The Real Hood Wives of St. Pete. (Chapter One)

***WARNING*** This excerpt contains strong language and adult situations. Read at your own risk.

Chapter One: Makayla Jenkins

Even though Makayla Jenkins had the stereo on loud, blasting the Up With Us Booty Mix on Wild 94.1 FM, the women sitting in her living room were beginning to grate on her ever-loving nerves. They were so loud and ghetto that their high-pitched voices gave her a headache. She wanted to tell them to shut the fuck up, but needed to keep her temper in check and just make some money. All they did was gossip about other people all day long, as if they even had room to talk. She inwardly rolled her eyes at the two women as she continued to braid her client’s hair.
“Did you hear about Quandanisha?” One of them asked.
“Nah. What happened? Did she get arrested again?”
“Nuh-uh, girl. She got kicked out of her apartment because she couldn’t pay.” The woman who started the gossip had a flat nose. It looked like somebody had ironed it when she was a baby. Her name was Kertisha. Her short, uneven, home-permed hair stood straight up on her head.
“What you mean, she couldn’t pay? She on Section 8 just like the rest of us, ain’t she?” Melissa asked. Everybody called her Missy Poo. She was about two hundred pounds overweight. She wore long boxed braids that hung down her back. She’d worn them for three months and needed to have Makayla re-do the perimeters of her head.
“Well, Section 8 only covered $550 and she had to pay the other $50. She got so far behind that the landlord had to evict her, and they cancelled her Section 8 voucher. Now she got to stay in the Mosley Hotel.”
“That bitch too damn sorry to raise $50?” Melissa exclaimed. While she talked, she slapped at her head because the braided-in hair was causing her scalp to itch. “Shit, I’ll be damned if I fuck up my Section 8 over some bullshit like that. All them niggas that be in and out of her place, she should’a made one of them pay. If they fucking, they need to be breaking a bitch off.”
“I know that’s right,” Kertisha nodded. “Now she at that rat-infested, nasty ass, drug fiend hotel with her kids.”
“That’s fucked up.” Melissa shook her head. “I wouldn’t want to live there with my kids. I heard she ain’t got good sense though. Maybe that's why she make so many fucked up decisions.”
The women sat on Makayla’s couch and gossiped while they waited for their turn to get their hair done. Makayla tuned them out. They all got on her damn nerves. If she didn’t need the money to buy personal items and extra things that she couldn’t get with food stamps, she wouldn’t have those hating-ass hoes sitting on her leather couch, sweating and stinking it up with their coochie sweat. She’d have to Lysol and Febreze it down when they left. She didn’t understand how a grown ass woman could be so damn funky. Even though Melissa was big, that was no excuse not to wash her ass. As long as she had water, soap and a wash cloth, she needed to put them to use. She had the whole apartment smelling like fried onions. The smell was causing Makayla to get nauseous, being that she was pregnant and still in her first trimester.
“What is that smell?” Draya asked, crinkling her nose. She was sitting in the chair getting a sew-in. Melissa and Kertisha were too engaged in the latest gossip to hear them. Their conversation had switched from Quandanisha to the boy who’d just shot and killed a police.
“That’s Missy Poo’s stank ass. That hoe always leaving out the house smelling like onions and shit. If she too big to get in the shower, she need to get somebody to hose her ass down,” Makayla said. “She got my stomach hurting. Let me see if I can find some air freshener.”
“Okay, girl. I hope you can find some spray ‘cause that smell is really raunchy. I’m glad you almost finished with my head so I can bounce. Me and funk do not get along.”
They burst out laughing. The other two gossiping women stared across the room at them in curiosity then went back to running their mouths.
“Makayla, how long you got on Draya’s head? I’m getting hungry. Do I got time to run up to Pineapple’s and get me a 2 Dolla Holla?” Melissa asked.
“Please run to some water and wash yo’ funky ass,” Makayla muttered low enough for only Draya to hear, causing Draya to crack up.
“Yeah, you got time. I’m about to eat something myself before I start vomiting. That shit hurts when there ain’t nothing on your stomach. Only thing come out is green phlegm.”
“Ugg. That’s nasty. Well, I’ll be back in about twenty minutes. Anybody want me to pick them up something?” she asked. The other three women declined because Melissa's funk would probably overpower their food. She struggled to get up from the couch. She resembled an overturned turtle trying to flip over. Finally, she made it to her feet. Puffing hard, she waddled out the door.
