All Hail the Queen Page 2

  A tall, slender light-skinned woman with a wild, curly, bright red Afro glanced up from the head of the preschool-age child sitting between her freckled knees on the step. The little girl offered her a welcoming smile. The woman did not.

  She bristled at the coolness. Fuck I do to her?

  When Naeema moved back into the house and set about making it livable she knew she didn’t bake brownies and visit her neighbors for introductions. Hell, she doubted she could point any of them faux, suburban living asses out in a lineup but instant hostility? Taking a deep breath to keep from getting to the woman’s level, she forced a smile.

  “How you doin’?” Naeema began, placing her hands on her hips. “Someone just broke in my house and I wondered if you saw somebody running away? I live in—”

  “Nah. I ain’t seen shit,” Freckles said, with one last hard look and an eye roll.

  At the sound of a chuckle, Naeema looked up and spotted a man sitting on the porch in a kitchen chair leaning against the siding. One of the white pillars nearly shielded his presence. His eyes shifted down to take in her thick thighs in the black high-waisted leggings she wore with wedge sneakers and a tank top tied beneath her full breasts. He twisted the toothpick in his mouth from side to side, enjoying the view, and Naeema knew he was the reason for the woman’s instant animosity. His disrespect. His past—or current—cheating. His shit done to her. That was their bullshit. Not hers. Fuck ’em.

  Naeema kept it moving.

  “He ran around dah corner.”

  Naeema stopped and looked down at the little girl who was still pointing down the street. The opposite direction Naeema was moving.

  “Shut your ass the fuck up,” Freckles snapped at her, tugging roughly on the girl’s hair and popping her cheek with the back of her hand causing tears to fill the whites of her eyes.

  Queen’s anger sparked and she balled her right hand into a fist as she raised it from her side.

  “What the fuck wrong wit’ you, yo?” the man on the porch roared, jumping to his feet to rush down the stairs and grip the woman’s red Afro in his hand to tug at just as roughly.

  Queen uncurled her fingers and lowered the hand she was just about to swing against the woman’s freckle-covered neck. Instead, she turned and crossed the street needing to be out of their space for her anger to ebb. On any other given day Queen would straight snap on a man abusing a woman—especially in front of a child—but in that moment she didn’t give a shit. He could straight deliver a Mortal Kombat punch to her ass and she wouldn’t blink.

  Ignoring them, she turned and looked down toward Eastern Parkway. The traffic on the one-way boulevard flowed steadily and she knew the thief was long gone. All she wanted was a clue as to how he looked. Any little clue to help her hunt him down and then beat his ass down.

  No need to keep going that way. His back would be to them.

  Heading back down the street she locked her eyes on an eight-unit apartment building. The porch was crowded with a dozen teenage boys all posted up without a care in the world. She walked up to them and her eyes narrowed as she watched a young girl in booty shorts and a tank walk out onto the porch and take a blunt from the mouth of one dude, hit it, and then turn to blow a stream of thick smoke into the mouth of another just before she kissed him.

  Naeema frowned a bit as she got closer and saw that although the girl’s thick body said eighteen her face revealed she was no more than thirteen. A baby trapped in a grown woman’s frame. That didn’t bode well for a young girl without much sense to know better. Naeema knew that shit firsthand.

  Her steps faltered as the girl turned and walked inside the apartment building. Every boy watched her movements with their eyes before their bodies followed as well. One by one each disappeared from the porch into the building. One by one.

  Naeema shook her head. It would take a fool—and she was far from that—to know their plans included entering her. Violating her while she took their sex like a compliment. One by one. “Shit,” she swore.

  She continued down the street and then took the steps by two before she pushed the front door open and paused before entering the hallway. It was unlit and the darkness offered some coolness from the heat and sheltered the bodies now gathered in the corner with their backs to her.

  “Damn that bitch can take a dick, yo,” one of the voices said.

  “Hurry up, yo. I got next in the pussy,” said another voice.

