Niya

by Fabiola Joseph

Genres: African American Urban; Coming of Age; LGBT Lesbian

Synopsis

Do you know who you are? Are you comfortable in your skin? Outed by her best friend in front of the whole neighborhood, Niya is trying to come to terms with being a lesbian. When she falls for her straight neighbor, Jamilla, there is no more denying who she really is. Niya will do whatever it takes to prove her love, even if it means taking a life. What will happen when family issues, fame, the struggle for love, and reality set in? How will Niya deal with a hip-hop career as she tries to repair her broken heart and family issues? Signing to Green Note Records may just bring fulfillment and love when the sexy R&B diva Brazil Noelle swoops in and aims for Niya’s heart. Niya has always been the hero, but is she willing to be saved? Will her feelings for Jamilla block what could be her chance to get back the love she always gives? Jamilla is drowning in the reality of her home life. Forced to face a real-life monster on a daily basis, the shame of her past is slowly killing everything beautiful about her. Just when she thinks life isn’t worth living, she befriends Niya and becomes confused by the extremely close, unconventional friendship - and the high sexual tension that sends her head spinning. Will her fling with a male “straighten” her out for good, or will it help her realize that love has no boundaries? How long can this game of friendship last when love is the stronger opponent? Join the tormented twosome on an undeniable thrill ride as they travel down the rocky road of self-discovery. Niya and Jamilla will combat their fears, violence, distractions, extortion, love, denial, family, and sometimes each other in this emotionally charged and action-packed coming-of-age tale.

Release date: December 27, 2016

Publisher: Urban Audiobooks

Print pages: 288

Sample

“Why are you fucking with me?”

The block was packed, and all eyes turned to me. Brooklyn in the summertime brought everyone outside. The kids and their parents littered the streets, hoping to escape the sweltering heat. The corner boys served their poison to paying customers, and as for me, I was having another argument with Rodney.

“What the fuck is your problem?” I asked, hoping that my lowered tone would convince him to do the same.

“You know what the fuck I’m talking about. You say that you’re my friend, but you are lying to me. You’re gay, Niya. Just admit that shit.”

I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that my best friend had just outed me like that. Well, maybe that was the problem. I looked at him as if he was still and only my best friend, and not as if he was the lover he wanted to be.

“Fuck you, Rodney.” I started to walk away, but he just caught up with me and turned me around.

“No one out here is surprised. Look at you. You dress like a nigga. You act like a nigga. You even wear men’s cologne. I thought that maybe, just maybe, you were a tomboy, and that maybe what they said wasn’t true, but we all have to face the truth.”

“What the fuck would it matter if it were true? You ain’t my nigga.”

My heart felt as if it would beat out of my chest. All my life, I had kept one secret. I had never let anyone in on this one thing about myself. I had battled this thing all my life, and I thought I had hid it well. There were plenty of straight girls who dressed like me and wore their hair in cornrows like me. So what made me so damn different? I asked myself while staring into Rodney’s face. I was still me. I was the friend he had always known. Why would admitting out loud the fact that I liked girls change any of that for him? It wasn’t like he didn’t already know. How could he do this to me? He was my one and only true friend. I even trusted this nigga with my life. I just couldn’t understand what had pushed him to embarrass me in front of everyone who was outside. I would never have done that to anyone I care about.

“I love you, Niya, but I can’t have a friendship that’s not real. You don’t like dudes, and that’s okay, but at least be real with yourself.”

I could feel my eyes watering up, but I couldn’t let the whole damn block see me cry. “I’m not gay.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to take them back. The truth was, I just couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.

“Are you fucking kidding me? I just gave you an out. Are you that fucking weak?”

“Fuck you! I ain’t weak. I—I just . . .” The words were fighting to get out. They were jumbled only because my brain was getting in the way.

“Say it. Say that you like girls. Can you do that?”

With my heart dying to tell the truth, I let my lies turn me around and allow me to walk away. I could feel everyone’s eyes burning a hole into my back as I walked away from the block where everyone already knew the reality of my sexuality.

When I got to my building after a short ten-minute walk, she was sitting there, at the bottom of the stairs, as always, writing in her damn notebook. I took the stairs two at a time, but as I turned to go into the building, I changed my mind. She was still sitting at the bottom of the stairs that led to my building, so I stayed at the top. I pulled out a Black & Mild and just sat down above her. I needed to cool off before I went into the house. I needed to clear my head. I just couldn’t understand why Rodney would do that to me. We had always been close, close enough for me to allow him to be my best friend.

