“Bitch, don’t slam my doors. You ain’t paying no bills around here,” Mackey shouted from the living room couch where he spent most his time watching television while his wife worked.
“Welp, neither do you, nigga!” Rissa was heated. She marched out of the bathroom and went into the spare bedroom where she slept. Franticly, she gathered her belongings. In the heat of the moment, she began to cry again, mumbling hateful things toward her aunt and Mackey. “Both of you gonna pay for fucking me over. I know my mama turning over in her grave.” Rissa closed her eyes and spoke out loud to her mother as if she could hear her. “I know you didn’t know, Mama. I don’t blame you.”
Rissa knew her mother would have never allowed her to stay with her aunt if she knew what an awful monster her sister’s husband was. The truth was her mother always got uneasy vibes about Mackey whenever he came around. Yet she couldn’t quite figure out what it was about him that made her feel that way.
Linda Ford really had no other family to speak of. It was only her and her sister. Their parents had passed away years ago. Rissa never met her grandparents on her mother’s side, only hearing stories from back in the day. As for her own father and his people, Rissa’s mother told her that her dad was killed when she was barely three months old. Her father’s side of the family had a knockdown drag-out dispute with Linda over the illegitimate bastard.
In denial of Rissa being their grandchild, her grandma let it be known plain and clear that her son had no children he knew of. She was a mean, hateful woman who could not be moved. Linda did everything she could to convince her that Rissa was their blood, even offering to get a DNA test and pay for it. With a cold heart, she wasn’t trying to hear none of what Linda was claiming to be true.
When Rissa got older, around fourteen years old, she sought out her father’s wicked-mouthed mother on her own. Sneaking through some of her mother’s personal papers, she found the address. Gathering her courage, she went to find her truth and knocked on the woman’s door. Anxiously, she waited for an answer. Overjoyed to finally come face to face with someone who looked kinda like she did, Rissa smiled. She then introduced herself, explaining to the woman her deceased son was her father. Her grandmother went in on her hard, crushing all hope of Rissa ever knowing any of her daddy’s side of the family. The bitter woman confusingly refused to accept the fact that her son had or could have a child to carry on his name. Rissa remembered the incident as if it had just happened.
“I’m gonna tell you this one time and one time only. Don’t bring your little bum bitch ass back to my house no damn more with all this high drama shit. Your mama sent you barking up the wrong tree.” The woman stopped ranting long enough to squint and lean forward. “Hell, you don’t look nothing like my son, me, or nobody else in my gene pool, as a matter of fact. So fuck you and your conniving mama,” the bitter old bitch barked at poor, broken-hearted Rissa.
That had done it for Rissa. She wanted no part of that woman from that point on. Ironically, she would find out later on down the line that she had a lot of her grandmother’s evil streak in her when it came down to it.
Rissa glanced around the bedroom looking for anything of personal value she cared about taking with her. Seeing nothing, she picked up the lightweight trash bag off the floor and slung it over her shoulder. Having no choice, she was ready to head out of her aunt’s house for good.
Before the pitiful teen got to the front door she had to walk by Mackey and her aunt. The two of them sat on the living room sofa, cuddled up, passing a Newport back and forth as if nothing major had been said. Side-eyeing Rissa, her aunt smirked, feeling as if she had accomplished something by turning her back on her deceased sister’s only child. “Lock my door on your way out, lying-ass, loose bitch.”
Rissa stayed focused. She looked straight ahead, trying her damn best not to say a word to either of them. However, when she reached the front door, Rissa stopped, turning around to give them a final piece of her mind. “Fuck both of y’all wack asses. You deserve each other, two fake niggas who ain’t about shit. And, Auntie, you know my mama would beat your ass for letting him get away with doing me like he did, your own blood. But that’s cool, though. I swear, I’ma be good. But y’all gonna fall; watch! Motherfuckers can’t do people like y’all doing me. And when I get wherever I’m going, I’m calling the police on your nasty ass, believe that!”
