Girls From da Hood 8

Book 8: Girls from da Hood

by Treasure Hernandez, Natalie Weber

Genres: African American Urban; African American Women's Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Urban Books' popular Girls from da Hood series is back, bringing listeners more dramatic tales about the lives of some tough, resourceful women who can hold their own when things get rough on the streets. Gabby Davenport spent the first 15 years of her life in the suburbs, living a privileged and sheltered existence. When her mother dies unexpectedly, she is forced to move from her middle class neighborhood into Cumberland Projects in Brooklyn. Gabby's life will never be the same. Mika, the queen bee of the projects, doesn't appreciate the arrival of this private-school good girl. Mika and her posse are on a mission to make Gabby's life miserable, and things only get worse when Mika's "friend with benefits" B-Waite decides he wants to make Gabby his girl. Mika is ready to go to war to win back her man, and she doesn't care who she has to take down in the process. Keisha, Shawna, and LaRhonda are best friends forever, as the saying goes. Nothing will tear apart this tight trio - or so they think. When Keisha steps out of her box to become more of her own person, tension builds among the girls. In the eyes of her trusted friends, her lifestyle has become questionable. What happens when her secrets and desires are revealed? Shawna's life is just starting to look up. She's been hired at a major record label, and she's making enough money to move out of the projects for good. When her good news is met by fake smiles, Shawna gets a new perspective on how her girls really feel. LaRhonda sees each of her friends moving up while she's still struggling in the confines of the ghetto. After she gives birth to her second child by the age of 18, she feels like her dreams are out of reach. Her growing jealousy isn't easy to hide. What will happen when her misery wants company?

Release date: August 1, 2013

Publisher: Urban Audiobooks

Print pages: 288

Sample

I got off the B54 bus that runs from downtown Brooklyn along Myrtle Avenue, the weight of my backpack slowing me down. The crowd had changed dramatically since I got on at Jay Street on the other side of the socioeconomic divide. There were only a handful of white people left and within a few stops the passengers would all be some shade of brown. I walked past a group of older teenagers in saggy pants leaned up against a wall smoking blunts. They shifted all their focus on me, their prey.

“Yo, mama, wanna play school with me?” One of them leered, slapping palms with his friends.

“Let me see what you got under that uniform,” a second added.

“What, you go to Hogwarts?” The first one used that corny-ass Harry Potter reference to make fun of my burgundy plaid skirt, white blouse, burgundy vest, and knee socks.

“Baby, I can teach you more than them ABC’s.” Another, shorter one with busted teeth winked, but I shifted my eyes away and pretended not to notice them.

I decided then and there to ignore any and all the elements of this place that bothered me; and, believe me, there were plenty. Maybe I was a snob. I just didn’t understand a neighborhood of people that could have or should have been motivated to climb the economic ladder, but instead they were content hanging outside doing nothing but shooting the shit. And this was during the nine-to-five workday. Yeah, this was the polar opposite of the upwardly mobile neighborhood where I had been raised. I knew I was sounding judgmental, like my mother. She had grown up here and made it her life’s mission to never return, but unfortunately there were some things that even she couldn’t control. Like me winding up living her nightmare.

Within a few blocks each way, gentrification, fancy wine bars, and Starbucks had sprung up and taken hold; but the aura of poverty within the Cumberland housing projects remained unchallenged and unchangeable.

This wasn’t the first time I’d stepped off the bus on Myrtle Avenue to get to my Aunt Kim’s tenement apartment, but everything about this trip was different. I was no longer a visitor counting down the minutes until I could escape to the safety and sanity of my own neighborhood. The Cumberland housing projects had become my home whether I liked it or not, and I would have to make the best of it for the time being. Aunt Kim was my mother’s younger, wilder sister and my only living relative, unless you counted my father, and I certainly didn’t especially since I’d never met him. He and my mother had been high school boyfriend and girlfriend. She had run into him on a trip home a couple of years later and one thing led to another and there she was knocked up. She said his life was already too big to include us, whatever that meant. I assumed it meant that he had another girlfriend in college and had rejected her, wanting more. He hadn’t stepped up because my mother raised me on her own until four months ago when she got sick. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and her health deteriorated quickly. In the two weeks since she died I’d been walking around nearly catatonic. My aunt had allowed me to stay home from school but yesterday she reminded me that my mother would not appreciate me neglecting the good fortune I had in getting a scholarship to St. Agnes, a pricey private school in toney Brooklyn Heights.

