by Mark Anthony
My heart was really pumping now but I didn’t move. I stayed stiff with my eyes open and continued to listen to my music.
“Take this shit off!” my father screamed while snatching my Walkman and headphones and flinging them across the room.
“You heard me knocking at the door. Shayla, what is going on with you?” I knew my father’s fuse was blown because he had this big-ass vein that would pop out on his forehead whenever he was angry. As he to me it looked as if it was pulsating.
I looked at my father and twisted my lips. I didn’t say anything to him.
“A’ight, Shayla,” my father said as he held both of his palms faceup in a surrendering gesture. “Okay. I’m gonna try to calm down and talk sensibly.”
My father, who looked like he could be related to the rapper Ice Cube, blew some air out of his lungs before speaking again. He asked me to sit up and look at him.
I reluctantly complied.
“Now what the hell is this that Vera is telling me?” my father asked with his face frowned up.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Shayla, don’t give me that bullshit. I asked you a direct question and you better fucking answer me because I’m two seconds from knocking the taste outta your mouth!”
So much for him trying to calm down, I thought to myself.
“I don’t know what Vera told you, so how can I answer you?” I said with a neck-twisting Brooklyn attitude.
My father moved closer toward me as if he was gonna hit me and I instinctively braced myself to get hit.
“Shayla, she told me she caught you in the basement fucking not one but two niggas!”
I sucked my teeth and shook my head and sighed.
“Shayla, are you crazy or what? You bringing niggas into my house in broad daylight and disrespecting yourself and my house? And what the fuck are you doing having sex? Where did all this come from, Shayla? And forty ounces, what the hell were you thinking?”
I knew that I had to say something and this was as good a time as any to start playing dumb.
“Vera don’t know what she talking about,” I blurted out.
My father was ready to say something else but I cut him off. “All I did was kiss somebody—that’s it. It was a real kiss but that’s all I did. So I don’t know what Vera is talking about. I knew she was gonna overexaggerate. She gets on my nerves!”
“Vera,” my father yelled out for Vera to come upstairs.
Vera had to be at the steps listening or something because she showed up in my room too damn quick.
“I just want you here because Shayla is saying she didn’t do nothing but kiss—”
Before my father could finish Vera blurted out, “Kenny”—which was my father’s name—“what I told you is the truth. Shayla had no clothes on with her ass up in the air and she was fucking. I know the difference between kissing and sexing,” Vera said emphatically as I cut my eyes at her.
Bitch! I wanted to yell at her.
“Kenny, you seen the liquor bottles. There were two bottles because there were two guys in here.”
I was getting so heated as I sat there that I wanted to just cry with anger. In my heart of hearts I honestly felt like I did nothing wrong and I definitely wasn’t in the mood to be getting chastised.
Before my father could say anything I stood up. I didn’t look anyone in the face but I just shouted at the floor. “All right! Y’all want me to say it? Okay, I’ll say it! Yes, I had sex downstairs in the basement. I had sex! Your daughter is not a virgin! Big damn deal!” Still angry as hell, I began marching out of the room. But before I could reach my bedroom door my father grabbed me by my hair and yanked me down to the ground and slapped the shit out of me.
“Vera, leave us alone for a minute because I don’t want you to see this!”
Whack!
My father smacked me again right across my face. I tried to cover up and protect myself but as a five-feet-three young girl going against a grown-ass man I wasn’t having any luck. My father grabbed both of my wrists with just his left hand and with his right hand he repeatedly gave me open-hand slaps to just about every part of my body. He yelled at me the entire time that he slapped earth, wind, and fire outta my ass.
“You’re thirteen years old, Shayla! This better be the last time you ever have sex in this house or sex, period! You hear me?”
I frowned up my face and just looked at my father. Although the blows that he was giving me hurt like hell I refused to cry.
“You hear me talking to you?” my father said while smacking me across my face one more time.
“I’m only doing what I hear and see you doing,” I shouted.
I could tell that I caught my father off guard because he totally froze for a moment and he had to think about what I just said.
“Shayla, I’m grown and you’re a fucking kid.”
I was breathing heavy and I still had a look to kill that was plastered across my face. I wanted to say more smart remarks but I kept my mouth shut after that point.
My father stood up straight and he looked down at me while I looked up at him and wondered if my ass-whipping was over.
“Go in the bathroom and clean yourself up and get ready for school tomorrow! And Shayla, you listen to me. You gonna start changing the way you dress around here, and you’re gonna start focusing on nothing but your schoolwork. You let this be the last time anything remotely like this happens again! And let me tell you something, you tell those little friends of yours that they lucky it was Vera that caught them and not me because I swear to god I would be going to jail tonight for three murders!”
Are you still yapping? I wanted to ask my father.
I guess he wasn’t through because he continued on. “And don’t worry about me and what I do and who I do it with! I’m a grown-ass man and I pay the bills around here. I’m the parent and you’re the child. You do as I say and not as I do! You understand me?”
