RedBone

by Styles, T.

  “Black-eyed peas, rice, fried chicken, and spinach.”

  He rubbed his stomach. “That sound good as shit. Now hurry up with your friends. ’Cause I’m over here waiting to walk you in the house.” When he left everyone was quiet and she rolled up the window. Farah turned the heat to a comfortable level.

  “Girl, you need to stop all that faking. You ain’t got no intentions on leaving that nigga,” Farah said. “You eat his shit for breakfast.”

  Rhonda frowned. “Who the fuck said anything about leaving him?” She laughed. “We got our problems, but I ain’t going nowhere.” Everybody shook their heads.

  “So what happened that night?” Coconut asked, skipping the subject. “When Tank killed Natasha. I’m confused.”

  “I told you already. Shit got crazy. He started beating her when he found out she was stealing his money and I started fighting his ass back,” she lied. “We jumped him at first, but he was so focused on her that nothing I did seemed to bother him. It was like he didn’t want to hit me for real. I think it got something to do with me being red and Natasha being darker than me.”

  From the back seat Mia and Rhonda sighed heavily. “You know I hate when you talk like that, right?” Rhonda said. “You sound so fucking stupid.”

  “Exactly ... because it’s ridiculous and don’ t make no sense,” Mia added. “Both of y’all bitches were about to rob his ass and both of y’all were going to get killed. That’s why you on the run.”

  “I’m just shooting it to you straight,” Farah continued. “You point out twenty niggas and I guarantee fifteen of them prefer the red bone. It’s just their way.”

  “She’s telling the truth,” Coconut said, having gotten a few perks because of her yellow skin. “If I hang out with any of my cousins on my mamma side, they bound to get the shaft if I walk into the room because if you rich, you want a red bitch on your arm. Bottom line.”

  “Y’all betta stop smokin that shit!” Mia laughed. “All niggas don’t be on that red shit. Most niggas be on that pussy shit. The problem is most dark-skinned chicks automatically feel inferior because of their complexion due to the media. And it shows in their attitude. They have zero confidence when they shouldn’t.”

  “Exactly,” Rhonda concurred. “Dark-skinned Farah from Southwest is fat and black yet niggas be on her hard because she think she sexy.”

  “Easy on the fat shit,” Mia joked.

  “Sorry.” She laughed.“It s just that I know for a fact that I pulled many a nigga over a red bitch in my day.”

  “You can’t really believe that,” Farah said.

  “I believe it,” Mia added. “She telling the truth.”

  Farah laughed. “Big sis, you delusional.”

  Mia squinted her eyes. “Well, how do you explain all of the niggas you ever had wanting to fuck Chloe? I mean ... ain’t she darker than you?”

  Silence.

  “That’s ’cause Chloe’s a freak and niggas can read into that shit.” Did Chloe tell her about Zone? Farah thought. I bet I won’t ever have her around another one of my niggas. Believe that shit.

  “I hear you, but if what you saying is true, because you’re red, your pussy should be golden and who wants to lose gold?” She smirked. “If anything, a nigga need to give Chloe the boot. But we all know when her little ass walks into a room, niggas’ mouths drop and she’s as black as night. Just like me, Mamma, and Daddy.”

  “Whatever, Mia. You just mad because Chloe be pulling your niggas too.”

  Mia laughed. “You sound like a fool. I just fuck the dudes I hook up with. I don’t personally own none of them nor do I want to. That’s why I only deal with the young boys. If you over nineteen, you can’t even get my attention and definitely not my time.”

  “How you only like young boys when you twenty-seven?” Farah asked. “You gonna fuck around and get locked up.”

  “Because they don’t speak unless spoken to and can fuck me long and hard.” She slapped fives with Rhonda. “Them old bastards can’t even eat my pussy right half the time.”

  “Maybe because they can’t find your pussy,” Farah added. She was really showing off and pushing her luck. Ever since she stepped out of her shell, she was starting to become heartless. “From that muffin top you got hanging over your panties, and the food and makeup that be on your clothes, you lucky any nigga step to you at all.”

  Mia rolled her eyes.

