Eviction Notice (5 page)

CHAPTER 7

Porsha made her
way leisurely through the aisles inside the Columbus Market, studying the different labels like they were Chinese arithmetic. She hated food shopping, or doing anything domestic for that matter, but it was her turn to cook that night. Porsha dreaded cooking almost as much as she dreaded the feedback she got on the rare occasions when she did cook. But when you looked like Porsha, whether you could cook or not was the furthest thing from a man’s mind.

Porsha was a brown-skinned piece who stood around five-seven, five-nine in the right heels. She’d had long, curly hair since she was a little girl, but six months ago she’d chopped it off and now rocked a funky cut that complemented her round face and China-doll eyes. Porsha was a bad chick with a Lil’ Kim swag about her that she wore on her sleeve and made no apologies for who she was. But, as with most things, there was more than met the eye with Porsha.

Porsha had watched her mom bust her ass working two jobs to provide for her children while her father came in and out of their lives like bad phone reception. Things had started looking up for them when her mother met her stepfather. He was a slightly older man with a military background and no-nonsense attitude. He and Porsha never quite saw eye-to-eye, but she respected him because he was a good man. Within a few years’ time her mother and stepfather had taken them from a tenement in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, to a beautiful brownstone on Ninety-first between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West. Both her parents worked every day of their lives to make sure Porsha and her siblings had all the best that life could afford them in an attempt to bury their less-than-pleasant roots. The oldest two, Vanessa and Charles, were the pride of the family, fitting right in with their new Ivy League friends and acting as if they had never spent a day of their lives in the ghetto, but a piece of Porsha’s heat would always be in Brooklyn.

Porsha still had aunts and cousins there so from time to time she was allowed to spend weekends in Bed-Stuy. When Porsha got old enough to ride the train by herself, the weekend trips became regular. On those weekends she spent with her cousins in Brooklyn she was free from the restrictions of her parents and she let it all hang out. By the time she was fourteen, Porsha was halfway through her education on boys and blunts and trying to find an introductory course on paper chasing. When her parents got hip they tried to put a tighter yoke on Porsha, but the more rules they set, the more she broke. The summer before she was supposed to leave to start her first semester at Howard came the straw that broke the camel’s back. When Porsha told her parents that she was pregnant by a dude who had just gotten sentenced to eight years in prison, her stepfather gave her an ultimatum: terminate the pregnancy and start school on time as if it had never happened, or get out. So Porsha left.

Sixteen weeks into her pregnancy she miscarried and fell into a deep depression and turned to drugs to comfort her. School, family, and even time all became a blur the deeper she sank into her funk. When she finally crawled out of it, a year had passed, she had been living from pillar to post, and school seemed a lifetime away. Porsha was at a low point … a point at which the average young woman may have given up and slipped further into oblivion, but Porsha wasn’t quite ready to lie down and die. She could’ve gone home and begged for her parents’ forgiveness, but pride wouldn’t let her, so Porsha searched for her own way.

Porsha was still as intelligent as ever, but she had been out of the loop so long that she had to crawl before she could walk, so she enrolled herself in a community college. Next, she managed to find a place to lay her head when a friend of a friend was looking for a roommate to share her apartment and bills with. It could be stressful at times with several women in one apartment, but Porsha made the best of it. She tried to find a job, but with the twisted economy and no degree, all she was offered were minimum-wage positions, and her high-end tastes wouldn’t allow that, so she turned to
other
ways to make money, capitalizing on the only real asset she had left, her looks.

“Porsha-boo,” someone called, snapping her out of her daze. When she turned around and saw Scar peering at her from the end of the aisle, her mood instantly darkened. Scar was a local knucklehead who was always into something. He was a drug dealer by trade, a pain in the ass by nature, and a natural magnet for trouble, which a teenager named Jay who worked for him had to find out the hard way. Someone Scar had run afoul of tried to kill him, and they ended up hitting the boy by accident. Not only did Scar skip the funeral, but he didn’t even offer Jay’s mother so much as a crumb to bury her son, when it had been his fault the boy was killed. Scar was a bastard and the whole hood either feared him or hated him.

“Hey,” she said dryly and continued pushing her cart down the aisle.

“What you got up in there?” Scar caught up to her and snatched a box of rice from the cart. “Let me find out you’re cooking us a romantic dinner tonight.” He smirked.

“I ain’t cooking us shit.” She snatched the rice back and kept going.

