Turned Out by His Hood Mentality 1

by Diamond D Johnson

  “You gonna… gonna make them give me a shot,” Destiny cried and snuggled closer to her mother.

  Her mom quietly sat there with a smile on her face as she lovingly looked down at her gorgeous daughter and lightly massaged the side of her face. Destiny had been my patient ever since she was two years old. I had watched her grow up right in front of me. Her mom had brought her right after school, so she was still dressed in her pretty school uniform, which was a baby blue polo shirt and a navy-blue skirt. She wore navy blue ruffled socks and ballerina shoes on her feet. Her hair was designed in beautiful braids, and although she was too cute, I knew she was wasn’t feeling too good. I could hear it in her rusty breathing.

  I sat in my rolling chair and wheeled myself over to Destiny. Like I did with many of my patients, I picked her up and placed her on my lap.

  “Let me help you wipe your face, pretty girl, because you aren’t getting any shots today,” I said, using tissues that I had in my lab coat, and I wiped her face. “Mommy brought you here today because she said that you had a cold, so I just wanted to see what was going on with my baby. I’m going to give Mommy here this paper that I wrote down the prescription for your medicine, and that’s it. No shots today. Your only part is to make sure you take the medicine so you can get better and be able to go back to school good and healthy on Monday. When you leave here, make sure you take two of those lollipops from out front, okay?” I asked, and she smiled big while nodding her head.

  “Good, that’s what I like to see. All I want to see is you smiling,” I told her then pinched her cheek before I placed her on her feet.

  I stood up next, and so did her mother.

  “Doctor Davidson, you are the best. The whole drive here, I was telling Destiny that she wasn’t getting shots, and nothing I could say to her was enough to get her to calm down. When it comes to these kids, you just have the magic touch with them. Two of my friends are pregnant right now, and I’ve already vouched for you on multiple occasions to them, so they can bring their babies to you. Whenever that day comes, I know you will make a wonderful mother. Thank you again, and take care,” Destiny’s mother said before she grabbed her daughter’s hand, and they walked out.

  Her words brought a smile to my face. I lingered in the room for a few minutes, and then I finally walked out, closing the door behind me. It was quiet, and that was really just because all the patients were gone. I took the long hallway down to my office and used my key code to get inside.

  My office was the size of a very spacious bedroom. I had so many appointments that I really wasn’t in my office as much as I would like. A massive desk and chair with my desktop computer were in the center of the room. On the desk was a big calendar where I had sticky notes with important dates. There was a lounge area in my office, which was really just for show because I never lounged around while I was there.

  My plaques showcasing my accomplishments were hanging on the wall. My favorite of all time was my medical degree, which hung high. There was a big, 11x14 photo on the wall of me in my lab coat with the words, Doctor Davidson embossed at the bottom of the polished wood frame. Every day that I walked into that room, it really was just a reminder that I did it. I did everything that I said I would do.

  On my chair was an oversized pink and green AKA cardigan that I would sometimes wear when I was in the office. There were different accessories in the room, which screamed the sorority that I would forever represent. I even had pictures hanging on the wall and on my desk of my sorority sisters.

  Before I left for the day, I had to chart a few things on my computer. Five minutes into me doing that, there was a knock on my door. I knew that someone would knock soon, more than likely just to let me know that they were leaving for the day, so I purposely didn’t lock the door behind me when I came in.

  “Come in,” I called out, never even turning around from my computer.

  The door opened, and Twinkle walked in. Twinkle was one of the nurses. She was two years younger than me, and although she and I were veryyyy different, I liked her. I honestly considered her to be a close friend. She’d been at the office for a little over a year. I’ll admit that I initially judged her. People never really lasted long in her position due to them not being able to properly satisfy the requirements of the job.

  I remember her first day. She came in with long braids that went all the way down to her butt. Under her scrubs was a long-sleeved shirt that she wore to cover her many tattoos. She was loud as hell, but the kids loved her. Not only that, but she did an excellent job in her position. She didn’t have kids of her own, but the way she tended to these kids’ needs and distracted them when she gave them their shots was really something special. I didn’t see her being a nurse there for long because I had high hopes for Twinkle, and I honestly saw her going further in her career.

  “Girl, if you don’t turn that computer off, and let’s go! It’s Friday, Normani! What the hell are you doing?” she asked with an expression on her face like she was appalled that I was still there and working.

  As she waited for my answer, I watched as she dug into the pockets of her scrub bottoms and pulled out one of the lollipops that we kept out front for the kids. I laughed because she consistently did that. Twinkle was a very beautiful woman. Hood, yes, but beautiful none the less. If I was 4’9,” then I would say that she was at least 5’2” because she really wasn’t that much taller than me. While I had dark skin, her skin was a caramel color, and she had beautiful, light brown eyes.

  Twinkle had beautiful, full, thick, jet black hair, but she seldom wore it out because she loved her wigs, her braids, and whatever else she thought to do to her hair. Even right now, she had on a dark brown wig, parted down the middle. It had to have been thirty inches long. Don’t get me wrong, her hair was always nice, but I loved natural hair, and I loved when she came to work with her hair in a fro.

