2
DYNASTY YOUNG
D
ynasty was tired of the nonsense. Super exhausted of her surroundings and the people who inhabited themâinside the apartment and out of it. Especially her only friend, Rufus, whose underwear had been in a twist ever since she ignored his crushing on her, and had made it a point to try to get under her skin any way he could. She shook her head. She couldn't wait to escape, and she would. Her dictionary would be key in her breaking free, she believed, mentally repeating the definitions her evere-xpanding lexicon required she feed her brain.
“Dy-nas-tee. Dyyy-nasty! Die nasty. Die nasty!” Rufus's insults blew through her opened bedroom window from one floor down.
Dynasty pulled back the dull white sheer and stuck her head out into the warm sunshine.
“You better get away from here, Rufus. Or I'm gonna come down and split your head with a brick. You hear me?” she spat, teasing and almost hating that she'd ever taken time out of her life to be nice to her mentally challenged neighbor. Rufus wasn't really handicapped; he'd just started to act like he was when she wouldn't kiss himâwhich was grosser than gross since they'd been close forever, and she viewed him more like family than anything else.
Well, at least I did
, she thought. They'd only hung out exclusively for a couple of monthsâas friendsâand he'd acted as if they were a couple. She shook her head. She couldn't understand Rufus, or why he was so upset. She'd never treated him like they were together.
“What you gonna do? Hit me with that dictionary you always reading? Come down and do it,” six-foot-five Rufus dared, his voice gruff and deep like a man twice his age. Everything about Rufus was to the second power. His height. Weight. Neediness and attitude. Ever since he'd been put on steroids for his rumored heart condition he'd vehemently denied having for months before she made him spill the truth, he'd ballooned like a jellyfish and wore his insecurity like a cape he thought was invisible. Dynasty could see it, though, because with each rejection from either neighborhood homeboys or some silly girl, it grew thicker and more apparent, and she was always the one to cheer him up.
“You better get your short-yellow-bus-riding behind away from my window, Rufus! Or I'm gonna have my brother handle you.” She stepped aside, making sure he didn't see her, and covered her laughter. She didn't really want to scare Rufus, but he'd been so mean lately she thought a little shaking up might do him some good. She moved back in his sight.
Rufus looked up and met her stare with his. He flipped up his middle finger. “That's why you ain't never gonna get into that rich-people school you keep studying to get in. And I ain't worried about nobody handling me. Why don't you have your man do it? Your brother's notâ”
“You're just jealous that I didn't choose you, and, for your information, my brother will be home from jail
this
week. Wanna try me, Ruthless Rufus?” Dynasty challenged, using one of the nicknames he hated and the only thing she had to help save her from Rufus's verbal attackâher brother King's killer reputation. But the truth was her brother was never getting out of jail and her mother was probably never getting off of heroin and she'd probably never get a scholarship to Winchester Hills Prep, her ticket to a good college.
“Yeah. A'ight,” Rufus said. “But you know you dead wrong, Dynasty. I know you was messing around with J.R. last night. You kissed him . . .
and
some. I'm not telling you what I heard; I'm telling what he told me. That's why you gonna die nasty and young, Dynasty Young!” he barked, then disappeared down the block.
“Whatever. You're lying. J.R. didn't tell anything like that. Couldn't of. And you know what else, Rufus? You make my butt itch!” she said, reaching behind her and pulling a wedgie outâsomething she had to do often because of the booty shorts she rocked most of the summer. “So go! Get outta here looking like a rejected remix of Biggie Smalls and Fat Albert. You just mad I didn't want you and you couldn't pull me, Rufus! This madness is juvenile! One minute we're cool, the next your 'tude is popping. You keep acting like we're not friends.” She mumbled the last sentence to his back, knowing every other word she'd said cut into him. He was a
troglodyte
âan unlearned person without culture, the word she'd committed to memory last week. So his ignorant-acting ways weren't his fault, she reminded herself. She really didn't like hurting him, but he forced her to, and it made her feel terrible, because deep down she liked him as a friend.
