One Way Or Another You Will Pay (31 page)

I
smiled.

Mocha,
who I learned attended public school whenever she felt like it, which was about thrice a month, was sixteen too, but older than me by a couple of months. Her mother was black and her father, who she didn’t know, was white, but she was one hundred percent hood and refused to be anything else.

She
was pretty – dark, tight curls that fell around her shoulders, liquid brown eyes, caramel skin, a curvy soft body, big boobs, big ass, Angelina Jolie lips and a smile that made her eyes sparkle.

After
glancing around, she dropped her voice and said, “My mama name me Jane, but you tell anyone dat and I will throw you under dat bus.” She winked. “Have a rep to maintain and Jane, dat name, it don’ cut it cos I ain’t gon get me no Tarzan anytime soon.”

I
laughed.

“And
I is drunk enough right now to do it,” she boasted.

“You
are?” I was fascinated. Never met a drunken person before, let alone a school girl who was drunk at that part of the morning.

“My
step-father, he also a prick. Big one. But it don’t matter, I jest steal all his money and his booze. This morning, I stole his vodka.”

A
prick? Wow, I loved the way she talked. It was so
Boyz in da Hood.
I was sheltered, remember? Never got out much, wasn’t allowed to watch much TV either.

“You
did?” My eyes were wide with wonder, my tears forgotten.

She
nodded.

She
had tattoos – an angel on her arm, a love heart on her shoulder, a butterfly on her ankle, a set of paw-prints on her boob, ‘
Loyalty’
and ‘
Respect’
written on the back of her thighs and the words
Slippery
When
Wet
on just below her navel. Her cousin worked in a tattoo parlor so she got free ink and she made the most of that.

Mocha
lived about five minutes from me, but in a less affluent section of Early. Her house was shabby, with peeling paint, overgrown grass and a few broken windows. Her room was at the back of the house and it was the size of our main bathroom. We entered and left through a side window.

Even
though the house was dilapidated, they had a make-shift bar and tons of booze. I later learned that her mother’s boyfriend was a barman at a club who stole booze from work and sold it to friends at a reduced rate.

“What’s
your favorite drink?”

“Eh,
um, whisky,” I said, mainly because Harry drank whisky. I had never drunk alcohol in my life but I wasn’t going to tell her that. “A bit of everything.”

“A
bit of everything?” she snapped her fingers, “Long Island Tea.”

“Tea,
okay. Got any chamomile? My mom drinks chamomile.”

“Suuuuure,
I got tea.”

With
a wicked smile, she began pouring different drinks into a beer glass – vodka, whisky, rum and about six other drinks. Just throwing it in without measuring. Finally she cracked open a can of coke, added some to the concoction and handed it to me. “Long Island Tea, Mocha’s version.”

Gingerly,
I tasted it and screwed up my face. “It’s awful, coffee. Doesn’t taste like tea at all.”

“It’s
Mocha
, not coffee, and jest down it, gurl!”

I
couldn’t get her name right and I couldn’t down it either, but with her prompting, I managed to finish it. My face spasmed, so to get rid of the taste, she gave me some Irish crème, which took away the awful taste in my mouth, but the crème was, well, it left me feeling
really
queasy.

In
spite of how much I drank, I was as sober as anything. “I’m not drunk yet,” I complained to my new friend. “Don’t know what the hype is all about.”

“Say
whaaaat?”

“Don’t
know what the big
deal is
,” I said, mindful of Mocha’s limited vocabulary and the fact that she went to school only three times a month.

Then
I stood up and the ground floated. “Whoa, coffee!” I shouted.

“
Mocha!
” she corrected and helped steady me.

Okay,
I was tipsy and it felt deliciously good, so I wanted to dance.

“Hey,
coffee, you got any
Teenage Dirtbag?
”

“Say
what?”

“Wheatus?
Hits of 2001.”

“Wheat
whaaaat?”

“Oh.
Can’t Fight the Moonlight?
By LeAnn Rimes?
”

She
shook her head slowly.

“
Murder on the dance floor
? Sophie Elle…Eeeeehhh…” I started to laugh at my thick tongue.

She
shook her head even slower.

After
some eye-rolling and muttering, she put
on Let me Blow Your Mind
by Eve.

“Gurl
whachu doing?” she asked when she saw me dance.

“I’m
dancing,” I said as I jumped around with my hands in the air.

“Dat
ain’t dancing. You dance like dat and it’s gon rain in here. Dis is how we do it.” She indulged in some serious booty shaking. “Drop it low, gurl. See?”

“Got
it!” When I tried to drop it low, I dropped alright – I lost balance and fell.

She
laughed. Hard. But she had a laugh that reminded me of musical chimes, so I didn’t mind her laughing at me. I just wanted to drop it
really
low.

As
we were having fun, Sia snaked into through the window.

Sia,
Mocha’s cousin, was seventeen and she too had tattoos, but piercings were her thing – on her upper lip, her lower lip, her nose, her eyebrows, her ears and her belly button.

(I
was both fascinated and repulsed when she later declared that she planned to pierce her nipples and her vagina soon.)

She
wore a back hoodie, black tights, black lace-up boots and had about twenty silver earrings in total. She was around 5’8, caramel skin, green eyes, black hair, but with ginger roots and she didn’t look like someone you wanted to make eye-contact with on the subway.

Pretty
underneath that black eye-liner and black lipstick, but scary.