  Just like I did things on the side, Twinkle did stuff on the side as well. She had an online boutique where she sold women’s clothing. Her business was doing well, and it had almost 500,000 followers on her Instagram account. We would sometimes get into deep conversations, and one of the things that Twinkle told me was how she’s always had a love for fashion, but at the same time, she knew that it would require a lot of hard work for her to get where she wanted to be in terms of sales and even popularity.

  While Twinkle worked to build up her store, she’d gone to a technical school where she was able to get her LPN degree in one year, and that’s when she landed this position.

  I had super high hopes for Twinkle, and I knew that whatever she decided to do, she would be good at it because she was a super hard worker, just like I was. Although she didn’t have children of her own, she was raising her oldest sister’s four-year-old daughter. Her sister was in prison, serving a ten-year bid for credit card fraud, stolen identity, you name it.

  Twinkle told me that she never wanted to be a nurse, but when her sister went to prison, she had to step up and find a way to properly take care of her niece. At the time, she was still living with her mother and working at Ross.

  Twinkle's sister’s name was Loyal, and she specifically asked for Twinkle to take care of her daughter, Dream. Apparently, she felt that her mother was incapable of doing so. Twinkle didn’t really go in-depth about why Loyal felt their mother was incapable of raising her daughter in her absence. What I did know was that their mother watched Dream after school until Twinkle got off work.

  So, yeah, we came from two different backgrounds, but I’d never been the type of person to judge someone simply because I couldn’t relate to them. If anything, not being able to relate to them is what would draw me in because I loved a very unique and different story.

  I laughed to myself as I thought about Twinkle’s first day at work. The uniqueness of her scrubs let me know that she was into fashion. I mean, she made her scrubs look like they were from one of those top of the line labels like Christian Dior, Gucci, Givenchy, or one of the high-end s
tores that I’ll admit I have a guilty pleasure of shopping at.

  I loveeeee a beautiful handbag. Everyone has their obsessions, and I happen to have an obsession with purses. My favorite purse line of all time is Christian Dior. I love the classy look of the bags. It’s so bad that the sales lady at the Christian Dior store in Brickell has my phone number. Whenever a new bag comes in that she knows is my taste, she’ll send me a picture of it. If I like it, I’ll have her wrap it up for me and pick it up either after work or on the weekends. No kids, no man, so I could spoil myself and not feel bad about it.

  I stared over at Twinkle, admiring her in the beautiful purple and gold scrub set that I knew she had to have designed herself. I stayed in the uniform store, getting new things for work, and I’d never seen that outfit in there before. She wore Nikes on her feet, and she eventually walked fully into the office and took a seat facing my desk. I decided to stop what I was working on because I knew that Twinkle wasn’t going to leave. She was more than likely about to beg me to go out with her on this Friday evening, and like I did each time, I would kindly decline.

  Yes, we hung out all the time outside of work. Twinkle was my brunch, pedicure, and full set partner. She was my girl who I went with to get massages, but hanging out with Twinkle on a Friday night just wasn’t something that I looked forward to. She liked to club, and that just wasn’t my thing. Listen to me, talking about that’s not my thing when I’ve never even been inside a club. Twinkle would come back to work sometimes and tell me crazy stories that happened over the weekend, and it just didn’t sound like something that I would be interested in.

  Monday morning, she came into my office, telling me how she’d gone to the strip club with her boyfriend, Monterius, over the weekend, and a fight had broken out between the dancers. See, I’d rather be at home, going over my Sunday school lesson for my babies instead of witnessing a crazy fight.

  “What I’m doing will be quick. What’s up?” I asked, prepared for whatever she was about to ask me.

  “Did you ever think about what you and I discussed last week?” she asked with a smile on her beautiful face.

  “We discussed a lot of things. You have to be very specific,” I said.

  I knew what she was referring to, though; I was just trying to find a way to talk around the subject like I always did whenever I didn’t want to just flat out say no.

  “Normani, I’m talking about going out with me tonight. My cousin, Billionaire, is home from prison. Five years, girl. My big cousin just did five years behind bars, so we’re going out to celebrate with him. It’s going to be a vibe. Normani, I’m telling you; you’ll love it. Listen, my big cousin, my man, and their friends are paid and well known in Miami. The club that we’re going to tonight, we’re going to have our own little section with them. I know you don’t drink, but you can still go and catch a vibe. You’ll be with them and me, so nothing is going to happen. Besides, with the niggas that we about to be around tonight, we’re going to be protected regardless,” Twinkle said, trying to win me over, but it just wasn’t working.

  She might have thought that she was easing my mind and possibly convincing me to come along, but everything she said was really the sole reason why I didn’t want to go. Why the heck would I want to attend a welcome home party for someone who just spent the last five years of their life behind bars? It wasn’t my place to judge him because I would leave that to God, but I mean, what did the man even do? I could be around someone who attempted murder, robbed a store, or whatever crime he could have possibly committed to get five years in the first place. Then, she was talking about all the men who were going to be there tonight, so no, that just wasn’t my idea of a good time.

