Misha, Swag, and Ty stood outside of the cell along with a few prison guards. The prisoner didn’t want them inside.
LaShawn had been served with five years in prison for her part in the robbery. When Whakelah reached out to her to do the show, at first, she didn’t want to do it. She wasn’t trying to see Whakelah or Misha. She no longer considered them her best friends. They had caused her enough trouble. But when Whakelah told her she would make sure her books were good for her whole bid, she didn’t hesitate to accept. Whakelah also told her the name of her show and to make sure that she lived up to its title while the cameras were rolling, LaShawn promised that she would.
“Are you happy now?” Whakelah asked.
“In a way, I am. Can’t nobody hurt me no more,” LaShawn said, meekly.
“So you felt that people were trying to hurt you?”
“Yeah, I mean, I was in an abusive relationship. He hurt me.”
“Who else was trying to hurt you, LaShawn?”
“That bitch, Misha, that muthafucka, Swag, and you too! All of y’all!”
“Well, LaShawn, Misha’s right there on the other side of the cell door. Is there anything you want to say to her, or me, or both of us?” Whakelah pointed to Misha. She knew she was opening a can of worms, but that’s what reality television was all about.
“Hell, yeah! Fuck both of y’all bitches. Y’all didn’t want to see a bitch come up. Well, I’ma come up anyway. Five years ain’t shit!”
“So you blame us for what you’re going through?” Whakelah was saddened by her homegirl’s comments. She was hoping LaShawn had time to think about what she had done and to feel some type of remorse.
“Yeah, I blame y’all. Y’all made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. I’m just as good as y’all. Nah, fuck that! I’m better. Yeah, that’s right. I said it. I’m better than both of y’all.”
LaShawn jumped out of her seat, and the prison guards warned her to stay seated.
“That nigga done beat the brains out that dumb bitch,” Misha said, watching LaShawn’s actions from in between the openings of the steel cell bars that separated them. Misha didn’t understand why LaShawn was still so hateful toward them. She had brought all of this mess on herself.
“No one person is better than anyone else, LaShawn. We all breathe, and we all bleed, and eventually we will all die. I know you’re hurting right now, and so you’re lashing out at us because we’re all you have right now,” Whakelah told her. “And that’s fine. I’ll accept that.”
LaShawn could see that Whakelah was putting on a show for her viewers, and she was doing a really good job. But LaShawn wasn’t acting, she was hurting for real. Once the cameras stopped rolling, Whakelah and Misha would be going on with their new lives and she’d be going back behind the concrete walls and sliding steel bars. She suddenly felt like an animal trapped in a cage and needed desperately to escape. Whakelah wanted her to keep it real. Well, LaShawn thought it was time she make good on her promise.
“Since we suppose to be keepin’ it real, why don’t you tell your viewers that you could have been sitting in this chair that I’m sitting in now for welfare fraud?”
“I don’t have a thing to hide. Yes, I almost did time for welfare fraud. And I would encourage all who contemplate scamming the system to think again, because they’ll catch you up in some mess that you don’t want to be in.” Whakelah dark brown skin appeared pale in color as she addressed LaShawn’s snitchin’ ass.
“Tell them how you got out of it, since you keepin’ it one hun’ed. Tell them how your girl Misha fucked your case away, with her ho ass. She fucked your lawyer, and fucked Swag, just to get into that music video.”
“Don’t worry about it, bitch!” Misha yelled, lunging at the steel bars that separated them. “You just mad because he didn’t want to fuck your triflin’ ass!” She wanted to burst into the cell and beat the life out of LaShawn.
Again, Swag held onto her. He wasn’t feeding into LaShawn’s performance. After all of the underhanded shit she tried to pull, her words held no weight with him. Once he had Misha calm, he gave her a deep and passionate kiss to let her know everything was still all good between them.
Whakelah didn’t appreciate LaShawn putting them out there like that. She told her to keep it real, but she was expecting her to talk about her own fucked-up circumstances, not theirs.
She thought about the night LaShawn convinced her to fuck B, a dude that she didn’t even know, violating the love and respect she had for her body. She thought about all of the times LaShawn had eaten food at her house and all of the other ways she had helped her. Before she realized it, she had lost control of her actions, and her slim fists were pounding into LaShawn’s face.
“All we did was try to help yo’ ass! Who came and got yo’ ass off the streets? We did! Who fed yo’ ass when you needed something to eat? We did! I didn’t have to fuck that nigga. You could have handled that on your own, but I did it, ’cause I thought you was my girl!” Whakelah shouted, as she punched away.
The cameraman zoomed in and made sure he captured every bit of the drama that was unfolding. The prison guards rushed in to stop the pummeling Whakelah was giving LaShawn, while Misha was cheering Whakelah on, wishing she could get a piece of the action.
“Get this little bitch off of me!” LaShawn told the guards. “I’m outta here!” She knew that one punch from her heavy hand would send Whakelah to the other end of the jail cell and she didn’t want to get into any more trouble than she was already in.
“We ya girls, LaShawn. We been ya girls, we still ya girls, and we gon’ always be ya girls!” Whakelah yelled.
The guards had been ordered to take LaShawn back to her cell. Once the warden had gotten wind of the altercation, it was time to shut the production down.
As LaShawn made her way back to her cell, she took a moment to reflect. She knew she couldn’t be mad at no one but herself, but it was much easier to blame everyone else. Her mother was so very disappointed in her, she wouldn’t even come to visit her. She didn’t have anyone but Whakelah and Misha, and she was turning her back on them, when they were the ones who should have been turning their backs on her.
“Is there anything that you wanna say to the people of New York City and around the world, Whakelah?” Whakelah’s cameraman anxiously asked her. If they had more episodes like this one, Keepin’ It Real was guaranteed to be a success.
Whakelah regained her composure and thought long and hard before she spoke. “Yeah, I got something I wanna say,” she said. “LaShawn ended up in prison because we were all on a paper chase. Y’all know what I’m talking about. A serious mission. A chase to get that paper by any means necessary. So I want all of y’all to keep this in mind—Don’t chase the paper, let the paper chase you!”
Urban Books, LLC
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My Best Frenemy Copyright © 2010 Chunichi
Diamond in the Sky Copyright © 2010 Karen Williams
Paper Chase Copyright © 2010 B.L.U.N.T.
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ISBN: 978-1-6016-2615-8
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