  Naeema pressed her eyes closed as she felt taken back to a time and place where she was the young, dumb girl in a small room with one bed and a line of boys waiting to fuck. One by one.

  She pushed the door open wider and the band of sunlight streaming in widened. The boys at the rear of the semicircle, who were of various heights and weights, glanced over their shoulders. Their faces were a mix of guilt and annoyance. Naeema didn’t give a fuck.

  As the boys’ urgent whispers began to rise in the air she jammed a thin and less than welcoming rug under the door to keep it open. “Get out. All of you,” Naeema said, her voice showing her aggravation that she even cared to stop the train.

  “Who dat?”

  “I don’t know that bitch.”

  With an eye roll and a heavy breath Naeema came striding toward them, pushing the sweaty and musty bodies out of the way. She turned up her nose at the smell of the girl in the air. It wasn’t pleasant and in the heat of the hallway it was even worse.

  A thin boy was between the girl’s open thighs as she lay on the floor. He hadn’t stopped his awkward rutting in the commotion. The girl looked up and their eyes met in that quick second just before Naeema bent down to grab the teenager by his neck and the rim of his pants, which were down just below his flat ass.

  With one solid grunt she yanked him out of her pussy and onto his feet as he hollered out, “What the fuck!”

  “Get up,” she said to the girl still lying on the floor with her legs spread wide like the arms of a cult leader preaching to his followers.

  BAP.

  “Ow,” Naeema yelled as a hit landed across the side of her face sending sharp darts of pain behind her eyes and her mouth.

  “Damn!” someone hollered out.

  The footsteps of some of the boys flying out of the hall echoed.

  Naeema felt herself sway on her feet but she fought to stay up on them. Oh shit, I got hit.

  “Why you hit her, Tee-Tee?” the girl asked.

  Naeema stiffened her back, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and then looked over at the teenager still standing there. Five others stood with him. She didn’t know if they were enjoying the show or were ready to pounce. She got her mind-set focused on the latter.

  I ain’t no killa but don’t try me. Well, I sorta am a killa. Anyway . . .

  She fired off a round of punches to Tee-Tee’s smug face like it was a speed bag in a boxing gym. When she caught the sudden movement of someone in her peripheral vision she instinctively turned and delivered a solid gut punch that sent the short, squat-looking boy to his knees as he fought to reclaim the breath she knocked from him. Just as quickly as she turned back and grabbed Tee by the throat he tried to deliver another blow.

  Silly rabbit . . .

  She grabbed his arm and whipped his young buck ass around to slam against the wall as she twisted his arm behind his back.

  He released a high-pitched scream that would put a soprano to shame.

  “Anybody else wanna try me?” she said, locking eyes with each one to let them know she was ready for them. She even leveled a hard look at the girl, who stood there with her booty shorts and underwear down around one ankle.

  No one said a damn thing. Good decision.

  With a grimace she jerked Tee-Tee from the wall and pushed him across the distance into the opposite one. She waited to see if he was ready for some more.

  He shifted his eyes away from her. He wasn’t.

  Naeema turned and the remaining boys stepped back, making a path straight for the ajar front door. She
headed right for it, ready to feel the sun and get some fresh air. Just before she stepped out onto the porch she turned and pointed her finger at Little Miss Hot Ass. “Let me holla at you for a minute,” she said to the young girl, pausing just long enough on the porch to take a deep inhale.

  For the moment all thoughts of the man who broke into her home were set aside . . . but just for the moment.

  2

  “Now,” Naeema said with emphasis over her shoulder before jogging down the stairs and crossing the street to make her way to her house.

  She didn’t come to a stop until she was in the house and standing with her dick pipe in her hand after searching through her clothes strewn all over the floor. There was a small chip in the tip of the lifelike dick that gave the smooth black finish a white spot. It was slightly imperfect but at least it was still in her possession . . . unlike the half-ounce of weed that had been in the shoebox with it. Good shit too.

  “Thieving ass,” Naeema muttered darkly, wanting nothing more than to pack the hollowed out balls of the pipe with a good chunk of top-grade medicinal Blueberry Yum Yum weed and then suck the fruity-tasting smoke through the hole in the tip.

