Around the Way Girls 8

by Tina Brooks McKinney

  “Girl, what the fuck are you talking about?”

  She gulped from her glass and reached up and took the bottle back from me.

  I was so busy trying to keep up with her conversation, I hadn’t even had a chance to pour myself a drink.

  “Church’s is a perfect example. Have you seen the size of their wings? It’s not natural and I think the same thing is happening to our bodies.”

  I reached over and took the glass from her.

  “What the hell are you doing? Give that shit back.”

  “You’re talking crazy and you’re scaring me.” I gave her a hard look, hoping to cut through the wall she had apparently constructed around herself.

  “Fine, if you don’t want to drink with me, I’ll go home.” She attempted to get up but was very unsteady on her legs.

  “Heifer, sit down. You just need to slow down a little.” I gave her back the glass but reclaimed the bottle and poured some for myself. I decided I was going to need something if I was going to get through the night. I didn’t care what else happened because first thing in the morning, I would be on a plane.

  Reshunda fell back once I’d returned her glass. I was pretty sure she was just talking smack when she said she was leaving, but I didn’t want to have to fight her ass if she really did want to go. I went over to my dresser and pulled out something for her to sleep in.

  “You might want to get out of that dress. You still have vomit on the shoulder.”

  She looked at the dress as if she was seeing it for the first time. This time when she attempted to stand, she had no problem. She began fighting with the zipper, trying to get the dress off.

  She looked so funny, I couldn’t hold in my laughter.

  “Shit, don’t just stand there grinning like an idiot, help me get this shit off.” She had kicked her shoes across the room and was twisting in circles in an attempt to reach the zipper on the dress.

  I went to help her but I took my time doing it. I didn’t appreciate her calling me an idiot. She continued to wiggle until her clothing fell to the floor. I waited for her to get dressed.

  “You know we have to talk about this.” I took it slow just in case Reshunda tried to flip out on my ass. She was still drinking pretty heavily, but at this point, so was I.

  “I know. I thought if I kept on drinking, we’d wake up and Ebony would come through the door.”

  “Well, baby girl, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Do you know what she was on? It had to be more than drinking.”

  “I don’t really know what she took. She’s been doing a lot of pills lately, but when I asked her about it, she told me to mind my business.”

  “The police are going to want to know.”

  “I know, Valencia, that’s what I’m afraid of. When dad finds out she was taking drugs, he’ s going to be all up in my ass.” Reshunda was really acting weird. She professed all this love for her cousin but yet she hadn’t said one word about her death. She appeared to be more interested in her shoes than her own cousin.

  “Well, what are you going to tell him?”

  “Hell if I know. I’m thinking about not saying anything at all and acting surprised and shit when they come and tell us.”

  “Seriously?” I felt like a muthafucking bomb had just exploded in my room. Who was this hard bitch sitting in front of me? For the second time tonight, I was speechless. My feelings were sliced in half. Part of me didn’t give a flying fuck what we said about the whole incident. Ebony was okay but I could take her or leave her. I only hung around her because of her relationship to Reshunda. The other side of me wondered how Reshunda would’ve reacted if it were me lying on the bathroom floor. I asked myself again, Who was this bitch and was she worth the trouble?

  “Yeah, no matter what we say, it ain’t gonna bring her back so why not act like we weren’t even there? We can say she got us into the club but she left.”

  “We shouldn’t say a damn thing about the club.”

  “Good thinking. I’m down with it. Hand me some of those chips,” Reshunda said.

  I was playing different scenarios in my head as I passed the bowl of chips. Reshunda crunched loudly, smacking her lips. I was going through a mental checklist of the things I needed to do before my flight.

  “You do know Trent was your daddy,” Reshunda said between smacks.

  I felt like all the air in the room had been sucked out, as my body turned cold. I finally had what I needed to make a change that was good for me.

  “What did you say?” My hands trembled as I waited for her to answer me.

  “Huh?” Reshunda’s head had rolled onto her chest and drool dripped from the corner of her mouth.