I had thought that being around him would mask who I really was, but how could that last? I allowed him to bring girls to my house when my grandmother was out. We would freak off, but that was between us. He would bring in a third party so I could watch her, touch her, fuck her, and make it look like a threesome, but I wasn’t fooling anyone but myself. Of course, he would be mad. I had used him to mask who I really was.

“The least you can do is say hello.”

She had never spoken to me before. I would always see her, look at her, write something about her, and keep it moving. I had almost forgotten about her being at the bottom of the stairs. It was a good thing she spoke.

“My bad. I was caught up in my own thoughts. Hello,” I said. She didn’t turn around when I spoke, so I was talking to the back of her head.

“Upset about what your friend said?” she asked.

I damn near choked on the smoke I had just pulled in. “That dude’s buggin’.”

“Is he?”

I remained quiet. I thought that I had momentarily lost my hearing, because Brooklyn had never been so silent.

When I didn’t answer, she turned around, which only added pressure to the situation. “Are you going to answer me, or are you just going to sit there all bug-eyed?”

“Um, nah. He has things all messed up. I just, you know, I—”

“Okay. I understand,” she said, cutting me off. Her answer sounded sarcastic, and that didn’t sit well with me.

“Bitch, who the fuck are you? You don’t even know me!”

“I said, ‘Okay. I understand.’ No need to call me a bitch ’cause you can’t admit to who you really are.”

I was down those stairs before her last word left her mouth.

“You don’t understand shit, ’cause there’s nothing to fucking understand. All you do is sit on these fucking stairs, writing in your fucking notebook. What the fuck would you understand about what I’m going through?” I yelled. I snatched her notebook out of her hand and kept it from her as she reached for it.

“Give me back my fucking notebook,” she demanded.

“Fuck you, bitch! Mind your fucking business next time.”

She looked at me as if she was hurt, but I was way too lost in my sea of bullshit to empathize with her. “Fine. Keep it,” she said, looking down at my hand before continuing. “Taking that from me, it won’t change anything that has happened tonight. It won’t change who you really are. You can yell ‘Fuck you’ all you want. It’s your lie, not everyone else’s.”

I was so taken aback by her words that I was speechless. I watched her walk into the building, and I instantly wished that things had gone differently.

I had felt her behind me, and that had shit irked me. I hadn’t been sure if she could see what I was writing, so that had made me stop. I had seen what went down between her and her friend as I walked out of the corner store. The whole block had seemed to be watching. In a way, I was kind of shocked that she didn’t light Rodney’s ass up. Niya seemed so tough. Although we had never uttered a word to each other, she just came off that way.

She hung with the rough crowd, the dope boys, the good-for-nothings. I didn’t even know why I always noticed her, though I guessed it was because she just seemed so different. I thought that it was a known fact that she was gay. She looked like a stud, wore guy clothes, and never had on any makeup, so I was lost. I knew that I should have kept my mouth shut, but being a writer had got the best of me. I had to know what she was feeling and why. I hadn’t thought that things would turn out the way they had, and the worst thing was that she had taken my notebook.

As I stood face-to-face with her for the first time, I noticed how beautiful she was, but in an “I’m not a girl” way. Sure, she had nice lips, nice hair, which most people would say was being wasted on a butch girl who would never curl it. Her skin showed the mix of her Dominican and Haitian roots. It was smooth, light, but looked tanned at the same time. Her eyes were on fire, yet they held so much in them. They were dark, beneath long natural lashes. Most women would kill for her eyes, which seemed also to be naturally lined with dark pencil. I watched her peach-colored lips as she spit her lies at me. I wanted to ask her to calm down just so I could talk to her, but that wasn’t going to happen. She was all of five feet eight, maybe five feet nine, but her anger made it seem as if she towered over my five-feet-seven-inch frame.

“You can yell ‘Fuck you’ all you want. It’s your lie, not everyone else’s,” I yelled at her. I had had enough. I just wanted to talk to her.

I had thought that maybe she had had enough of staring at me. For months, that had been all she did. I didn’t mind it, unlike some of the other girls had during our high school years, but now we were headed to college after the summer was over. I would have thought that she would feel free enough to be herself. But fuck it. She wasn’t in the right frame of mind tonight. As I walked into my building, I prayed that she didn’t open that notebook and read what was inside of it. But a small part of me wondered what would happen if she did.

As I walked into my grandmother’s apartment, my cell phone rang. I looked at the name on the screen, and it was White Boy, an albino nigga who would buy some shit off me from time to time. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with his ass, so I sent him to voice mail. It just hadn’t been my night. Two arguments with two people in a matter of minutes, and it had left me drained. If I’d known any better, I would have just gone to bed.