  “I hope you don’t be tricking on them, Mia,” Coconut responded. “You big, but you too pretty for all that.”

  “Bitch, fuck pretty. I’m beautiful and don’t get slapped.” Mia pointed at her. “I don’t give niggas shit but pussy.” She sat back in the seat and allowed the effects of the weed to take over. “What I look like spending the hard-earned coins I get from the bank on a nigga? I’m not their mamma.”

  “I heard that.” Rhonda laughed as she texted Knight, who drove to the store with one of his friends a moment ago.

  “You mean the hard-earned coins you steal from the bank,” Farah added.

  “The ones I steal and earn, smart ass. I’m just being for real. Niggas who stomp on bitches because they dark are dumb. It don’t make no mothafuckin’ sense.”

  “So you saying there’s something wrong with a preference?” Coconut asked. “I think a man has a right to choose what he want.”

  “Naw ... ain’t nothing wrong with preference; like I said, I prefer young dick.” Mia laughed. “So picture me hating on anybody who prefers anything. I’m just saying niggas is lame who slam bitches because of their complexion. Especially when the bitch who gave birth to them is black.”

  “Right! Move on what you want but don’t be downing other mothafuckas in the process,” Rhonda added. “I know some girls who wanna kill themselves because of that shit.”

  “Whatever,” Farah said, rubbing her dry eyes. “I get mad play because of my skin tone and that’s the bottom line. I’m tired of being stressed because I’m blessed.”

  Mia started giggling. “What you laughing about?” Rhonda asked.

  “Something from when we were little.”

  “What?” Coconut asked, turning around to look at her.

  “Farah, if you love your tone so much, how come when you were a kid you stayed out in the sun until it went down just to get dark?” Mia continued. She was getting higher by the minute and no longer considered her sister’s feelings. “She had puss bumps from her head to her pissy pussy.”

  “I heard about that shit too.” Rhonda laughed. “I ain’t think that was for real though.”

  Farah never got over how Brownie treated her after that. She was in pain for weeks after the sun ate at her skin, yet there was no worse humiliation than when her mother pressed feces in her face.

  “So where were you staying? Because you haven’t been home since Natasha got murdered,” Rhonda said, skipping the subject. “You had everybody thinking something happened to you too.”

  After Tank murdered Natasha, Farah ran away to stay with a drug dealer named Jonsey from Virginia Beach, who she dealt with from time to time. Jonsey was twenty years older than her, generous, and had a nice home. She would have still been with him if it weren’t for one thing: he insisted on having his dick sucked twenty-two hours out of a twenty-four-hour period. Farah sucked him off so much that as she spoke her jaw hurt. In the end she stole $5,000 from him and bounced. He’d been threatening her, but since he couldn’t find her he had to be reduced to cell phone gangsta status. “Where haven’t I been? Farah said, pulling on the blunt again. “I got too much going on to be caught slipping, so I had to leave town. This nigga Tank is trying to kill me for real! I keep telling y’all that. It’s not a game.”

  “Tank ain’t gonna kill nobody,” Mia said. “If anything he’s as far away from DC as possible. Five-O after his ass; he not hardly worrying about you.”

  “Natasha’s funeral was sad, Farah. You really should’ve been there. It wasn’t a good look, especially since people knew you were there
when she was killed,” Rhonda said.

  “Well, what y’all want me to do, get smoked too because I went to the funeral?” Farah responded. “They say the killers always show up anyway.”

  “The way that girl died was fucking dumb!” Mia said. “I should smack the fuck out of you for being so stupid, Farah. If you gonna pull some shit like that, the least you could do is have somebody with you who was ’bout it.” She shook her head. “What if that nigga killed you too?”

  “Then I’d be dead.”

  “Bitch, I’m serious!”

  “Mia, I’m not trying to hear that shit right now. And if you must know I did ask Coconut to roll with me and she declined my offer.”

  Coconut pouted. “After all that shit, I’m glad I did.”

  Farah rolled her eyes. “Anyway, what’s done is done. I do know this, though, I’m not gonna let this nigga get me on no stupid shit.” She continued passing the blunt back and forth, never bypassing Rhonda once. “I ain’t even been to my house because I got a feeling he waiting to clap my ass.”