Closing the sheer curtain, Dynasty stepped away from the window, then settled onto the old mattress that served as her bed, careful not to fall onto her prized dictionary. She was tired of battling the likes of Rufus and other project dudes like him. She sucked her teeth, looking around her tiny dingy room. She hated her surroundings and wasn't too fond of the people who inhabited them. Stuck in Thomasville Heights, a fenced-in Atlanta housing project complete with a guarded gate and a penitentiary around the corner, she was reminded daily that girls like her weren't expected to go far in life.
She rolled her eyes at her forecasted future, sickened by who society said she'd become if she didn't escape the projects and the madness.
The Withouts
. Half of the grown-ups she knew were The Withouts; they were either
without
an education or most of their teeth. Sometimes both. Most of the teens weren't too far behind.
“Dynasty!” her Aunt Maybelline called from downstairs. “Get down here!”
Speaking of no teeth.
Dynasty pushed herself up from the cheap mattress and made haste out of the room, stepping over the dirty clothes, clean clothes, and some other accessories that belonged on a person, not a floor, and made it down the steps. She was thankful she didn't wound her bare feet and chastised herself for forgetting her slippers. Aunt Maybelline kept a nasty house and wouldn't let her clean anything but her room.
“Ma'am?” she answered her aunt with as much respect as she could manage.
Aunt Maybelline just stared through the cloud of smoke that floated around her head, then flicked her cigarette on the coffee table, looking very deserving of her name. Drawn-on eyebrows. Inch-long eyelashes thickly coated with five coats of mascara. Enough eyeliner to trace a map of the U.S. was surrounded by pools of blush and a cherry-red lipstick that bled past her lip line. Dynasty shook her head.
I live with Bozo
.
A clown.
Her aunt flicked her ashes again, this time on top of an unopened carton of cancer sticks, not even bothering to aim for the ashtray or caring about Dynasty's asthma.
“Ma'am?” Dynasty asked again, eyeing a case of beer sitting on top of the coffee table alongside the cigarette carton.
Aunt Maybelline reached in her parachute-sized bra and retrieved a damp-looking ten-dollar bill. She handed it to Dynasty.
“Go to the store and get me some cigarettes and a twelve-pack.”
Dynasty crinkled her nose and knew Aunt Maybelline hadn't taken her medication. There were twenty-four beer cans and two-hundred cigarettes on the coffee table and her aunt was trying to send her to the store?
Man
.
She can't be serious.
“Auntie, you already have beer and cigarettes. Plus, ten dollars isn't enough and you know they won't let me buy that stuff. I'm only thirteen,” she lied, deciding to get some entertainment for the day since Rufus had an attitude and wasn't up for making her laugh.
Aunt Maybelline reared back her head. “Fourteen.”
Dynasty looked her in the eyes, knowing her aunt didn't know if she was thirteen or thirty.
“No, Auntie.
Thir
teen,” she lied again.
“
Thirteen
? Since when? Humph. That means we got five years left,” her aunt said, referring to how long the state would kick in money and a food-stamp card to aid her aunt in raising her.
Dynasty nodded, knowing full well she was fifteen. “Today, Aunt Maybelline. I turned thirteen today so I can't buy beer and cigarettes.”
“Oh. Well. Happy thirteenth. When you find somebody to help you buy my drink, we'll toast.” Aunt Maybelline shrugged. Still staring, she pulled her cigarette again and blew the smoke in Dynasty's face. “Go. Get. My. Cigarettes. And. Twelve-pack. I'm almost out, and Pork Chop's coming over so we can celebrate his grandson coming to stay with him from New York,” she hissed, serious as ever and clipping her words.
Dynasty reached out, handing back the nasty, damp ten-dollar bill. Aunt Maybelline slapped her hand so hard it stung, then kicked off her prized pair of old-school bright green jelly shoes with the backs cut out.
