by Meesha Mink
Fuck tears.
I pick up my journal and open it. The first thing I see is a doodle of my name. Not my real name, Jamillah Unger, but my nickname, Princess. I use my finger with the bit-off nails to trace the flower pattern surrounding it. They call me Princess because my mother’s nickname is Queen.
Humph. That chick ain’t know shit about bein’ no queen and she damn sure ain’t never treat me like no princess. When my mother looks at me, she ain’t seen shit but a child support check. My daddy used to beat both our asses. He’s a major asshole, but he’s a major asshole with a decent trucking job that pays his court-ordered support like clockwork. To me that’s the only reason I’m still up in this piece. No Princess, no check.
My eyes dart out the window as raised voices float up to me.
“Bitch, where my money?”
“I ain’t got it, Hassan.”
See? Drama. Shit, I just got home from school. It’s still early.
Hassan, one of the minor dealers up in Bentley Manor, reaches out and grabs this head name Delia by the neck. I make a face as her thin and crack-ravaged body drops to her knees as she fights to get his hands off of her.
Delia is a mess. She used to be one of the prettiest chicks I ever seen in my life. Even prettier than that chick Aisha who got slashed by one of her tricks a few months back. Delia’s mixed. She’s Blasian (half Black, half Asian). That crack has her ass good and jacked up. No teeth. Stank breath. Stank ass. Ashy skin. Dull eyes. Skin and bones. Walking dead.
I shift my eyes to Hassan’s face. That Negro has a nasty-ass temper. Shit, I can’t count how many of these heads Hassan done fucked up behind dope money. I thought this crazy-ass junkie named Smokey’s ass was gonna be good and lumped the fuck up if Miz Cleo and Miz Osceola didn’t run Hassan’s ass off.
And I love those old ladies, especially Miz Osceola. They fightin’ a losin’ battle tryin’ to get the drugs and the dealers up outta Bentley Manor, but you gotta give ’em an A for effort. Mind you, I just hope they don’t bring the wrong attention on themselves trying to play neighborhood watch. The po-po ain’t gone be worth a damn bit of help to them if one of them dealers decides to send them on to their Maker. Not that they missed much. Them two old ladies are nosy as hell, and they always tryin’ to figure out the latest drama about to pop off.
A flash of red catches my eye. I look toward the building across the parking lot from me. My best friend, Lucky, is waving like crazy from her bedroom window. Is that heifer wearing a red teddy with the titties cut out? What the fuck?
Lucky is wild and crazy and I love her to death.
A few seconds later I see her pulling her boyfriend, Dean, in front of the window. My mouth opens as she strips him naked and then drops to her knees to take Dean’s hard and long dick into her mouth.
That bitch told me in school today she was going to sneak Dean into her room to spend the night, and I didn’t believe her. Leave it to Lucky to make sure she let me know I was wrong.
Her and Dean started messing around at the start of school year a few weeks ago. They been hot in each other’s pants ever since. They supposed to be in love. Who knows if they really are? Shit, momma Dumb-Ass done been in love a million times since my daddy left. So much for believing in that shit.
Even though her mother died years ago, Lucky has the normal teenage life I can only dream about. Boyfriends. A good relationship with her father. Thoughts of nothing but clothes, videos, and makeup. Thoughts of college when we graduate this year.
I’ve never had a boyfriend and don’t want one. With all the men I’ve had playing over me when they got ready, I wasn’t looking for another dude who will want to fuck me, too. All boys and men want is sex. I don’t even like to bring attention to myself, so I never wear makeup and I never wear all the cute tight-fitting clothes like Lucky and most of the other girls at school. I never even think about college. I ain’t smart enough and I damn sure ain’t got the money. Plus I’m sure Queen will eventually throw me out once I get aged out of child support. Instead of working on a B.S. or B.A. degree, I’ll be looking for a J.O.B. after I graduate.
My thin, fake-wooden bedroom door swings open suddenly.
“Princess, where Cash say he was going?”
