes later, she came back into the living room and said, “The bitch ain’t got shit.” Then she glanced over at the Christmas tree.

  “No, Danada.”