The Brooklyn housing projects were deserted as Eva
Patterson took a shortcut through the buildings, trying
not to get drenched in the pouring rain. It was unusually
cold for early fall, and all she had on was the corduroy
skirt and Salvation Army sweater she’d been wearing
when Rasheena kicked her out of their tenement apartment, but the temperature was the last thing on her mind as her eyes scanned the crime- ridden buildings in search of a safe place to go.
“Sheena, please . . .” Their neighbor Iris had butt in on
the earlier drama as Rasheena cursed her daughter out
like she was a grown woman. Iris had puffed out her
cheeks and held her breath between tokes of weed. “Stunt, stop
fuckin’ trippin’. Eva’s a good girl. And young as she is, I know
you ain’t . . . putting her out in the . . . street this time of . . .
night.”
It was a GreyGoose night, and Rasheena drunk was somebody
altogether different than Rasheena high. The high Rasheena
would have been sitting in a corner somewhere. Getting her nod
on and leaving Eva the hell alone.The drunk Rasheena had stood
over her daughter giving her a grimy look that said Eva could kiss
her ass.
“What?!?” Rasheena had turned to Iris. “Fourteen is
grown!
Sheeit . . . my ass was on the ave gettin’ tricked when I was
twelve. Who the fuck took care of me?”
Rasheena slurped a mouthful of Goose straight from the
bottle, then chased it with a long swig of cranberry juice and
explained. “Look, I. If you lie you steal, and Eva is a thief. A
goddamn thief. There’s two things I ain’t ’bout to watch in my
own goddamn house. My duji and my dick! Ya feel me? Eva
grown enough to fuck with my man and dabble in my shit?
Then she grown enough to let the doorknob hit’er in the ass on
the way out!”
“Well
damnnn,” Iris toked the blunt and muttered under
her breath. “Y’all the ones who got her started on that shit in
the first place . . .”
Eva had just sat there crying inside and looking forty instead
of fourteen. She
had tried to dip in Rasheena’s stash, but she’d
been sick all day and couldn’t go out and make no money. Eva
hated stealing from her mother. These days she hated taking
anything from anybody, but she had a hungry monkey on her
back. And Iris had it right. Eva wasn’t responsible for putting
herself on the gutter path to drug abuse, but neither did she
have what it took to get off of it. She hadn’t gotten a hit all day,
and just thinking about having to get out on those cold streets
was enough to bring her jones down even harder.
“
Don’t worry I got you,” Eva’s stepfather Jahden put his hand
up to his mouth and whispered. He winked and grinned as Eva
slunk into the tiny room she’d once shared with her cousin
Fuego, whose street- translated name was Fiyah. Eva missed her
cousin real bad. But Fiyah’s mother had gotten out of rehab a
couple of years earlier and he’d gone back to Harlem to live
with her. Even with all the grimy things they’d done together
Fiyah was down for her through thick and thin, and Eva
wished she could have escaped to Harlem with him.
“And don’t you take a damn thing outta here that I bought
you!” Rasheena screamed from the kitchen. Eva sighed. The
only thing she was interested in taking from the room was the
most important thing.
Her works.
Jahden grabbed her thin arm as she headed out the front
door.
“Hold on, baby. I said I got you.” A mid- level drug dealer,
Jahden specialized in pushing smack while most trap boys were
busy trading that rock. His hand slid around Eva’s narrow
shoulders then fell to the small of her back. Eva stiffened as his
fingers crept down the lump of her ass and massaged her
cheeks. A cold sweat broke out all over her skin.
If my real father
was here Jah wouldn’t be touching me like this, she cried inside.
This nasty pervert woulda been bodied by now. Eva bit her
tongue, trying not to throw up. Jahden liked to cold sex her.
He would do things to her that Eva’s young body just wasn’t
ready to handle. There was no end to his twisted demands, and
earlier in the day he had forced Eva to sit on the floor and
watch him fuck Rasheena from the back while Rasheena got in
Iris’s pussy at the same time.
“Check me out, Eva baby!” he had panted as his ass cheeks
gyrated and pumped like a steam engine. Eva shuddered. Her
mother was rotating her head in circles and lapping nookie
juice like that shit came in thirty- one flavors. Jahden laughed at
the look of revulsion on Eva’s face, then screamed on her as she
closed her eyes and tried to escape the horrible scene playing
out in front of her. “Bitch open ya goddamn eyes! You betta be
a student and pay attention, dammit!”