  She didn’t have a health problem and her doctor knew nothing about that particular medicinal healing. She just preferred the medicinal strains to the bullshit sold on the street that was more stems and nasty-ass mold than anything. Medicinal weed had elevated the game and Mook had the best connection to a dispensary out of Los Angeles.

  She walked out onto the porch with her dick still in her hand just as Little Miss Hot Ass made her way across the street with clear attitude on her face and in the back-and-forth motion of her hips as she strutted. Fast self.

  Naeema sat down on the top step on the porch, sitting her pipe behind the column as she pulled her cell phone from her bra. She dialed. It rang just once.

  “Yo, whaddup sexy,” said the voice coming through her cell phone.

  “You. You know that. Twenty-four seven, love,” Naeema said in a soft, sexy voice. “When can you get here?”

  “On the way.”

  Yes. Yes. Yesssss.

  “I need—” she stressed.

  “I know what you need.”

  Yeah my motherfucking weed.

  Every bit of that convo had been as fake as a five-dollar pack of weave and filled with enough codes for her weed connect, Mook, to know how much weed she wanted to buy. Just in case the feds were ear hustling.

  “Aight,” Naeema said, ending the call.

  Beep.

  The girl stepped up onto the sidewalk and Naeema motioned with her fingers for her to come closer. “What’s your name?” she asked her, sitting the phone down on the step beside her.

  “Mya,” she said as she opened the gate and then closed it behind herself.

  “Where’s your mom?” Naeema asked.

  “She works at night.”

  Humph. I ain’t judging . . . but I’m judging.

  “What were you planning on getting out of that . . . besides a wet ass?”

  The girl remained silent.

  Naeema patted a spot on the step.

  Mya glanced back over her shoulder.

  Naeema followed her line of vision. The same remainder of boys was sitting on the porch of the apartment building waiting for her. To them Naeema had just hit a PAUSE button and not STOP.

  They raggedy-ass train was all the way off the tracks and they ain’t even know it.

  “You remind me of myself a long time ago,” Naeema began, looking away from the teenage boys. “I had to learn that little boys think with their dicks and not their heads and for damn sure not their hearts. No matter how many of them you let run up in you—run a train on you—they will never respect you or love you for that.”

  Mya was a pretty light-skinned girl with bright eyes and jet-black hair she wore pulled up in a short tail more suited for a pig than a pony. Her edges were thick and dry and the ends of her hair just as thirsty. Her pink tank was so old and worn that the edges were torn and dark from constant wear. Her cutoff shorts were two sizes too small.

  Naeema knew the girl was doing the best she could with what she knew to do. She hated to judge her mother right off the bat but it was hard not to.

  “They just my friends,” Mya said with a one-shoulder shrug.

  Naeema fought not to grimace at the plaque lining her teeth at the gum line.

  “Don’t think you so smart that you do dumb shit and don’t even know it,” Naeema said. “Your friends don’t fuck you in groups on a dirty floor in a hot-ass hallway . . . or anywhere else for that matter.”

  “But—”

  Naeema held up her hands and locked eyes with her. “But nothing. My grandfather used to tell me that little boys would use me for sex like I wasn’t nothing but a walking piece of pussy. I never forgot the words but I never listened. Trust me more than I trusted him when I tell you the same damn thing.”

  She leaned over and gripped the teenager’s round chin in her hand. “They’ll run right through a pretty girl like you.”

  Mya leaned her head back just enough to break Naeema’s hold but her eyes were filled with the direction of her thoughts as she shifted them over to her “friends” across the street.

  “Besides . . . if you’re too young to know how to wash your ass you are definitely too young to be giving up that ass.”

  Mya pressed her knees together and tucked her hands under her arms after she crossed them over her chest. Her eyes filled with tears.