I was a senior and I’d been at St. Agnes since seventh grade and was on track to be the second member of my family to attend a four-year college. My advisor thought I’d be an ideal candidate for the Ivies, so before my mother passed I had applied for five of the eight. Instead of being anxious about admissions letters I no longer cared. Going to Harvard was our dream and without her to hold it up it had already begun to wither. The admissions letters had just been mailed out. I just cared less and less every day about my future and what college I attended, or if I even went to college at all.

“Watch where you going, bitch!” hollered an attractive brown-skinned sister about my age wearing a nasty scowl and a fresh weave. Her clique of three girls surrounded her.

“I’m sorry,” I sputtered nervously. I’d been so busy in my own world I hadn’t even seen them.

“You better be! What the fuck, you some retard Catholic schoolgirl?” She laughed in my face.

“No, it’s not a Catholic School it’s a prep school,” I answered flatly. All I wanted was to get upstairs and throw myself onto my bed and weep. All day I’d been holding back the urge to fall apart, but I knew my mother would expect more from me so I held it together. And now this?

“No, it’s not a Catholic school,” a light-skinned girl with bad skin and a tank top two sizes too small mocked me. “Bitch, we don’t care about you or your bullshit edumacation. What you need to care about is staying out of Mika’s way.” She shouted the words at me. I nodded in agreement, just wanting to get out of there. I tried to step past them but they formed a barrier and blocked me from moving. Suddenly a couple of them grabbed my backpack and purse and flung them to the ground.

“Maybe next time that’ll help you remember to watch where the fuck you going.” Mika pushed up in my face before walking away. This was clearly her way of letting me know that she meant real business. Message received.

I bent down and started picking up the contents of my backpack, shoving them inside the bag. By the time I gathered all my things and stood up the group had moved off to the side, watching my humiliation. As I turned toward the building a tall caramel-colored guy with short, curly hair shot out from around the corner and raced straight at me. Before I could stop him he flung a package into my already overloaded arms. A finger rose to his lips as he caught my eye. He was halfway down the block before I had a chance to react. Next thing, a series of police cars raced past me. The police cars cut him off. Cops jumped out and threw him up against the chain-link fence. Mika and her girls glared at me from their bench across the yard. They had seen everything and it seemed to piss them off more, if that was possible. I hurried into the building before anything else could happen.

I still hadn’t gotten used to the overpowering stench of urine that greeted me as I entered the stairwell and raced up six flights of stairs before hurrying into the corridor and the safety of my aunt’s apartment. I knew she wouldn’t be home when I got here. She worked a nine-to-five on Wall Street and then she usually went to her twelve-step meetings. Although lately she’d been skipping meetings to hang out with her new boyfriend.

My hands were shaking as I let myself into the apartment. I tossed my things down on the floor and flung myself across my bed. I didn’t know how long I lay there crying when I heard a banging at the door. It could have been any one of my aunt’s neighbors. If I refused to answer the door maybe they would get the hint and go away. But after a full five minutes of relentless banging I dragged myself off the bed and went to answer the door.

“Yes,” I shouted through the closed door. I knew better than to open it without identifying the visitor. This was not the suburbs. It wasn’t even Park Slope, the gentrified neighborhood where I had grown up across from Prospect Park.

“It’s me. The guy from outside,” I heard a deep smooth voice respond.

“Excuse me?”

“I think you have something that belongs to me,” he answered in a tone that said he thought it was a joke.

