by Omar Tyree
Tracy had cooled out with boys and mischief for a little while, but as they say, A hard head makes a soft behind. Her mouth was getting worse as well.
“Girl always worried about somebody,” she continued to rant, worried about what would happen if Raheema started running her mouth. She paced back and forth in her living room. “That’s why her face is breakin’ out. She need a new boyfriend. All she do is sit around the house and gossip. Little fuckin’ nerd. She need to live her own damn life.”
• • •
Times were hard and dull for Raheema. The two rebels of life, Mercedes and Tracy, seemed to be getting a lot more out of it.
Raheema thought back to her childhood years, and she was suddenly able to understand Mercedes’ changes. Mercedes was a victim. It simply did not pay to do right in a world where so many enjoyed doing wrong.
Raheema did all of her homework on time, and continued to get straight A’s in Cardinal Dougherty high school. She was bored and miserable, learning to gossip for enjoyment. She had lost her only boyfriend because of her mistrust and inexperience with the opposite sex, and to top off her misfortunes, a case of teenaged acne had slowly begun to invade her face.
What did obedience to her parents do for her? Raheema felt as if she was being robbed of her teenage experience. She felt as if she would have nothing to tell her children, except gossip about what everyone else was doing. Her self-esteem was as low as a worm’s in the mud.
She went to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. The image reflected her inside and her outside. Her acne pads sat inside the cabinet, with a strong smell of alcohol. It was a teenage thing. Everyone would get it. But Raheema only saw the miserable people with it. Mercedes never had no stupid acne, she thought. And Tracy doesn’t either.
Books and homework no longer had their hold over her. In Raheema’s state of depression, the bed seemed a lot more rewarding, and she was beginning to take naps for hours at a time, tormented by her “Plain Jane” lifestyle. She went to her room and got into bed.
Beth walked in and clicked on her daughter’s light, concerned about her. It was eight-thirty. Raheema had not left her room. “Ra-Ra? Are you sick or somethin’, honey?”
Raheema ignored her, playing possum. She didn’t feel like talking about it, not to her mother. She put me in this situation in the first place, by marrying my mean-ass father, she thought. “No, mom. I just want to rest.”
Beth placed her hand on Raheema’s forehead to see if she was coming down with a fever. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong with you?”
“I just wanna sleep, mom.” Tears slid from Raheema’s face and into her pillow, revealing her despair.
“Did something happen in school today?” her mother pressed her.
Raheema remained speechless.
“Well, did you fail a test or something? Honey, please, I’m here to help you.”
Raheema felt that her situation was hopeless. She mumbled into her pillow, “You can’t help me, mom.”
“Well, what is the problem?”
Raheema sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I hate myself because I’m ugly. I haven’t been happy since my sister left. I want to be with her. She’s the only one that has a real life in this family,” she cried, wiping her watery eyes and sniffing more rapidly.
Beth hugged her, attempting to sooth her pain. “Honey, this is just a passing phase. It’ll go away,” she said, referring more to the teenaged acne than the reference to Mercedes. Lord knows I don’t want to go through that again, she thought. Keith still talked about “that damn Mercedes” this and “that damn Mercedes” that.
Raheema retorted, “I’m tired of hearing that. Tracy didn’t start breaking out.” She angrily pulled away. They had had teenaged acne discussions at least five times before.
Raheema put her hands over her face and mumbled, “I’ve done everything that dad tells me to do, and he doesn’t even notice me. All he talks about is Mercedes. He always liked her more than me anyway. She didn’t do anything he told her, and yet he still talks about when she was here. He never talks about me. And I hate him anyway. I hate him, mom.”
She looked her mother in the face with spiteful eyes, as if she hated her too. Then she asked her, “Why you marry that man, mommy?”
There was nothing Beth could say to soothe her. Why did I marry him? she asked herself. “Baby, things will get better,” she said.
