Authors: T. Styles
Seona had no idea what she was talking about. She stayed as far away from Cutie as possible when they were home, but she knew her answer wouldn’t matter. She could still taste the vinegar from the pickle she was eating on her front step before Cutie approached her, as she thought of what to say. “I didn’t do it,” she whispered. “Please don’t hit me.”
With tightened lips, Cutie drew back her fist and slammed it into her nose and mouth. Blood splattered on her coat, two of her friends, and all over the grey concrete beneath them. Seona fell to the ground, curled up in a ball, and covered her head. Fashionable shoes kicked and stepped on her, leaving her brown coat covered with dusty footprints.
“Cutie, get up here!” Mooney yelled from the window. “Now!”
Hearing Mooney’s voice caused everybody to shudder. Very few people heard her speak, and as far as most knew, she was on the run from something or somebody, and found refuge in the projects. In her five years there, she’d seen everything from a man getting shot, because he didn’t want to turn over the keys to his car, to Homeless Henry dying from hypothermia in an abandoned truck due to last year’s winter storm. She wouldn’t speak to the cops no matter how much they asked, believing silence was the best policy.
With everyone staring at Mooney, the crowd around Seona opened up, and she dodged into the building for shelter. Cutie looked up at the window, put her hands on her hips, and said, “What you want with me? My mother said I can be outside.”
“I didn’t ask you that. Come up here now. I want to talk to you.”
Cutie passed her friends with their quizzical stares. She wondered what the strange woman wanted, and why she would embarrass her in front of her crew. When she knocked on the door, Mooney opened it up and Cutie trudged in and plopped on the sofa. It was the same place she sat whenever her foster mother asked Mooney to watch her for a few hours. During those times, she couldn’t wait until she was thirteen so she would be allowed to watch herself. Even back then she believed she had an understanding with Mooney: you don’t say shit to me, and I won’t say shit to you. So what had changed?
“What you want with me?” Cutie said, her arms folded angrily over her chest. “My mamma say I can watch myself now. I don’t have to be sitting up in here looking at you watch little kids.”
From her brown leather recliner by the window, Mooney examined the little girl. She could see herself in her and that wasn’t a good look. Mooney’s light skin was covered in an array of brown freckles, in different sizes and shapes. Although she was a little over forty, these days she resembled a sixty-year-old woman. Placing a cigarette in her mouth, she held the lighter to its tip and flicked it until it glowed with a speck of orange. She could feel Cutie growing agitated, and it was what she wanted.
“Can you tell me what you want with me?” she said, pushing her medium-length hair out of her face. “I wanna go back outside to play with my friends, dang!”
Mooney, on her own time, took two puffs of her cigarette and said, “Hang your coat up.” She nodded toward the rack at the door. “Over there.”
Cutie turned her head to look at the rack before she faced Mooney and said, “No. I wanna keep it on. I’m not gonna be here long anyway.”
Mooney could see right through her. The tough-girl exterior she presented was fake ... a façade.
“I just wanna go back outside.”
“You’re not wearing a shirt under your coat, are you? Mooney asked, removing the cigarette from her lips, placing it in the glass ashtray. “You’re outside, being loud and crazy to get attention. All for a bunch of boys who don’t give a fuck about you. You look ridiculous.” She laughed. “I bet you don’t even know who you are, do you?”
With her lips poked out she said, “I’m Cutie Tudy from Southeast! I know who I am.” With multiple neck rolls she continued, “All the boys like me because I’m light skinned and I can fight.”
“I didn’t ask you what you look like. I asked you do you know who you are?” She frowned. “You can’t even tell me without talking about your outside appearance. Which can be taken from you in an instant.” She snapped her fingers. “Trust me, I know if it doesn’t fade first.”
Cutie was embarrassed and tried to buck at the woman to ruffle her feathers the way she’d done hers. “Fuck do you want with me? You ain’t nothing but a washed-up-ass bitch!” She giggled. “And everybody around here know it, too.” She paused. “Anyway, I done already told you my mamma said I can watch myself now.” She got up to walk away.
“Sit the fuck down,” Mooney said. “Now.” Cutie took a seat. “Why did you hit that little girl?”