  “What did you say about Trent?” I demanded, getting onto my feet.

  She rolled over onto her stomach and began to snore. She’d turned up the bottle, its neck in her Jimmy Choo shoe.

  I wasn’t upset Reshunda knew who my father was. What hurt me the most was the fact that my so-called friend knew and didn’t say a damn thing about it. I was officially done with Atlanta. I’d said it many times before but this time I meant it. In time, I was going to try to forgive Reshunda and my mother but for now, I was going to do me!

  I stepped over her, much the same way she stepped over her cousin, and grabbed my suitcase from the closet. Changing clothes, I did a final check of my room before leaving it. I sat at my kitchen table and composed a short note. I finally understood why my stepfather was drinking himself to death. He knew my mother sat in jail, protecting her ex-lover. He knew she chose him over both of us, so, in his own way, he checked out too. The same way I was about to do.

  Reshunda, your car is at the airport, good luck finding it. I wished you loved me enough to be honest with me. Mom, I really don’t know what to say to you right now. Both you and Reshunda got me twisted, but I won’t live my life with hatred in my heart. I’m sure, in time, I will forgive both of you. But I doubt I will ever forget. I sincerely hope you both find what you’re looking for and when you do, be honest with yourself and those around you. Ain’t nothing worse than a liar. When you both think back on this, and you will, don’t think of my leaving y’all, think of it as me leaving me. I’ve got to do it this way or never do it at all. I’ll holla.

  I walked out the door and never looked back. Despite the pain, I felt good. Never again would I allow anyone to have as much control over me as they did. I loved so hard, I refused to see their faults. No more. I was done with that. I left my rose-colored lens at the house.

  I allowed a final tear to fall as the plane taxied down the runway. I was not running from my past, I was leaping to my future.

  ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

  By B.L.U.N.T.

  Chapter 1

  Good In The Hood

  Kelly stared up at the ceiling, chilling, lying on her bed, in a pair of tight, light blue jean booty shorts and a close-fitting black T-shirt that read Flirt in white rhinestones. There were a juicy set of lips in ruby red rhinestones that also embellished the T-shirt. The red lips matched the color of Kelly’s fiery red hair, which was pulled into a sleek ponytail. She inhaled and exhaled slowly as she enjoyed smoking a blunt of purple cush in the privacy of her bedroom. The scarlet-red walls that surrounded her high-yellow body had black hand-painted Chinese writings on them. The symbols were striking and bold. They stood for love, peace, loyalty, and faith; all of the creeds that Kelly took to heart.

  The powerful weed infiltrated her mind as she began reminiscing on the current events of her life. So far, at the age of twenty-six, she was still figuring out who she was and what it was that she really wanted to do. Kelly Morgan was just an around-the-way girl with around-the-way aspirations, but she did know that she had not yet accomplished as much as she had hoped she would. She was going to be turning thirty in a few years and her mother had always told her, before she passed away, that thirty was the age she needed to know what she wanted out of life and have a plan on how to get it.

  To date, sh
e had a job working as the main lookout for Buddah, the neighborhood coke and crack king. Her previous employer, her younger brother, Kevin, had turned her on to the opportunity when he got locked up. It wasn’t the career path she had in mind, but Kelly was financially straight. She was making more than enough to keep her bills paid, her refrigerator stocked with food, her clothes game sick, her hair, nails, and feet done weekly, and her shoe game on one thousand. She was a long-haired, thick redbone who could probably convince any man she wanted to trick on her, but she was an independent chick and she wanted to get it for herself.

  Kelly raised herself up off of her queen-sized bed and waltzed her nice round, plump behind over to her open closet. She thumbed her manicured nails through a plethora of hangers, contemplating what she wanted to adorn her fine ass with on this day. Whatever her choice was to be, ultimately it was going to be a fly one. Kelly loved to look good. The shape of her eyes were those of a temptress, her eyelashes were naturally long and she didn’t mind batting them. She was a thick little thing at five feet four, with all of her one hundred and fifty pounds perfectly proportioned.