“That’s one big bitch,” Kertisha said after Melissa had left.
“Uh-huh. Can you smell her though?” Draya asked. Kertisha didn’t answer because she knew Draya was sadity and thought she was better than everybody else. She figured the woman was just trying to throw shade, and she wanted to stay out of it.
“Kertisha, you sitting close to Missy Poo, you can’t smell that funk?” Makayla asked.
Since Makayla said something, she decided to respond. “Nah, I didn’t smell nothing. I’m kinda glad my nose is fucked up, and I don’t have a keen sense of smell. ‘Cause the way y’all faces wrinkled up, she must be funky as hell.” Makayla and Draya cracked up again. It was hard to tell if they were laughing about what she’d said regarding her nose being fucked up or just laughing in general.
“Oh my damn. Let me find some damn Lysol. I should have told her to sit on a towel or something. It’s a good thing I don’t have cloth furniture. That funk would be hanging on like a mountain climber.”
“Girl, stop. I can’t,” Draya laughed. “You got my stomach hurting now.”
“My bad. I’m just keeping it one hundred. I might have to stop doing her hair if she don’t bathe soon. People come up in here and think it’s my shit smelling like that ‘cause her fumes be lingering. I don’t like that, ‘cause I know I keep a clean house.”
“Mm-hmm,” Kertisha nodded. “Cleanliness is next to godliness. It sholl do be clean and smelling nice...when I can smell. Sometimes my smell come back to me,” she explained to the other women. “I’m glad today ain’t one of them times.”
At that moment, a tall, handsome teenager opened the screen door and entered the apartment. “What’s up?’ he greeted.
“Cortez, why ain’t you in school, with yo’ Souja Boy looking ass?” Makayla asked.
“I don’t look like no damn Souja Boy. Souja Boy look like me,” he said. “Fuck school. Ain’t nobody got time fuh dat.” He plopped down on the couch. “What the fuck?” His nose scrunched up when the scent from the couch hit him. He hopped back up. “Y’all ain’t even got to tell me—Missy Poo big ass was here, wasn’t she? She got it smelling like hot garbage and fish in this bitch.” All three women doubled over in a fit of laughter.
“Tez, since you here, do me a favor,” Makayla said, still holding her stomach. “Can you find that air freshener and spray it in here? It’s either in the bathroom or in my room.”
“Shit, that ain’t gon’ help. You need bleach for that stench.”
“Boy, stop playing. See if you can find the Lysol too and spray some on that couch and wipe it down. Missy Poo ought to be ashamed to be so rancid. I know she can smell herself if everybody else can smell her ass.”
“She probably immune to it,” Cortez said, heading out of the room. He came back a few minutes later with a wash cloth, some rubbing alcohol and the Lysol. “This all I could find. It’ll work.” He went about rubbing the couch down. They all turned when there was a loud knock on the screen door. It was Tina the Crackhead, a thin, gaunt woman with most of her teeth missing. She wore her hair slicked back with Pro Styl Gel. It was so short and thin that the dark gel caked on her scalp showed through the balding spots.
“Makayla, is Aisha and J’Aisha over here?” she called through the screen door, not attempting to come inside.
“No, I haven’t seen them this morning,” Makayla said.
“I saw Aisha at the bus stop,” Cortez told her. “I didn’t see J’Aisha though.”
“Aiight. Thank you. That girl gon’ make me beat her ass. She always stayin’ out all night and skippin’ school. Probably out there in the streets fuckin’ and suckin’ some low-life nigga. These kids make my blood pressure rise.” She went on a rant about how hard it was raising teenage daughters. Finally, after about fifteen minutes she shut up. ”Y’all have a good morning now, ya hear?”
“You too, Ms. Tina,” Draya said. Makayla just rolled her eyes. She and Tina didn’t get along since they’d had a knock down all out girl fight a few months prior. And it was all because of Tina’s fast-ass daughter, J’Aisha.
“I bet she ‘bout to go find her a rock to smoke. That’ll make her forget all about her daughter,” Kertisha said. No one said anything because they knew she’d spoken the truth.
“Makayla, you and Ms. Tina still got beef?” Draya asked.
“Fuck that hoe,” Makayla said. “She shouldn’t have tried me like she did. It’s not my job to watch her half-grown ass kids. If she got off crack, maybe she could be a better parent.”
