1. Deja McCoy
DEJA MCCOY
FIVE YEARS LATER
“Baller alert! Baller alert! Ya’ll hoes better beat them faces, make sure your pussy is clean, and everything else on you smells good because the niggas with the motha fuckin coin just walked in the building.
Bitches, it’s big out there!” Lucky, one of the dancers came in the locker room yelling, getting everyone’s attention.
I was sitting at my secluded station, touching up the wand curls in my hair, also on a facetime call with my little sister, but when Lucky barged in, I looked up at her. Hell, I was curious who the niggas with the coins was that just walked in, that had Lucky so excited.
“Who’s the niggas?” one of the other dancers asked. She asked the million-dollar question that we all wanted to know.
“Girl. The Bennett brothers just walked in. Not just one or two of them. All four of them just walked in. Even Wolf, and ya’ll know we can never get Wolf’s ass to come outside.
They said that it’s the younger brother Demarco’s birthday.
They at the front, exchanging cash right now. Get ya’ll asses ready,” Lucky finished.
I knew exactly who the Bennett brothers were.
Like Lucky already said, it was four of them.
Kingston was the oldest brother. He didn’t really show his face too much in the club.
Every now and then he’ll pop up. Then, there was Kendrix.
We all knew Kendrix because he made it his business to be here a couple of times out of the week.
The third brother was Wolf. I didn’t know him enough to know his real name though.
I don’t think anyone in here knew his real name.
To me, Wolf was the finest brother out of all of them.
He was the brother that everyone wanted to fuck.
Even me. Yes God, even me. The thing is, Wolf wasn’t the kind of nigga to be outside like his brothers, so it was hard to get at him.
The last brother was Demarco. He was in here just as much as Kendrix.
The two of them spent bags every time that they pulled up.
I’m talking, your rent and other bills will be paid up for at least two months.
I could only imagine the money that I was going to make tonight, knowing that all four brothers were here.
“Deja, Ima just call you back. I’m trying to vent to you and you not even paying me any attention,” my little sister Nari whined to me, as she sat on the facetime call, holding her newborn son in her arms.
My nephew was only four months old, and he was sound asleep in his mother’s arms. Nori was only 17 years old, and she had a kid already.
I fell to my fuckin knees and cried when my sister told me that she was pregnant.
Nori was the good girl. She was the kind of kid that’s never been into a fight in school, never skipped classes, never brought home bad grades, none of those things.
We all thought that she would be the first one in our family to go off to college and live a completely different life from all of us, but she got pregnant.
College was still on the table, but she continued with the tradition of teenaged pregnancy in our family, and I hated that shit.
My grandma had my mother and aunt as a teenager.
My mama turned around and did the same thing, getting pregnant with me at only seventeen.
The cycle skipped me, but Nori got a hold of it.
I threw five hundred dollars in my sisters lap the day she told me about the pregnancy, telling her that I would make sure I didn’t sleep during the day on whatever day she chose to terminate the pregnancy, so I could take her to have it done.
Her ass had the nerve to get offended when I told her that she needed to get an abortion.
She told me that she didn’t want to kill her baby.
I think about that day, and how I felt like I turned into my mama in just one split second.
My mama had a habit of crashing out, putting her hands on people when they said something to her that she didn’t agree with.
Man, I spazzed in that room and beat Nori’s ass like she was my child.
With all the commotion going on, it forced our mom to barge in the room, just to see what was happening.
I normally kept my sisters secrets, but I exposed her right there, telling our mom that she was pregnant, thinking that she was going to tackle her ass the same way that I did, and tell her to get an abortion, but she didn’t.
Her dumb ass told Nori that it was her decision on what she wanted to do.
Anything to go against me though. That’s how her weird ass was.
She told Nori all these lies about helping her with the baby, and how she would watch the baby while Nori goes to school, but the baby came, and she didn’t stick to her word.
Our mama is barely fuckin home. She’s always outside, on a trip or something.