“Niya, mi amor, what all that yelling I hear outside? You know I keep window open. Why you yell ‘Fuck you’ like that?”

I looked at my grandmother as she made her way over to the fridge to take out my plate and warm it up. I headed to my room, threw Jamilla’s notebook down on my nightstand, and headed back to my granny to finish our conversation and eat.

“You can’t do that, Niya. You can’t curse people in the streets like that, my love. Don’t act like your mama. She used to—”

Her comparing me to my mother only added fuel to my dying fire. I had vowed to be nothing like her, a crackhead who roamed the streets, turning tricks for a hit. Not that my father was any better: he was locked away in jail for robbing a bank. Neither of them cared enough about me to get shit right.

“My mother? Are you for real?” I said, interrupting her.

“Sí. Igual que ella.”

“Just like her! Are you crazy?” I couldn’t believe my ears.

“Ay, watch your mouth. You are the crazy, speaking to me like that in my house,” my grandma said with her heavy Dominican accent. She walked over to the table, pulled out a chair, and told me to sit. She walked back into the kitchen and brought my plate out. “Now, tell me why you yell ‘Fuck you’ to the nice girl.”

I looked at her as I picked up my fork, and for a second, I thought about lying to her. “’Cause she overheard Rodney calling me gay.”

I watched her scrunch up her face before she asked, “He called you what?”

I put down my fork and looked right at her. “A gay. Lesbian, Grandma. A lesbian.”

Her mouth dropped open. She got up and went into the kitchen. I followed her, but she wouldn’t face me.

“Mi amor, why he call you that? And why you yell at her for him calling you that?”

“Because she wasn’t minding her business.”

She was quiet for a while, and I would have given anything to know what she was thinking. She never turned around, though. “Why you tell me this Rodney and her think you’re lesbian?” she finally asked.

My heart rate quickened. Was she about to flip out? She started to wash dishes, as she just couldn’t stand still. She even washed what was already clean.

“Why, Niya? Why you tell me this, huh? That’s crazy. Rodney tell you that, she tell you that, and now you tell me?”

I started to cry. What would make her ask me why? I thought that I would be safe with her, thought that she would shield me from others, and even from myself. Was this a mistake? I hadn’t even got a chance to tell her yet, and she was already acting funny. Either way, I told myself, I was just going to tell her the truth. I had lied to two different people on the same day, and those lies would end with the only woman I knew who truly loved me. I was afraid, I was worried, but I couldn’t face knowing that I was a liar just one more time that night.

“Grandma, look at me.” I touched her back, but still, she didn’t turn around. “Look at me! Do I look straight to you? Why do you always ask me who I am going out with? It’s ’cause you already know. You always ask his name. You know there is no he, Grandma.”

“So why you tell me this, huh?”

“Because I’m a lesbian.”

Her hands no longer moved. The water was running, but she didn’t say a word. Nor did she wash another dish. I backed out of the kitchen. With anger and hurt filling my airways, I needed some air. I grabbed my cell and opened the door. I heard her call my name, but I just couldn’t go back in there. I had said it. For the first time, I had said it out loud, and at that moment, the truth was suffocating me. Once I was outside, I called White Boy and told him that we could meet up. When I hung up with him, I called Roxie and told her I would see her within an hour or two, after I made a deal.

Eye to eye with the barrel of the gun, and all I could think about was how much of a shitty night I was having. First Rodney, then Jamilla, though that shit with my grandma was just the worst.

“You got one minute, bitch. If you don’t come up off them bricks, I’m gonna put a hole in your chest.”

See, now, why did he have to call me a bitch? ’Cause I got tits? I shook my head before getting out of the car.

“Don’t you know that this is a man’s game? Ain’t no room for no pussy in this shit. Fucking dyke running around here like you a nigga. I should put this dick in your ass and remind you that you’re a bitch. You got a pussy just like the rest of them hoes around here.”

I looked back and looked him up and down. This little nigga was poppin’ big shit, but I couldn’t worry about that right now. I had other things to think about. Like how this dude knew that I was holding. The only people who knew about this deal were White Boy, who was buying the shit from me, and Roxie, the bitch I was fucking with. Could it be that this nigga had just got lucky, or had White Boy sent his ass?

As soon as I’d pulled up to pick up my packages, he was right on my ass. Either way, I was going to find out. Whoever he was, he had to know something about me. He was taking my sexual orientation a little too personal for him not to. I walked him to the shed behind the abandoned house and popped the lock.

“Hurry up, bitch. I ain’t got all damn day.”

We walked into the shed. I moved some things around and pulled out the two bricks. Even through his ski mask, I could tell that he was smiling.

