Street Chronicles Girls in the Game (30 page)

“Who in the fuck do you think you talkin’ to?” her mother snapped at her. The dude she had been dancing with tried to grab her arm and calm her down, because he knew she was about to clown.

This stunned Tahj, because her mother had never talked fresh to her. Oh, she had heard her cuss the other kids out plenty of times. She called Lena a ho and a whore throughout her entire pregnancy, but never had her mother talked to Tahj in such a tone. As a matter of fact, her mother never really talked to her at all. Perhaps that was why the other kids did the things they did— to get some attention from her, even if it was negative attention.

“This is my muthafuckin’ house,” her mother continued in a fierce rage, pulling her arm from the man who was trying to restrain her.

“Teena, baby,” the man said in a mellow tone. “Be cool. We can take the party elsewhere. It ain't nothin'. Li'l mama here is right.” He then turned to Tahj to speak to her directly. He looked at her, his brown eyes were like two pecans in sugar cookie dough. They were each a perfect oval, inherited from his Asian mother. His hair was a cross between what some black folks referred to as good hair—that wavy, Indian type of hair that curled up—and just regular of hair, inherited from his black father. He was very gentlemanly, courtesy of his upbringing. “My bad. We didn't know anybody else was in the house. Our apologies.” He then addressed the others. “Come on, y'all. Let's ride out.”

“No, Lee!” Teena shouted to him. “This is my house, I said. Let her ass ride out. Y'all stay put. I don't know what everybody so tired for and tryin’ to sleep. Y'all's lazy asses don't do shit.”

“Ma, we your kids,” Tahj said, her feelings now hurt. “You wanna put us out over some company? I was just sayin’ that you woke the baby up. And besides, Lena went to school all day. I worked at CVS all day. We cooked dinner and we cleaned the house. We ain't lazy. We doing the best we can do, and we just want some sleep ‘fore we gotta get up and do it all over again in the morning. You at least owe us that.”

Her mother sighed and looked at her as if Tahj were crazy.

“I don't owe you shit, bitch,” her mother said to her. “You eighteen now, so as a matter of fact, you owe me. You all up in my shit tryin’ to be grown. Well, grown muthafuckas pay they own way, and since you don't, like I said, you need to ride out.”

Tahj was speechless. She didn't know what to say or do. This was the first time she and her mother had ever actually taken five minutes to have a conversation. She'd had no idea her mother would react to her this way. So she just stood there, hoping that the liquor would wear off of her mother's brain, therefore ceasing the lashing out it was forcing her tongue to make. But before she could do anything, her mother was coming at her, yanking her by the arm and pushing her toward the front door.

“You heard me, bitch. Get the fuck out,” her mother yelled.

“Ma, stop it!” Lena yelled from down the hall. She was halfway out of the bedroom door, holding the baby in her arms. The baby started yelling even louder. Needless to say, her mother ignored her cry and continued to put Tahj out of the house.

“Ma, stop it.” Tahj began to cry. “You know I ain't got nowhere to go. It's the middle of the night.”

“Then, bitch, you should have thought about that before you came out here runnin’ your mouth,” her mother replied. “You should have thought about that warm bed your ass was lying in for free before you talked your ass out onto the cold concrete.”

“Please, Ma,” Tahj pleaded, twisting and turning her arms, trying to loosen them from her mother's grip.

“No, Ma,” Lena screamed over the baby's yelping. ”No, Ma, no.

Tahj took her free hand and tried to loosen the grip her mother had on her arm. When she did so, Teena took it as if Tahj were trying to fight her back. Out of nowhere she hauled off and backhanded Tahj with all her might across the face. Tahj was dazed as blood poured from her nose. She just stood there for a minute, trying to maintain her balance, literally seeing stars, little white flashes. She could feel the trickle of the blood reach her lips. She wiped it with her hand, the entire time still dizzy and trying to keep her balance. Her vision was even a little blurred for a moment.

