Bad Apple - the Baddest Chick(2)
“Apple, run to the store and pick me up a pack of Newports.”
“I’m busy,” Apple snapped back.
“Busy doin’ what?” her mother barked. “Bitch, you’re seventeen, and you ain’t doin’ nothin’ but blasting music in my muthaf*ckin’ house.”
Looking over at her mother, Apple sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes. She couldn’t wait until she had a place of her own, away from her disruptive mother. Apple tried to ignore her mother and turned her attention back to Cross on the block.
Her mother shouted, “Apple, you hear me talkin’ to you?”
“Yeah. And? I said I’m busy!” Apple snapped back.
“What the f-uck is so interesting that got you lookin’ out that f*ckin’ window?”
Apple continued to ignore her mother, but became unsettled when Denise walked up to the window and looked outside with her daughter.
“You sittin’ here lookin’ at these nappy-head niggas on the corner, tryin’ to get your pu-ssy wet. Bitch, I ain’t tryin’ to become a f*ckin’ grandmother because your f*ckin’ ass is in heat.”
Apple sighed. “You need to preach that to Kola,” she spat.
“Don’t get f*ckin’ smart wit’ me.”
“Why don’t you ask Kola or Nichols to run to the store?”
“’Cause I asked ya f*ckin’ ass.”
Apple sighed and sucked her teeth again. “I f*ckin’ hate it here.”
“Then leave! You and ya sister seventeen. Get the f-uck out my crib if you feel you’re woman enough to handle your own!”
“I will too. Real soon!”
Apple snatched the twenty-dollar bill her mother had in her hand and stormed out the bedroom. She knew the only way out her mother’s crib was money, and unfortunately, she didn’t have any. She had no job, no stable boyfriend, and was barely making her grades in school. She had beauty like her sister, and men yearned for her like she was Helen of Troy. Still, her looks weren’t providing her with any money, which she needed.
*****
Denise Evans was impossible to deal with most times. She had been on Section 8 for the longest. She and her mother had received welfare and government checks all their lives and knew how to work the system. Now, she was teaching her three daughters the tricks-of-the-trade in benefiting from the system—if not a weak man.
Thirty-five years young, Denise wasn’t only unemployed, she’d never had a job, and the only money she ever earned was what she tricked off men. She’d gotten pregnant with Apple and Kola when she was only seventeen. The twins’ father, Ronald, was a construction worker with a good heart and a great-paying job. He and Denise had met at a mutual friend’s party one night, where Denise lured the twenty-five-year-old from Trinidad with her tight dress and long legs. The two hit it off instantly, and four months later, they got married after Denise found out she was pregnant.
Ronald wanted to be in their life after they were born, but their mother was so busy whoring in the streets and carrying on, he couldn’t tolerate it any longer. He thought she was a good woman, but grew tired of the drinking and cursing over time. He felt ignored.
Then Denise became pregnant by another man a year later with Nichols. That’s when Ronald left to find better, but not before Denise hit him with child support and alimony payments. She wanted to drain him of everything he had, and for years, Ronald suffered from depression. Almost everything he worked hard for went to Denise and the kids. But Denise could care less, splurging his hard-earned money on mostly herself.
Denise had years of hood experience, so she knew how to manipulate the system to make the majority of the court’s judgments go her way. Ronald soon became tired of fighting Denise and the courts, and on the twins’ thirteenth birthday, he blew his brains out with a .357. They found his body two days later.
Nichols’ father, Dominique, was a different breed of man, though. Denise had met him on the block. She was attracted to his style and the money. She got pregnant by him a month after they met, but she soon found out he had eight kids and she would become his ninth baby mama.
On top of his many women and children, he was a violent man. Dominique used to beat on Denise, and even slapped around her twin girls until they were ten years old. One time, Denise fought him back, and he beat her so severely, she had to spend a week in the hospital. Dominique was charged with her abuse, and then soon after, he caught a drug charge and was sentenced to fifteen years to life.
*****
Apple never understood her mother and missed her father a great deal. She only had a few pictures of him and some memories. Her mother was a beautiful woman, but she was a ghetto tragedy who never had anything to call her own, except heartache, the bottle she clung to every night, a beat-up pu-ssy, a box of Newports, and the projects they grew up in. Denise would whore herself out for a good time and a few dollars, and Apple loathed how her mother treated a man with a big dick and some cash better than her own daughters.
Apple knew she was totally opposite from her mother and had dreams of being somebody. She wanted to be rich, marry Cross, move from the projects, and have her own, something her mother never had. She was determined to be different from her family. She wanted to be that chick that everyone looked up to and respected. She wanted to be the woman in Cross’s life. She wanted to be noticed. She wanted to be known and loved.