“I was just joking, Porsha, don’t act like that with me,” he said, softening his approach.

“That’s your problem, you’re always playing and never serious about anything.”

“I know one thing that I am serious about.” Scar touched her arm lightly.

“Whatever, nigga. Dick that has run up in Boots will never run up in me.” Porsha rolled her eyes and kept pushing.

Scar was stunned for a second, but quickly rebounded. “Boots? You shouldn’t go believing everything you hear, ma.” He fell in step with her.

“It ain’t about hearing, it’s about seeing, because it ain’t like y’all got the common decency to put no shade on it. Everybody in the hood except Bernie knows you and his baby mama are fucking, among other things. Now please leave me to finish this shopping so I can get outta here.”

“Why don’t you let me pay for those groceries for you, ma. Porsha, I know you ain’t no hood bitch, so it takes a nigga who can take care of you to even step to you,” he said, pulling out a knot of money, spreading the bills so she could see that he was holding.

Porsha looked down at the money and the look on her face said that she wasn’t impressed. “Scar, sometimes it ain’t about money, it’s about class, and right now you’re a little short on it, boo. It ain’t nothing personal, I just don’t feel you like that,” she said frankly.

Scar’s face melted. “Word?” He shook his head sadly. “All y’all broads is the same. When you first move around you act like your pussy is wetter than the next bitch, but before long you all ask me to be the judge,” he said smugly.

Porsha wanted to snap, but she kept her cool and only the half smirk on her face said that she was fazed by the comment at all. “Scar, I almost went there with you, but I know you be on your ignorant shit so I’m gonna let it slide, but if you feel like you gotta come at me sideways, then we don’t have to say anything to each other.”

“Shorty, you better take that shit back down to Ninety-whatever Street you’re from and recognize that this is my hood—”

“My bad, I didn’t mean to interrupt.” A well-built man, wearing a white shirt under his burgundy smock, stood at the top of the aisle, watching the altercation. He was a handsome brown-skinned fellow who wore his hair cut low and tapered on the sides and in the back. He ran his hand over the top of his hair, lightly disturbing the swirls of thick waves.

“Yeah, we were kinda in the middle of something,” Scar said bitterly.

“No, we weren’t.” Porsha pushed her cart toward the worker, leaving Scar standing in the aisle.

“A’ight, so Ima see you on the block, Porsha,” Scar called after her.

“I guess so,” she said over her shoulder.

She waited until Scar had disappeared down the other end of the aisle before acknowledging the young man in the smock. “Thanks, Alonzo, that dude was getting on my last nerve.”

“Ain’t nothing, I peeped ya body language and figured you could use an assist,” he told her. “So what brings you into our fair market, and with a shopping cart no less?” he joked.

“I’m cooking dinner tonight,” she explained, riffling through the items in her cart, still feeling like she was missing something.

“You should have somebody cooking for you!” Alonzo said.

“In a perfect world.” She sighed.

“Hey, it ain’t gotta be perfect to be right.”

Porsha looked up at him and saw that he was seriously trying to court her. “Alonzo, go ahead somewhere with that Jodeci shit. Right now I come with way too much baggage for a man to deal with.”

Alonzo flexed under his fitted dress shirt and showed her all thirty-two of his teeth. “I got a pretty strong back. But on some G shit, Porsha, you ain’t never even thought about giving me no play.”

“Alonzo, you’re fine as hell but there’s no way it would work out. I’m moving fast right now, trying to get where I gotta get on the express train, and you’re riding the local,” she said seriously. Seeing that she had offended him, she explained, “Alonzo, I don’t mean that as any kind of slight to you, but I’m into a certain type of dude that’s on the same page as me. Working a nine-to-five for as many years as you’ve been here is beyond impressive, but—”

“But what?” he cut her off. “Porsha, before you give me the ‘good kid working in the supermarket’ speech, don’t forget that working here is one of the only things that are keeping me outta prison,” he reminded her. Alonzo had been a notorious stick-up kid in and around the Bronx until a four to nine slowed him down. He started working at the supermarket as a condition of his parole, and by the time he was off parole he was next in line for the manager’s position so he stayed on. People often clowned him for working in the supermarket but Alonzo had a plan.

“That shit Scar and them doing,” Alonzo waved his hand dismissively, “been there done that, and ain’t none of them built like I was when I was popping, but unlike them knuckleheads, I realized that there was more to life than a fucking five by nine and a chow call. This shit,” he motioned around the supermarket, “is an ends to a means.”