Makayla’s house was known as the hangout place. Since she styled hair, plenty of people came over. Sometimes, the women’s boyfriends would stop through and smoke, drink or play cards while they waited on their lady to get her hair done. Aisha and J’Aisha had started hanging around. It wasn’t Makayla’s place to govern them. So far, she had only one child she had to be responsible for, and that was two-year-old Darrion. She couldn’t watch somebody else’s kids, and even if she could, it wasn’t like teenagers couldn’t be slick. Aisha and J’Aisha were both hot in the ass and wanted to fuck. They’d sneak off into the bathroom to give some of the neighborhood boys blowjobs while Makayla was side-tracked doing hair.
One particular day, J’Aisha had been missing in action longer than usual and Makayla went to search for her. She found her in Darrion’s bedroom fucking some boy. The boy jumped up, grabbed his clothes, and ran out butt naked, slipping past her before she could do anything to him. J’Aisha just sat there with a nonchalant look on her face, not even bothering to cover herself up.
“What do you think you’re doing, J’Aisha?”
“What it look like? I was tryna get a nut befo’ you busted in here like the Po Po,” she said in a bored tone.
Makayla lost it and went upside her head. “Yo’ trifling ass is in my son’s room fucking some nigga. How disrespectful is that? You can fuck all you want ‘cause I’m not yo’ mama, and can’t tell you what to do. But you won’t be doing it in my house. Get yo’ bum-ass out. You lucky my son ain’t here or I’d stomp a knot in yo’ ass.”
She had been hotter than fish grease. What the hell had made that girl think it was okay to have sex on the floor of her son’s bedroom? She must have adapted some of her mama’s crackish ways.
J’Aisha told her mom about Makayla hitting her and Tina came over supposedly to “get her straight.” The two women had ended up scrapping like two stray cats in a back alley. Makayla had told Tina to keep her whorish daughters away from her place. She’d also threatened to get a restraining order on Tina if she came back. That’s probably why Tina had stood outside and hadn’t attempted to come in. She knew Makayla was still in her feelings about the fight they’d had.
“Was Aisha at the bus stop for real, Tez?” Makayla asked. Even though they weren’t her children, she couldn’t help but to worry about them. What kind of a life did they have living with a crackhead for a mama? She felt sorry for them. That’s why she’d let them chill out at her place. But, when they’d started disrespecting her place, that’s when she’d had to put her foot down. The only one fucking in her home would be her.
“Yep. Aisha was there talking to Ronnie. I know it was her because I tried to snatch her weaved ponytail out, and she got mad. I was about to go to school, but changed my mind. The bus was taking too long to get there.”
“Whatever, boy. You just didn’t want to go to school. Yo’ ass need to graduate and do something with yaself. Get up out this hood,” Makayla told him.
“I ain’t gotta do shit but stay black and die. Y’all ‘hood bitches need to do something with y’all selves and get off Section 8. Y’all can star in y’all own reality show: the Real Hood Wives of Section 8.”
“Oh, no you didn’t,” Kertisha exclaimed.
“Oh, yes. I. Did,” Cortez shot back. “Women are lucky. They can screw twenty different niggas, get knocked up and have about five or six kids, with seven baby daddies, and they’re set for life. Y’all get food stamps, WIC, Section 8, got places that pay y’all electric and other shit. Hell, I almost wish I had a vagina.” He had the ladies cracking up.
“Boy, you are stupid,” Draya said. “You ever thought about being a comedian?”
“Nah. I can’t stand up on no stage in front of a bunch of people and try to make them laugh for a living.” He shook his head. “That shit is cray. I’d be broker than a joke ‘cause I can see myself getting tongue-tied. They’d probably boo my ass off the stage.” He chuckled. “Hell nah. I’ll leave that shit to Katt Williams and Kevin Hart.”
When he mentioned Katt Williams it got Kertisha started again.
“Y’all know he was supposed to be at the Tampa Bay Times Forum and was a no show. I was pissed ‘cause I had tickets and errythang. I’d arranged to have my mama watch my kids and planned to have a good time. His ass didn’t even come.”
“What happened?” Draya asked.
“They said “unforeseen travel issues.” That’s some bullshit. That nigga was probably too drunk or too high,” she said.
“Speaking of high, Kayla, can I roll one up?” Cortez asked.
“I don’t care,” she said. She finished the final stitch in Draya’s sew-in and plugged the flat iron in the socket.
