I pulled away from him and I looked at him with eyes filled with lust.
“Let me get your lil ass up out of here before I put something in your life that I know you can’t handle,” he said, picking me up off his desk and placing me on my feet.
We walked out of the office and he let his workers know that he would be gone for the remainder of the day. We walked to his BMV and got in. When he started the car, I noticed that it was 3:30 now. I had to be home by 5:00 because my aunt knew that I didn’t work Fridays anymore, and I normally would go to the library after school, leaving me to be home most days at least by 5:00.
“What you doing tomorrow?” Jah asked me.
“Nothing, you know I don’t work weekends. Wow, I totally forgot. Tomorrow is October 17th, huh?” I asked Jah.
“Yeah, why? What’s on the 17th?” he asked, looking over at me as he jumped on 95.
“My birthday.” I shrugged, like it was no big deal because honestly it wasn’t. Hell, in my house, it was just another normal day, but my little cousins would come and sing happy birthday to me.
“You say that shit as if it’s no big fuckin’ deal, Antonia. You’re going to be eighteen years old and it will be your day. How about this? I come and pick you up tomorrow, first thing in the morning, and let me spoil you. Let me buy you all the things that your heart desires. It’s your day tomorrow, and I just want to make you smile,” he said.
As tempting as that sounded, I just knew that it wouldn’t happen. Hell, it would be a cold day in hell before my aunt let me hang out with Jah.
“I’ll see what I’ll be able to come up with,” I said and I knew that I was lying. I couldn’t think of one valid lie that I could tell my aunt that she would and allow me to be gone for the whole day.
“Ion trust that. You got a number or something that I can reach you at?” Jah asked me.
“I don’t have a cellphone, and my aunt does not let me touch her house phone for any reason at all,” I told him.
He nodded his head and continued to drive, turning up the music. I watched as he took the exit on the highway and then ten minutes later, we were pulling up to the Sprint store. He turned the car off and we both got out. I didn’t know what was going on but I was just following his lead. We walked into the store and it wasn’t crowded, so we were able to walk right on up to a representative. Jah led the way, while I stayed behind him.
“Hello, welcome to Sprint. How can I help you today?” the sales lady asked us.
“Let me get the 6s Plus iPhone in rose gold, 128 GB,” he told her.
I went around the store and looked around at the other phones. Before I knew it, Jah was walking over to me, handing me the white Sprint bag and putting the phone in my hand, which was now in a rose gold case.
“Here, the phone number is inside the bag. My number is already stored in it. Don’t worry about the phone bill or none of that. I got it all covered,” he told me.
I flashed a big smile because this was the first time in my life that I had my own phone, and on top of that, it was an iPhone. I wasn’t really up to date with all of the new electronics and things like that, but I knew for a fact that this one was the newest ones, judging from all of the advertisements they had on the wall inside the store. We got back into the car and Jah pulled off while I tried to work the phone.
“Where the hell is all of the buttons on it?” I asked him and he laughed.
“Girl, your ass acting like somebody who just been in jail for a long damn time and not up to date on technology and shit. It’s touch screen, Antonia, ain’t no buttons on there,” he said, laughing.
I laughed with him, and it didn’t take long before I figured out how to work it. I pulled my book bag out of the back and placed the phone and the Sprint bag inside because I needed to hide it from my aunt.
“I’m going to call you tomorrow so that we can celebrate your birthday. Go on in the house. I’ll text you when I’m home,” Jah told me.
“Oh, wait, before I forget,” I said, putting the book bag on the floor and then opening it back up to pull out my school uniform. “Close your eyes,” I told him.
He didn’t close his eyes like I had told him to, but he did pull out his phone and focus his attention on it. I changed back into my school uniform and then placed the clothes that I had just took off into my book bag.
“Thanks for spending the day with me, even though I’m sure you had other things that you could have been doing. Because of you, I didn’t have to spend my senior skip day alone,” I said and then got out of the car and made my way to my apartment.
I promise you, today was one of the best days of my life.
Chapter 13: Tacarra
After enjoying my senior skip day with my girls, we were now in my bedroom all laid out on my California king sized bed with the door shut and the music playing. Since my mother liked to eavesdrop, we had to turn the music up so that she couldn’t hear what was being said in my room. My girls and I had a shitload of stuff that we needed to discuss, and I didn’t want to risk my mom barging in my room like she had done the last time. It was midnight, and I’m pretty sure that she was asleep, but still, we didn’t want to risk it. My girls were spending the night over tonight and we were all dressed in our onesies from PINK and getting ready to have some serious gossip.
“Okay, so clearly the elephant in the room needs to be addressed, though. What y’all think about seeing Antonia and Jah together earlier today?” I asked my girls.
“I’m not even going to lie, when you told me that he had taken her dinner that time, I just knew that her ass was lying, I mean, look at her and then look at the bitches that he fucks with! I can’t for the life of me understand what he could see in her,” Patrice said and I nodded my head in agreement.