Keith roared from down the stairs, “BETH! WHERE ’DAT DAMN GIRL AT? Tell her to get down here and wash these damn dishes!” He walked to the kitchen to get something to drink. He was just getting in from work. He took out a KOOL cigarette to calm his nerves from the hype of his laboring job.
Beth came down to meet him. “I’ll do it. Raheema’s not feeling too well.”
Beth had bags around her eyes, appearing thin and frail, as if the exuberance and the energy of life had been sucked out from her body. She wore droopy, dull clothing, navy blues, charcoal grays and dark greens. She had married Keith because she thought it was the right thing to do. She was pregnant with his daughter, Mercedes, right out of high school, and even then he had forced his will on her.
Keith asked, “Well, what’s wrong with her?” He gulped down a cold Miller and burped.
“She’s having emotional problems.”
“Emotional problems!” he exclaimed with a frown. “So she’s about to start up with that dumb shit, too, hunh? I’m gon’ straighten this one the hell out!” Keith put out his cigarette and headed for Raheema’s room.
Beth asked, “Now what are you gonna do, Keith?” She hurried behind him, forcing herself not to allow him up the steps.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he yelled at her. He shoved her and continued on his way up.
Beth pleaded, grabbing onto his waist, “Please, Keith, I beg you. It’s not what you think it is.”
Keith pushed her away to release her hold on him.
Beth refused. “You’re torturing her!” she screamed at him. “That’s her problem! Now if you have any love left in your heart, then let her rest in peace. PLEASE!”
Raheema jolted from her room and saw her parents struggling on the stairs. She ran back to her room and slammed the door, locking it shut. She then proceeded to trash her room, wishing she had the power to do the same to her father. All her life she dreamed of having that power. For five minutes Raheema screamed and hollered how much she hated him.
Keith finally got the message. He turned and walked into his room, locking his door. He paced inside of his room and lit up another cigarette, thinking about how his father had tortured him and his family when he was young. He didn’t want to blame himself, yet he realized that was adding, blindly, to a terrible chain of mental cruelty.
Raheema made her mind up, in her despair, that she too would have sex, just to see how it felt. But everyone hated her snotty attitude. And she had acne. Those were problems. Tracy had previously joked that sex would clear her face up, and Raheema was willing to find out if the myth was true.
Makeup covered her blemishes, with lipstick adding the finishing touches. Raheema pumped herself up to have a positive attitude. The first couple of days in school she pulled it off. She held meaningful conversations with a few more people than what she usually had spoken to, and specifically with more boys. But no one tried to approach her about a date until her second week on the prowl.
“Hi, Ra-Ra. You real look nice today,” a fellow student said inside of the hallway. He had bright eyes and rust-colored skin, and he was friendly.
Raheema smiled. “Oh, how you doin’, Darin?”
Darin had known her since freshman year and had a crush on her. He was attractive, but not glamorous. Raheema did not count him as a likely prospect.
“Can I walk you to class?” he asked her.
Raheema slammed her hard-to-close locker. “If you want to,” she answered carelessly.
“So what did you do all summer?”
“Nothing, really.”
&
nbsp; “Well, how is your mother?”
What is he asking about my mother for? Raheema thought. She felt guilty about it, but she was annoyed with Darin’s small talk. He wouldn’t have gotten a second of Mercedes’ or Tracy’s time. He was slow-witted, and his conversation was weak.
Raheema tried her best to remain cordial when she asked him, “Why are you asking about my mother?”
Darin answered, shakily, “Oh, I just figured I’d ask. You know?”
Raheema smiled and nodded to ease his embarrassment, but she didn’t know. He’s never even met my mother, she told herself.
They arrived at her class, and she was relieved when Darin turned to walk away. He felt good about it. He had enjoyed himself. He was grinning as if he had received an award at a banquet.
“I saw you, D. What did you say to her?” his brown and slender friend asked, walking up on him from behind.
Darin said, “Man, I was scared to ask her to the movies. But I tell you what, if I could get with her, I’d give her everything I have to give.”