“Girl, don’t even worry about flat ironing my hair. I’ll do that myself. I’m running late,” Draya said, getting up. “Thanks for hooking a sistah up.” She dug into her Coach purse and grabbed some crumbled up bills. “Here you go.”
Makayla straightened the money out, counted it then frowned. Draya had only given her forty-five dollars. The sew-in cost sixty-five. She’d shorted her by twenty. No wonder she was in such a rush to leave. She just twisted her lips, but didn’t say anything. Forty-five dollars was better than nothing. She shook her head and placed the money in her pocket. Draya always tried to stiff somebody out of something. She had money for everything else, like that Coach purse she carried on her arm and those Red Bottom Louboutin heels on her big ass feet.
“Aiight Draya, see you later.”
“Where you got to get to in such a hurry?” Nosey Kertisha asked, sitting down in the chair Draya had just vacated.
“I got to get to the WIC office and go down town to recertify so they won’t stop my food stamps.”
“You can do that online, you know that, right?” Kertisha said.
“Yes, but my internet is off. Besides, John-John pawned the computer anyway. So, I have to go down to Mirror Lake and get on theirs.”
Makayla shook her head but remained quiet. She couldn’t understand how some of these women laid up under such trifling ass men and let them fuck for free. John-John was a sorry son-of-a-bitching bastard who used women and tossed them to the side. She couldn’t stand him. Even though he was supposed to be Draya’s man, he stayed trying to get in her panties—and any other women who he could talk into letting him hit.
She eyed Draya from head to toe. She was a very pretty woman, tall with a smooth caramel-colored complexion. She wasn’t shaped like a model, but she had a nice physique. She looked similar to Whitney Houston. She could pull a man better than John-John’s rabid ass. She must be suffering from low self-esteem or something. Makayla would be damned if she’d put up with that shit. Wasn’t no man, woman or child going to take her computer or anything else and pawn it. She worked too hard to put nice things in her house, and she wasn’t about to let some loser get his hands on it.
“Why you looking at me all sideways?” Draya asked, rolling her eyes.
“No reason,” Makayla said, not wanting to start anything. She knew Draya had a sarcastic mouth, and she didn’t feel like getting into it with her.
“If you got something to say, just say it,” Draya insisted.
Makayla shrugged. Since Draya wouldn’t let it drop, she might as well speak her mind. “I was just wondering if you bumped your head or something. You too damn pretty to put up with that bullshit from John-John. Why do you let him take advantage of you like that?”
Draya sucked air between her teeth. “Why don’t you just worry about who yo’ baby daddy fucking while he locked up. Just pray that the motherfucker don’t bring you AIDS when he get out. Stay out of my personal business, Makayla,” she snapped.
“Ump. You gonna take that?” Kertisha instigated. “Why she snapping and shit anyway?”
Cortez looked up from the blunt he was rolling. “Bitch, I know you ain’t getting salty with my girl. You up in her shit talking crazy. Step yo’ wack ass on up out of here before you get ya ass beat.” Since he was always acting like a comedian, it was hard to tell if he was serious or not.
“Who gonna beat my ass?” Draya placed her hands on her hips. “I know you not gonna lay one finger on me and Makayla’s pregnant ass won’t either.”
Before she knew what had happened, Makayla had stuck her with a right cross. She staggered and dropped her purse, spilling everything out.
“Bitch, you trippin’ because I gave you my opinion? What you said about Jabari was unnecessary. Get the fuck outta my house and don’t bring yo’ ass back,” Makayla said.
“You ain’t have to hit me,” she complained, picking up her purse and putting the contents that had spilled out back into it. “That’s what was unnecessary.”
“If you say one more word, I swear to God I will snatch every stitch of that sew-in I just did out yo’ raggedly ass head.”
“But—”
“But nothing. Haul ass, bitch,” Cortez said. “Let ya feet hit the concrete, trick. Get to stepping hoe. Walk yo’ ass out the do’.” He laughed at his made-up rap then went back to rolling the weed in the blunt.
“Fuck all y’all,” Draya yelled and stalked out, letting the screen door slam behind her.
“She just need some dick in her life. The way John-John spreading himself all over Tampa Bay and the surrounding areas, he probably don’t have enough energy to tap that,” Kertisha, the Gossip Hound, said. “Y’all didn’t see that vibrator she slipped back in her purse real quick?”