Eva had just sat there and cried. She was traumatized and
sickened. She wanted to stick a knife in Jahden’s neck. The
same way he’d stuck a fearsome needle in her neck a year ago
and turned her into the scared, humiliated shell she was today.
Although Rasheena had starved her child almost to skin and
bones and done things to Eva that even the lowest dog- mother
would never consider, Jahden was the real reason her life was so
fucked up and Eva hated him for it. Every other day she’d
promise herself that she’d kick dope cold turkey before she let
him rape her
or get her high again, but her greatest fear had become
her greatest joy, and Eva was helpless.
Rasheena, who had held Eva down the first time Jahden shot
her up, and who had then stood by and watched as her boy -
friend busted her young daughter’s cherry, had been acting real
jealous. She got mad whenever it looked like Jahden would
rather fuck Eva than fuck her, and she put her foot down and
demanded that from that day on Eva had to pay for her skag
with cold hard gwap just like every other fiend- head customer.
Desperate, young Eva had taken to the streets to earn her
drug money the only way she knew how. On her knees and on
her back. She’d been beaten by strange men, raped, stabbed,
and almost strangled. She had cried out to God for help, begging
to know what she had done to deserve such a dark, treacherous
life. But as usual, there were no answers for Eva. There
was only more destitution and misery. Only fear and more
pain. And right now, standing next to Jahden while he rubbed
all over her ass, she was hurting. Real bad. Hurting and scared.
Seeing the disgust on her face Jahden grinned and reached in
his shirt pocket. He passed her a tiny foil- wrapped package and
squeezed her fingers when she tried to take it.
“I got what you need, baby girl.” He cupped his dick and
licked his lips. “See how cool I am? Tonight I’ma let you get it
for free.”
Eva burned with rage, but he was right. She feared what he
had, but she needed it too. She snatched it greedily and fled.
Downstairs, Eva’s nose was runny and her entire body
ached. A deep pain gripped her as she was leaving her building,
and it wasn’t just from anger or from her mother’s cruel behavior.
Rasheena had once been a top clothing model for a highly
successful designer, but these days she was a common needle
fiend who put her man, her drink, and her drugs way ahead of
her only child. She had also been an extremely beautiful and
intelligent black woman who could have gone far in life. Tall
and shapely, with skin the color of brown sugar, she had wide
eyes, stunning lips, and hips like sweet chocolate milkshakes.
Back in the day she used to be known as the finest chick in
Brownsville, but a fast life and a series of grimy men had
proven more than Rasheena could handle. She’d traded her exotic
beauty for one too many heroin trips, and these days she
scrambled with the low- life Jahden because he not only paid
her rent, but he also kept her head right.
Having a junkie for a mother was bad enough, but the
drunken rages Rasheena flew into always cut Eva deep. Juiced,
Rasheena would wrap an extension cord around her fist and
whip her daughter until Eva’s skin split open and she passed
out from the pain. Eva’s starving body was a canvas of thick,
ugly scars and fresh bruises that she’d picked until they were
oozing, infected sores. Her stomach, ass, and back would be so
cut open that her wounds bled through and pussed over and
glued her undergarments to her skin. Her arms and legs had
their fair share of crisscrossed cuts and welts too, but Rasheena
had learned to chill on those areas after the school social worker
got on her case and told her she’d make sure her black ass got
locked up the next time she saw Eva with a fresh belt mark.
It was hard for Eva to admit that she would rather see her
mother mainline heroin than guzzle vodka and gin, but that
was the way it was with Rasheena. Besides, Eva understood
duji. She respected that shit. Liquor was something else
though. A smack head could find any old corner and cop a
quiet nod, but a drunk usually got loud and abusive. Drunks
liked to bully the weak, and that was Rasheena to a tee.
Eva dodged rain puddles and hunched her narrow shoulders
against the cold. It was after midnight, and the sixteen- story
concrete towers of Howard Houses Projects were a mixture of
illumination and darkness. Rain curled Eva’s silky hair and
drenched her down to her bruised skin. Shivering, she tightened
her grip on the tiny package she’d gotten from ...