I turn my head to see my tall and curvy redbone mother standing there. Figures the first question out her mouth would be about her latest no-good boyfriend, Cash. Fuck asking your only child about her day. Fuck making sure I went to school today. Fuck checking to see if I ate. Fuck me. I get the picture loud and clear.
I look at her for a long time and wonder why she hates me. Is it because I look like Ben (my daddy who don’t deserve to be called Daddy) or because she never wanted a kid? What is it that makes this woman treat me worse than a stepchild?
“Why you starin’ at me like that?” she asks in that big booming voice of hers. “Where did Cash go?”
I just shrug my shoulders and turn my head to look back out the window. All I know is his no-good ass wasn’t here when I got home and I was glad for that.
I’m ’bout tired of his ass watching me like a hawk. I flip back in my journal to the day he moved in with his garbage bag of dirty clothes. I wrote:
I hate the way he looks at me. His eyes feel like hands on me. I hate it. Another damn pervert.
He supposed to work at UPS, but the only thing I see his ass deliver is below the waist—and that’s when he ain’t smoking weed. He looks only a little older than me, and I don’t know where she found his ugly, big teeth ass. Yesterday morning when I woke up I walked in on him and my momma having sex on the living room floor. He looked up and saw me walk in the room, and his ass ain’t even stop fucking her. He just gone look up at me and wink while Momma’s dumb ass steady hollering for Jesus. I just turned around and went back in my room to try and get the memory out of my head.
“Why you can’t open your mouth and answer me?” Queen yells.
If I did talk would you even hear me? I think as I turn my head and look at her again.
“And why your ass always looking sad and shit?”
Bitch, like you don’t know.
Queen just sucks her teeth and leaves the room, slamming the door behind her.
I flip back through the pages to the day my grandmother died. January 15, 2005. The tears come flooding back, and this time I let them fill my eyes and soak my lashes before I raise my hands to dash them away.
Granny had been my savior over the years. The few summer weeks spent at her house in South Carolina was the only time I felt any happiness. The only fucking time.
I bite my bottom lip as I read the letter I wrote her in my journal that day:
Dear Granny,
Today you left me and I wish that I could go to heaven with you. I never told you that the days I spent at your house was my lifesaver. I could take a bath and not worry about some man walking in on me…to touch me…to make me touch him. At your house I knew when I went to bed I could sleep in peace. My door wouldn’t open. The covers wouldn’t be pulled back. I wouldn’t wake up with some man hands and thing on me…in me. At your house and in your arms I knew what it meant to be loved and to be safe. Who gonna love me now?
When she first died, I used to dream of using my hands to dig through the dirt so that I could crawl in the grave with her. The dreams stopped, but I still miss her like crazy.
I close my journal and pick up my old, taped-up, no-name CD player. I push play. The sweet strains of Mary J. Blige’s classic “My Life” fill my ears and seem to drift through to my soul. I love this song.
Some of the anger I have for my momma eases…for now.
Some of the pain I have about my past stops…for now.
And some of that ache I have for my granny pauses…for now.
“My Life” is my theme song. My own cry for help. “If you look in my life and seen what I’ve seen,” I sing, wishing and hoping and praying people really did know what the fuck I been through.
The one thing good and pure an
d rich in my life is my voice. Sometimes I don’t feel pretty. Sometimes I know I ain’t the best dressed or the smartest. But one thing I know for damn sure is that my ass can sing. It’s the one thing I got from my momma that she can’t take back. And I think she hates it that I sing better than her. Everybody says so.
I am getting lost in the words and the music as I sing that motherfucking song like I am on the mic. Like it’s my CD. Like I’m reaching millions of people with my voice the way Mary J. does.
I know that my voice drifts out my open bedroom window for the wind to carry. I don’t care.
I know everyone downstairs in the parking lot or in the surrounding buildings with their windows open can hear me. I don’t care.
I know the pain I feel is deep in my voice. I don’t care.
“Sang, Princess,” someone calls up from downstairs.
Just to show off, I do a run that I know can even make Ms. Mary J. pause.
