Chapter 1 #2
“See, when you hired that lady, I told you that she was a punk. No, y’all thought I was being too judgy.
Now look at this shit. Y’all let that lady turn our restaurant into a whore house with whore waitresses doing whorish shit.
You can’t leave these hussy whores unchecked for too long because their whore tingles gets to tingling.
” My grandma was in her fuck that bitch zone.
My mama and grandma lived in the same house. Most thought that it was my grandma that needed to have someone living with her, but it was my mama. Five years ago, my mother was in a bad car accident. Her recovery was hell on all of us. My grandma moved in to help, and she never left.
My house was about a mile from their house on our family land. My sister’s house was next door to mine. Some of the hundred acres that we owned were leased to other small farms, but my mother had no desire to sell any portions at this point.
When I arrived at the house, I told myself that I wouldn’t tell them, but I swore these women could read me. I told them what went down, and it was a wrap from there. “Grandma, you say the word whore like you’re getting paid to do it.”
When her top lip twitched and her brows knitted together, I wanted to laugh.
“You like fuckin’ with me, Bolt. What you want me to call their asses?
” Before I could respond, she lifted her hand to stop me.
“Don’t say shit to me if it doesn’t consist of you telling me that a whore is a whore is a whore.
Now pay me six hundred dollars for my words. ”
My mama stood in front of the stove mixing a pot of lima beans and laughing. “Mama, why are you so crazy? Why my baby boy has to give you six hundred dollars?”
“Ain’t that the going whore rate these days?
Well, at least for whores fuckin’ in restaurant bathrooms. See, now I need a cool thousand dollars.
” My grandma held her hand out to me from where she sat at the kitchen table.
When I asked her if she was serious about me giving her a band, she gawked at me like I had three heads. “You damn right.”
There was no use arguing with this woman.
I pulled out my cash, flaked off ten hundred-dollar bills, then handed them to her.
She recounted it like she didn’t just watch me count it out, before she folded it and tucked it into her bra.
“Since we’re talkin’ about whores, Sandra, tell this boy about that girl.
” My grandma glanced at me, winked, then said, “That’s a freebie, baby boy. ”
These women are hell! I turned my attention to my beautiful mama. “Mama, what whore do you need to tell me about?”
She didn’t say anything until she mixed the pot for another second before she put the top back on it.
Time had proven with the matriarchs of my family that Black in fact did not crack.
At fifty-nine years old, my mama killed the game.
Sandra minded her family, business, and God.
According to her, that was how you stayed out of jail.
“Let me tell you about that lil girl, Anna,” she blurted as soon as her butt hit the empty seat at the table.
Why the hell does this girl keep coming up! Wait . . . “Mama, how do you know Anna?”
Anna was just a fuck buddy that I fucked with in the cover of tinted windows or closed hotel room curtains.
We didn’t chill, go out together, or any of that kind of shit.
She called when she wanted dick, and I called when I wanted pussy.
There was no way my mama should have known anything about her ass.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I met her earlier today when me and Mama were at the store. She felt the need to let me know that you and her were dating and had been for a while. Bolt, now I think I know enough about you to know that if you were truly dating someone that I would know about it.”
Yo! This damn Anna is wild! “Mama, you know good and well if I had a woman that you would be the first to know about it. You already know how I do.”
At thirty-seven, I didn’t have the time or patience to play with women’s feelings.
I wasn’t out here putting dick to a bunch of different females, because I didn’t have the time to manage a bunch of different dick obsessed women either.
When I did stick dick to a female, she knew exactly what it was before I touched her, and I made sure that they understood it.
It seemed like the understanding that Anna and I had expired.
“See, when that whore stopped us in the store, I smelled the whorism all over her. It has a distinctive smell of bull-fuck-shittery!” I was convinced that my grandma sat in her room with a notepad and created compound curse words.
What the fuck was bull-fuck-shittery? Her hand tapped the table and pulled me out of my short daze. “That’s four hundred. Let me get that.”
My mama laughed before she told me to give her mama her money. “Mama, Grandma, I’m sorry about her. She’s a female that I used to deal with. This conversation was confirmation that I needed to cut her smooth off. Consider it done.”
There was nothing else that needed to be said about the topic because Benjamin Abloy taught me how to be a man of my word.
That was all that I knew how to be. When my father died thirteen years ago, I was devastated.
To get a call in the morning that your father didn’t wake up was the worst experience of my life.
A brain aneurysm during the night took my and my sister’s father from us and my mother’s husband from her.
I was fucked up for years behind his death.
There was so much anger in me that I would go off on anyone.
All it took was the wrong look and I was on your ass.
