Around the Way Girls

by Karen Williams Chunichi

  “I have some things I have to take care of, Clutch. I appreciate you stopping by,” she whispered into his ear, trying to keep it nice.

  “I’m not done yet. There’s a lot of money on that floor.”

  What’s up with everybody wantin’ extras tonight? Misha’s body was taking a beating on this day.

  But her pussy was in prime condition, and Clutch was well aware of that fact. Shit, he was just getting started.

  After two more sexual sessions and a role play rendition of “Clutch the Dog chases Misha the Cat,” Misha finally convinced Clutch to leave.

  Feeling like she had put in three full days of work in just a few hours, Misha collapsed on her sofa and closed her eyes. She hated doing what she was doing, and she wanted out.

  After resting for a few moments, she opened her eyes. She looked around her living room at all of the money Clutch had thrown and mustered up enough strength to get her butt up of the sofa and picked it up from the floor. She counted it all up. Her visual calculation was exactly on point. He had tricked fifteen hundred dollars on her.

  Now, that’s what the fuck I’m talking about. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  WHAKELAH

  “Fuck that! My TV show is going to be the shit! Anybody who ain’t feeling my show don’t know what talent is!” Whakelah said, her dark-skinned hands resting on her slim waist.

  “Girl, there’s just too many of them reality shows on the air. They’re taking over. Every time I turn on the damn TV, all I see is somebody’s reality show. I think it’s ridiculous. They’re getting rid of all of the good television shows and all of the good movies too.” Misha had finally made it to Whakelah’s apartment.

  “That’s ’cause that shit is fake. People are tired of that fake shit. They wanna know the real deal. Shit, I’ma keep it one hun’ed, you know what I’m sayin’.”

  “Yeah, like when a nigga says he’s gonna call you, and the nigga don’t call. He ain’t gotta lie. I can handle it. Just keep it real and keep it movin’, and a bitch won’t be waiting to see the number pop up on my phone.”

  Whakelah didn’t know what that comment had to do with what she was saying, but her girl was always talking about niggas in some way or another, so she continued doing what she was doing.

  Whakelah had just come from shopping and getting her hair braided from the African braid shop on the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road. She was busy popping on a piece of Doublemint gum and dumping her and her kids’ new clothes out of countless shopping bags onto her green faux leather sofa. She couldn’t stay out of the boutiques and department stores, though she couldn’t afford to be in them. Layaway was her best friend.

  Whakelah Brown was collecting a welfare check and receiving food stamps for her and her two kids, and had the nerve to have a shopping fetish. She would give anything to be able to go to Beverly Hills and shop on Rodeo Drive like the true rich bitches of the world. She was also overly caught up in the reality shows that had taken over the cable networks and prime time stations. She had dreams of creating her own reality show and was willing to do whatever it took. But she didn’t have a dollar in her pocket.

  “Damn, Whakelah! Y’all don’t need no more clothes. You be on a mission. You got a bad habit, girl, and you need to fix that shit. You need to stay out of the stores.”

  “Hmph. And why do I need to stay out of the stores? Rich people get to shop until they drop. And do you see the price tags on their shit? They be buying shoes and bags that cost thousands of dollars, and ain’t nobody telling them they need to stop shopping.”

  “Uh, I don’t know if you’ve looked in a mirror lately, but yo’ ass ain’t nowhere near rich. Bitch, we live in the projects, and we’re on public assistance.”

  “A bitch can dream, can’t she?”

  They both laughed.

  “And I may not be rich, but I can spend the hell out of a damn dollar, I bet you that.”

  “Shit, you and me both.”

  They both laughed again.

  “Nah, but really though, you need to slow down with buying all these clothes, and all of these crazy gadgets and toys that you really can’t afford.” Misha told her.

  Misha knew that she had just escaped her financial blues by coming up with the rent money just in the nick of time, and she didn’t have any children. Whakelah, on the other hand, had two children, but she seemed not to worry about where her next dollar was coming from. Misha never knew of any man that Whakelah was dating to be providing for her in any substantial type of way, so she wondered how in the hell she was making her situation work. She wanted to know Whakelah’s secret. Whatever her secret was, Misha needed to get on the same program, because her ship was sinking, and it was sinking fast.

  “You need to stay out of the stores, Whakelah. You’re spending too much money, money that you don’t have, on shit you don’t even need.”

  “You need to stay out of my business.”

  “What about your household bills?”

  “What about ’em? Shit, they’ll get theirs when I decide to give it. I ain’t livin’ to be paying no damn bills. Those bills are going to always be there, steadily coming in every month. Shit, a lady like me is going to stay fly.”

  Whakelah continued folding up their new clothes and placing them in their particular piles so that they could easily be deposited into their clothes bank, which was their closets. She gave some thought to what Misha was kicking to her. She knew she had a serious problem; she was a shopaholic. But shopping was the only way she could drown her sorrows.