“And did y’all see the way he stood up and defended that bitch when I told him to stop fuckin with the homeless?” Meccah added.
“Hell yeah, that nigga jumped up quick as hell like he wanted to slam your ass,” Kelsey joined in on the conversation.
“You said her auntie be the one beating her ass like that. You think she know about her skipping school to hang out at the beach and be with Jah?” Patrice asked me.
I knew for damn sure that Antonia’s auntie didn’t have a clue that she had skipped school today.
“Hell nah, she doesn’t know. Antonia came over here early in the morning and changed out of her uniform and put on that outfit that she had on at the beach,” I said.
“What you think she would do to her if she found out?” Kelsey asked me.
My body shuddered at the ass whipping that Antonia would take because of that. “She would probably try and kill her. I know that for a fact. Antonia gets her ass beat for any little thing that she does. I know because she used to tell me. I remember last year she told me about how her aunt had beat her because her aunt had sneezed and Antonia didn’t say bless you. She said something about Antonia was disrespectful and she didn’t have any manners,” I said and I watched as they burst out laughing.
“Are you serious? That’s petty as hell,” Meccah said after we had finished eating.
“Yep, little shit like that and she’ll get her ass tore up. I got tired of hearing all her damn Django stories, so I told her to stop telling me that shit. Shit was depressing as hell,” I vented.
“You think we should tell her aunt that she skipped school yesterday and was hanging with a man that’s six years older than her?” Meccah asked.
“You evil bitch,” I said, laughing. “But I love it,” I added. Antonia wanted to be grown, well let’s see her ass get a grown ass whopping.
“But wait, what if she asks us why we were there and stuff like that? I mean, we had to be there in order for us to have seen her,” Kelsey added.
“Yeah, but she doesn’t need to know that we were hanging with boys too. We’ll just be like it was the four of us and Antonia didn’t want to hang with us, she was out doing God knows what with a grown ass man,” I said.
We stayed up for about another three hours talking about a little bit of everything, and then we finally were off to sleep.
10:00 a.m. the next morning
It was ten in the morning and my friends and I were climbing into my car. We had woken up around nine, and after all of us took showers, got dressed, and fixed our hair and makeup, we were just now leaving an hour later. I knew the way to Antonia’s house by heart because I used to drop her off last year from school. This was before she had become a pest, and I was able to put up with her annoying ass. Now, every time that she asked for a ride home, I would always come up with some sort of excuse.
It took me about another five minutes to get to Antonia’s apartment complex and I shook my head at what the hell she called home. I stayed about ten minutes away from her, but it damn sure wasn’t considered to be the projects. My neighborhood was classy, and nothing like this ghetto ass building. I parked the car and all of us got out.
“Remember, let me do all of the talking,” I said once we were in front of Antonia’s apartment door. They all shook their heads. I knocked on the door and waited for someone to answer it.
“Who the fuck is at my door?” a voice asked and I knew that it was Antonia’s aunt.
I didn’t reply, I just waited for her to come and answer for us. She swung the door open with a mean scowl on her face. She was wearing a crooked pink satin cap on her head and a white pajama gown that had all types of stains on it, and not to mention, her saggy ass breasts were damn near touching the damn floor. She had on these pink house shoes that were clearly way too small for her big ass feet.
“Can I help you?” she nastily asked me, looking from myself to my friends.
“Hey, I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Antonia’s friend from school, Tacarra,” I told her and she looked at me blankly. I’m pretty sure she didn’t know who the hell I was. She looked like she was ready for me to cut the bullshit and get to the point, so I began.
“Well, I was just coming over to let you know that you should talk to Antonia about the company that she has been keeping lately. Yesterday was senior skip day and we all went out to South Beach. Antonia was there, but she wasn’t there with us, instead she was out hanging with this 23-year-old man, and word around town is that he is a thug and not a very good person to hang around. I’m only telling you this because we saw Antonia around noon, and we didn’t see her after that, so we don’t know what type of things she was doing while she wasn’t around us. All of the other seniors were in the water, having a good time, but Antonia wasn’t,” I said, putting on a great persona of an innocent little girl.
I watched as Antonia’s aunt turned red and she looked like she was about to explode, that’s just how mad she was.
“I will deal with Antonia, thanks for telling me that,” she said and closed the door in our faces.
“What you think she’s going to do now?” Kelsey asked me.
“All I can say is, pray for Antonia,” I said and we took the steps back down.
Antonia
Like he promised, Jah had texted me last night when he had gotten home. I couldn’t stay up and text him all night even though I wanted to because I couldn’t figure out how to turn the brightness down on the phone, so I ended up turning the phone off and placing it in my top drawer. I wanted to take into consideration the things that Jah said he wanted to do for me today, but I just could not think of an alibi to tell my aunt that would get her to believe me.
I woke up this morning and I thanked God for allowing me to see another year. Once I had made up my bed, I went into the bathroom to take a shower.