“I don’t open doors for strangers.”

“Well if you would open the door and let me introduce myself then I wouldn’t be a stranger.” He laughed but I didn’t bother to respond. All I wanted was to crawl up into a ball, close my eyes, and pretend that my mother was still here.

“How did you find me?”

“I’m not sure you know this but you’re the only girl in these parts with a St. Agnes uniform. This neighborhood ain’t filled with private school girls so you stick out like a purple giraffe. Some people make it their business to know everything that goes on around here and I make it my business to know those people,” he answered.

“Oh,” I mumbled. I hated sounding so naïve, but all those years of being a latch-key kid and not being allowed to hang in the streets had robbed me of a different kind of education.

“Look, I really can’t leave until I get what belongs to me,” he said.

“How do I know you’re not going to try to attack me or kill me?” I shouted loud enough for him to get it.

“Wow! You watch a lot of television. Law & Order?” He cackled. “Just open up the peephole.”

“No!” I shouted at him.

“I can’t slip my whole body in through that small space. You really think I’m dangerous?”

“The police don’t usually pin innocent men to the ground.”

“Do you want to check the color of my skin again?’ he joked. “Come on, I promise not to bite.”

I opened the peephole to see the prettiest hazel eyes staring back at me. I stumbled back, caught off-guard by how handsome he was.

“See, I told you I’m harmless,” he said, winking at me. “Here.” He passed his bankcard to me. It read DAMON BRATHWAITE. “That has my name and all my money, ’cept people call me D-Waite.”

“What?”

“Like D, wait up?”

“Naw, it’s short for Brathwaite. Look, text that info to somebody you trust. That way if something happens to you they know who done it. I just really need to get my bag from you.”

I typed in the info and sent it to Maddie, my best friend. Not only did we attend the same school, we used to live a couple of blocks away from each other until I moved here. I trusted her with my life.

She texted me back immediately: What?

I answered: Just insurance.

She typed in a confused smiley face emoji. I took a deep breath and opened the door. He stood there, grinning, but then his face grew serious. He reached out to me but I jumped away as if his touch burned.

“You’ve been crying? What’s a beautiful girl like you doing crying?” He sounded genuinely concerned. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Wait here,” I snapped as I hurried into my bedroom and grabbed the brown paper bag he had tossed at me. I hadn’t bothered to open it and find out what it was, but suddenly like an avalanche coming out of nowhere I was pissed. I opened the bag to at least a hundred little packages of white powder. How dare this guy take a chance with my life? What if someone had seen what he had done? Couldn’t I have been an accomplice to his crime? I stormed back into the living room where he stood grinning. I hurled the package over my head at him with full force, but he raised his arm and caught it before it caused any damage.

“Wait, what was that?” He seemed shocked by my actions.

“Are you kidding me? You put my life in danger throwing those drugs at me. Do I look like some drug mule? Like I’m to wind up behind bars? I don’t even know you,” I fumed.

“Look, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I was desperate!”

“Just get out!” I yelled and felt the sting of tears in my eyes.

“I fucked up. Shit, I don’t even know your name.”

“Good, because I don’t want to know you. Now just leave.” I knew that I couldn’t stop the tears and I didn’t want to break down in front of him.

“I’m not leaving you like this.” He took a step closer tome.

“You got what you wanted, so go!”

“No. You’re hurting and I only made it worse. I’m not going to just leave you like this.”

“I’m fine,” I lied, fighting back tears.

“No, you’re not. You can say you don’t want to talk about it but please don’t lie to my face.”

I looked up, locking eyes with him, and before I could stop myself the floodgates opened. Tears that I thought I’d already cried let loose. Suddenly this complete stranger was holding me in his arms and comforting me. I knew that I should have separated myself and told him to leave but it just felt so good to be held. I wasn’t sure how long we were there but I started feeling uncomfortable. What if he was dangerous? Clearly he was a criminal. We’d already established that.