  Whakelah wasn’t where she wanted to be in life. She was a twenty-four-year old single mother of two, with no real skills. She’d dropped out of high school to have her daughter when she was fifteen, gave birth to her son two years later, and never bothered to go back to school. She had been on public assistance and found it easier to live off the system than to get a job and have to worry about her kids being safe while she was at work. Sure, she juggled her shit, and robbed Peter to pay Paul, but she thought she was doing pretty well for herself.

  Until she became obsessed with wanting her own reality show. The world of television seemed like it was a million miles away and far out of Whakelah’s reach. Without a high school education and financial stability, she had no idea how she was going to make her dream come true, but she was determined to do so.

  “I can’t be on my reality show looking tore up,” she told Misha.

  Just then, Whakelah’s son, Marvin, came running into the living room. He was seven years old, and a straight A student in second grade. “Mommy, can I have the new Xbox 360?”

  Whakelah looked at Misha. She knew Misha was waiting to see what her answer would be to her son.

  “See? What I am I supposed to do when my kids ask me for stuff?”

  “Tell them no!”

  “I can’t tell them no. Shit, they didn’t ask to come here. I brought them here.”

  “Hmph. See, your ass is buggin’. I would tell their little asses no in a heartbeat. They’d be like, ‘Ma, can I’—NO! See how easy that is?”

  Whakelah giggled. It seemed easy enough, but she knew her kids were not having it. They were used to getting what they wanted, when they wanted it, and so was she. In a way, Whakelah felt that she needed to be an excellent mother to her kids so that they wouldn’t miss having a father around. And, sure enough, having all of the clothes and toys that they wanted seemed to divert their attention to the fact they didn’t have a father figure in their lives. But Whakelah knew that she was burying herself under a financial burden.

  Whakelah also had been lying to various caseworkers for the past three years, receiving public assistance and food stamps for herself and five kids, not the two she had. The Department of Social Services had discovered this information and had contacted her, informing her that she was under investigation. They advised her that she could very well receive federal jail time, in addition to having to pay back all the money stolen from the government.

 
The days of caseworkers coming out to the homes of welfare recipients to perform home inspections had long gone. However, the Social Services Department still had their ways of finding out who was trying to cheat, or beat the system.

  Misha saw that she wasn’t going to get anywhere trying to convince her best friend to curve her addiction and stop shopping. Misha knew deep down that it was Whakelah’s personal way of relieving stress. She really couldn’t blame her. After all, isn’t shopping every woman’s stress reliever?

  “I don’t care about your ass, but I’m worried about the kids. You’re teaching them bad spending habits. And as far as you and your crazy reality show, do you know what stardom and television does to children. It screws them up. Look at Michael Jackson.”

  “Don’t be comparing my kids to Michael Jackson. My kids are nothing like he was when he was a child, God rest his beautiful soul. My kids, they have their childhood. I’m not rushing them to grow up. They want to be on television just as bad as I do.”

  “Sure, they do, Whakelah.”

  Whakelah had actually drilled the idea of having their own reality show into her children’s heads. She had them watching all of the latest reality shows on television, even the ones that were inappropriate for their age group. Her daughter was a fan of For the Love of Ray J, and her son’s favorite was Diddy’s Making the Band, and they both loved Run’s House.

  Whakelah felt that her kids needed to have a deep sense of reality, how people behave and react in real-life situations at a young age. She believed that, when they approached their later years, they would be well informed as to the ways of this unpredictable world and would know how to cope, and handle themselves. She also believed that fewer people would be able to take advantage of them in whatever career path they chose to pursue.

  To Whakelah, her life was fairly decent, but she wanted a whole lot more. She regretted not finishing school. She knew that if she had finished school and not taken the easy way out, she would’ve already had the knowledge she needed to take herself to the next level. She also knew that there were young girls and boys who needed to know what she’d been through coming into adulthood and would benefit from seeing her life portrayed.

  Her next purchase was going to be a computer. She had no idea how she was going to afford it, but she knew that both she and her kids would benefit from the purchase of one. A computer would help the kids with their school assignments, and it would also help her branch out into the world of networking.

  Whakelah wanted to start making a name for herself on web pages like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. Her cousin, Tank, who was a DJ, had blown up just by being popular on these sites on the Internet. Whakelah realized that, for her reality television show to be a success, she had to have a following and a huge fan base. There were a lot of people that utilized the web to make connections, and she desperately needed to get connected.

  “You need to stop teaching them how to be the next reality superstar and start teaching them how important it is to get an education,” Misha said, not realizing that, in Whakelah’s mind, reality shows were educating her kids.

  “Didn’t I tell you that you need to stay out of my business? What about you? Did you get an education in being a ho? Oh, excuse me, I mean, a special services consultant. Or were you self-taught?”

  “I’m self-taught, bitch, and I’m a pro. Film that!” Misha snapped her head from side to side.

  “I’ll pass on that. I’m not into porn.”

  “You need to be. That’s where the money is.”

  “Then, bitch, I guess that’s where you need to be. You the one tricking.” Whakelah walked from her living room into her kitchen to begin cooking dinner for her and her kids, leaving Misha behind.

  Misha didn’t take offense to her best friend riding her about what she was doing to make her ends meet. She knew Whakelah didn’t approve of her lifestyle, but they were still best friends, and nothing would ever change that.