“Take ya butt now, and wear these. And ya better bring back my cigarettes, twelve-pack,
and
my shoes. I know you and ya raggedy friends been scheming on my shoes. You and that friend of yours, that big, black boy. I see y'all looking.”
“Auntieâ” Dynasty began, deciding to try to reason with Aunt Maybelline one last time.
“
Auntie,
my foot. Go or find you someplace else to stay. Make a wayâand wear my shoes so I know you'll have to come back.”
Dynasty put her feet in the awful bright-green jelly shoes and walked out the door. In the warmth of the sunshine, she exhaled and prayed no one saw her. Never mind that she had on orange, wearing different colors didn't bother her half as much as rocking shoes nearly five sizes too big. That, she didn't want anyone to see.
“Mm. Mm. Mm,” loudly penetrated the quiet air, forcing Dynasty to turn around.
“Hey Sheeka!” she called out to the neighborhood kitchen beautician who could hear but couldn't speak.
Sheeka pointed to Dynasty's hair, then raised her hands in the air.
Dynasty shook her head in the negative. “No, Sheeka. I don't have money to get my hair done, but when I do I'll check for you.”
Sheeka looked at Dynasty's feet, then up to her face. She shook her head, then walked away.
“Shuckey duckey,” Rufus sang from afar, walking up on her seconds after Sheeka departed. “Them there shoes are hot, Dynasty!” He laughed.
She really rolled her eyes now. Hard. “Not now, Rufus. Okay?”
Rufus stood next to her, shading her like a tree. “What happened, shawty? Aunt Maybelline didn't make it to the pharmacy, huh? Well, maybe your man J.R. will buy you some shoes you can fit . . . with all that corner-boy money he be banking.”
Dynasty started sliding forward. She couldn't walk without tripping, so she slid her way toward the store. She regretted confiding in Rufus that her aunt was bipolar.
“Shut up, Rufus. You know that hurts my feelngs.”
“Don't be mad at me,” he said, scratching his ashy arms. “Better be glad she ran out of medicine 'cause if she didn't you'd probably be sleeping on the steps again until I come get you like the last time. I don't know why you don't just leave. You know she don't want you there. You ain't nothing but a check . . . or maybe . . .” he said, his tone changing into one laced with sarcasm. “You can sleep over J.R.'s. Oops. I guess you did that already, huh?”
Here we go again
. He was trying to hurt her and she knew it. She stopped, turned, and looked up. Rufus couldn't comprehend
rational
and wouldn't entertain being
sagacious
âtwo of her dictionary words for the week, meaning reasonable and perceptive. She'd have to meet his childishness with the same.
“Anybody ever tell you that you're too big to be outside, Rufus? You're blocking the sun. Why are you so big, Dufus Rufus? And how you get so ashy when it's humid out? That's what's wrong. You mad 'cause my boyfriend isn't fat or ashy. Right?” She stared, waiting for an answer. “Rhetorical question. Oops. Sorry.” She tilted her face sideways, then scratched her head. “You don't know what that means, huh? I forgot. You're fat, ashy,
and
stupid. But never mind that, Rufus. You know what I'd really like to know? How do you manage to be ashyâwhich comes from drynessâand mustyâwhich comes from sweatingâat the same time?”
Rufus bit his bottom lip, squinted his eyes, and flared his nostrils. He was getting mad now and it showed. Because he was so insecure about his weight it was easy for Dynasty to strike his nerve.
“Shut the eff up! 'For I hurt you,” he snapped, then quickly looked away and hung his head. “You better be glad I like you 'cause if somebody else talked to me like that I'd hurt them for real.”
Dynasty just laughed, knowing he was fronting; he wasn't going to harm her. If anything, he'd protect her. He had many times before. She walked over to him, managed to stand on her tiptoes, and planted a kiss on his cheek. Then she left him there, huffing and puffing and whining and cursing her name, and proceeded to slide the too big jelly shoes toward the gate so she could go to the store.
“Later, Rufus!” She waved.