  Working for Buddah on the block was a cool gig. That’s where she got her shine on; the block was the shit. She had to know everything and see everything and tell Buddah everything that didn’t smell right, which was pretty much what she used to do for her brother, just in a different location. Kevin did his thing in Brooklyn. After being on the streets and doing her thing for so long, she had developed a keen sense for sniffing out undercover cops, and her talent was invaluable.

  It was becoming more and more difficult to know who “Jake” was. Most of the undercover police that worked the hood these days were hard to detect. They were getting younger and there were a higher number of African American undercover police officers working the inner-city neighborhoods, which was very good for the employment rate, but not so good for the drug game. They blended in so well with the dudes on the street that niggas was getting knocked off left and right by fucking with what niggas in Colonial Heights labeled on the streets as “ducks.” Everyone in Colonial Heights was about getting money by any means necessary. Police were simply in the way.

  Kelly hated the police. She had had numerous experiences with them; none of them were pleasant. There was the obstruction of justice and falsifying a police report, which stemmed from a vehicle accident. Both charges were considered felonies. There was the possession of marijuana. She had been caught with a half ounce. They tried to turn a half ounce into a half pound. There was the sodomy charge she had received for giving one of her ex-dudes head in his Escalade. She had been arrested a total of three times. Each time, they tried to hit her with felonies and trump up bogus charges on her. And each time, she came with a lawyer and ate their bitch asses up and walked out of the courtroom with her head held high.

  Back then, she didn’t have that much to lose, but now she did. If they ever busted her boss and shut down his operation, that would shut her shit down completely and stop her from being able to ball out. They were a direct threat to her financial prosperity. She knew all the uniformed cops of the neighborhood knew who she was, but they didn’t really have a reason to fuck with her; she really wasn’t doing anything illegal. All she was doing was informing her boss of the people whom she didn’t trust, telling him who she thought was suspect. Kelly didn’t feel she had anything to hide or to worry about in regard to her freedom. The worst they could do was label her as a snitch, but it was the cops she was snitching on. She didn’t see anything foul about it.

  After combing through hangers filled with jeans, slacks, leggings, blouses, sweaters, and belts for what seemed like hours, Kelly had finally decided on what to wear. She grabbed a pair of Rocawear blue acid-washed skinny jeans, and then slid her hands over to a red satin long-sleeve Deréon button-down blouse. She was about to hit her shoe room when her cell phone began to vibrate on her nightstand. She ran over to it and checked the display. It was Buddah.

  “Hey, boss,” Kelly said, with a smile in her voice.

  “Kells, baby, what you lookin’ like?” Buddah asked.

  “I’m lookin’ like new money, playa, what you lookin’ like?” Kelly shot back.

  “Yo, I need you to be on the block early. They raided Spank’s house. They tryna’ come at a nigga and catch me up on some bullshit. I need to be extra careful who we serve today. I need you to be on point,” Buddah said. His tone expressed his urgency.

  “Cool, I’m on it,” Kelly told him, nonchalantly.

  “Kells, I’m serious, I need your eyes and your ears to be wide open,” Buddah stressed.

  “I got you, baby, I told you, I’m on it,” she said with assurance.

  “Oh, so you got me, you sure you got me?” Buddah asked. His tone had suddenly changed up. He was doing what he had always done with Kelly: play games with his words in a flirtatious manner.

  “Yeah, Buddah, of course, baby, you know I got you one hundred and ten percent,” Kelly said in a sexy tone.

  “Thas whassup. Yeah it’s real real good to know that you got me like that,” Buddah replied slowly.

  “No doubt,” Kelly slurred.

  “So when you gon’ let a nigga get you?” Buddah asked her in a low tone.

  Buddah had been trying to get with Kelly ever since Kevin had put the two of them in business together, but Kelly wasn’t feeling him like that. Nor did she want to mix business with pleasure. And she damn sure didn’t want to start something with Buddah that she had absolutely no desire to finish. That would make their working relationship very uncomfortable. In her eyes, he was her boss and that was as far as she was going to take it. She did fuck with his head now and then, but it was strictly for her very own amusement.

