Dirty Money

by Jaquavis, Ashley

Genres: Urban Fantasy; Anthologies

Synopsis

Anari is the epitome of a good-girl-turned-bad after her world is brutally destroyed. Consumed with her desire for revenge, she and her best friend Monica enter a life of drugs, fast money and betrayal - adopting the lifestyle that pushed them into the game in the first place. Hiding their true identities they quickly rise to the top of New Jersey's dope game. Using everyone who crosses their paths, nothing - not betrayal or addiction - will stop them from dispensing their street justice.

Release date: January 10, 2013

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Anari watched the clock, tapping her pencil against the desk and wishing the class would hurry up and end. She glanced over at her best friend Tanya, who slept with her head propped in her book, and laughed to herself. She tore a piece of paper from her notebook and threw it at Tanya.

“Tanya, wake yo’ ass up,” she whispered.

Tanya raised her head groggily and wiped the spit from her bottom lip. Just as she was about to throw the paper back at Anari, the school bell rang. The girls walked out of the classroom into the hall and out the front door.

On their way home, they ran into a group of girls who didn’t like Anari too much. Anari stopped walking when she noticed them. This particular group of girls thought that she was conceited and were always writing stuff on the bathroom walls or spreading rumors that Anari slept around. In actuality, that was the last thing she did.

Anari was still a virgin, so the rumors bothered her to the point that she avoided the people who started spreading them. Tanya noticed Anari hesitate, so she spoke up loudly.

“Fuck them, Anari. They scary asses ain’t gon’ do nothing. All they do is run they damn mouths.”

Anari walked past the girls, hoping that they wouldn’t start anything with her. She picked up her pace while Tanya walked past the girls, mugging each one. Tanya made sure that she made eye contact with the main girl to let her know that she was not intimidated and that she would not let them intimidate her best friend.

When they finally passed the group of girls, Tanya looked at Anari. “I told you them hoes ain’t want none,” Tanya said.

Anari laughed it off, trying to pretend as if the girls didn’t bother her, but on the inside, she was trying to stop her heart from beating so fast. They walked home, talking the whole way. They never walked home without one another. They felt safer walking home together. In their neighborhood, it was common for young girls to get hassled by dudes who did not understand the word “no.”

As they looked at the rundown subsidized housing projects they called home, Anari said, “I am not living here. As soon as I turn eighteen, I’m out.”

Tanya looked at Anari, knowing that her friend was tired of living in the hood. She knew how it felt to want more out of life. “I feel you, but until then, we just got to deal with it.”

“Tanya, get your ass in this house and do your damn chores!” Tanya’s mother yelled as she stuck half her body out the second-story apartment window.

Tanya rolled her eyes at the sound of her mother’s voice. “Here I come!” she replied. She turned to Anari and shrugged her shoulders. “I have to go, but call me later. I want you to put my perm in for me.”

Anari said, “Okay,” and began to walk to her building. She was almost there when she heard sirens in the distance and saw a boy running through a hole in the fence. Anari nosily kept her eyes on the boy and saw him throw something in the bushes as he raced past it.

Anari paused for a minute and took a look around to see who he was running from. She didn’t see anyone, so she walked over to the bush to see what the boy had thrown. Anari picked up a sandwich bag full of what looked like crumbled peanuts. She put the peanuts in her book bag and quickly walked into her building. When she entered her apartment, she saw her mother cuddled up with some strange man. “I’m back, Ma,” she yelled and ran upstairs to her room.

Anari looked out her window and saw two policemen push the boy to the ground. She cracked her window so she could hear what was going on.

“Where is it?” yelled one of the officers.

The boy kept his face pressed against the ground. His voice was muffled. “Man, I don’t know what you talking about. I ain’t got nothin’.”

The other officer checked the boy’s pockets. “I think he might have thrown it somewhere.”

“Check behind those bushes over there, and if it’s not there then check in those garbage cans, too,” his partner replied.

The officer thoroughly searched the bushes and the trash, but he didn’t find anything. “Let him go. It’s not here.”

The boy got up from the ground with a cocky smile on his face. The officer roughly removed his handcuffs. “You got lucky this time, you little piece of shit.”

