“No. Fuckin’ LaTavia is jealous of me. Just leave me alone. I’m going home!” I interrupted and began walking towards home.
Twenty minutes later, he convinced me to get in the car and we drove home. He never denied the allegations, but that realization didn’t come for quite some time. When we arrived in front of my housing building, everyone was outside because a fight had just gone down. Suddenly, all eyes went to O and his girl with the blood shot eyes.
O got arrested the week after I’d gotten back from Ohio. He was incarcerated for three weeks. It’s absurd how they do young black men who don’t have the money for low tolerant attorneys that could solve many issues by just appearing in court and speaking three or four words. They sit in jail for long and unnecessary periods of time. They claimed that he got lost in the system after they raided a party up on Montgomery Ave. I recalled begging him not to go to that party but he insisted.
One day O said he had a surprise for me. He told me to tell my mom that I was going to Keysha’s house one night. I just knew that my mother wouldn’t fall for it but did it anyway. She bought the story much to my surprise. That Thursday night O picked me up from Keysha’s place around the corner from the projects and took me to The Loop Hotel.
That night I became a woman, O and I went all the way. It wasn’t as good as Keysha described it to be but it was definitely satisfying. The next day I went to school with a huge smile on my face. I was now a woman, so I thought. That’s it for LaTavia, I figured.
Over the next few months, I began to focus on college since there were offers left and right for scholarships. I made sure to include O on every decision concerning my tertiary education. I wanted to move out of Jersey, possibly south, anywhere away from the dreaded place called home. O would always say, “Anywhere you wanna go, baby girl.”
I sent off applications and from that point on things just got worse. Samantha began to stay away more frequently. The hot, home cooked meals would stop. Chyna would constantly be at our grandparents’ because I had basketball. Akeem would grow distant, taking up long hours in the streets. Whenever I would try to discuss our mother’s new habit, he would give me the cold shoulder and walk away. One day he even had the nerve to say, “You need to stop fuckin’ wit dat nigga, O. Worry about that first! Open your eyes to what’s goin’ on!”
That statement had taken me aback. Akeem never got in my business concerning O. He would just tell me to be careful; O was an older more experienced guy. “He’s been around the block before,” was all that he’d say.
I fired back, “Keeme, how ‘bout you stay out of my business and get yourself a girl instead of sleeping with all those dope heads you be servicing!” Akeem left the room shaking his head, clearly exasperated.
J-Boog would soon move in. His mother, Karen, went off to rehab again for the fourth time, which left him and his older brother homeless—again. J-Boog was a good person in my eyes. He always respected me because of his relationship with my brother. He would be the only other person besides O that I could talk to about my mother’s drug habit, of course when Akeem was not around. But even J-Boog acted as if he was keeping something from me.