  Naeema smiled at her trying to soften the harshness of her words. The world was harsh and the road she was traveling offered no softness. She was saying to Mya how she wished someone had laid shit out for her. Even her grandfather hadn’t kept it one hundred with her. Hard and to the point. It was difficult to miss something smacking you dead in the face. Plus with all the attitude she was toting on her shoulders a little humbling was just what she needed for an attitude adjustment.

  She’s a young girl already smelling like an old whore and that shit needs to be handled.

  “A woman has to wash and apply deodorant once a day, Mya. Sometimes two,” Naeema said, cushioning her tone. “If you need soap or deodorant and stuff . . . or you just want to talk, my door is open.”

  Mya nodded and offered her a hesitant smile.

  Naeema spotted Mook’s nondescript dark burgundy Honda Civic. It was at least ten years old and looked like it was held together with wire hangers and prayers. Just like the phone call, the car was a front to keep him below the radar as he operated his hustle. “You go on home, Mya,” Naeema said. Deuces.

  “What’s your name?” Mya asked as she rose to her feet.

  “Naeema.”

  “That’s your boyfriend?”

  Naeema shifted her eyes from Mook climbing from his car. “No,” she said with emphasis.

  “Yeah, he don’t never stay long when he come to your house,” Mya said, glancing back over her shoulder.

  “Oh so you nosy too?” Naeema asked.

  Mya just shrugged one shoulder.

  “Bye-bye.”

  “Bye, Miss Naeema,” she said, before jogging down the steps.

  Naeema rose to her feet as Mook walked through the opening in the side of the fence next to the asphalt drive. He looked exactly like his name. Odd. His face was long and thin but his eyes, nose, and lips were big. He was well over six feet but walked with his shoulders slumped like he didn’t have a bit of motivation. Another front.

  Mook climbed the stairs and sat down on the step beside her pulling his hand from his pocket to settle behind her. It lightly brushed her ass. “What’s good, Naeema?” he asked with a lick of his perpetually dry lips.

  “Don’t get fucked up, Mook,” she warned, side-eyeing his J. J. from Good Times remix-looking ass.

  He laughed. “I would love to get fucked, Naeema,” he said, knocking his knee against hers.

  She locked eyes with him. “I said fucked up. Big difference,” she told him, ri
sing to her feet to adjust her leggings, fully aware that her ass and thighs were in his line of vision.

  “Damn, Naeema. Don’t do it like that,” he said, as she wiggled her bottom and pulled the leggings up higher. “You been teasing me for the longest.”

  And tease is all it will ever be.

  Naeema was more than willing to leave Mook’s odd-looking ass horny and hot if it got her a discount on her weed.

  She focused on Mya walking up onto the porch of the apartment building where she lived and easing past the teenage boys still waiting on her. Naeema smiled when Mya shook her head at something one of them said before she walked into the building and solidly closed the door behind her. Moments later the boys threw their hands up in disgust—and probably disappointment—as they came down the porch and went walking down the street and eventually around the corner.

  Not one dared to glance over in her direction.

  “Sheee-it, I’ll double you up if you just let me smell that fat motherfucker,” Mook pleaded.

  She looked down at him as he continued to stare at her ass as he licked his bulbous lips. “Double?” she asked with an arch of one of her well-shaped brows.

  I just dropped a hundred last week and that stash is deep in the lungs of the fucker who robbed me. Now I can get a fucking BOGO deal . . . for a sniff?

  Mook jumped to his feet and towered over her as he claimed every inch of his full height. His face was excited that she even considered that shit. “Damn right. Whassup?” he asked, cocking his head to the side and holding up his large hands.

  “Just a sniff, Mook,” she agreed, bending to pick up her pipe and the bag of bluish-colored weed he dropped from his hand when he first sat down beside her. “I got robbed and my weed got lifted. That’s the only thing giving you life right now.”

  “Well, God bless that thieving motherfucker then,” Mook said, comically bugging his eyes out even more.

  Naeema turned to walk to her front door and he followed close behind like her shadow. “Weed first,” she said over her shoulder before pushing the door she left slightly ajar.

  “A businesswoman. No problem,” he said, turning to rush back down the stairs.