My mama didn’t know how to handle me, especially since I was a grown man.
It was different from when I was younger and had my issues.
My father was there, and he was on my ass.
Get back on the leash, Son. That was what he would say to me when I was angry.
I was a calm person overall, but when provoked, I was like a rabid dog off a leash. That was why I stayed in the circle that I knew. It was safer for all involved that way. Over the years, I kept busy with the restaurants, farm, and helping my sister raise my nephew Benji.
My phone vibrated on the table. Damn, my sister’s ears must be itching. “What’s up, Sis?”
There was shuffling on the other end for a second. “Bolt, I’m going to kill your nephew if I get to that damn school before you do. Right now, you’re his only fuckin’ hope,” she fussed.
“Man, Sis! Calm down. Now tell me what happened.”
A Boy Fight . . .
My nephew, Benji, was one of the most intelligent, yet dumbest teenagers that I knew.
There was no doubt in my mind that he would be something great and impactful when he was older.
Right now, as a fifteen-year-old teenager, he struggled with the regulations of his emotions at times.
That shit got him into more trouble than it was worth.
His grades were so impeccable that he was invited to a prestigious, private high school. Heritage of Excellence High School was an award-winning high school right here in country ass Clover, South Carolina. It was something we called our own.
When I pulled up to the guard gate at the campus, I gave them my name.
Yeah, it was that serious. If you weren’t supposed to be on campus, then you wouldn’t be.
With all the school violence, I loved the security measures that the high school took to ensure the safety of the students, faculty, and staff.
Bethany was at our Charlotte restaurant location. She called me when she was almost in Clover to come to the school. I was happy that she did because her off-the-leash was ten times worse than my off-the-leash.
“Hi, my nephew was in a fight or something. His name is Benji Abloy,” I told the office secretary when I walked in. She looked up at me with a welcoming smile.
“Oh, yes. He is in the in-school suspension room waiting for you or his mother.” She stood. “I’ll take you there to speak with him. Principal Anderson is currently speaking with the other student’s parent.”
My head tilted. “Principal Anderson? What happened to Principal Carver?”
“Oh, Principal Carver accepted an out-of-state opportunity. Principal Anderson has been the new principal since the beginning of the school year. She is so amazing and smart.” The secretary gushed over the principal.
She opened the door to the in-school suspension room which was a small room with a desk in it.
Benji sat at the desk with an open book in front of him and a tablet.
His head popped up at the sound of the door opening.
A sense of relief covered his expression when he saw me. “Man, Unc, that boy started with me.”
I waited until the secretary left the room to speak. “Benji, you know your ass isn’t supposed to be fighting. We talked about this shit.”
His eyes bucked. “So, I’m just supposed to let some dummy think he can bully me because he thought I was an easy target? I was minding my business, writing notes for my research paper coming up, and his stupid ass poured soda all over my notes, ruining them.”
Ah shit! If there was one thing that my nephew didn’t play about at all was his schoolwork.
Benji was an honor student and took that shit serious as fuck.
When you saw him, you assumed he was an athlete because of his size, but nah.
He was a tech nerd who hung out with other tech nerds.
Some of the kids that were deemed the cool or popular kids saw that as a weakness for some reason.
“I’aight, nephew. We’ll get it all sorted out. I’ll talk to ya mama because you know all she heard was that you were in a fight,” I told him before I cupped the back of his head with my hand.
We sat in there for another ten minutes before the secretary came in to get us. She told us that we could wait in the principal’s office. When we walked in, I was surprised at the size of it. It had a conference table toward the back.
My ass was nosy, so I took a moment to look around.
On a side table against a wall, there were various frames.
I walked over to get a glimpse of this new principal.
Damn, she’s fine as hell and thick. I wasn’t surprised that she was a person of color since that was the lineage of the school since it was established.
A picture toward the back of the table caught my attention. I recognized the picture.
I picked it up to make sure I wasn’t tripping. Nah, I wasn’t. I pulled my phone out and snapped a picture of the picture, then set the frame back in its rightful place. I moved to the conference table and took a seat.
Me:
*Attached pic* Aye, isn’t this you?
Josh:
Nigga where you get that old ass pic of me and P’Nee from?
I knew it! I was the one who took this picture. Joshua was like thirteen years old in the picture. We all went to the fair together.
Me:
Benji got into a fight. I’m at his school and they got a new principal. This pic was on one of the tables in the room. Did you know she was in Clover?
Josh:
Fuck no! You know I haven’t talked to her since I was like 17. WTF!
Before I could respond, the office door opened. In walked my sister, and not too far behind her, P’Nee Anderson in all her grown, fine ass glory. Damn!