Makayla chuckled. “Damn, you don’t miss nothing, do you Kertisha?”
“She don’t need a vibrator; I’ll fuck her. All she had to do was say something,” Cortez said. “I’d be glad to hit her with the Bop Stick.”
“Cortez, I thought you said you gonna stay a virgin until you get married?” Makayla reminded him.
“I’m gonna try, but if she offer me that pussy on a platter, I ain’t turning it down. Draya is fine as hell. She might have a fucked up attitude, but she fine. I’d hit that.”
“I’d be glad to break you off a lil bit, Tez,” Kertisha said, giving him a wink.
Cortez stopped licking and rolling the blunt and stared at her in disgust. “Hell to the fuck nah, Kertisha. I ain’t letting you be the first woman I fuck. You looking like Flats that play on SpongeBob and shit. Hell nah. I’d rather jack my dick until it falls off.” He closed his eyes, cringed and gave a shiver. “Ugg.”
“You ain’t right,” Makayla said, laughing until tears came to her eyes. “I gotta give you your props, though. Most men wouldn’t turn down free pussy. So, you deserve your props.”
“Now, if you offered me some, Makayla, I’d have to give in to you. You’d make me break my purity pledge in a hot second ‘cause you got a special place in my heart.”
“Get the fuck outta here with that shit, Cortez. You might be a virgin, but you full of shit just like the other niggas that’s putting their dicks in everything. I am not trying to have sex with you, Tez. You’re just a kid. I don’t even look at you like that.”
“You don’t look at nobody except that nigga you got that’s locked up. That’s why it’s so hard for me to figure out how the hell you got knocked up again. You not quite three months pregnant, so it can’t be Jabari’s. Who did you let hit that, Makayla?”
Makayla stiffened and her face clouded over. “It’s not ya business. Go outside and smoke that shit ‘cause I don’t wanna smell it in my house,” she snapped.
“Well damn. What I did to make yo’ ass switch to bitch mode so fast?” Cortez asked. “Y’all women, I swear y’all be on the rag one week and be needing Prozac the next. Fuck this. I’m going somewhere where I’m appreciated.” He threw Makayla an exaggerated hurt look. “And I’m giving my dick to the only woman who deserves it: Mary Jane.”
The woman burst into laughter once again, clearing the tension in the air. Cortez swaggered to the door, opened it and said, “And I ain’t no kid. I’m eighteen. Remember that.” He stepped out and closed the screen door behind him.
“That boy is a trip.” She shook her head and exhaled. “Kertisha, did you wash and condition your hair?” she asked, while parting hair away from Kertisha’s scalp with a rattail comb. She wasn’t about to braid her hair with all that dandruff and flakes swirling around.
“No. I didn’t have time,” Kertisha lied.
Too damn trifling to do it, Makayla thought. That shit looks nasty. If I have to touch her hair and scalp, she needs to wash it first.
“Well, go in the bathroom and wash it while I fix me something to eat. I should have told Missy Poo to get me something from Pineapples. I want some Chinese food, but China Star don’t open ‘til ten thirty. I don’t trust their food, though. They could be cooking anything in them woks--frying up cats, dicing up rats, throwing roaches and anything else in with that rice. I’m suspicious.”
“I know that’s right. But, if it don’t kill you, it’ll just make you fat.”
Kertisha got up and headed out of the room to go wash her hair.
Makayla let out a deep sigh. She didn’t feel like cooking, but the only food she had that didn’t need to be cooked was cereal, and she hated cereal.
She went to the refrigerator, pulled the door open and looked inside. She had a fair amount of groceries. She probably would have to go to the Wal-Mart Supercenter and get some more before the month was over.
She decided to make an omelet with bell peppers, onions, mushrooms and cheese.
“Makayla.” She heard Kertisha calling to her and rolled her eyes. The dumb bitch probably couldn’t find the shampoo.
“The shampoo is in the shower caddy, Kertisha,” she called back.
“I got it. I just wanted to let you know Darrion woke up.”
Makayla smiled. Just the thought of her two-year-old son brought her joy. He was her sole reason for living and breathing. If it wasn’t for Darrion, she didn’t think she’d be able to get through the months ahead.
She placed her hands on her flat stomach and prayed she’d never feel the kick of the child that was inside it. Just having such morbid thoughts made her ill and sent her rushing to the bathroom to vomit.

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