“If I wasn’t in a hurry, I would dick your dyke ass down. Maybe it would remind you that you should like dick, not walk around like you have one. I should—”

“Nigga, maybe if you weren’t so caught up on the pussy that I’m getting, you would actual get some real-life pussy, instead of just talking about what you should do. Small dick motherfuckers always got a problem ’cause I’m fucking bitches better than they ever could!”

As the words left my mouth, I couldn’t help but question if they would be my last. But he didn’t shoot me. He punched me in the lip instead.

“Bitch, I’m giving you ten seconds to get the fuck out of here.”

I spit out the blood that was dripping into my mouth from my busted lip. “All right. My bad. I’m leaving.”

I left the shed, made a left, and prayed that I was moving fast enough. I walked over to the plant, lifted it up, and stood there for a minute. I had never had to use the gun. I’d just cracked a few niggas in the head. I’d never really pulled the trigger. That night, it was as if everything was moving in slow motion. I cocked the gun, made my way back to the shed, and prayed to God. I was about to take a man’s life, and I wanted him to forgive me. A few things ran through my mind, but the thought of him dying didn’t have the importance it should have. I thought about who I was and who I was going to be after that day. I thought about the people in my life, and how they’d reacted to the person I had always been but had hidden, and it pissed me off. I turned the corner and crept into the doorway of the shed. There he was, walking out, as if what he held belonged to him.

“Ay, you still wanna fuck this dyke bitch straight?” I asked as I aimed the gun at him.

He tried to reach for his gun, but I moved faster. I let out three rounds, hitting him only once. He fell back, but he was still breathing. I walked up on him, took the duffel bag from his fingertips, and did the world a favor. I shot him again, hopefully ending the life of a homophobic thief who would otherwise rob again. I got the rest of my things, moved them to a new place, and went straight home.

I didn’t get much sleep that night. The dead man ran through my mind as I tried to get some rest. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, taking a life, but I tried to act as normal as possible when I awoke the next morning to the smell of bacon and eggs on the stove. I stumbled down to the kitchen.

“Hey, Grandma. Anything good to eat?” I asked as I tried to rub the sleepiness from my eyes. I wasn’t going to bring up the night before if she didn’t.

“Niya, mi amor, you have to get some rest. You too handsome to go around looking like zombie.”

I looked over at my grandmother and had to smile. She always knew how to brighten up my day. Just hearing the word handsome made my heart skip a beat. I took a seat at the table, and as she brought over a plate of eggs and bacon, I asked myself if she got it. Did she understand what I had told her last night? If so, was she okay with it?

As I ate, she watched me. I knew she had a mouthful to say, so I waited.

“You know, your uncle George was a gay in Santo Domingo. My father kick him out because he gay. He struggle so much. He didn’t have no money, no food, no clothes. So . . .” She had to stop for a minute. I waited for her to wipe her tears so she could continue.

“So he live on the streets, did anything for money. Soon he start to take the drugs to be able to stay up, work more, sell his body. Well, we beg my father. Me, my mother, and my sisters, we beg him. We say, ‘Please, Papa, let him come back. He still your son.’ He say, ‘No. He dead to me.’ For two years, we beg him, and he say no. Well, one day, we in the house, making dinner, and we hear yelling from outside. We run out. It’s my papa covered in blood. He hold George in his hands. He skinny like broom, almost dead. Someone beat him, rape him. We bring him in house, call doctor, clean him, give him medicine. Three days later George die.”

I got up, got the box of tissues, took one, handed her the box, and watched her wipe her tears as I wiped my own.

“See, my father, he cry the hardest. He cry the loudest. He know this no happen if he let George stay. My mother hate him after that. They never the same. They fight. They hit every day after that. Life never the same again. My father die with this on his heart. So, Niya, when I ask why you tell me this, it’s ’cause I know already. I know for years. I love you, Niya. That don’t matter. Forever, I love you. No matter what. Understand me?”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I got out of my chair and kneeled down in front of her. I threw my head onto her lap and just cried. I cried for her dead brother; I cried for my broken family. I cried because I loved her and she loved me. I cried because she loved me, no matter what. Most of all, I cried because I was free. As long as my grandmother knew and accepted me, I could start to come to terms with who I was. I could say “Fuck the world” and just be me.

“Mi amor, as long as I love you, that’s all that matters. ‘Fuck you’ to anybody who no love you. You are great, Niya, the best, no matter who you love or sex with. I love you.”

I hadn’t seen Niya for a week. My heart raced as I thought of my notebook. I didn’t want her to take anything she might have read the wrong way. Or worse, I didn’t want her to think that I was some obsessed person who wrote about her. I hoped that she just thought that I was writing about some random person.

