hair that looked wet, his chinky eyes, and those dimples…damn.
“Girl, what you thinking about?” Monique asked, snapping Ruby out of her daydream.
“I was thinking how much product I left in Coney Island,” Ruby lied. Monique knew she was lying, also. She knew her girl and knew when she was hurt, happy, and lying.
“Please, Ruby, you thinking about that clown Wise or whatever he call himself.” Monique laughed at Ruby’s expense, causing Ruby to laugh too.
“You know me too good. I got to change my ways.”
“What’s there to think about? That nigga old news,” Monique said, hoping Ruby wasn’t thinking about reconciling her and Wise’s relationship. She knew how hurt Ruby was when she had gone on that visit and saw him hugging and kissing another woman. She didn’t want her best friend to go through that again. People just didn’t know how much Ruby changed after that episode.
“You right, girl. Fuck that clown,” Ruby said, continuing to chop on the crack rock she had on the plate. “It’s about money and you know what m-o-n-e-y means to us!”
In unison, Ruby and Monique yelled, “Money Over Niggas Every Year!” They both howled in laughter.
Mecca was now thirteen years old and still a virgin. Her body developed quickly. The boys in her junior high school noticed the feisty thirteen-year-old, and her friend, Dawn, who had also developed quickly.
Dawn had already lost her virginity in the school bathroom to a Puerto Rican boy in her social studies class. They started off passing notes to each other, then Dawn answered the last letter with a check in the “yes” box when he asked if she wanted to go out with him. He motioned for her to meet him when the bell rang to change classes. They snuck to the basement and had sex in the bathroom.
“Did you like it?” Mecca asked curiously.
“At first I didn’t, because it hurt. Then it started feeling good,” Dawn replied shyly.
“You so nasty.” Mecca smiled and playfully hit Dawn on the shoulder.
Dawn sucked her teeth. “Please, you better get you some before your stuff dry up and die.”
Both girls laughed. Mecca and Dawn had to gain their respect back when they entered junior high. Their reputations stayed intact the entire time. Both Mecca and Dawn were problem students, so they both had to attend the “six hundred school” for bad kids. Ruby thought Mecca would be cool going to school in Brownsville because that’s where her friends were, and when she had tried to school Mecca in her Coney Island neighborhood she kept getting into fights. The sad thing was, the fights continued in Brownsville. It was a new school and there were new foes at the time, and some of the kids from their elementary schools were there and spread the word that Dawn and Mecca were not to be fucked with. But with some people, examples had to me made.
The opportunity presented itself when the girlfriend of a guy who had a crush on Mecca found out that he liked her. Instead of confronting her boyfriend, she chose to approach Mecca, who didn’t even know the boy. The girl made a bad choice. A choice that she had to carry for the rest of her life.
Dawn and Mecca both dressed in tight-fitting Lee Jeans. Mecca with burgundy pinstriped ones with burgundy on white shell–top Adidas, and a white sweat shirt with “Mecca” written in script on the upper left corner, and giant door knocker earrings. Dawn wore black ones with black on white shell–top Adidas, and a white sweatshirt with matching earrings. They both walked down the crowded hallway heading toward the exit, when a light-skinned girl with a short Jherri curl that left stains on her no name–brand, button-down blue shirt approached Mecca with an angry look on her face.
“You better stay away from my man!”
Mecca and Dawn looked at each other, then back at the girl, confused. “Who you talking to?” Mecca asked.
“I’m talking to you! Stay away from Tah or I’m gonna…” the girl replied, stepping closer to Mecca’s face.
Mecca didn’t give her the opportunity to finish her threat. She was punching the girl in the face and pulled her Jherri curl, pulling the girl down to the floor. Dawn started kicking the girl in the stomach and the face. The girl screamed as the crowd in the hallway gathered around, watching the two fly girls beat up the girl who had approached them with hostility. While the girl was down, she managed to look up and spit in Mecca’s face. Mecca turned as red as an apple. Mecca reached in her back pocket and pulled out a Gem Star razor that she had found on the kitchen table. Ruby used them to chop up her drugs.
Grabbing the girl by the back of her head, holding her hair, she sliced the girl’s face from her ear to the corner of her lip. The blood squirted from the girl’s face. She tried to hold her face closed so the blood wouldn’t leak out.
“She cut me! Get this bitch off of me!”
When the crowd saw all the blood, they started walking away. Mecca and Dawn both ran to the exit and rushed to the bus stop to catch the bus heading home. Later that day, two cops knocked on Monique’s door in Langston Hughes looking for Dawn and Mecca. The girls used Monique’s address so they could go to school in Brownsville. They had to live in the zone in order to attend the school. If the school found out they lived in Coney Island, they wouldn’t be allowed to attend. The cops told Monique that they had a warrant for the arrest of Dawn and Mecca. Monique informed both of them that Dawn and Mecca didn’t return home that day. When they did she would bring them to the station. She lied.
“Who the hell is Tah, Dawn?” Mecca asked Dawn while they rode the bus home.
“You know him by face. He’s in my math class,” Dawn replied, looking out the window while the bus rode through the Pitkin Avenue shopping area.
“How he look? He better be cute after all this bullshit we going through,” Mecca said.
“He all right. He ain’t no LL Cool J. He gets fresh and all that. He pump jums in Brownsville houses.”
“You know we can’t go back to school, right?” Mecca said more than asked.
Dawn sighed. “Yeah, I know. Fuck it, I’m tired of school anyway. I’m ready to start making some dough.”
“What are you talking about, Dawn?” Mecca asked with a look on her face that said, “I know you ain’t talking about what I think you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the way your aunt gets money. Like everybody else. I’m tired of taking handouts from Ruby, Mecca. I’m ready to get down with the program.”
Mecca shook her head at her friend. Dawn is going crazy, she thought. It’s probably losing her virginity that messed her brain up. Mecca hoped Dawn was just talking and not dead serious about it.
“Dawn, you crazy, girl,” was all she could say before riding the rest of the way to Coney Island in silence.
The white-robed man named Lou folded his arms and stared at Mecca for a few seconds.
“What?” Mecca asked tersely.
“Did that girl deserve to have her face sliced up like that?”
Mecca sucked her teeth and looked away from Lou. “Shoot, she spit on me.