I just looked at my father and didn’t say a word.
“Now get outta my face because I’m two seconds from killing yo little ass!”
I went and took a shower and nursed the soreness that my father had caused from hitting on me. When I had gotten out of the bathroom my father came up to my room. He talked to me some more and told me how he didn’t want to be hitting on me but it was his job and his responsibility to protect me and care for me and that I would shipwreck my life if I got pregnant or some kind of STD. He went on and on and on about all kinds of shit. But when he said that my mother would be so disappointed in me and that she was probably turning over in her grave at that very moment, I almost lost it. I couldn’t believe that my father had the nerve to say such a thing.
I tuned him out from that point forward and I couldn’t have cared less what he was telling me. My mother would be so disappointed in me? I couldn’t believe that he’d actually said that to me.
It was all right though, because right then and there I was convinced that I wasn’t gonna change a damn thing about myself and I definitely wasn’t gonna stop having sex just because of an ass-whipping from my daddy.
In fact, in my mind I knew that I was gonna step things up. Only I knew that I just had to be much smarter about it from that point on. BK’s friend Mike had never finished what he’d started with me. As I laid in my bed and tried to go to sleep that night, my last thoughts were me wondering if me and Mike would be able to get it on at his house or at BK’s house, and if so, when, and for how long?
My pussy was getting really wet just from the thought.
Chapter Six
Kiss and Tell
The next morning when I woke up my father was miraculously home and actually there to eat breakfast with me, something he hadn’t done in years. Vera had fixed breakfast and had it on the table yet her black ass was still in the kitchen lingering around trying to busy herself so that she could eavesdrop on what me and my father would talk about.
But I kept my mouth shut the entire time and just listened to m
y father rant on about how he couldn’t sleep at all because he was tossing and turning the entire night thinking about what I had done.
“And when you finish that food go upstairs and change that outfit you got on. I told you last night that you ain’t gonna be dressing like that around here anymore!”
“Fine,” I said as I used that as my excuse to remove myself from the table so that I could go to my room and find something other than a tight pair of jeans to put on.
I knew that my father was driving me to school that day so I had to hurry up and change. That wasn’t a problem because I desperately wanted to hurry up and get the hell out of that house so I could get to school and be free. In no time I threw on a pair of somewhat loose corduroy pants and a big, thick-ass angora sweater that was not form-fitting.
Fifteen minutes later, after my father had inspected and approved my outfit, we were in his Audi and making the five-minute trek to my school.
“And you make sure that you have those boys’ home phone numbers and addresses when you get home from school,” my father reminded me for the tenth damn time.
“Daddy, I already told you that they don’t go to my school and they’re not even from around here,” I stressed as we pulled up in front of the school.
“Shayla, listen to me. If I have to drive you to school everyday and go with you from class to class and follow your ass back home, each and every day, well, then that’s what I’ll do. Now either you get these addresses and telephone numbers so I can talk to these boys’ parents or else I’ll handle it my way!”
I looked at my father and then looked away and rolled my eyes but I made sure that he couldn’t see me.
“All right,” I said in a defeated tone. “I’ll see you later.”
I exited the car, not knowing how the hell I was gonna get out of this jam that I was in, but I knew that I would think of something before the day was out. In fact, I knew that I had to think of something because my father was wild enough and in a position to do just what he said that he would do.
See, my father didn’t work a full-time job. Up until the time that my mother had died he used to drive the train for the New York City Transit Authority, but when she died in a car accident he was able to cash in on her million-dollar life insurance policy as well as sue the guy who had crashed into my mom’s car. A million dollars may not be a huge sum of money but back in the late eighties if you had that kind of money you were more than straight.
The problem was that my father used the money to just catch up on the years of wild living that he had missed out on because of the fact that he had gotten married to my mother at such a young age. So he didn’t move us to some rich, high-class neighborhood out on Long Island. Instead, he kept us right in one of the nicest areas in Brooklyn so that he could have the excess money to finance his nanny jump-offs and his numerous sexual excursions to exotic places like Brazil and Fiji.
So yeah, the last thing I needed was my pops, who had all kinds of time on his hands, literally up in my face following me around 24–7. I knew I would think of something but I just didn’t know what. As it turned out as soon as I made it to my homeroom class I found out that I had some much bigger problems to attend to, problems that were much bigger than the problem that my father was posing for me.
“What is that you wearing, girl?” Angie asked me as soon as I sat down in homeroom.
I shook my head and just looked at Angie without saying a word. She immediately knew that I was pissed off about something.
“Are you upset about what I think you’re upset about? And why didn’t you call me last night? Girl, what’s going on? What’s up?” Angie asked in rapid-fire mode.
“Just a lot of shit, Angie,” I said while still looking pissed off. “And what are you talking about, asking me if I’m upset about what you think I’m upset about?”