Cutie blew out a puff of air, fell back into the seat, and took her iPod out of her pocket, with the white headphones attached, before stuffing them in her ears. She still had the blood of Seona on the front of her secondhand pink Baby Phat coat. Growing irritated, Mooney stood up, pulled the belt harder on her robe, and snatched the iPod and ear set away from her. “I asked you a question! Why would you strike your foster sister?”
“I did it because she stole my shit!” she lied.
“You mean this iPod?” she asked in a monotone voice, completely void of emotion. Mooney threw the device in a box on the floor next to her. “You hit her in the face for something she didn’t do? I know Melinda has her shit with her, but where did you learn to be so cruel?”
The troubled teenager, caught in her lie, felt her stomach juices swirling around. “Leave me the fuck alone!” she said, pulling her phone out of her pocket. She was as done as a piece of burnt fried chicken. “You ain’t supposed to be taking my stuff.” Her fingers moved quickly over her phone as she sent a group text to her friends:
Please tell mi Y this bitch just took my shyt. I’ma tell my motha when she get home from work and she gonna fuck her up 2.
Dee Dee responded:
Well hurry back outside. We talkin bout jumpin that bitch tmo at skool!
Mooney looked at the tight jeans Cutie had on, the small traces of blush on her face, and the cleavage spilling from her coat, and felt sorry for her. Tudy Ranger, aka Cutie Tudy, had stayed in Melinda Sheldon’s foster home longer than any other child. Usually the government never allowed children to stay with her long, because of past complaints. Most stayed no more than six months to a year, mainly because she would spend the money allocated for their care, and kick them out when they complained. It was obvious that although Melinda was unfit, she had a soft spot for Cutie. The damage being placed on her young mind bothered Mooney, and for the first time ever, she was going to tell someone the story that had been burdening her for years.
Mashing the cigarette out in the damp ashtray, it sizzled. Rubbing her left elbow she said, “You remind me of somebody.”
Cutie looked at her and then focused back on her phone. Small dings rang out every time she received a text. “Let me guess, you gonna tell me I was like you when you were a kid? Right?” she said in a sassy voice.
“You could never be me,” Mooney said. “You remind me of somebody who was so focused on outside shit, they became something else ... just to fit in.”
Cutie rolled her eyes and continued to stab at her keypad. “I don’t want to hear about it, because whoever you talking about wish they could be as cute as me.”
“Well, you gonna hear it anyway, otherwise I’m gonna tell the cops you hit that girl, and they’ll take you away. I know how much you love your foster mother.”
Her eyes widened. “You can’t do that!”
“I can do that and more.” Mooney rubbed her left elbow again. “When you were outside, before you hit that child, you called her an ugly black bitch. Why?”
“Because she a ugly black bitch, and not cute and light skinned like me, that’s why!”
“What makes you think she’s ugly, because she doesn’t have the same complexion as you? How are we that different?”
Cutie sighed, looked at the ceiling, and said, “Everybody knows red bones are cuter than dark-skinned girls. That’s just life.” She shrugged. “Most of the boys at my school are on Team Light Skin ... that’s what they call it anyway. Cutie sounded so ignorant but she didn’t know. Her young mind was infiltrated with the opinions of stupid adults, and she didn’t have an opinion of her own. When she tried to read Mooney, she said, “I don’t know why you mad at me, you light skinned too.”
Mooney sat down. “The story I’m gonna tell you is about a girl just like you.”
“This ain’t no Halloween story is it?” She stabbed at her keypad again. ’Cause I ain’t got time for all of that, ’cause nothing about me is gonna change.”
Cutie was suddenly inundated with texts but Mooney didn’t worry, because she knew when she heard the craziest story never told that she’d have her complete attention.
Chapter 1
Many Years Earlier
“Mamma got it wrong about what happened behind the school.”
—Farah
Twelve-year-old Farah Cotton was stunned silent, as she looked at her classmate being handled so roughly by the people she loved most.