“What
the fuck, Mocha?” she asked eyeing me as if I was road-kill. “A snot-nosed private school, priss…?”

“Relax,
Sia,” Mocha said in a voice as soothing as the chamomile tea my mom drank. “Kat here is …” She shook her head slowly, “her pussy ass step-daddy, he abuse her, Sia. All da time.”

Sia’s
frown lessened.

“Likes
to sticks his dick in her, Sia.”

“What?!”
I was mortified by what Mocha had just said. That wasn’t true at all.

“Eh,
Mocha, that is not …”

Mocha’s
head snapped to look at me, the look on her face telling me to zip it.

I
did and sipped on more Irish crème.

“Harry,
dat’s his name, Sia. Pussy ass
Hairy
mudderfucking Harry dey call him.”

Where
she got that from, I had no idea. Harry wasn’t hairy at all.

He
was always impeccably dressed – clean shaven, slicked hair, with a cardigan around his shoulders that tied loosely in front. That kind of a guy.

“What?!
The fucker!” Sia glared at me for a moment, fury flashing in her emerald eyes. She whipped out a blade from inside her boot and flicked it open, scaring the daylights out of me.

“You
tell pussy ass hairy mudderfucking Harry that I will cuuut off dick, slice off his nuuuuts, punch fucking holes in him if he ever does that again, you hear me?”

As
if Harry had done all those terrible things Mocha spoke of, I nodded meekly, mesmerized by the blade in Sia’s hands.

“If
I ever see Hairy in the street, he best turn and run or I swear I gon punctuate the ma’fucker!”

Silently,
I prayed that Harry never encountered Sia in the street so that she could never
punctuate
him.

Mocha
the shit-stirrer, nodded her approval at Sia’s vow. “Das my homegurl.”

“Puncture,”
I corrected.

They
both looked at me.

“
Punctuate
is a verb,” I explained. “You use it to intersperse or interrupt a sentence or…”

“Gurl,
you need a ’nother jug of tea,” Mocha said.

“Oh,
okay. Did you have any green tea?”

“Sure,”
she said as she threw different drinks into the beer glass, added coke and handed it to me. “Here’s yo green tea, Mocha’s version.”

“Oh,
thank you so much,” I said as I accepted it.

So
wound up was Sia about Harry, that she brought out a cigar. Except that it wasn’t a cigar, it was a blunt.

I
had never smoked weed in my life, (let alone a cigarette) but in an attempt to fit in, I did what they did, I smoked it. It tasted like crap but I was too wasted to care.

Shortly
thereafter, to their amusement and disgust, I vomited. Retched.

When
I finally stumbled home hours later, I vomited some more on the road.

Then
throughout the night, I hurled till my stomached burned, my head ached and my body shook. I was convinced that I was dying and vowed never to drink tea again, no matter which island it was from. Only coffee. Or maybe Mocha.

The
next morning, I was shaking and dehydrated and wasn’t able to go to school.

Sia,
Mocha and I became friends. I hung out with them all the time and was exposed to a world I didn’t know existed.

Their
obtuse world, which I was rudely introduced to, was different, fascinating and dangerous at the same time. But as long as I stayed close to them, I was okay.

I
hated weed, I decided, but of course, I never told anyone that.

It
would have destroyed my new-found rep as a badass who imbibed in drugs and alcohol.

At
the bus stop, I used to be pushed to the end of the queue by some mean girls name Jenny Coltier and Samantha Bailey. They used to bully me and make fun of me. I was a pushover so I didn’t nothing about it.

One
day over a nice cup of tea in Mochas establishment, as she called it, I mentioned Jenny and Samantha.

“Is
datafact?” Mocha asked as she sipped on her beer. “I got yo back,” she said.

I
had no idea what she meant, but I liked the way it sounded.

The
next afternoon, before I could get to the bus stop, Sia and Mocha were already there scaring the bejeebers out of the school kids.

“I
don’t care how rich you bitches are,” Mocha said as she circled the terrified girls with a knife in her hand, “Kat here’s my homegurl and any of you hoes fuck wid her and I will beat yo ass, then stab you with dis.” She flicked her blade several times. “You feel me?”

“Yes,”
all the girls murmured.

“That
goes for you bitches too,” Sia said, waving her knife the boys looking on. “I will cut off your nuts and make a coin purse out of it. Don’t think I won’t, cos I just got out of Juvi.”

The
kids at the bus stop were …
kids
, and they were shaking in the boots at the sight of these tattooed and pierced girls brandishing knives and threatening to stab them and cut out their family jewels.

“Now,
who da fuck be Samantha and Jenny?” Mocha demanded.

About
twenty hands pointed at Jenny and Samantha.

Mocha
walked slowly up to them.

Jenny
and Samantha held onto each other and began to tremble.

Mocha
eyed them with narrow eyes. “I wid stab you both right now, jest like dat, but I don’t wanna get bitch on my knife,” she said.

“I’m
ain’t worried ’bout that,” Sia said, her green eyes, blazing.

Both
Jenny and Samantha started crying. Sobbing.

“Apologize
to my homegurl,” Mocha said.

They
did. Profusely.

After
that incident, it was as if I belonged to the Mafia. Nobody fucked with me. I got a seat every time in the bus and I was always at the beginning of the queue. In fact, kids greeted me all the time without making eye-contact with me.