Anari closed her window and pulled the sandwich bag from her book bag. She poured the peanuts onto her bed and counted out twenty of them.

So, this is the stuff that be making niggas rich.

Anari heard a knock at her bedroom door and scrambled to put the stuff back into the sandwich bag. She threw it under her pillow and yelled back, “Hold on, Momma. Here I come.”

Anari’s mom just yelled through the door, “I’m ’bout to go. I’ll be back later, and when I come home, I want that damn kitchen clean. And when Maulie get home, tell him to clean up my room before he goes outside.”

Anari opened her door. “Okay, Ma,” she said.

After her mother left, Anari got right to her chores. She wanted to hurry up and finish so that she could figure out what she would do with the drugs she found.

Maybe I’ll give them back to that boy. I think Tanya knows one of his friends.

Anari finished her chores and went into the kitchen to get something to eat. She opened the refrigerator and found some milk and some baking soda.

Damn, it ain’t even nothing here to eat.

Her stomach growled, so she did what she always did when she was hungry. She drank water.

She took a glass back up to her room and called Tanya. After two rings, Tanya picked up.

“Hello?” Tanya answered loudly.

“What up? What you doing?” Anari asked.

“Nothing. I just finished my damn chores. My momma swear I’m her slave.”

Anari laughed at Tanya and quickly changed the subject. “What’s that boy’s name that you talking to? You know the high yellow boy that you always be flirting with?”

“Oh, you talking ’bout Lance. What about him?”

“I need to talk to his friend. The one that he always be with. Do you know his number?”

Tanya put Anari on hold and came back with the number. “Anari, you still there?”

“Yeah, do you have it?”

Tanya continued, “His name is Maurice and his number is 686-5114. Since when you start liking him?”

Anari was in a rush to call the boy, so she told Tanya that she would call her back. She started to pick up the phone then hesitated. Would he be mad because she took his shit? What if he beat her ass or something? Maybe she would just keep it and not say anything.

The more she thought about it, though, Anari realized she couldn’t keep the drugs in her room without her momma finding them, and she would rather take an ass whooping from Maurice than her mother any day. She picked up the phone and dialed the number.

“What up?”

“Hi, can I speak to Maurice?” asked Anari.

“This me. Who is this?” replied Maurice.

“Well, you really don’t know me, but this is Anari. I saw what happened to you today and I just wanted to call you and let you know that I have your stuff. I took it out the bushes so the police wouldn’t find it.”

Maurice was silent for a while. He finally spoke up. “I’ll pick it up later tonight. It’s too hot outside right now. Is twelve o’clock okay?”

“Okay, but don’t knock on my door or ring the buzzer,” Anari replied. “I’ll meet you out front.”

Maurice hung up the phone and Anari went to get his stuff. She was looking at it when she heard the door slam downstairs. She went to her door and yelled, “Maulie, is that you?”

Jamal raced up the stairs with Tanya following behind him. “Yeah!” he said, running from Tanya as she playfully hit him on the back of the head.

“You it,” he said as he hit Tanya back and ran into his room.

“That boy getting big. I ain’t gon’ be able to beat him up in a couple more years.” Tanya laughed as she walked into Anari’s room. “So anyway, what did you call Maurice for?” she asked as she plopped down on Anari’s bed.

Anari walked over to her door, shut it, and locked it. She walked back to her bed and reached under her pillow. She held up the sandwich bag and showed Tanya what she had. “This is his stuff. He dropped it and I want to give it back to him.”

Tanya took the bag from Anari. “It’s like four hundred dollars worth of dope in here,” she said. “You can buy you some fly shit with four hundred dollars.”

Anari shrugged her shoulders and frowned her face up. “How in the hell you know it’s four hundred worth?”

Tanya smiled and lay on her stomach. “I watched my friend Lance bag that shit up. He told me what goes for what and how shit is. You should try to sell that and make some money.”

Anari ignored her friend’s suggestion and changed the subject. They talked for about an hour before Anari’s mother interrupted them.

“Hold on, T. I’ll be right back.”

