A lot of the kids envied Mecca, due to Ruby making sure that Mecca’s clothes were of the latest fashion. Mecca wore clothes that kids in Coney Island wouldn’t see until months later and wouldn’t be able to have because their parents couldn’t afford them.
What Mecca didn’t know was that her clothes were from boosters that Ruby paid for with dope or were given to her by her friends. The only things Ruby bought for Mecca were jewelry, sneakers, and shoes. Mecca wore two-karat diamond earrings, diamond-flooded wrist and ankle bracelets, and she had every cartridge for the Atari 2600 and the 3200 ever made.
When the summer of 1983 rolled in, Mecca met a girl her age named Dawn who lived down the hall from her tenth floor apartment. Dawn’s mother was one of Ruby’s customers and asked Ruby if Dawn could stay at her apartment while she went out on “dates,” which everybody in Coney Island knew were Johns. She sold her body to support her habit. At first, Mecca hated the dark-skinned, thick, bushy-haired girl. Dawn wore dirty clothes, smelled like piss, and she was always ashy. Mecca didn’t like her out of jealousy. Ruby started giving Dawn new clothes; she bathed Dawn, and did her hair the same way she did Mecca’s.
Mecca found her excuse to try to physically hurt Dawn when Dawn tried to steal one of Mecca’s Atari cartridges. They were playing each other in a game of Frogger when Mecca noticed out of the corner of her eye the print of a cartridge in Dawn’s dungaree pockets. Mecca dropped her joystick and went to grab Dawns pocket.
“What are you doing?” Dawn jumped back and yelled.
Mecca gave her the look that usually scared other kids away from her, but to her surprise Dawn returned the look. Mecca was caught off guard. She was not used to anyone not being scared when she gave them that menacing stare.
“Gimme my cartridge, you thief!” Mecca barked.
“This ain’t yours!” Dawn grabbed her pocket when she saw Mecca stare at it.
“Yes, it is!” Mecca yelled, charging at Dawn, who was no pushover.
This was no easy fight for Mecca. Dawn was just as strong and ferocious as she was. Ruby, in her bedroom, was bagging up heroin into small, white packets, wearing a hospital mask over her face as not to inhale the fumes, when she heard the argument going on between the girls, and ran out to see what the commotion was. When she entered the living room she saw Mecca and Dawn both with ripped T-shirts, hair out wild, and both had scratches and blood coming out of their noses. They were both out of breath holding each other’s hair, and swinging their arms at each other. Ruby watched them fight for a few more minutes, grinning, then when she realized they had both had enough, she stepped between them, holding them apart from each other.
“All right, you two! Y’all know damn well y’all had enough. I don’t know what y’all was fighting for….”
“She tried to—” Mecca replied, pointing to Dawn, out of breath.
Ruby cut her off. “I don’t want to know. The way y’all fought each other y’all better off being friends and holding each other down against them people that’s going to hate you for who you are. Whatever it was, don’t let it come between y’all again. Don’t let nothing come between y’all, I want y’all to be like sisters, you hear me?”
Both girls stared at each other, neither not wanting to fight each other again. Mecca had to admit to herself Dawn was tough and Dawn thought the same of Mecca. Dawn also thought Mecca was a spoiled brat who was spoon-fed and didn’t have to fight for anything, but she had a change of heart after the fight Mecca had put up.
“I said did y’all hear me?” Ruby grumbled. Both girls nodded their heads.
Dawn never tried to take anything from Mecca again. In fact, she stole cartridges from other kids that Mecca didn’t have, and gave them to her. Afterward, Mecca started to like Dawn, and when Mecca realized Dawn’s mother was a fiend she felt sorry for Dawn and their bond got tighter. Ruby enrolled Dawn in the same school as Mecca and the two became inseparable. When you fought one, you fought the other. Eventually no one messed with the two girls. Kids in their Brownsville school started calling them The Devil’s Daughters.
The man in the white robe laughed loudly while Mecca just stared. “The Devil’s Daughters!” the white-robed man called Lou yelled, chuckling.
“I didn’t tell anybody to call us that. So what’s so funny?” Mecca asked with anger in her voice.
Lou stopped laughing and said, “I know you didn’t tell no one to call y’all that. It’s what they saw in you and her. People see you better than you see yourself, Mecca. That’s why now I’m giving you the opportunity to see yourself from day one and the people around you, I’m giving you the opportunity to see how your life affected others and how people saw you.”
“I don’t care how people saw me,” Mecca said sternly.
“After this, you’re going to wish you had cared, Ms. Mecca.”
Chapter Five
For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread and the adulteress will hunt for the precious life.
Proverbs 6:26
The Summer of 1987
The summer of 1987 was one of the best summers Ruby ever had. Crack was on the scene and Ruby became acquainted with the rock form of cocaine, and established a relationship with it that fattened her pockets. The Langston Hughes projects were full of crack fiends looking for the dealer who had the best stuff. A lot of good people fell victim to the lure of the three-minute high that crack gave.
A lot of people Ruby knew from her younger days were now strung out, people who were once a part of the in crowd. The people who everyone in the hood wanted to be like, dress like, and talk like got bit by the crack epidemic, even Stone.
When Stone, the once kingpin of the projects became a full-fledged crack-head, he eventually lost the respect of his soldiers and confidants. He started smoking his own product until he went broke. Darnell, the man who killed Ruby’s sister and brother-in-law, made his move. He had the product and the product was good. With that came the soldiers. Stone’s ex-soldiers. In no time Darnell was the biggest cat in the projects. Ruby set up shop in Coney Island, and she had her friend Monique sell her stuff in Langston Hughes. Ruby wasn’t making as much as Darnell was, but it was enough. Most of her money was being made on her Coney Island block.
“Girl, guess who home?” Monique asked as if she was about to deliver bad news.
“Who?” Ruby asked while she chopped up a rock the size of a tennis ball on a white china dish with a razor blade. She placed the pebbles inside small vials with yellow tops.
“Your ex-nigga a Five Percenter now. They call him Wise, like the dumb nigga wise or something,” Monique giggled.
Monique was the only person Ruby talked to about the ordeal with Wise. Monique and Ruby had been friends since they were kids growing up in Brownsville. Ruby talked to Monique about men because Monique was an expert when it came to dealing with the opposite sex. She had men wrapped around her finger. Her voluptuous body and striking good looks were the keys to making men bow at her feet. She had a caramel complexion and hazel eyes with firm C-cup breasts. Monique had an exotic look having been born to a Panamanian mother and Cuban father. Oddly, Monique didn’t know a lick of Spanish.
The thought of seeing her ex