Rissa’s words were delivered with sheer ice. Superstitious, Mackey and her aunt both felt fearful that Rissa had just cursed them, but they tried to laugh it off as she walked out the door for good. Mackey also hoped she would not actually call the cops and turn him in.
CHAPTER TWO
“Dang, I guess I’m on my own, Mama,” Rissa said, looking up at the evening sky as she walked up the block with tears still in her eyes. Having no idea what her next move was, Rissa got several blocks away from the house. Having to stop to catch her breath because she was walking so fast, her mind was going a hundred miles an hour in all directions. She got sick to her stomach. Her entire world was turned upside down. She had no plan and no real money to speak of. Distraught, she doubled over, throwing up on the sidewalk and part of the curb. Rissa wiped the vomit away with the back of her thin North Face jacket sleeve. The cool April air was comforting to her, at least, as she sweated. Getting back on her square, she steadied herself and looked around to see where she was. The street signs read Gratiot and Gunston; she’d walked all the way from Eight Mile Road and hadn’t realized it.
Searching for a safe place to rest her burning legs, Rissa also needed some water to rinse her mouth out. Her first mindset was to drink out of someone’s water hose, but actually finding a person in the hood with a hose let alone a faucet tap that worked was impossible. Bag back over her shoulder, she went into the gas station on a nearby corner to buy a bottle of water. Crazy as it may seem, it was jumping and it was located right across the street from the police department’s ninth precinct. This area was known in Detroit as the Red Zone, where anything was subject to pop off. There were always drug deals being made, panhandlers posting up and begging for a dime, a quarter, a cigarette, or something. Before you could get out of the car good and walk inside the station you were attacked.
Rissa went to the cooler and got a dollar water. Then she headed back to the front to cash out. On her way in she’d noticed the two Arabs working behind the counter eyeing her trash bag over her shoulder extremely hard while they tended to customers. When it was her turn to pay for what she was buying she pulled out a dollar that was tucked in her rear pocket and eyeballed them back. “What the fuck you keep looking at my bag for?”
“Why you so rude, sweetie? I do something to you? I say nothing wrong to you,” the Arab at the first register spoke in broken English with lust in his eyes.
Rissa couldn’t stand them because they were always disrespectful to black women with all that sweetie, honey, baby bullshit. But as soon as a nigga knocked one of their bitches off, it was a problem. Rissa sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes at the dude. She then paid for the water and turned to walk out but was stopped at the entrance.
“Girl, what up? What you doing at the trap station?” Wanda cried out in joy to see her road dog.
Rissa perked up quick when she saw Wanda. “I was about to ask your ass the same thang.” Rissa smiled as they hugged each other. Wanda and Rissa had met in ninth grade and had been jam tight ever since. At one point when you would see one you would see the other.
“What are you about to do, go to your auntie crib?” Wanda asked, assuming that had to be her homegirl’s move.
Rissa dropped her head an inch and shook it side to side. “No. I bounced from that bitch house. Her and my slime ball uncle be on that bullshit, especially him,” Rissa announced sadly as she got a huge lump in her throat.
An off-brand nigga came through the door high as fuck. He walked between them like they were invisible. As he bumped Rissa’s shoulder her garbage bag full of all she now owned in the world fe
ll to the ground. Wanda and Rissa went ham on him. There was no way in hell anyone in the hood would allow the next person to be so rude and not go off, damn the consequences.
“Hey, nigga, damn. Have you lost your fucking mind or what? Where the fuck they do that bullshit at?” Wanda was pissed, immediately bending down to help her friend pick up her bag.
Rissa looked up, giving him a death stare. “Yeah, that was messed up. You gotta be high off something strong as hell, shit.”
“Damn, my bad, ladies. A brother a little wasted tonight,” he apologized with smug grin plastered across his clean-shaven face. Then he yelled out to the cashier to give him a fresh back wood blunt. After he got it he hurried back out the door ready for the rest of his night.
“Okay, sis, now back to what we was talking about before that fool came in. So when did you move out?” Wanda quizzed with surprise.