Raheema turned down several uninteresting offers that day while flirting in the halls. The girls talked about her, expecting her change to be for the worst. Her head was too high. She walked with a glow that she had never possessed. And they were jealous.
At the SEPTA bus stop, Raheema attracted more eyes than she did previously. The boys sensed that she was presently open for offers.
One boy asked, loud and clear, “What’s your name, slim?” He was light-skinned with a scarred face, as if he was a fist-fighter. And he was not from Catholic school. He wore flashy public school gear.
Raheema asked, “Why you call me ‘slim’?” She was attempting to establish her new sociability. The boy was not as well-groomed as Bruce or Darin, but Raheema thought he was more confident and cool. So what if he’s not a pretty-boy? she told herself.
Scar-face sat down beside her and responded, “Does the shit matter?”
His friends chuckled. He had always been rash with his words.
The boy reminded Raheema of Bruce’s friend Bucky. She had never gotten along well with him. Bucky had been able to read all of her inconsistencies.
Blood rushed to Raheema’s face with anxiety. She began to feel inferior and not secure enough to deal with the boy. Her new self-confidence was weakening.
Scar-face asked, “So what’s your name?”
He put his hand on Raheema’s knee. She could imagine her father doing something of that sort to her mother, some twenty years ago.
“Raheema.” She tried to hide her nervousness with a piece of gum.
“You got one for me too, right?”
Scar-face did not look all that bad with a smile on his face. Raheema gave him a stick.
“So where do you live?” he asked, popping the gum into his mouth.
“Diamond Lane.”
“Yeah? Do you know some girl named Tracy?”
“Yeah, why?” she asked, still craving gossip.
“Oh, ’cause she think she the shit. I be wantin’ to take her head off, the cat-eyed-lookin’ bitch.”
Raheema giggled, feeling more comfortable. “What’s your name?” she asked him.
“Chuck.” He looked at her silky long hair and touched it. “I like this. It’ll be good to run my fingers through.”
His friends looked at him and laughed again.
Raheema smiled it off, apprehensively. I don’t think I want to do anything with him, she told herself. Yet Chuck had established more authority with her than the other boys who had tried her.
He asked for her number, but Raheema bashfully asked for his instead, so Chuck wrote it down for her.
She arrived home with a certain smugness about her day. She had accomplished something outside of schoolwork for the first time in a long time. It was even enjoyable to go boy-shopping. She began to feel some of the excitement that she was sure her older sister and her neighbor had felt.
Tracy had turned down Cash’s offer to go to the movies. Raheema had “busted her groove,” or in other words, gotten in the way of her plans Cash then promised to take her to the Gucci shop in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He said he was going to buy her some Gucci gear, since he had missed her birthday. He gave her all kinds of excuses for a couple of weeks before he finally took her on the shopping spree.
They left for Atlantic City early on a Saturday morning. Tracy lied to her mother and said that she would be attending Jantel’s cross-country track meet. She knew she was pressing her luck, but she surely was not going to pass up a chance to go to Atlantic City.
When they arrived, Cash counted out three thousand dollars. Tracy pretended as if she was not looking, but Cash knew that she was. The only time she had seen that much money was in the movies.
“You gon’ spend all that on me?” she asked with a loose tongue.
“Naw, my sisters wanted some stuff, too.”
Tracy smiled and said, “I know. I was just jokin’.” She felt embarrassed about her hasty comment.
Cash grinned at her and responded, “No you didn’t. You really are greedy like that.”
“No I’m not,” she retorted.
They walked ahead toward the casinos. It was cloudy along the beach, and the first three casinos they had entered were wrong.
Tracy whined, “Dag, we gotta walk all way back there.”
“Won’t you stop complainin’ so much?”
“I don’t feel like walkin’ all way back there.” She dragged her feet like a child. She wore her white Sixers jacket, black Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and red Reeboks.
“Fuck it. We goin’ back home,” Cash teased.
“Sike, Cash, I’m only playin’. God.”
