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Like he promised, Jah had texted me last night when he had gotten home. I couldn’t stay up and text him all night even though I wanted to because I couldn’t figure out how to turn the brightness down on the phone, so I ended up turning the phone off and placing it in my top drawer. I wanted to take into consideration the things that Jah said he wanted to do for me today, but I just could not think of an alibi to tell my aunt that would get her to believe me.
I woke up this morning and I thanked God for allowing me to see another year. Once I had made up my bed, I went into the bathroom to take a shower.
I was just about to rinse the last bit of soap suds off my body when suddenly, the bathroom door burst open. I did my best to cover myself up because I didn’t know who it was. Quickly, the shower curtain was pulled back and I was dragged out of the shower by my hair and I lost my balance and fell on the bathroom floor. As I fell on my arm, I promise I heard a bone in my arm crack. I looked down at my shoulder and I knew for a fact that it was dislocated from the way that it was hanging. My aunt was standing over me with a scowl on her face and a new leather belt in her hand.
“Where the hell were you yesterday?” she asked me.
“I was at school, auntie. What you mean?” I cried.
Whap! She swung the belt, hitting me in my stomach with it.
“Lie to me again and I swear to God I will kill your hoe ass in here! Where the fuck were you yesterday, and think long and hard before you answer this time,” she said to me.
I looked at her with tears falling down my face, absolutely scared for my life. How my aunt had found out that I had skipped school yesterday was beyond me. We didn’t have the house number on file for school, so it wasn’t like the school had called or something like that. Maybe she went into my bag or something while I was in the shower and saw the clothes that I had worn yesterday to the beach.
“Okay, okay. I went to the beach yesterday along with all of the other seniors because it was senior skip day,” I told her through my tears.
“And that’s all I needed to know!” she said and the belt came crashing into my body repeatedly as I lay there on the floor, screaming to the top of my lungs. My body was soaking wet and the strikes that my body was taking felt worse than any beating that I had ever suffered before.
My little cousins came in the hallway, crying their eyes out as they watched me get the shit beat out of me. After a few minutes, my body felt numb and I was no longer screaming.
“You like to run around and hang with grown ass men! You gon’ end up being a crackhead just like your no good ass mother,” my aunt spat.
“Don’t… talk about… my mother,” I said through my tears, as I spit blood out of my mouth.
In the middle of the beating that I had just suffered, I was hit in the mouth a few times with the belt.
“Or what? What the fuck are you going to do? I’ll talk about that crackhead bitch all I want to with her stupid ass. She was dumb as hell and your ass is going to follow right in her footsteps, you hoe!” she said.
I somehow picked my ass up off that floor, and with all of my strength, I pushed my aunt as hard as I could, making her slip and fall on her ass. She tried to get up and charge me, but all of a sudden, Rick came and he held her from getting to me.
“Don’t you dare talk about my mother like that! I don’t care what you say or what you do to break me, but you leave my mom the fuck out of this! I hate her so much for leaving me alone with you in this fucked up predicament but at the end of the day, she was still my mother and you will respect her,” I screamed.
My aunt looked at me with shocked eyes because for the first time in twelve years, I was finally defending myself.
“Antonia, calm down. She didn’t mean anything by it,” Porsha said, trying to touch me, but I slapped her hand away.
“Don’t you dare say a fuckin’ word to me! You watched this woman beat my ass for years and you never did anything to stop her, so don’t fuckin try to defend me now,” I screamed at her. My arm was still hanging crooked and I was so livid that I didn’t even feel it.
I walked into my room and went over to my dresser and threw on some clean underwear and a bra. I was able to find a pair of sweatpants to throw on and a sweater. I went in my closet and found some old ass sneakers and I threw them on. I grabbed the phone that Jah had given me and stuck it into my pants pocket.
“And you better not take your ass down there telling them people our business,” my aunt screamed after me.
I walked out of the apartment and closed the door behind me. Taking the stairs, I went and stood on the side of the apartment building. I powered on my phone and waited for it to start up. Once it did, I dialed Jah’s number.
“What’s good, birthday girl? You hanging with a nigg
a today or what?” he asked, causing me to smile.
“Yeah, can you come and get me? I’ll be standing outside,” I let him know.
“I’m already out running the streets, so I’ll be to you in about another ten minutes or so, so sit tight,” he said and then ended the call.
I took a seat on the sidewalk, wracking my brain, trying to figure out how my aunt had found out about yesterday. When I went in the room and put on clothes, my bag was in the very same spot as yesterday, so I knew that she hadn’t been in my book bag. I smiled at the thought of me defending myself. All I heard was Jah’s voice in my head from yesterday, saying, Don’t let them bitches talk about you like that, Antonia! You let them get away with it once, they’ll consider you to be weak and they’ll keep doing that shit.
It wasn’t too late for me to start defending myself, even though I had chosen to wait a whole ten years. I was pissed as hell at my mother for leaving me here, and I said some mean things in my head toward her on a daily, but I’ll be damned if I watch another person fix their lips to say hateful things about her as well!
Chapter 14: Jahiem