“I guess about an hour ago,” Rissa replied, knowing her life would never be the same. She hated Mackey for what he had been doing to her and she hated her aunt, her own flesh and blood even, doubly for not believing her. Yet and still, Rissa still couldn’t help but feel a bit of sadness not knowing what her future would hold.
“Damn, girl, that’s all the way fucked up.” Wanda hugged Rissa tightly in an attempt to comfort her. Out of curiosity, she asked her childhood friend what happened and why she wasn’t going to be living with her aunt anymore. Rissa was already beyond upset. She had been through enough emotional turmoil for the night and didn’t want any more tears. She knew good and well her eyes were already redder than fire. Throwing her bag back over her shoulder, Rissa told Wanda she’d tell her later, which was all she had to say. They had been running together long enough throughout the years to know that was code for “Bitch, hold tight. I’ll tell you when I get high.”
“Okay, damn all the sad shit; so what is you about to do? I need to turn up and get my mind right, girl,” Rissa gleefully said, trying to take her thoughts off of the earlier events.
Wanda looked at her watch and smiled. “Girl, go to my house. My mama and brother left driving to Florida this morning. Her cousin died.”
“Oh, wow. That’s messed up. Sorry to hear that and for your loss.” Rissa gave her a sad look as they walked out the door of the gas station together.
“Fall back, bitch, don’t be sorry. I didn’t like his old, crusty, good-black-face-hating ass anyways,” Wanda shrieked, waving her hand from side to side.
As the friends laughed, both the girls’ attention was drawn to their left. Off to the side of the wall, they noticed the same rude nigga who cut between them inside then took a cop. He was cursing into his cell phone while he held it like a microphone trying to be more than extra.
“Fuck that, homeboy, if you ain’t high you didn’t buy it from me. It’s whatever, my dude. I’m out here in these streets like a real G every day and night, you can believe that!” He was obviously agitated the louder he got.
Rissa and her girl side-eyed him for trying to front for a few young, giggling females who had no business even being out this time of night and posted at the hot box gas station at that. Ready to get in their own zone, they kept it moving.
Bending the corner, Rissa saw Wanda’s boyfriend Chad parked off to the side of the lot. He was gangster leaned back in his old-school Cutlass that sat up high on rims. The two friends were horse playing, talking shit about this and that. Rissa was glad to have someone to talk to who wasn’t as fake as she’d just found out her aunt was. Almost a few yards away from the car, Chad began franticly motioning for his girl and Rissa to hurry up and get inside.
“I told her ass I didn’t like this gas station shit always popping off up here,” Chad said out loud to himself as he leaned over from the driver’s side, pushing the passenger door open.
Obviously the girls weren’t paying attention to their surroundings. But thankfully Chad was. Knowing the reputation of where they were, Chad was focused on the black Hell Cat as soon as it turned off of Gunston into the gas station lot. Watching the play about to go down, he saw the vehicle whip right up on the dude who was just on his cell phone a second ago truly going ham on someone or perpetrating it. Just the same, something wasn’t right. Chad had a bad feeling come over him as soon as the Hell Cat’s tires came to a screeching halt.
“Hey, y’all, hurry the fuck up! Now,” he demanded, putting bass in his voice.
“Look at this nigga, girl, trying to be all bossy. Boy, don’t be rushing us. We coming,” Wanda yelled at Chad, who was giving them a crazed look.
“You must have told that nigga he getting some wet-wet tonight the way he rushing a bitch,” Rissa teased, switching the bag to her other shoulder.
Both the girls were smiling, oblivious to the scene playing out behind them. The rude, bigmouthed cash-talking guy at the gas station was frozen in fear. With his hands up, grimacing, warm piss started to run down his pant leg. He was caught with his dick out, exposed. The front passenger in the Hell Cat had a .40-cal. with an extended clip aimed at his head. He appeared to be short on patience and long on determination, demanding his twenty-five dollars back he gave him for the nothing-ass weed he had copped not even ten minutes earlier.
“Damn, dawg, it ain’t that serious for all that. You ain’t gotta be pointing that thang at a nigga face and whatnot.”