Cash shook his head. “You somethin’ else, girl. And you think I’m a sucka’, but that’s aw’ight.” He looked at her and grinned, thinking about leaving her in “A-C.” “You lucky I like you,” he told her.
“Why?” she asked, confused.
“Oh, don’t worry about it now.”
“Don’t worry about what?”
“Nothin’, girl.”
What is he talking about? Tracy thought to herself.
They reached the right casino and walked through crowds of gamblers before coming to the Gucci shop. Prices ranged from twenty-five dollars for key chains and umbrellas, on up to the thousands for everything else, including sweaters, jackets, shoes and outfits.
Tracy tried on the sneakers that she wanted. Cash bought them, a pocketbook and a key chain. He bought himself a four-hundred-and fifty-two-dollar sweat suit, along with the items his sisters wanted.
Cash hung around the casinos while he waited for Tracy to use the bathroom. It was a perfect opportunity for him to get away long enough to order a hotel room. Tracy came out of the restrooms to find that Cash was gone. He came walking back with a smile on his face, and Tracy was curious about it. She thought he had snuck off to talk to some other girls who were there.
She asked possessively, “Where did you go?”
Cash lied to her. “Oh, I tried to get in the casino, and dude let me play a few games. But umm, Tracy, what we gon’ do when we get back home?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, let’s put all these bags inside the jeep and walk around.”
They walked around the casino grounds for another hour, laughing and talking about people. Every now and then, Cash would take a peek or two at Tracy’s firm behind. He got her to jump on an elevator to ride up to the eighth floor. They got off to snoop around. Cash then stopped, taking out a key in front of room 812.
Tracy grinned. “Oh, so you got a room, hunh?”
“Yeah, I can’t let us go home without celebratin’.” He walked in with a serious face. And it was obvious to Tracy that he wanted something. “Come here and sit on my lap,” he told her.
Tracy did, reluctantly. She didn’t like the way that Cash had gone about it. He should have just told me that he was going to get a room, she thought to herself. I don’t k
now why he had to sneak around to do it.
He looked at Tracy’s lips before he kissed her.
Tracy pulled away, disappointed. She wasn’t sure if she was up to doing anything with him. She just did not feel like it.
Cash asked her, “What ’chew stop for?”
Tracy sighed, without giving him an answer. She thought about lying to Cash and telling him that her time of the month was around. But she doubted if that would work. I might as well just get this over with, she told herself. She got up and went inside the bathroom to begin taking off her clothes. Cash was shocked! No young-girl had ever been so bold about it. Tracy figured it was the fastest way to get the sexual encounter over with, but Cash felt she was being exotic.
She walked over to the bed, butt-naked, with firm breasts, firm behind and a perfectly curved honey-brown body, and slipped underneath the covers.
Cash took out a three-pack of lubricated LifeStyles.
Tracy watched him. “I’m on the pill,” she announced.
“So, them pills don’t stop shit from burnin’.”
“What?” she snapped defensively. “Oh, I ain’t got nothin’.”
Cash looked at her as if she was crazy. “Shid’, I’on know you like that, girl. Even young-girls burnin’ nowadays. I can’t take no more chances with my shit, ’cause AIDS is killin’ muthafuckas. And the shit that trips me out is that girls don’t be knowin’ when they’re burnin’.”
“You got burned before?”
“What ’chew think?”
There was a moment of silence.
Tracy said, “Well, I don’t have anything, and if you feel like that, then we ain’t gotta do nothin’.”
Cash retorted, “Yup, and we ain’t gotta go back home, either.”
Tracy sighed. “Well, come on then,” she said, throwing her head back against the pillow.
Cash looked at the pack of LifeStyles in his hand. “Aw’ight, fuck it,” he said, throwing them on the dresser.
He climbed in bed and went for Tracy’s breasts to stimulate himself. Tracy caressed him and guided him inside of her. Cash was shocked by her actions again. He moved in a fury as Tracy ran her fingers over his back, causing his early explosion. He breathed heavily as he released himself, and it was over too fast for Tracy’s comfort.