The only thing I ordered that Porsha couldn’t was a Patrón margarita. I kept a drink to my lips. With me, there was never a line drawn or a limit set to say “that’s enough.” I didn’t think I could function without alcohol in my system.
“What stores are you trying to hit to spend that fat-ass knot your daddy gave you?” I questioned Porsha, trying to get her attention on me and off her phone.
“I don’t know. I’m probably gonna load up my RushCard and shop online. All of the boutiques around here that I know of have the same boring outfits at each one. What I might cop though are new gym shoes, a cell phone case, a purse or two, and another charm for my Pandora bracelet,” she responded like a spoiled brat.
I wasn’t hating, nor did I blame Porsha for her attitude. She got it honest and had been placed on a pedestal since birth. Calvin and I prided ourselves on giving Porsha what she wanted, Benzie too. Being stingy with dope money didn’t make sense.
“You’re lucky your parents sell dope. You should say thank you more often since we stay risking our lives to give you and Benzie the finer things in life. You see how them other kids be looking in the hood: rough, ratchet, and like li’l dirtballs. You got it good.” I was being honest.
She smacked her lips, then turned them up like something smelled bad. “You and daddy been selling dope way before me and Benzie were thought of, so don’t put y’all choice of careers off on us. We were born into the game.”
Right when I was getting ready to read Porsha again for having a smart-ass mouth, I laughed instead. She made the adage “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” seem alive, true, and well. Porsha wasn’t acting out. She was acting like me. If I wanted her to act differently, I’d be beating the traces of me out of her, if ya get what I mean.
After the waitress brought out our food and drinks, we dug in and enjoyed our lunch as mother and daughter. I might’ve not wanted to lighten up on her since she’d tried to get gully with me earlier. Still, I chalked her behavior up as karma and moved on. I might’ve not admitted it to Calvin, but I knew my bark was a little too vicious, and I didn’t want to push my Mini-Me away. In life, all we have is family. I might have had a funny way of showing it, but I’d lay my life on the line for all of mine, and I had. Once Porsha was grown with her own children or a family, she’d understand my stance and not keep a chip on her shoulder.
* * *
“Dang, Ma! You look fly as hell in that dress,” Porsha complimented me when I stepped out of the dressing room.
We were finished with lunch and now at the mall. She’d done all the shopping she’d planned on doing, so now I was trying to find the perfect outfit to wear to the cabaret tonight. That was why I’d forced Porsha to come with me in the first place, to help style me, as the young kids these days called it, on fleek. I might’ve been her momma, but I still was fine as fuck and stepping on the toes of any of her other friends’ momma’s without trying.
Ring, ring, ring.
“Dig my phone out from my purse for me,” I told Porsha. I was busy posing in the mirror, trying to see how my curves looked in the dress. I wasn’t a flat-tummy, no-roll-having diva. I had meat on my skin and wore it well, along with clothes that fit me.
“It’s Auntie Tanya.” Porsha held my phone up.
I rolled my eyes. “Answer it and talk to her while I change.”
Tanya was one of my older sisters. She and I were the most different of all my siblings. She was a teacher who dated an accountant and went to church every day of the week like Jesus Christ be at the service too. First of all, I didn’t wanna be bothered with my own kids, let alone a bunch of snotty brats who got on their mother’s nerves when not at school. Secondly, I wasn’t never about to bust it wide open for a nigga in a Brooks Brothers suit. If a nigga wasn’t a thug, I wasn’t fuckin’ with him. And lastly, I’d probably blow up into a million pieces if I stepped into the house of the Lord. I was a sinner who planned to keep sinning until the day I died.
The extreme differences between Tanya and me kept us at each other’s necks like we were enemies with different blood. Yet and still, we’d link up in a heartbeat to beat an outsider’s ass. That was how all my sisters and I were for one another. Besides Tanya and me, my momma had Tiana, Trish, and Ruby (the oldest and named after my granny), all by the same nigga. She wasn’t a ho, but that didn’t keep him from not being shit.
He beat my mom until she stopped breathing one day. While Tanya was busy trying to resuscitate my mom and call 911, I was busy breaking a mirror over our dad’s head, then slicing his throat with a piece of the broken glass. I didn’t serve time or no shit like that for murdering my daddy. However, child protective services opened a case on my mom to make sure the well-being of me and my sisters was intact. I also had to undergo extensive therapy that only made the visual playback of his neck squirting out blood as he died more in depth and constant. Yeah, you can believe it. I’d been coldblooded since I was a kid.
Tanya called because my mom was losing the house we grew up in. She was off her rocker, popping pills every day. All of us daughters were supposed to pitch in and save the house we grew up in, but I was like fuck that ’cause that house was nothing but a representation of hell for each and every one of us. I’d told them time and time again that I wasn’t giving them one dirty dope dollar toward saving that house and that I’d feed her pill addiction instead, but Tanya kept calling me incessantly. Since we were kids, she’d been trying to boss me around because she was the older.
Fuck age. She knew good and damn well that, between the two of us, I wasn’t the weak link. Besides, my momma probably wouldn’t take the money if I offered it to her. She’d never said it, but I felt like she started disliking me the day I killed her husband. I wasn’t pressed about carrying that monkey on my back, however. If Calvin ever raised his hand to strike me, I would send him to the grave too. I’d never been cut out to get beat on. My momma shouldn’t have been either.
“Ma! Dang, what’s taking you so long in there?” Porsha tapped on the dressing room door.
“Here I come, girl.” I slid on the next outfit, then stepped out, grabbing my phone. “Hey, sis. What’s up?”
“We only got a little more time to pay the taxes on Momma’s house. Please tell me that you changed your mind about chipping in with the rest of us.” On the topic I’d expected, Tanya was ruining my mood. I hated repeating myself, especially about this.
“Damn, Tanya. How many times do I have to tell you no? No, no, no, no! Y’all trifling as hell to wanna save that house of terrors. Matter of fact, I should go over there when Momma is gone and light that bitch on fire.” I spat venom, meaning each word.
As soon as the words slipped off my tongue, my mind moved even quicker, trying to see if I could really burn the house to the ground and get away with it. I didn’t want to commit too many crimes surrounding my mom but really pertaining to my dad. Luck runs out, and I’d already walked away without even a slap on the wrist with one murder.
“Sis, you’re crazy as hell for one. For two, you’re going to have to get over what happened when we were young. What are you planning on doing? Carrying that burden on your back forever?”
“Yup. It ain’t nothing for me to do that, Tanya. What’s known didn’t have to be said.”
She huffed and puffed, irritated by me not giving in and being an asshole in the process. “Argh, I swear, if you weren’t my sister—”
“Yeah,