“Dammit!” I heard myself curse as I tried to separate myself from him, except he wasn’t budging. I couldn’t believe how strong his arms were or how good I felt in them. Oh no. What if he thinks this is some kind of invitation for sex? I pushed myself away from him, wiping my face with the back of my hands. He untied the button-down shirt from around his waist and used it to dry my tears.

“I’m fine,” I insisted in a voice much stronger than I intended to use.

“Really? Wow, you just not gonna let a brotha help you?” He took a step back, holding up his hands. “But you should talk about it. You can’t hold all that inside. You don’t ever have to see me again. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger. I’m not gonna try to sell your shit to the National Enquirer unless it’s really juicy,” he teased me.

“No, it’s not.” I felt myself blushing.

“So spill it. You saved my ass from some serious time behind the black iron curtains so I owe you something. What’s causing such a pretty little thing like you to be in so much pain? If it’s your boyfriend let me know and I will set him straight.”

“No. It’s not a guy. I don’t have a boyfriend,” I confessed. I could have sworn his eyes lit up when I said that but maybe it was just my wishful thinking. I hadn’t had a boyfriend yet. My mother decided that when I reached seventeen I could start to date in groups but my birthday coincided with her illness. And the last thing on my mind or hers was my love life. “My mother died two weeks ago and now I live here with my aunt,” I said, but before I could finish my thought he had wrapped me in his arms again.

“You okay?” D-Waite breathed into my ear. “’Cause I could hold you all day.” I couldn’t stop the huge smile covering my face. “Is that a smile?” He caught me.

“No!” I tried to hide my face.

“So will you tell me your name? Please.”

“It’s Gabby. Gabrielle, but everybody calls me Gabby.”

“Gabby, if I let you go do you promise not to hit me or scream or anything that might cause a brotha some pain?” He let me go and I backed away, embarrassed.

“Hey, there is no shame in showing your feelings. I like it. Most girls I meet spend their time tryin’a convince me that they are bulletproof.”

“Bulletproof?”

“Yeah, that nothing could ever hurt them.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m working on that.”

“Don’t. I like you like this.” His eyes pierced me, and even if I wanted to I couldn’t pretend he didn’t affect me. I started looking around for somewhere to put my focus. “How about I go and get you something to eat? There’s a bodega around the corner that makes an amazing sub. Lots of meat piled high and shit. ’Cause you look like you ain’t ate in a minute.”

“No, I’m all right.”

“Oh, did that sound like a question? My bad. I’m going to get you some food and I’ll sit here until you eat it. Uh, can I get my bankcard back? Unless you need some cash? I’ll give you the pin code.” I reached into the pocket of my uniform sweater and handed him his card. “I’m coming back and you got to let me in, Gabby, okay?”

“Yes, I will let you in.”

“Now lock the door behind me.” He strolled out. “Lock the door,” he shouted from the other side.

“Bossy.” I laughed but I did as he ordered.

By the time D-Waite got back I had changed out of my uniform and into jeans and a T.

“You didn’t have to dress for me,” he teased as we sat down. Not only did he bring two huge subs but Lay’s Barbecue chips and Mountain Dew.

I knew it should have felt weird having some strange guy—and a criminal at that—up in my place, but it didn’t. I was relieved just be able to hang out with someone without them treating me like I was fragile glass about to shatter. No, this was probably the first time in a long while that I felt normal.

“Damn, girl, you can eat.” His words brought me back.

“Guess I was hungry,” I admitted.

“Yeah, well I’m gonna make it by business to make sure you eat.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I didn’t stutter. I’m gonna take care of you.”

“What? You don’t even know me.”

“Sure, I do.” He pierced me with those eyes again and I knew that he wasn’t playing. “Yeah, meeting you today wasn’t an accident. It was fate.”

“Oh really? So is this the way you seduce all the girls?”

“Not at all.”

“I may be young but I’m not stupid, and I’m not that kind of girl.” I stared at him, giving him more attitude than I’. . .