Anari went downstairs to watch her mother inspect the kitchen. When her mother appeared to be satisfied, Anari walked past the strange man sitting in the living room and up the stairs. When she went back into her room, Tanya had the bag of stuff.

“Nari, I miscounted. It’s only like three hundred dollars worth in here.”

Anari took the bag from Tanya. “It don’t matter how much is in there, because I’m giving it back to him.”

Tanya rolled her eyes, knowing that Anari was a goodie-two-shoe. “I don’t care what you do with it as long as you don’t smoke that shit,” she said. “I don’t want no crack head for a best friend.”

“Don’t even play.” Anari laughed at the thought.

Anari was nervous about meeting Maurice that night, so she tried to think of something else for the rest of her day. She put in Tanya’s perm and tried to do some of her homework. Tanya went home around 10 o’clock and Anari got ready to pretend she was asleep. She walked down the hall and knocked on her mother’s bedroom door. “Ma?”

Anari could smell the scent of weed coming from the other side of her mother’s door and she knew that her mother’s usual rituals were taking place. She opened the door.

“I’m going to sleep. Do you want me to do anything else before I go?”

“You ain’t going to sleep until you finish them damn chores,” Anari’s mother replied.

Anari frowned in confusion. “You said that I was done with my chores. I thought I did a good job.”

Her mother looked at her and scowled. “You didn’t wash the clothes.”

Anari was frustrated and just wanted to get her plan in motion. “But you didn’t tell me to wash clothes.”

Anari’s mother walked over and hit her upside her head and raised her voice. “Get your trifling ass down there and wash them clothes! I shouldn’t have to ask you. You’re the oldest. I do my job by keeping a roof over your head. The least you could do is help out. You are an ungrateful little ass.”

Anari wanted to spit in her mother’s face, but she wasn’t disrespectful. She hated when her mother acted like she was a good parent, but instead of saying this to her mother, she thought everything that she wished she could say.

I hate you! You don’t keep nothing over my head! I could pay the fucking thirteen dollars a month. I’m walking around here in Tanya’s clothes cuz you blow all the money on drugs. You can’t even keep food in our refrigerator.

Anari walked out of the room with her heart filled with rage. She was so upset, she knew it was best that she just keep her mouth shut and do as she was told or she was bound to say something that could get her into trouble.

She went downstairs and started separating the dirty clothes. All her mother’s clothes smelled liked vomit, liquor, and weed. She frowned as the smell overwhelmed her. Anari threw the clothes into their separate piles, cursing her mother out in her head.

When she finished separating all the dirty laundry, she saw that she had four huge loads to wash, dry, and fold. She sighed heavily and shook her head as she put in the first load. She would be up all night trying to finish these clothes.

Anari was sitting on top of the dryer when she saw that it was 11:30, almost time to meet Maurice. She hopped off the dryer and ran up to her room. When she passed her mother’s door, she didn’t hear anything, so she assumed that her mother and her company were asleep. She went into her bedroom and put on a pair of blue jeans and a pink shirt.

Anari was anxious to give Maurice the drugs that she had found. She grabbed the sandwich bag and walked out of her room, trying to be as quiet as possible because she didn’t want her mother to wake up and find out that she was sneaking out. She ran down the stairs, put in the third load of clothes, grabbed her house keys, and quietly walked out the front door.

As soon as she walked outside, she saw Maurice waiting for her in a raggedy black Ford Tempo. She walked over to his car and got in the front seat. As she sat down, she felt her heart speed up, and wondered why she was so nervous.

“Here’s your stuff,” she said, pulling the sandwich bag out of her pocket.

He took the bag from Anari and pulled out a wad of money. Anari turned her head, thinking that it would be rude for her to stare at his money. He placed five crisp twenty-dollar bills on her lap.

“I don’t want your money,” Anari said. “I was just helping out.”

Maurice looked at Anari and licked his lips. “I want you to have it,” he said. “I appreciate you being straight up with me. I saw you go into the bushes and get the dope. You could have just kept it, but you was real with me. You didn’t try to pull nothing grimey. I like that.”

Anari smiled as she took the money and put it into her purse.

“So, what you say your name is?” Maurice asked as he pulled away from Anari’s building.