I was just about to rinse the last bit of soap suds off my body when suddenly, the bathroom door burst open. I did my best to cover myself up because I didn’t know who it was. Quickly, the shower curtain was pulled back and I was dragged out of the shower by my hair and I lost my balance and fell on the bathroom floor. As I fell on my arm, I promise I heard a bone in my arm crack. I looked down at my shoulder and I knew for a fact that it was dislocated from the way that it was hanging. My aunt was standing over me with a scowl on her face and a new leather belt in her hand.
“Where the hell were you yesterday?” she asked me.
“I was at school, auntie. What you mean?” I cried.
Whap! She swung the belt, hitting me in my stomach with it.
“Lie to me again and I swear to God I will kill your hoe ass in here! Where the fuck were you yesterday, and think long and hard before you answer this time,” she said to me.
I looked at her with tears falling down my face, absolutely scared for my life. How my aunt had found out that I had skipped school yesterday was beyond me. We didn’t have the house number on file for school, so it wasn’t like the school had called or something like that. Maybe she went into my bag or something while I was in the shower and saw the clothes that I had worn yesterday to the beach.
“Okay, okay. I went to the beach yesterday along with all of the other seniors because it was senior skip day,” I told her through my tears.
“And that’s all I needed to know!” she said and the belt came crashing into my body repeatedly as I lay there on the floor, screaming to the top of my lungs. My body was soaking wet and the strikes that my body was taking felt worse than any beating that I had ever suffered before.
My little cousins came in the hallway, crying their eyes out as they watched me get the shit beat out of me. After a few minutes, my body felt numb and I was no longer screaming.
“You like to run around and hang with grown ass men! You gon’ end up being a crackhead just like your no good ass mother,” my aunt spat.
“Don’t… talk about… my mother,” I said through my tears, as I spit blood out of my mouth.
In the middle of the beating that I had just suffered, I was hit in the mouth a few times with the belt.
“Or what? What the fuck are you going to do? I’ll talk about that crackhead bitch all I want to with her stupid ass. She was dumb as hell and your ass is going to follow right in her footsteps, you hoe!” she said.
I somehow picked my ass up off that floor, and with all of my strength, I pushed my aunt as hard as I could, making her slip and fall on her ass. She tried to get up and charge me, but all of a sudden, Rick came and he held her from getting to me.
“Don’t you dare talk about my mother like that! I don’t care what you say or what you do to break me, but you leave my mom the fuck out of this! I hate her so much for leaving me alone with you in this fucked up predicament but at the end of the day, she was still my mother and you will respect her,” I screamed.
My aunt looked at me with shocked eyes because for the first time in twelve years, I was finally defending myself.
“Antonia, calm down. She didn’t mean anything by it,” Porsha said, trying to touch me, but I slapped her hand away.
“Don’t you dare say a fuckin’ word to me! You watched this woman beat my ass for years and you never did anything to stop her, so don’t fuckin try to defend me now,” I screamed at her. My arm was still hanging crooked and I was so livid that I didn’t even feel it.
I walked into my room and went over to my dresser and threw on some clean underwear and a bra. I was able to find a pair of sweatpants to throw on and a sweater. I went in my closet and found some old ass sneakers and I threw them on. I grabbed the phone that Jah had given me and stuck it into my pants pocket.
“And you better not take your ass down there telling them people our business,” my aunt screamed after me.
I walked out of the apartment and closed the door behind me. Taking the stairs, I went and stood on the side of the apartment building. I powered on my phone and waited for it to start up. Once it did, I dialed Jah’s number.
“What’s good, birthday girl? You hanging with a nigg
a today or what?” he asked, causing me to smile.
“Yeah, can you come and get me? I’ll be standing outside,” I let him know.
“I’m already out running the streets, so I’ll be to you in about another ten minutes or so, so sit tight,” he said and then ended the call.
I took a seat on the sidewalk, wracking my brain, trying to figure out how my aunt had found out about yesterday. When I went in the room and put on clothes, my bag was in the very same spot as yesterday, so I knew that she hadn’t been in my book bag. I smiled at the thought of me defending myself. All I heard was Jah’s voice in my head from yesterday, saying, Don’t let them bitches talk about you like that, Antonia! You let them get away with it once, they’ll consider you to be weak and they’ll keep doing that shit.
It wasn’t too late for me to start defending myself, even though I had chosen to wait a whole ten years. I was pissed as hell at my mother for leaving me here, and I said some mean things in my head toward her on a daily, but I’ll be damned if I watch another person fix their lips to say hateful things about her as well!
Chapter 14: Jahiem
I ain’t gon’ lie, I was shocked as hell when Antonia called me this morning, telling me to come and pick her up. I just knew that she was going to be on some bullshit, talking about how she couldn’t come out the house or something like that. I didn’t know which apartment she stayed in, but I knew that she stayed on the second floor. So, I was already prepared to knock on every damn door today, just so I could take her out for her birthday.
Little Miami Girl: Antonia and Jahiem's Love Story Page 9