The room seemed dead silent as Tahj just stood there. But the baby's cry soon brought her fully back to the grim reality. She looked down the hall at her sister, who had her hand over her mouth in disbelief. Until now their mother had never laid a hand on any of the children, not even when they stole from her purse, not even when she found condom wrappers in her bedroom. But for reasons unknown to Tahj, she felt the need to strike the child who never, ever gave her any trouble.

“Please don't,” Lena said to Tahj softly, shaking her head.

Since the baby, and it being just the two siblings left in the house, Tahj and Lena had started to form a bond. Tahj helped Lena out with the baby and her schoolwork. She was a comfort— a comfort Lena had never had in her mother. “Don't leave me. Please don't leave us.” Lena looked down at the baby.

It broke Tahj's heart, but she knew that there was no way in hell she was going to stay in that house. Tears began to run down Tahj's face as she looked at her sister standing there holding her
niece. She cried because she pitied her. Tahj didn't see her sister: she saw her mother, the cycle repeating itself. She then looked at her mother, who was waiting impatiently for Tahj to get the fuck out of her house. Her fist was balled and she was huffing and puffing as if she were going to hit Tahj again any minute now. She hated to leave Lena there, where she wouldn't be paid attention to, where she wouldn't get any hugs, kisses, or any sign of love, where she would probably end up having five kids herself and more than likely raise them in that very same apartment.

The last thing she wanted to do was leave her little sister there to become a product of that environment. But if she stayed to watch out for Lena, who would be there to watch out for Tahj? Who would be her keeper? Tahj hated the split-second decision she had to make. Perhaps she should have fought for her spot in that apartment, and maybe her mother would have come to her senses and given in. But deep down inside, Tahj knew that this might be her only chance to get out. She would have to leave sooner or later. She hated to do it, but she knew the sooner, the better. Her mother hadn't wanted her around in the first place. She was sure to make her life a living hell now.

What was a teenage girl to do when not even her own mama would have her back? Tahj didn't think about all of that; she just walked out the door into the arms of her new adoptive mother, the streets. It was then that Tahj realized that no matter who she encountered in life, at the end of the day, all she had was herself. So from that moment on, Tahj was always out for self.

The big fight with Tahj and her mother had taken place five months ago. It was in the past now. Tahj didn't have to think twice about Teena now that she was living in a plushed-out crib in the ‘burbs of Cleveland, Ohio. But Lord only knew where she would have ended up if Lee hadn't followed her out of her mother's house that night and taken her in.

“Ain't shit a nigga in this world can do for me,” was how Tahj would put it. “A bitch neither, for that matter.” And she damn sure wasn't going to do shit for nobody else. How she saw it now was that she was alone in this world. But fuck it! This was her world. Everybody else was simply on a lease agreement.

Tahj was too selfish even to notice when somebody was doing something nice for her. She felt like muthafuckas owed her; therefore, she appreciated very little and took for granted everything, even Lee. She loved him and was glad that he had taken her in and provided her with the finer things life could offer, but she'd say, “Fuck you,” to him faster than the speed of light if it came down to it.

Having never met her father perhaps was one reason she lashed out at men the way she did. You could say the same for the lashings she gave bitches, too. Because as far as she was concerned, she might as well have never met her mother either. She couldn't see how knowing her had affected her positively at all. As far as Tahj was concerned, neither her mother nor her father played a beneficial part in her life.

Where the fuck was they at to tell me about the fucked-up hand my life could be dealt
?Tahj often thought.
Not one of them warned me about life, about the streets, about all the bullshit I would have to endure just to make it as a young black female.

Even when Tahj was right underneath her own mother's roof, she never longed for her touch. Hell, she didn't even desire her attention; that was why she'd always stayed to herself. But never in a million years would she have thought her mother would throw
her out of the house knowing she had nothing and nowhere to go. Not even once did her mother come for her and try to talk her into coming back home. Perhaps she would have if she hadn't heard about Lee taking in Tahj and making her his PYT.

Teena couldn't take the blow to her ego—her man friend choosing her daughter over her. Her husband, the older children's father, had already left her for another woman—another girl, rather. She was some teenage slut who used to live next door to them. One day, right after Tahj was born, he just up and left Teena and the kids to be with this girl.