“Anari,” she answered in her cutest voice.

She looked over at Maurice and was immediately attracted to him. He had a brown complexion with strong features. She noticed that he had a scar above his left eyebrow.

Even that looked good to her, she thought as she rubbed her hands together in her lap.

“So, you trying to chill with me tonight?”

Anari wanted to stay and chill with Maurice, but she knew that her mother would have a fit if she found out that she had sneaked out of the house.

Maurice peeped the look on her face. “I’ll take you home, little mama. I don’t want your moms to trip on you or nothing.”

Anari was relieved that Maurice understood. She wasn’t trying to get into any trouble, and she didn’t want to come out and tell him that she had to go home.

“How old are you anyway?”

“Fourteen,” she replied. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” Maurice replied.

Anari didn’t know that Maurice was so old, but she didn’t really care. He seemed to be nice enough. Besides, he was only four years older then she was.

When Maurice pulled back up to Anari’s apartment building, he said, “All right, youngin’.”

Anari blushed as she got out of the car. She closed his door and walked toward her apartment building.

When she looked back and waved, he rolled down his window and yelled, “I’ll pick you up for school tomorrow.”

Anari laughed. “Okay.”

She watched Maurice drive off. She couldn’t wait to call Tanya and tell her about him. He was so fine. Anari hoped that he thought she was cute too. Her excitement died down when she realized that she had to sneak back into her house.

Anari slowly put her key in the door and opened it, praying that it wouldn’t make any noise. The washing machine had stopped. Deciding she would finish the clothes in the morning, she started to ascend the steps, trying to stop them from squeaking. Every step seemed to squeak louder and louder as she walked up. After what seemed like forever, Anari crept past her mother’s room and slowly opened her own bedroom door. As soon as she closed the door, she leaned up against it and sighed.

She took off her clothes and got underneath her covers. As soon as she closed her eyes, she felt something hit her in the face. “Ouch!”

Anari got out of bed and ran around her dark room. She turned on her light switch and saw her mother standing by her bed with a belt in her hand.

“You might as well get ready for this ass whooping. Your fast ass had the nerve to sneak out of my house.”

Anari’s mother came at her with full force, smacking her in the face repeatedly. Her smacks turned into punches as Anari curled up on the ground.

“I’m sorry!” Anari screamed, trying to get her mother to stop hitting her. She didn’t fight back though. She had learned a long time ago that it was better to just take the hits.

Anari curled up even tighter and tried to protect herself from the forceful blows and unrelenting kicks that were aimed for her head and stomach.

“Momma, please!” she begged, hoping that the beating would stop.

Anari realized that her mother didn’t plan on stopping until she was ready, so she lay there wincing as her mother hit her over and over again. She felt the pounding in her head and the swelling of her face with each kick that connected with her face. Anari tasted the salty blood as her lip busted, and she began to cry.

Finally her mother’s male friend came in and pulled her mother off of her. “That’s enough! Look at her. She can’t even move.”

Anari’s mother stopped hitting her. She stood there breathing heavily. When she eventually caught her breath, she yelled, “Now take your fast ass down there and finish those damn clothes! And shut up before I give you something to cry about!” Anari was left in her room, lying on the floor in agony.

Jamal had heard the whole thing, and he lay in bed praying that his mother would stop. He loved his sister because she was the one who he came to when he wanted to play. Anari was the one who helped him with his homework, and she was the one who performed all the motherly duties that were not being done by their real mother. After he was certain that his mother was back in her room, he got out of bed and tip-toed into his sister’s room.

“Are you okay, Nari?” Jamal asked as he knelt down beside her.

She tried to compose herself so that her little brother wouldn’t see that their mother had beaten her again. “Yeah, I’m okay, Maulie. Go to bed so you won’t be sleepy for school in the morning.”

Anari tried to get up off the floor as if she wasn’t hurt, but the pain was unbearable. She grimaced as she felt stabbing pains all over her body. Maulie helped her up then she walked her little brother to his room and tucked him in. Anari stayed there with him until he was sound asleep. Tears flowed down her face as she watched her brother sleep peacefully.

I hope I can get us out of here before it gets worse.

She kisse. . .