As the song ends, I open my eyes. Lucky and Dean are both in her window listening. Other people are standing to their windows. The hood boys downstairs stop shooting dice and slinging dope to look up at me. From their usual spot in front of their buildings, with their bats at their sides, Miz Osceola and Miz Cleo are listening.
My door opens again. “Will you shut the hell up and get out the window with that bullshit,” Queen snaps before she slams the door again.
I ache for my mother’s love so much that I hate that bitch.
3
Keisha
“Keisha, girl. You’ve got to do something about my hair!” Hawkina snatches a pink do-rag off her head and reveals a thick mess that looks like rats have been sucking on it.
“Oh, girl.” I reach up to inspect the damage, but her shit is so hard, I’m surprised it doesn’t cut my hand. “What the hell did you do?”
Hawkina’s eyes fill with tears. “I tried this new home relaxer—”
“Say no more.” I ease the door open. “C’mon, girl. Let’s see if I can work a miracle.” I ought to be ashamed the place is a mess, but this place always looks a mess.
My kids: Jasmine, seven; Jordan, six; Jada, five; and Jackson, four, make it impossible to keep a clean apartment. So as usual, Hawkina and I navigate our way through a floor littered with race cars, Legos, Barbie dolls, and God knows what else to make it to the kitchen where Layla is already sitting, waiting for me to base her edges.
Layla, a lanky ink-black sistah with matching eyes, glances up and does a double take on Hawkina’s fried hair. “Ooh, damn, girl.”
“Good morning to you, too,” Hawkina says, pulling out one of my wobbly kitchen chairs and dropping her two-hundred-plus-pound ass into it.
“Damn, girl. Don’t break my shit,” I warn her.
Hawkina and Layla glance at each other and share a chuckle.
“Whateva,” I mumble. I may have gotten most of my shit from yard sales or out by the Dumpster wheneva someone was evicted, but it is still my shit. I grab the red, wide-tooth comb planted in the center of Layla’s thick African bush and resume parting and basing her hair.
“Now, Keisha,” Hawkina starts up in a sad whine.
I already know she’s about to tell me she ain’t got no money.
“You know I just spent my first of the month check on school clothes for the kids. It’s a few weeks late, but late is better than never. Is it all right I hook you up on the fifteenth?”
What the fuck? Don’t these bitches know I got mouths to feed and clothes to buy, too? I take another glance at her jacked-up head and draw a deep breath. Heaven knows how long it’s gonna take me to work on that head.
“I know you need the money, too,” she adds, sliding into her best sistah-girl voice. “And if Bennie can flip some of his shipment this weekend, then I’ll rush over some money sooner. Promise.”
Hell, that’s where her money really went: investing in pounds of marijuana like they were stock options and hoping to flip the money by selling it further south in the smaller hick towns. A bad plan; seeing how Hawkina and Bennie are going to smoke half the investment and everybody knows ain’t nothin’ but a bunch of meth heads in those small towns. They’ll be lucky to make back what they paid for it. One thing they absolutely couldn’t do is sell the shit in Bentley Manor.
M. Dawg ran the weed circuit here and Kaseem handled the harder stuff. No one, and I mean no one, tries to bite off their action. There’s an order to these things and everyone respects it. That—or they get fucked up.
In all likelihood, Hawkina and Bennie will lose money, and their kids will continue to wear the same raggedy clothes they wore last year, just like mine.
“Yeah, girl. We cool,” I finally say.
“Yeah?” she asks, smiling, prominently displaying her missing front teeth.
There’s another knock on the front door, and I groan thinking it’s somebody else wanting me to do their hair on credit, but I know good and damn well that late money makes a monkey out of no money at all.
I rush into the living room, forgetting to watch my step and nearly break my neck on a pile of jacks and marbles. “Goddammit,” I hiss. How many times I got to tell these damn kids to put up their toys?
My visitor pounds on the door again. “I’m comin’!”
The banging continues, and by the time I reach the door, I’m ready to rip whoever it is a new asshole. However, when I snatch it open, my angry words die on my tongue. “Shakespeare.”