  “I’m good, Buddah, but thanks as usual for the offer,” she told him.

  “Oh, I know you good, but like my man Ne-Yo said, ‘Baby, I can make you better!’”

  Kelly laughed.

  “Yeah, okay, Buddah, I promise to keep that in mind. Yo, I’ll hit you back. I’m about to get dressed right now.”

  “Aw shit, Kells, you mean to tell me you ain’t even dressed yet? That shit’s gon’ take another five hours. I need you out on the block now!” Buddah stated in a pressing tone. He was back to business and he needed her.

  “You wanna come and watch me get dressed?” Kelly asked, teasing him, as she chuckled lightly, trying to lighten his mood.

  “Hell yeah I wanna watch, shit, a nigga want a front-row seat too!” Buddah said with excitement. Kelly’s voice was making his nature rise.

  “Nah, I’m just fuckin wit’ you. I’m good, Buddah,” Kelly said, softly.

  “See now that’s what I’m talking about, just fuckin’ with you,” he emphasized.

  “Buddah, stop playin’. I’ll be out on the block in a few,” Kelly told him, as she pressed her end button on her cell phone.

  Kelly hoped that even though she played with him like that, he understood that she had no need for him in that way. She wasn’t mad at Buddah for trying to get at her; he wasn’t the first nigga trying to get at her and he certainly wasn’t going to be the last. As a matter of fact, she enjoyed it when he flirted with her; it was fun. The more shit he talked, the more shit she talked.

  Buddah was stressing, but she wasn’t going to let him stress her out. He needed to put that shit on freeze. Kelly went back to doing something she loved to do so that she could take her mind off of Buddah and his mood swings. She entered her shoe room. Kelly’s shoe room was not by any means the average shoe room. She owned at least two hundred pairs of pumps; over one hundred pairs of boots; another hundred pairs of sandals, and over two hundred pairs of sneakers. Thus, she needed an entire room equipped with a ladder to house them all.

  Kelly selected a pair of red Nike sneakers with a navy blue swish. It wasn’t the look that she was originally going for, but it matched her outfit, and if Buddah was as much a target as he suspected he was, she really did need to be on point. Kelly had wanted to put on
a pair of black pumps, but she didn’t want to have to dip off and jet in a pair of stilettos. She had done it before and it was no joke. Her feet stayed swelled up for a week. The thought alone was too painful to relive. Kelly took her sneakers back into her bedroom and tossed them on the floor. She then ran into her bathroom, placed a shower cap on her head, and jumped in the shower for all of five minutes, making sure to wash her “spots.”

  Once out of the shower, she doused her skin with baby oil and then slid baby lotion all over her creamy soft skin. She then dried her smooth body off with a thick, maroon bath towel and tied it around her body. Light makeup was applied to her radiant skin. She really didn’t need any at all, but she placed a little bit of mascara on her lashes and red shimmery gloss on her pouty lips. She smoothed her brown eyebrows with the tips of her fingers and smiled to herself in her bathroom mirror. Kelly smoothed her silky red mane with her yellow hands from the edges of her temple all the way up to the rubber band that held it all together. She wrapped her fingers around her shoulder-length ponytail and twirled her tresses around and around. Kelly was feeling the color of her hair. She had just dyed it two weeks before and the brightness of the red was becoming of her complexion.

  “Bitches gon’ be hatin’ today,” she said to herself out loud.

  Kelly got dressed, went into her top dresser drawer, scooped up her .380 and headed toward the front door. She slid her keys off of her kitchen table, snatched up her dark-blue denim Dooney & Bourke bag, put her .380 inside of it, and left her apartment. Kelly had been living in the Colonial Heights in the Bronx for four years. The chicks of the hood who liked her, really liked her, but the ones who hated on her, really went out of their way to let her know that they weren’t fucking with her. She had a flock of neighborhood niggas from the block hanging on her every word on a daily basis and a lot of their girls had a problem with their men being all up in Kelly’s face.