She was a young mom. Only 40. Young has hell to be a grandmother, and she knew with the life she lived, always on the move, that she wouldn’t be able to help Nori with the baby, so till this day, I don’t know why she lied to my sister like that.
My nephew is either with me or my grandma during the day. We did it because we wanted my sister to finish high school. I didn’t want her to have the same loser ass story as our mama.
“My bad. I was listening to you though. You said that you texted your baby daddy, asking him to get Nico this weekend, and he didn’t respond.
Nori, I’m not trying to justify shit that he’s doing, but that nigga is moving exactly how I knew he would.
He’s a young nigga that doesn’t want to have any kind of responsibilities.
Stop forcing that shit on him. I told you about that the other day.
What did you have to do this weekend?” I asked her, sitting the curling iron down, so that I could lean back in the chair a little bit, and look at her.
My little sister was drop dead gorgeous. I hate that she allowed a nigga to take her out the game so early and become a mommy at just seventeen, but it was done already, and I had to stop dwelling over it.
I sat here, feeling like I was looking back at my own human sized barbie doll. Although we were sisters, Nori and I didn’t look anything alike. Nori looked like her dad, and I looked like my mom. Crazy because I was the child that my mama acted as if she hated, yet I came out with her entire face.
Nori’s skin complexion was a beautiful chocolate complexion.
She had perfect skin. I can tell you right now that she only washed her face with water, yet her skin was to die for.
She had a bunch of fine, jet-black hair.
She washed it tonight, so she was sitting before me with her hair in two plaits.
Her big eyes looked so sad. Here she was, just a baby herself, and she was raising a baby on her own.
She didn’t have much of a childhood right now because her days consisted of going to school and then coming to get Nico from me or our grandma, so she could tend to him for the rest of the day.
“Nothing in particular. Deja, I just want to get out of the fuckin house. I know that this is all my fault, but I feel like I’m suffering every fuckin day.
I have no life. I don’t get to hang out with any of my friends.
I’m depressed. I hate how Juvie gets to live life, do whatever the fuck he wants to do, while I’m stuck at home, raising our son,” she expressed, and as soon as she finished, she burst into tears.
I sighed, listening to my sister have her moment. She was speaking on all the things that I tried to tell her ass in the beginning of her pregnancy. All the things that I didn’t want her to have to go through on her own.
“Call auntie Twan and ask her if she can watch Nico for you this weekend. I can’t do it.
I’m doing this music video in Atlanta this weekend.
I leave Friday and won’t be back until Monday.
What about next weekend? If Twan can’t watch him for you, I can do it next weekend because I’ll be off,” I said.
Still crying, she shook her head no at me.
At the same time, Lyric was walking over. Lyric was my girl. We met at the club. She danced with me. Her stage name was Honey. We had a bond with each other outside of this club shit. I looked at her as a big sister. She was four years older than me.
I took my eyes off the facetime call, so that I could cut them over at Lyric. I watched her mouth to me, asking me who I was talking to, and I mouthed right back, letting her know that it was Nori on the phone. She could hear Nori crying, so Lyric snatched the phone up, and she held it in her hand.
“What the fuck is wrong with you Nori?” Lyric asked, getting right to the point.
This is how you knew that we were family for real because she didn’t mind snapping on Nori whenever she needed to.
She played that big sister role with Nori as well.
Nori knew that Lyric was getting ready to get in her ass, so she quickly hung the phone up.
I was about four shots in, I smoked a blunt before I got here, so I didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with my sister right now.
I loved my sister like I carried her for nine months and pushed her out of me, but I was allowing her to stress me out.
I would just pull up on her tomorrow morning, so that we could finish this conversation off.
“What’s wrong with her?” Lyric wanted to know, tossing my phone down onto the vanity.
“Girl, same shit. Juvie won’t get the baby.
Now she’s talking about how depressed she is.
She’s missing out on having a life. Repeating back all the things that I told her when she found out that she was pregnant.
I feel bad for her though. I told her that I would get Nico next weekend, so that she could go out.
Lyric, she going to drive me fuckin crazy,” I spat, standing up for a second, just so I could stretch.