The plumpest, most kissable lips God has ever created on a man curl into a smile and I feel my heart pump. Shakespeare is everything my crackhead husband ain’t: dependable, reliable, and fine as hell.
“Hey, Keesh. Where’s Smokey?”
“Where you think? ’Sleep.” I laugh, but my voice is absent of humor.
Shakespeare glances at his watch and shakes his head. “He had an appointment with his parole officer this morning.”
Typical. “He ain’t said shit to me about it.” I point to the bedroom. “You’re more than welcome to try and wake him up if you wanna.”
Releasing a frustrated sigh, Shakespeare navigates effortlessly through the maze of toys and heads toward the back. “Afternoon, ladies.”
“Hey, Shakespeare,” my kitchen-saloon customers chime.
Layla and Hawkina grin and wink at Shakespeare as he passes. When he disappears into the bedroom, the women collapse against each other, giggling.
“All right. You ladies behave,” I chastise, tumbling over an endless stream of toys. “Goddammit,” I shout when I almost pitch face forward over Jordan’s skates.
Just then, Jasmine, my oldest, rushes through the door. “I saw Uncle Shakespeare. Is he here?”
“Where’s your brothers and sister at?” I snap instead. “You guys need to get in here and pick up these damn toys.”
Jasmine’s eager face falls and nearly rips my heart out. When will I learn to stop taking my frustrations out on the kids? “Yeah, he’s here,” I say, softening my voice. “But go get your brothers and sister and come clean this mess up. Uncle Shakespeare will still be here when you get back.”
Jasmine’s face lights up again. “Okay. I’ll be right back.” She disappears back out the door.
Shaking my head, an amused smile claims my lips as I turn back toward the kitchen. The girls have already returned to their seats, but are still snickering about my brother-in-law.
“Keisha, girl. Why in the hell did you ever hook up with Smokey’s triflin’ behind when you coulda had Shakespeare’s fine ass?”
“Girl, hush,” I say, snatching her head back to finish basing.
“Ow. Chile, watch it,” Layla snaps. “You know I’m tender-headed.”
“Sorry.”
Hawkina laughs. “She ain’t sorry. She’s just mad she picked the wrong brother.” She attempts to cross those thick ham hocks she calls legs, but after a few failed attempts, she settles on just crossing her ankles and letting her knees point in opposite directions. “Hell, I’m kicking my damn self. You know Shakesp
eare had a crush on me back in high school.”
I can’t help but laugh at that bullshit. “Come on, now, Hawkina. Everybody knows Shakespeare has only been crazy about one girl his whole life.”
Layla bobs her head, agreeing. “Devani. Her overreaching ass. If you ask me, she got what was coming to her.”
“Stop it now. It’s not nice to speak ill of the dead.”
“Humph,” Hawkina grumbles under her breath. “She ain’t saying nothing we didn’t say when Devani was walking around this motherfucker. Always had her nose in the air, acting like she was too good for this place, just ’cause she had gone to some damn technical schools and was fucking a football player.
“We all know that nigga had something to do with that drive-by shooting. Geneva said that she heard from Afrika that the bitch was also pregnant.”
“Hawkina!” I glance up to make sure Shakespeare isn’t around to hear.
“What? I’m just speaking the truth. Zion said that she recognized Tyrik’s black SUV that night of the shooting.”
I perk up at this news. “Did she tell the police?”
Hawkina’s face twists into an expression that clearly says, “Have you lost your damn mind? Ain’t nobody tellin’ the po-po shit. They spend too much time up in this motherfucker as it is.”
My face flushes with embarrassment. Hawkina didn’t say it, and she didn’t need to, but Smokey and I are one of the reasons the police roll up in here on the regular. It usually goes something like: Smokey would score some crack, come home and think his ass was runnin’ shit, and try to beat my ass.
It usually sounds like a war in this motherfucker. Next thing I know, Miz Cleo is on the phone and Smokey is off to cool his heels in a holding cell. I never press charges, not because I enjoy the occasional black eye, but because Smokey…well, because I love the bastard.