“Jamilla, we need to talk. Ki kote ou ye?”

“I’m here, in my room,” I said to my mother.

She came into my bedroom and sat down at the foot of my bed. She waited for me to put my laptop down before she started to speak. “How are you and Marie?”

I rolled my eyes. I had got a new stepdad, and a stepsister, Marie, had come with him. “Everything is fine,” I answered coldly. My mother shifted on the bed, and I waited for the bullshit.

“You are still wetting the bed?”

I didn’t answer.

“Marie said you wet the bed four times this week. She said—”

“Mom, I don’t want to talk about this. The doctor said that it’s a side effect.”

My mother stood up and looked at me. “Side effect? Kisa sa ye?”

I couldn’t believe that my mother had just asked me what a side effect was.

“From what happened, Mom. The doctor said—”

“Ban’m tèt mwen. I don’t care what he say. You need to stop this, and since you can’t, you have to move out of the room.” She had told me to “give her her head.” Meaning she didn’t want to hear anymore.

“What? Why do I have to move? This is my room.”

“You keep wetting the bed. Marie can’t take it, and I can’t expect her to live like that.”

I thought I was losing my damn mind. My mother was kicking me out of my own room for Marie? I couldn’t understand what was happening. I wasn’t wetting the bed on purpose. I prayed every night, before I went to bed, that the sheets would be dry when I woke up. It was embarrassing. I couldn’t sleep over at anyone’s house because of this, and it just ate at my self-esteem.

“You are taking her side on this? You are going to make me leave my own room for her? Where will I sleep? In the living room?”

“You wet the bed and won’t stop. What do you want me to do? Jackson is not happy that his daughter is mad. You cannot sleep in the living room. You will ruin Jackson’s couch. You will have to sleep in the kitchen. The floor can be mopped if you pee on it.”

I didn’t know what to say. My heart felt as if it was being ripped out of my chest.

“What do you mean, in the kitchen? I can’t sleep in there. This is my room.”

“Listen, I have to do what is going to make everyone happy. You keep peeing in the bed, and that’s not right.” My mother’s Haitian accent seemed to get stronger, the angrier she got.

“But, Mom, it’s not my fault. I have tried to stop.”

She was actually mad at me, and she yelled, “No, you are not trying hard enough.”

I started to cry. I felt like I was in the twilight zone. I knew that my mother liked to brush whatever happened under the rug, but the bed-wetting was a result of her refusing to deal with things.

“I am not leaving my own goddamned room for that bitch. Let her go sleep in the kitchen.”

“Hey! Veye bouch ou nan kay mwen. It is over. You do what I ask, okay?”

I got off the bed and stood face-to-face with my mother. “You are asking me to watch my mouth? Fuck her! She is not your daughter. I am.”

“Yes, you are my daughter, but why can’t you be good, like Marie? All day you sit outside. I say study, and you go outside. I say clean, and you go outside. I say stop peeing in the bed, and you still pee.”

“Are you kidding me? I get straight As, maybe one B, if that. I do everything, while Marie sits on her ass. It’s not my fault she would rather stay in the house, watching TV all day.”

“Listen, I don’t care what you say. You do what I tell you.”

I looked at my mother and lost all respect for her in that very moment. “Fuck all of you. This is my room, and I’m not leaving.”

I sat back as Roxie danced for me. There was something about her body that just drove me crazy. Her dark skin, her jet-black hair, her eyes, her lips—they all told the story of a Negro Puerto Rican. Well, that was what she told me her family called her. I guessed she had always been some sort of outcast, because the rest of them were light. But she was the most beautiful. I met her when she came over to my house with Rodney. I had thought that we would freak off, but she hadn’t wanted Rodney to touch her at all. We’d just ended up drinking and smoking. But before she left, she gave me her number.

She was very open about who she was, but I met up with her only in private or after dark. She loved to fuck with me. She knew that I didn’t like her hugging or kissing on me in public, so she would do it all the time.

“You bring something for me today?” she asked as she made her ass jump to the music. She was thick, had ass and breasts for days. Her body was that of a grown woman, but she had just turned eighteen.

“Maybe, maybe not. Aren’t you just happy to see me?”

She walked over to me, straddled me, and let her hair down. It swept past her shoulders and made her even sexier. “Come on, Papi. Don’t play with me. You know it makes me wet to see something sparkle.”

I knew what type of chick she was, but I just couldn’t help it. Looking at her in her bra and thong, so pretty, so deceivingly pleasing to the eye, I just had to feel her, be around her, feast on her.

“You feel that, Papi?” she asked as she took my hand and slipped it into her undies. “You feel how wet that. . .