“I hear you talking,” she said with a smirk.

“Don’t hear me talk, watch me move.” Alonzo winked and walked away. “You gonna stop playing with me and act like you know Porsha,” he called over his shoulder.

CHAPTER 8

After successfully tackling
the grocery shopping, Porsha headed home to catch a quick nap before she started dinner and went to work. She passed Scar and a few of his cronies leaning against he fence in front of the community center, obviously up to no good. He looked at Porsha and smirked, but she just rolled her eyes and kept walking.

To get her mind off Scar’s creepy stare, she reflected on her and Alonzo’s conversation and it brought a smile to her face. Alonzo was a good dude and a fair catch, but she respected his grind too much to complicate his life with her bullshit. She was a broke college dropout with half a plan and a dream to get out of the hood, and Alonzo looked like he might actually make it, so she wouldn’t share her karma with him.

As she was about to turn up the path leading to her building, a cab was pulling up on the avenue and someone was calling her name out the back window. “Porsha, it’s me, Sahara. Come here right quick.”

Porsha looked to make sure it was really Sahara before approaching the cab and looking at her in shock, because she was such a mess. Her hair was all over the place and there were welts on her dark face. “What the hell happened to you?”

“It’s a long story, and I’ll tell you all about it, but first I need you to let me hold eight dollars to pay for this cab,” Sahara said.

“Shit, where’s your money?” Porsha asked suspiciously.

“I left my pocketbook on the bench in front of King’s building. Please don’t play twenty questions with me right now, Porsha, because I’m not in the mood.” Porsha paid for the cab and held the door open for Sahara. When she stepped out, Porsha could really see how much of a wreck Sahara was. Her elbows were scraped and her dress was torn down the back, barely covering her ass. “I swear to God I’m gonna murk this bitch.” Sahara smacked her hand against her palm in frustration. She was speed-walking down the path to her building.

“What bitch? What happened? Who?” Porsha fired off questions while trying to keep up with Sahara.

Sahara stopped in her tracks and looked at Porsha as if she were stupid. “Yvonne! Damn, ain’t you been listening?” Sahara continued walking, giving Porsha the short version of what had happened.

“Wow, I can’t believe that bum bitch tried to frog-up on you.” Porsha shook her head.

“That’s a’ight, because I’m about to call my bitches from Patterson and let the BX in me be felt,” Sahara fumed.

“Well, I ain’t no big fighter but I got some wild-ass cousins from Bed-Stuy that’ll come up here and get it
way
popping,” Porsha offered. Fighting had never been one of Porsha’s strong suits, so she generally left it to her cousins, and those chicks were professionals at delivering ass whippings.

When they rounded the corner toward their building they spotted Happy, Levi, and Frankie on the bench passing around a blunt. There were a half-dozen designer bags on the ground and on the bench, so Porsha knew she had caught Frankie fresh off a lick, which meant she would get the pick of her goods before they made it to the streets to be picked over. Shopping with Frankie as opposed to in the stores allowed Porsha to keep up her high look, on a broke bitch’s budget.

As they were closing in on the bench, Boots and Bernie were coming out of the building with three of their children. Bernie pushed the stroller carrying their youngest child with one hand and clutched a brown paper bag in the other. He strode so purposefully and proudly with his family in tow, and it sent a wave of sympathy through everyone watching it. Bernie was an accident that just hadn’t happened yet.

Boots was decked out in gray sweats and lime-green flip-flops with a black tank top that struggled to hold in her large breasts and increasingly growing waistline. Boots was a cool chick, but she had some very scandalous ways about her, promiscuity being only one of them. Boots loved to fuck and didn’t care who knew it, which probably explained why she had five kids by almost as many dudes.

Bernie was the only one of her kids’ fathers who actually stuck around and tried to create a family structure with Boots and her children, but she did him the dirtiest. At one time Bernie had been a promising basketball recruit, but Boots’s trifling ways and a patch of ice had ruined all that. Bernie worked odd jobs and sold weed to get by, but he wasn’t very good at either so it was always left to Boots to fill in the gaps. By hook or by crook, Boots would go out and get it when her number was called, but how she was getting it was the best-kept secret. Bernie’s love for Boots made him deaf to the mocking laughter all around him about Boots and her fucked-up ways.