  “Whateva, Miss Stinkness. Like I said, reality shows are supposed to be real. You shouldn’t have to teach them how to act,” Misha yelled from the living room.

  Whakelah wasn’t trying to hear what Misha was saying. She was hell-bent on having her life on television for the entire world to see. She felt that Misha was too caught up with men to have a valid opinion about anything, except for subjects pertaining to men. How could she possibly have advice for her when she was no further in life than Whakelah was? Then, on top of that, having something to say about what was going inside of Whakelah’s apartment, when pure sin was going on in her own.

  Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and broccoli was on the menu for the evening. Whakelah washed her chocolate brown hands, gathered the ground beef from out of the refrigerator, her roasting pot from her bottom cupboard, and reached up to grab her seasonings from the cupboards on the top. As she blended the ingredients into the roasting pot, she reflected on her life, and what brought her to the point to which she was currently at, the point of emotional and financial turmoil.

  Whakelah had been digging a huge hole for herself for quite some time with her bad spending habits. There wasn’t a day that she hadn’t purchased an item or multiple items for her or her children. Her debt was mounting, and she was making matters truly worse by spending more and more. She thought she was buying things to try to make herself feel better, but in all honesty, she was buying things to cover up her pain.

  Whakelah wished she could have the heart her best friend Misha had. Then she could get her a roster of men and start charging by the session as well. But she was a mother of two, and there was no way she was going out like that. She wasn’t knocking what her girl was doing, but everything wasn’t for everybody, and that lifestyle just wasn’t for her.

  In Whakelah’s mind there was nothing a man could do for her that she couldn’t do for herself. All men ever did for her was cause her pain and give her grief. Her father had disappointed her at a young age by leaving her and her mother, and making another woman and her children his focal point, leaving Whakelah and her mother to fend for themselves. This left a bad stain on Whakelah’s heart, and she started to dislike and distrust men.

  After a few bad relationships, she met her children’s father. He had showed her mad love in the beginning of their relationship. She was a tough cookie, but he hung in there with her and knocked down a lot of the walls that she had built up in regards to her feelings toward men. He had treated Whakelah like a queen, and she thought she had finally found the perfect man. Until she had gotten pregnant with their first child.

  In her third month of pregnancy, she received a phone call from a woman who claimed to be his wife.

  One year and a half after that phone call, he turned up at her apartment to see his daughter, and in that visit, they conceived her son. Her children’s father had never seen their son and had seen their daughter that one time. Whakelah had no idea where he was, nor did she care. She had made the decision to lie down with him, so she had no problem raising her children on her own. She knew one thing—She was never going to be anyone’s wife. She wasn’t interested in women either. She was simply interested in her kids, and her reality television show, of course.

  Living on welfare, receiving Section 8, WIC and food stamps helped her to survive and raise her kids all of these years. There was no way she would have been able to pay rent, utilities, and keep food on the table for the three of them without the help from those services.

  And what about the other things they needed? Clothes, shoes, day-to-day necessities. She had to provide for her family, and the task was getting harder and harder to do. She felt she had no choice other than to exaggerate a little bit on how many children she had. Now she may have to pay them back money that she had long since spent, not to mention the possibility of prison that was lingering in the air.

  Whakelah’s head was spinning with all of her thoughts. She suddenly began to cry. She didn’t know what she was crying for. She had an idea, but she really wasn’t absolutely
sure just what it was that made her cry. She had so many different issues that she had been dealing with, that she had been keeping inside.

  The thought of her going to prison and leaving her children to her mother was at the top of the list. Her mother had warned her about trying to cheat the system, but she never thought she would get caught. Her cousin, Tank’s girl, had been completing all of her paperwork and providing her with social security numbers that she swore were safe to use, but Whakelah knew better.

  At that moment, Whakelah’s daughter, Kadayja, came running into the kitchen. She had come in to find out what her mother was cooking because it had the whole apartment lit up with its delicious smell. She stopped in her tracks when she saw her mother’s eyes filling up with tears. Whakelah’s entire face was soaking wet from tears that been flowing down her dark brown cheeks.

  “Mommy, what’s wrong?” Kadayja asked her mother. She didn’t ever recall seeing her mother cry, ever.

  Whakelah grabbed an onion, picked up a knife that rested on the kitchen counter and began chopping the onion without even removing the skin.

  “Nothing, Dayja. Mommy’s good.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  Kadayja was nine and was extremely curious about everything, especially her mother. She was the splitting image of her mother, tall, thin, and dark brown. You could tell that she was going to be tall like her mother.

  “Mommy’s cutting onions, Dayja, and they make my eyes burn.”

  “I thought I saw you crying before you started cutting the onion.”

  Whakelah loved and hated the fact that her daughter was so smart and perceptive. She had no idea how to tell her children that they may lose their mother for a while and that they may have to go and live with their grandmother while she went away. But she always kept it real with her kids, and if it came down to it, then they would have that talk, but for now, there was no need in upsetting her daughter and having her worry.