“It wasn’t that serious until you was screaming at me that you was about that life and my little twenty-five dollars wasn’t about shit. It was serious then so let’s keep that convo on tap,” the passenger yelled back at his soon-to-be victim.
“Man, quit playing. Bust that bitch-ass nigga, man. He was talking that tough-tone shit on the phone a minute ago. Now look at him, all pissy and shit,” the driver mocked, begging his boy to just go ahead and put in that work so they could peel out.
As the soon-to-be high-profile but common crime was taking place, Chad got more animated, pointing at the situation popping off behind the girls. Finally when bullets were seconds away from flying, the mouthy duo caught on to Chad and what he was trying to say. Looking back, they saw the real murderous drama unfolding.
Rissa and Wanda jointly let out high-pitched screams and ran full speed to Chad’s car. Practically diving inside, their hearts raced. Chad called them both all kinds of dumb hoes for not paying attention to what was going on around them at all times in Detroit. Rissa ducked down in the back seat, peeking out the window. Chad hit the gas, making the Cutlass leave a trail of burned rubber tracks off of the side of the gas station onto Gratiot.
Rissa witnessed the rude guy attempt to reach toward his waist as if he had his own peacemaker. However, it was much too late to call himself taking a stand. The man who he had sold the garbage weed to didn’t double back to be friends but enemies of the boy’s family and friends. Countless numbers of flashes lit the night air followed by the ear-splitting eruption of loud gunshots coming from the Hell Cat the guy stood just feet away from. It was like looking at an oncoming train wreck. Part of Rissa wanted to just turn her head in the other direction and thank God it wasn’t her getting cruelly put to sleep, while the other part had to watch the inevitability. All three of them knew the bigmouthed dude was dead before he hit the ground.
Oh well, add another one to the homicide statistics of Detroit, Rissa thought. She had zoned out. She forgot she was in the car with Wanda and Chad. Her heart raced and her adrenalin was on a hundred. Finally she was snapped back to reality by Chad’s continued ranting. “Chad, you my nigga and all but shut the fuck up, bro; we get it. Pay attention to our surroundings,” Rissa repeated with sarcasm.
Chad was always overprotective of females, especially the ones closest to him. “Okay, y’all think it’s all fun and games, until ya ass end up in some random clown’s trunk buck-ass-naked and literally fucked up.”
Wanda sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes at her man. He took his eyes off the road long enough to side-eye her. Rissa then yelled from the back seat, “Where’s the weed at? Roll up! Put some smo
ke in the air. A bitch need to get her mind right.”
Wanda reached over and snatched the quarter sack of bud off of Chad’s lap. Then she prepped the back wood to be filled with weed. Finally rolled and lit, she hit it hard then passed it over her shoulder to Rissa. Rissa took it and looked at it good before she went any further. Then she cussed Wanda out for doing a fucked-up job rolling up as always. Rissa hit the weed hard causing her chest to fill up with the meds she craved. Rissa held the smoke in as long as she could. When she was no longer able to hold it in, she exhaled, blowing weed smoke out. The car filled up quickly with smoke.
Chad, the last to hit, could barely contain his excitement. “Damn, that shit smells funky; pass that shit!”
Way before the blunt was equally passed among the three, they were high as fuck and in a Snoop Dogg tranquil state of mind ready for whatever the rest of the evening had in store for them.
The trio finally made it to Wanda’s mother’s house. They exited the old school car and went inside. Once inside Chad went to the icebox to grab a drink to quench the case of cotton mouth he was experiencing. He found just what he needed: a pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid. In the hood it’s everybody’s favorite thirst quencher. Chad gulped down the ice cold Kool-Aid, giving life back to his mouth and pleasure to his taste buds.
Wanda and Rissa sat in the living room discussing Bobby, who was Rissa’s special boo thang. As they did, it was time to put something else in the air again. The pair moved like a well-oiled machine. Rissa cleaned the tobacco out of the blunt while Wanda broke down the kush. It was rolled and blazed up in no time at all. Chad then joined them in the living room and pretended not to be listening to their conversation as he gladly took his turn when the blunt came around to him.
Around the Way Girls 10 Page 13