  “You know his baby mamma Boo looking for you, right?” Rhonda added. “She said if she finds you, she gonna bust you in the mouth and you better hope she don’t bust her gun, too.”

  Farah looked in the back seat. “You call yourself my friend and you let her say that shit to your face?”

  Rhonda gave her a look like “Bitch, please.” “Farah, picture her telling me some shit like that to my face. Or even in my presence. Pregnant or not I’d stomp that bitch for blood. Naw, she ain’t tell me no shit like that. She told Shannon and them and they got word back to me since they know I fuck with you like that.”

  “You still fucking with that dumbass bitch?”

  “Yeah. They coming to my shower, too,” Rhonda continued. “Why? You still don’t like them?”

  “If the shower gonna be at my house they not coming.”

  “That’s fucked up, Farah!” Rhonda protested. “I’m trying to get as much shit as I can for my baby.” She rubbed her stomach for sympathy points. “If anything that’ll be a time for you to floss your new crib. Why not let them come?”

  “I guess.” Farah liked the idea of making them jealous.

  “If you stopped worrying about shit that happened on the bleachers in school during gym, you’d find out that they are really nice girls,” Coconut said.

  Farah waved them off. There was nothing they could say to her. She didn’t fuck with Shannon in middle school and she didn’ t fuck with her now.

  “I don’t care about Shannon but I know one thing, the world would have to flatten itself out before I let Boo put her hands on my sister.” Mia laughed. “She shouldn’t have had a baby by Tank’s ass anyway,” she continued, still brewing about the stink bomb she threw in the hallway when they were younger.

  “I can fight my own battles, Mia. I’m a Cotton too.”

  “I know that I taught you everything you know, but I used to beat the brakes off of Boo’s ass for exercise.” Everyone looked at her large body. “So she can put her hand on my little sister if she want to.” Mia pulled on the blunt and coughed smoke out of her lungs. “Just tell her come see me.” She hit her chest a few times.

  As they were getting high, Eleanor McClendon, aka The Clapper, walked past the car. “Oh, shit! I hope this bitch don’t ask for no money,” Mia said, watching The Clapper strut to the car wearing a brown worn-out fur coat and a short red dress.

  “Right ... ’cause we ain’t one of them niggas trying to see her wrinkled-ass cheeks clap together,” Coconut said. “She gonna have to do more than pop that thing to get my money.” Everyone laughed.

  “I can’t believe she can do that shit so good, though, Rhonda said, remembering when she first met her. “I would swear her ass was light-skinned and not white, if I hadn’t seen the pictures of her mother and father on the wall by her door when she opened it one day.”

  “Wait ... you went inside her house?” Farah asked.

  “Yeah, right. I was trying to get to my friend’s house. And Eleanor lives in her building. So many niggas crowded the hallway to see her that day that I could hardly move past them. Hustlers were throwing ones in the air and everything.” She shook her head. “To be fifty-eight, that bitch could put the baddest stripper Atlanta has to offer to shame. Niggas call her the eighth wonder of the world.”Everybody giggled. “I wish she didn’t fuck with that heroin, because I fucks with her. She kinda cool.”

  “She right. I get my weed from her,” Coconut said. “She gets it from Willie Gregory, the old pimp man who just got out of jail. I think they fucking or something.”

  “Ain’t that Randy’s father? Rhonda asked.

  “Yep,” Coconut said, looking at Farah.

  “I heard he not all that bad.” Rhonda shrugged. “He volunteers a lot at that nursing home in Southwest. He just not good enough to date,” Rhonda said. “And he got money, too.” Farah remained silent, keeping her comments to herself.

  The Clapper walked up to the passenger window and lightly tapped. Coconut rolled hers down and said, “Yes.”

  “I was wondering if you girls need anything?” The Clapper said, walking up to the window. “I could give you a show if you want to,”She continued, preparing to raise the bottom of her coat.

  “Fuck you mean do we need anything?”Farah frowned. “Bitch, ain’t nobody in this car paying you to do shit but get the fuck outta they face!” she yelled across Coconut.