“Hold his arms, babies! Hold ’em tight, too!” Brownie ordered her children Mia and Shadow, as they stood behind a bush in the back of Farah’s school. “I want him spread out like he Jesus on the cross!” A maniacal grin covered her chocolate skin, and her pink tongue hung out the side of her mouth. There was nothing more in life she loved than inflicting pain on others and the sight of blood. “That’s good. Just like that,” she coached. “Get ready, Farah. ’Cause I need you to pull his shorts down.”
Without looking into the boy’s eyes, she pulled down his shorts.
“Good ... Now get his drawers, too!” Brownie said.
With her eyes slammed shut, Farah pulled the boy’s drawers down, exposing his penis.
“Perfect, now get ready to kick him where it counts.”
“But what if he gets loose and hits me?” Farah asked, this time looking at her classmate, a boy she liked very much, a kid who just a few hours ago loaned her a few pieces of paper and a number 2 pencil to do her work in class. Her light skin, riddled with old sore scars, was flushed and she felt like she was five minutes from breaking out in hives. All her life, she along with her mother, sisters, and brother suffered from what they believed were allergies of the worst kind. Although their attacks seemed to be few and far between, Farah’s were triggered by anything from stress to the scent of household chemicals. “I don’t wanna do it!”
“They not gonna let him get you!” Brownie yelled, growing irritated with her daughter. “Are you, babies?”
“We got him, Mamma!” Shadow said, gripping Theo Cunningham’s wrist harder, as his older sister, Mia, grabbed his other wrist and pulled in the opposite direction. Shadow’s face, which was deep chocolate like the rest of their family, formed a row of sweat, which he quickly wiped away with his free hand. “He ain’t going nowhere!”
When they had a good hold of the twelve-year-old’s arms she said, “That’s good, Mia and Shadow! Keep him right there.”
“Sure thing, Mamma!” Mia said as she struggled to grab a few much-needed breaths due to being overweight. “This nigga gotta pay for the sins of his mother!” she continued, repeating Brownie’s deranged words. Brownie smiled in approval.
Farah stood next to her siblings, and looked at how they all seemed to enjoy what they were doing to the boy. Her confusion seemed to bring more attention to the fact that she was not like them. If you were to walk into the DC project they lived in, and pointed out the members of the Cotton family, you would surely pass over Farah a million times. People told her all the time how she was the pretty red one in the family and how she should be grateful she didn’t turn out as black as her mother, father, sisters, and brother. Farah never looked at the difference as a blessing. In her eyes, it was quite the contrary. She never wanted anything more than to look like the people she lived with every day.
She felt like an outcast when people would walk up to them, single her out, and say, “You so pretty, even with them scars on your face, and you got good hair, too.” What she wouldn’t give to sit between her mother’s legs in the kitchen and have her hair pressed and then styled with green grease like Chloe. How she prayed she’d wake up with a smooth, dark complexion like Mia, but her wish was never granted.
Her skin was yellow, her hair black, wavy, and shiny, and her heart was nowhere as hollow as the members of her family. It was true: nothing about Farah said she was a Cotton, except her last name. It wasn’t like the rest of the family wasn’t beautiful. When they weren’t fighting, and causing problems in the neighborhood, they were quite stunning to look at with their smooth skin tones reminiscent of the kings and queens of Africa. But because they were so unruly, nobody gave a fuck about outside appearances. They were ugly inside, so that made them ugly outside too.
“Please let me go,” Theo begged, as long strands of snot oozed from his nose and fell into his mouth. He quickly lapped up the salty nasal mucus to continue his pleading. “I didn’t do nothing!”
“Stop standing over there looking crazy, RedBone!” Brownie yelled, waking Farah out of her trivial thoughts. “Kick him in his dick! And do it hard, too, like we talked about!”
Farah looked at Theo, who was crying harder. “I don’t want to do it, Mama,” she refused. “He let me use his pencil at school today. He’s really nice!”
“You heard what the fuck I said, girl!” Brownie screamed as she pointed her long finger in her face. “That’s why I know you’re not no real Cotton! You not a fighter! And if Cottons don’t do nothing else, we fight and defend our name!”
“I am a Cotton!” Farah said with wide eyes.
Brownie always embraced an opportunity to make Farah feel inferior when she wanted her to do something. “Then do it!”
Farah walked slowly over to Theo, closed her eyes, and with all her might she kicked in Theo’s direction.