  If people wanted to consider me to be boring, then I’d take that label, but I just never wanted to be in a situation where I was taken out of my comfort zone. I wouldn’t even fit in. People would automatically look at me and notice that I had no business in a club. I didn’t even have club attire. My closet was filled with blazers, church dresses, jeans, dressy shirts, and work clothes. It wasn’t like I could pull out a little black dress from the back of my closet and throw it on because I didn’t even dress like that.

  “Twinkle, that’s just not my thing. You go out and have a good time. I’ll be here Monday morning to hear all about it,” I said, and she sucked her teeth.

  “Normani, I promise I’m not even trying to be funny, but what the hell do you have to do when you get home? Please tell me what you have to do that’s so important that you can’t get out of the house tonight. Girl, it’ll just be for a couple of hours,” she said.

  “I have things that I have to do. For one, I need to finish up my laundry, I need to do a deep conditioning of my hair tonight, and—”

  “Girl, please! Those sound like excuses! Just come. You can even drive your car, and I’ll just ride with you. That way, whenever you want to leave because you’re not feeling it or whatever the case may be, you can just go. It’s not imperative that you deep condition your hair tonight because your hair is bomb. You know that, and everyone else does too. I love your silky, curly hair and all those baby hairs. I wish I had baby hairs like yours. Normani, you are naturally pretty, so you don’t gotta do a whole lot to get ready. For me. Pleasseeee,” she begged, crossing her hands together and sticking out her bottom lip—making herself look sad, so I could give in.

  I sighed and then slouched in my chair.

  “What will I even wear? I don’t have anything club like in my closet, and—”

  “I’m a step ahead of you, boo, because I already knew you would say that. I’m going to bring a few of my new pieces from my warehouse over to your house, and you just pick what you want to wear. Oooh, I’m so happy. I promise you’re going to enjoy yourself tonight. You’re going to love my cousin. He’s cool,” she told me.

  “I’m not going to love your cousin. I’m going to get out of the house like you asked me to,” I shot at her.

  Twinkle laughed while playfully rolling her eyes.

  “Hmmm,” was all she said before she stood up from her chair.

  Twinkle ran down what time she would be at my house and everything else, and then she finally walked out of my office.

  I left about fifteen minutes after her because I had to finish what I was working on. At the same time, I was also trying to come up with one hundred different ways to tell her that I didn’t want to go. I literally had no excuse. My parents were on a church retreat, and they wouldn’t be back until tomorrow night.

  My older sister, Naomi, was eight months pregnant, carrying her first baby with her husband, Liam. Although she had a month to go before my niece’s arrival, she looked like she was ready to pop any day. So, hanging out with Naomi was out of the question too. These days, the only thing she wanted to do was sit with her feet propped up, stuffing her face with whatever pregnancy cravings she happened to be longing for at that moment. Just like my father, my sister’s husband was a pastor, so that alone gave Liam cool points in our family.

  My daddy used to always tell us that when we were old enough to start dating, we needed to get with someone who reminded us of him. I agreed with that, but only to a certain extent because if God ever decided to stop holding my future husband hostage, he didn’t have to be a minister. Of course, I would want him to know the Lord and to even have a relationship with Him, but to have his own church and be a minister really wasn’t what I was looking for.

  My sister’s husband, Liam, we’d known him for years. He and Naomi had attended school together since the two of them were in elementary school. That was another plus for him with my father because it wasn’t like Naomi was going off with a complete stranger. Liam attended our parents’ church, and we knew his family well.

  I just hoped I got lucky, and my father liked whoever I brought around. His validation of anything I did meant a lot to me. It would be awful to have an interest in someone, only for my parents not to like them. I wasn’t really sure if that would be a dea
l-breaker for me, though. It really would just all depend on what my parents, or should I just say my father, didn’t like about the person. My mother told me in private that she didn’t care who I brought around, as long as I got somebody because she felt like my clock was ticking. Still, I felt that I had plenty of time because I wasn’t even thirty yet.

  Once I accepted that there was no excuse good enough for me to give to Twinkle, I just accepted the fact that I would have my first club experience tonight. I didn’t even have a club experience when I was in college because I was such a good girl and afraid that my daddy would pop out of the shadows and embarrass me. I had no idea how tonight was going to turn out, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t ready for it.

  9:00 P.M.

  “Ding-Dong!”

  My doorbell rang while I was in my bathroom, adding lip-gloss to my lips. I was sitting at my vanity, so I picked up my phone, which was resting on the counter, playing low music, and checked the Ring app to make sure that it was Twinkle at the front door. It was. This girl was there at exactly nine on the dot, just like she told me she would be. I assumed her punctuality was designed to not leave me any room to switch up and decide not to attend tonight’s rendezvous.

  I sighed because the closer it got to us getting out of the house and going to the club, my desire to stay home intensified. The club we were going to was King of Diamonds. I had done my research on the club about an hour ago, and everything about that place just screamed that it was something I didn’t want any parts in. The strippers, the gang of people that would be huddled inside the club… just everything. I didn’t mind letting my hair down and doing something fun, but this just wasn’t my idea of a good time. Only for Twinkle would I do this, though, because she definitely had a way of making me feel bad to the point that I was left with no choice but to just give in.