  “Unless you got some weed on you,” Coconut said.

  “I’m out now. If you wanna stop by later I got you.” She bowed three times before looking at Farah strangely. “I’ll talk to y’all later.”

  “What y’all about to do right now?” Rhonda asked, seeing her boyfriend pull back up. She missed him already. “Knight about to walk me in the house. I wanna take a nap.”

  “Nothing, girl,” Farah said. “Go ’head and do you.”

  When Rhonda left, Coconut decided to break the silence. “You went too hard to prove your point earlier, Mia. With the sunburn thing.”

  “Bitch, shut your young ass up!” Mia said. Coconut knew that when it came to wrecking, Mia could win a championship fight with Tyson in his heyday if she wanted, so she closed her mouth. “My sister knows I’m just playing with her. Right?”

  Farah looked back at Mia and said, “Coconut, mind your business. You know my sister just fucking around with me.” Coconut rolled her eyes.

  “So, Farah, when you moving back home?” Mia asked.

  Farah looked back at her and frowned. “Never.”

  “What you talking about? You know you can’t afford that apartment by yourself. Ain’t that the reason you got caught up with Tank? Trying to get rent money? Not to mention your roommates keep on dying on your ass.”

  “First off, Natasha never made it to roommate status and Zone was my man. Secondly, I can’t live with Ma, you know that. We’d probably kill each other.”

  “Mamma ain’t strong like she use to be, Farah. She ain’t about all that fighting no more.”

  When Farah’s phone rang she saw it was Randy and tried to hide the screen from Coconut before she saw his name. When she looked over at her, she was staring in her face. “What?” Farah frowned.

  “If you fucking with that nigga again, you stupid.”

  “What nigga she stupid for messing with, Coconut?” Mia asked.

  “Mind your own, Coco,” Farah said.

  “Fuck it, y’all ain’t gotta tell me shit,” Mia said. “I got problems of my own.”

  Farah was supposed to meet Randy fifteen minutes ago but time flew by. She was starting to realize that as much as she hated him, when it came to a bind, he could easily get her out. She was reckless with money, spending it on everything but its intended purpose. Many times she tried to see him in the stories she wrote every day about the way she wanted her life to be, but his face never seemed to fit the picture quite right. “Look, I gotta be somewhere. I’ma get up with y’all later.”

&n
bsp; “Ugh!” Coconut said, shaking her head. “I knew you were gonna be stupid. Watch that nigga finish what Tank started.”

  Now Mia was really interested. “What she talking about? You in trouble outside of the Tank situation?”

  “It’s nothing, Mia. I keep telling y’all I’m grown,” Farah snapped. “I’m not mousy Farah Cotton anymore.”

  “Whatever,” Coconut said. “You just make sure you call me later. I wanna go to that new club in DC I was telling you about. It’s called E.A.T.”

  “If we can get in. I hate when they don’t just take our fake IDs and keep it moving.”

  “Well, I know somebody at the door this time. We gonna be good. I’ll call you when I’m ready.” Coconut eased out of the car.

  “A’ight, li’l sis.” Mia leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek because she still felt guilty about what she said earlier. “I’ma get up with you later. I love you.”

  “Love you too. If Shadow calls from prison, tell him I’ll write him soon. Daddy too.”

  “Cool ... but you need to call Grandma. She’s fucked up that you and Chloe not talking to each other, for whatever reason. And she says you’ve been avoiding her too.”

  “I’m tired of her preaching.”

  “At least you got somebody who cares about you. You’ll appreciate that when the time is right. Later.”

  When she left, Farah drove as fast as she could to Randy’s house out in Maryland. It did bother her that she didn’t have a bond with her grandmother the way she used to, but she was grown and no longer wanted to be told how to live her life. If Elise wanted to see or talk to her, it would be on Farah’s terms and times. She pushed the gas pedal harder because for every minute she was late, he would spend fifteen minutes complaining and asking her to give him a reason why he shouldn’t leave her alone. But at the end of every fight, he would give her enough cash to make her problems go away and she would do anything sexual he asked.