“What’s good, y’all?” Boots greeted everyone and went to lean against the fence.

“I can’t call it.” Levi shrugged.

“What’s popping, Frankie, you on?” Boots asked, trying to peer inside the bags.

“I’m always
on
. What you need?” Frankie opened the bag and slid it toward Boots to examine the merchandise.

“This is nice,” Boots said, holding up a stylish leather dress she’d fished out.

“Yeah, that’s tight. I wanted to keep it for myself, but I ain’t got enough ass to fill it out properly,” Frankie joked. “If you want it, I’ll shoot it to you for something light. Give me fifty bucks and you can have it.”

Boots thought on it for a minute. She had seen the same dress in the window of Level X, so she knew that getting it for fifty dollars was a steal. “Bernie, you got money on you?”

Bernie turned his pockets out. “I’m popped, ma.”

“Figures,” Boots mumbled. “Frankie, I really want this dress but I’m fucked up right now. If you let me get it, that’s my word I’ll hit you off when I get my check Tuesday.”

“I wish I could, Boots, but I got some people coming through to check me later and I know one of them will give me at least a hundred for it, so I can’t miss out on no bread.” Frankie plucked the dress out of Boots’s hands. “I’ll tell you what I can do: I’ll hold the dress for you until later on tonight so you can have some time to come up with it.”

“That ain’t about nothing, ma, we’ll come up on fifty dollars by the end of the night,” Bernie said as if he were the one who had to hustle it up.

“Yeah, I’m sure ol’ Boots will figure out a way to come up with it by then,” Happy said slyly.

“What the fuck happened to you?” Levi asked, noticing Sahara’s appearance for the first time.

“I don’t even want to talk about it.” Sahara rolled her eyes. “Can we go now, Porsha?”

“Yeah, I gotta put this food up anyway.” Porsha adjusted her bags.

“Hold on, I’m coming up too. I gotta take inventory of all this stuff.” Frankie gathered her bags and fell in step with them to the building.

“I’m about to go up the block to the Chinese restaurant.” Happy hoisted himself off the bench. “Levi, what you about to do?”

“I’ll be right here when you come back,” Levi said, thumbing away on his BlackBerry.

“I’ll go with you. I gotta get something from the corner store anyhow,” Boots said.

“A’ight, we can all walk together,” Bernie offered.

“Nah, you ain’t gotta have Hassan out in all this heat.” Boots adjusted the hood of the stroller.

“Don’t worry about it, boo, it ain’t even that hot.” Bernie pushed the stroller ahead of them.

“This muthafucka,” Boots said under her breath and fell in step with Bernie. Happy brought up the rear, laughing at a joke that only he seemed to know the punch line to.

*   *   *

The three girls
got off the elevator, with Frankie doubled over in laughter about what had happened to Sahara.

“I can’t believe y’all were out there scrapping over King’s tired ass.” Frankie slapped her thigh while trying to catch her breath.

“It ain’t funny, Frankie,” Sahara snapped, “and we weren’t fighting over King, we were fighting because she keeps trying to play me.”

“Personally I think it’s stupid. Come on now, y’all are making spectacles of yourselves in the middle of the street, fighting like hood rats,” Porsha said.

Sahara turned her anger on Porsha. “Excuse the fuck out of me, little princess. I don’t know how they do it in la-la-land, or wherever the fuck you’re from, but around here bitches get stomped out for disrespecting.”

“Slow your roll and lower your tone when speaking to me, because I didn’t get stink with you. I was just giving you my opinion on the situation and you can miss me with that
princess
shit, ma. Before my family had money we rested our heads in Bed-Stuy, so you can bet your ass I done had more than my fair share of scraps over hos acting silly. Ain’t nobody trying to clown you, Sahara; all I’m saying is that you’re better than those bitches so it looks crazy when you stoop to their levels.”

“Whatever.” Sahara marched down the hall toward the apartment the three of them shared.

“Don’t pay her no mind, Porsha, after we put something in the air she’ll be back to her pain-in-the-ass self.” Frankie laughed. When Frankie and Porsha made it to the apartment door, Sahara was standing as still as a tree with a piece of paper in her hand.

“I can’t believe this shit,” Sahara said in shock.

“What’s that?” Porsha tried to peer over her shoulder.

“I found this taped to the door,” Sahara said, holding the paper out for her roommates to see. It was an eviction notice.