“Shayla?” Angie said with this goofy-ass look on her face. “You know.”
“I know what?”
Angie smirked and looked at me as if she was trying to figure out just what I was thinking. Then she leaned forward and whispered in my ear.
“Everybody is talking and asking me if it’s true that BK and his boy Mike ran a train on you yesterday?”
“What!” I said as I pulled away from her and looked at her in disbelief.
My heart was thumping with shock and nerves.
“Everybody like who?”
Angie sucked her teeth and replied, “Everybody!”
I looked at Angie and I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“So is it true or what? And you ain’t even call me last night and tell me and we supposed to be homegirls? What’s up with that?” Angie whispered so that the others in our class wouldn’t be all in our business.
“Angie!”
“What?”
“No it ain’t true,” I lied.
“Well, I don’t know. I mean people are talking this early in the morning and word on the street is—”
I cut Angie off. “You don’t know? Angie, I’m telling you! I’m your girl and I’m telling you what’s what!”
There was this pause and Angie and I both looked at each other without saying anything.
The first-period bell rang and we had to make our way to our classes, which were in separate directions.
“Okay, Angie, I’ll be straight up with you but you can’t say shit to nobody.” I paused to see who was around and trying to eavesdrop on our conversation before continuing on.
“I fucked BK yesterday at my house but ain’t nobody run no train on me!” I lied in a whisper.
Angie looked at me and smiled a half smile. When her smile disappeared, she spoke up over the loud throng of voices that had filled up the school’s hallways.
“Shayla, you my girl and all so don’t get me wrong, but all I know is that BK must have kissed and told because people know all your business and all types of details and now you got these girls up in here calling you a ho and all type of shit. So I’m just saying don’t get caught off guard by the shit ’cause you gonna hear it.”
I needed this like I needed a hole in my head. I was so pissed off at BK that I wanted to slap the shit out of him. But as Angie and I departed and went our separate ways for the time being I realized something that made me feel very stupid. I realized that even if I wanted to get in touch with BK I had no way of doing so unless I happened to just run into him. He didn’t go to my school, I didn’t know where he lived, and I didn’t even have his phone number. I had nothing of the sort, yet I had let him just run up in me and bust a nut on my back like I had known him for years.
Well, there was nothing that I could do all day long but think about what everyone in the school was possibly thinking about me. I wondered who exactly knew what. When did they find out? Did BK just pick up the phone and call everybody last night or what? Did they know that Vera had caught us? My thoughts were driving me insane and there was no way that I could concentrate in any of my classes. I didn’t even bother to participate in gym. I just told the gym teacher that I had forgot my shorts and sneakers at home.
The only thing that I wanted to do was hear that final bell ring so I could get home, get on the phone, and start calling around to see who knew what and to also do any damage control.
Before the day could end, though, I had to make it through my lunch period that was right after my gym class at 12:45 in the afternoon. I would always hook up with Angie at lunchtime and she and I would sit together. On this particular day it was no different. The only thing that was out of place was me rushing up to her as soon as she walked through the doors of the cafeteria and bum-rushing her with questions to see had she heard anything more about people calling me a ho.
“Girl, would you calm down and stop bugging out over that,” Angie said to me. “No, I ain’t hear nothing else about it. And even if I did it ain’t none of nobody else’s business what the hell you do, so fuck everybody else.” She then paused and started to laugh. “I don’t mean
fuck everybody else like go and have sex with them, I mean fuck them like don’t listen to them. You know what I mean, right?” Angie asked, then she started laughing as if what she had said was the funniest thing in the world.
I giggled with her even though my nerves were shot and I wasn’t in no laughing mood.
“You could have at least told me what you was planning on doing yesterday,” Angie said to me as we sat down in the lunchroom in our regular spot.
“The thing is it just kind of happened,” I said as the lunchroom was quickly filling up with noisy, rambunctious students.
Angie just looked at me and didn’t say anything. We were both silent for a little while until she broke the silence.
“So what was it like? How was it?”
“What?”
“You know.”
Angie was probing and being nosy but I guess it was normal for her to probe me being that she was my girl. Actually just being around her was helping me to relax and calm me down.
I chuckled and said, “Angie, between me and you, it was so good!” I said while emphasizing the word good.
I knew that Angie probably wanted to know all of the specific and intimate details but I was smart enough to not be too specific with her because even though she was my girl, I didn’t want it to come back later and blow up in my face.
“That’s it? It was just good? You know my little hot ass wants specifics, so spill it!”
Angie and I both laughed and just as my nerves had fully subsided, walking past us was this ghetto chick named Sonia who was supposed to be in the ninth grade but had gotten left back so she was still in the eighth grade with me. Sonia was jealous of me because of all of the attention that I would get from the boys and yet even with her trying as hard as hell wasn’t nobody ever really giving her ass the time of day. Of course she attributed her lack of male attention to me and I guess I always kept her jealous meter on high.