Lena hadn't been born yet. Lena's daddy was some white man whose office Teena used to clean. She thought that trappin’ him with a baby would put her on easy street. She figured he'd marry her rather than admit he had an illegitimate child. Then she'd have herself a husband with a good job and a well-to-do white daddy for her other kids. In Teena's fucked-up state of mind, she figured a white man could bring far more to the table than a black man ever could. The white man could go from job to job and not worry about the prejudices of not getting hired because of the color of his skin. She knew a white man would always be able to make a way for her and her kids because the country respected his skin more than a black man's. Little did Teena know, but the fool was already married and had three kids of his own. The coward shot himself in the head when Teena showed up at his office with that chocolate baby, threatening to ruin his life if he didn't make good on the situation and be a father to Lena. So Teena had one man who didn't want to be with her and ran off with a girl who hadn't even grown all the hair on her pussy yet, and another man who'd rather be dead than to be with her. Then Lee's choosing Tahj over her destroyed Teena's already damaged ego.

If Teena wasn't a stone-cold drunk out on the streets before, trying to find Mr. Whoever Will Have Me, she certainly was now.
But Tahj could not have cared less about what her mama was doing. It wasn't long before even Lena and her niece weren't on her mind anymore. Her past was just that—her past—and the way she saw it, nothing good could come from any of it. She had no intention of ever turning back or bringing anything from the past into her future, not even Lena. The only thing any of Tahj's life experiences did for her was to make her hard and uncaring.

It may have been safe to say that Lee was a partial exception. Deep, deep down inside, Tahj had love for Lee; she truly did. But she refused to give him all of her love. The way she saw it, he was only human, which still meant that he could turn on her in the blink of an eye and leave her hanging. Using her own mother as an example, it took eighteen years for Teena to eventually turn her back on Tahj, but in the end, that was exactly what she did. Tahj had had a warm place to stay and food to eat and one fall night it was all taken from her. So even with all that Lee had done for her, keeping her laced and iced out with a nice set of wheels, a laid-out home that she shared with him, and a jiggy wardrobe, she still physically and mentally prepared herself for the day he would hurt her, the day he would perhaps throw her away, too. To protect her feelings, Tahj made it up in her head from the beginning that at the end of the day, Lee was nothing more to her than a sugar daddy.

Tahj hadn't been with Lee a month before she started pinching on his personal stash, both money and drugs. Lee never brought weight into the home, but he did keep coke for recreational use here and there. Tahj smoked a little weed, but she didn't do hard drugs like coke. But she'd sure enough flip it for some fast loot in a heartbeat. She had all kinds of ways to put a few extra dollars in her pocket. Whenever Lee was going out of town for a couple of days, she'd ask him for money to go shopping while he was gone. She'd buy him a little something and simply deposit the rest into
her bank account. Lee never asked her what she bought, because she would have already distracted him by presenting him with the gift she had bought him.

If shit else didn't motivate Tahj in life, money did. She knew that was what made the world go ‘round, and without it you could get dizzy just standing there watching it turn. If she found a quarter lying on the ground, she'd pick it up and deposit it into what she called her “the day will come” account. It wasn't family and it wasn't fake-ass friends that kept Tahj moving through life at a rigidly fast pace. It was money. The last thing she desired was any type of comfort from anybody, even a man.

Now cold and callous, Tahj didn't even long for the man who planted the seed for her to be born. As a matter of fact, she didn't know why her mother had felt the need to give birth to her in the first place. It should be against the law for just any bitch to pop a baby out of her pussy and officially earn the title of mother. That was bullshit, as far as Tahj was concerned. There was too much dirt out in the world to do to get caught up in some of emotional bullshit. So Tahj brushed her emotions under the rug like they were broken glass and proceeded to become better acquainted with the streets.

F
uck me! Fuck me good, baby!” Tahj shouted as she balled her fist, twisting and turning her body as her arms remained handcuffed to the wrought-iron bars of the king-size headboard. Her chocolate, five-foot-seven-inch, 125-pound body lay stretched across the bed.