The Queen's Diamond Read online

  Mama blurted, “If her ass would’ve been where she was supposed to be, she wouldn’t have Saturday school in the first place.”

  The sound of her voice was irritating my soul. “Ma—”

  “Ma, what?” She was close to my face now. “Get yo’ ass in that shower and get ready for school. I’m not gonna tell yo’ triflin’ ass again. If I find out you didn’t go, you might as well not come back here.”

  My whole body felt tight. It was like this pent-up aggression that had been building from her constantly nagging was now surfacing. She was picking at me, and I wasn’t feeling it. “Well, I’m not going to school, so I might as well leave now, then. I don’t need you all up in my face, either.” I stormed down the hall toward my room, making my bare feet slap against the hardwood floor. “I’m not about to spend my birthday at school. Y’all got me all the way twisted.”

  “Ooh, Diego, I’m telling you, I’m gonna punch that li’l girl in the face!” Mama stormed.

  “No, you shouldn’t have to do that, Paula. Let me talk to her.”

  “Her mouth is so reckless. She’s not going to get away with this. Believe that, baby. Humph. I ain’t got time for this li’l girl.”

  “Now, just calm down,” Papi said. “I said I’ll talk to her.”

  “I can’t calm down. What’s talking going to do? I’m supposed to let her talk to me any kind of way?”

  “I didn’t say that, Paula. She acts just like you. Where you think she gets it from?”

  “Nah, Diego. She thinks she’s grown. She ain’t even graduating on time. Woke up eighteen years old, and now she thinks she can talk to me any kind of way. No, sir. I’m tellin’ you and everybody up in here, there is only one queen up in this bitch, and that’s me. She done crossed the line.”

  I slammed my bedroom door to drown out their voices. I didn’t want to hear her mouth. Papi usually stuck up for me, even when I was wrong. Things were changing, and I figured the only way they would appreciate me was if I was gone. I threw off my extra-large sleeping shirt and put on my bra. I wasn’t going to Saturday school, and that was it. I was going to spend my day the way I wanted. Since my family wasn’t celebrating my day, I was going to do whatever I wanted.

  When I was growing up, I used to imagine leaving home for college, with my mama in tears, begging me not to go, and my papi being proud that I was leaving the nest to go to college. I would pack my small car with boxes and my suitcases, and then I would watch them wave at me from my side mirror as I drove away. Now that was nothing but a dream. How could I think about college when I wasn’t graduating from high school on time? My GPA was barely a 2.0, and I hadn’t applied anywhere. I had already made up my mind that college wasn’t for me.

  I packed fast, anger fueling me. I wrapped my toothbrush after I brushed my teeth. After I had my bags packed and all the money I had out of my piggy bank, which was about seventy-five dollars, I texted my best friend, Mina.

  Me: Mama kicked me out. I got nowhere to go. The bitch is crazy.

  Mina: You know you can stay here. You coming now?

  Me: Yeah.

  Mina had always said that I could stay at her apartment. She had graduated last year and had a job. I didn’t know where she was working these days, because she always quit after two weeks and then would be working somewhere else. The main thing was she was paying her own bills and didn’t have to worry about school anymore.

  When I came out of my room, Papi was still working on the yard, and Javier was mowing the lawn. When I reached the living room, Mama was standing in the middle of the room, smoking a joint.

  “You better leave all your keys right here on this table.” She pointed with her pinkie finger as she held on to a joint with her thumb and pointer finger. She hit the joint hard and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Car keys too.”

  “Huh? It’s my car. Papi bought it.”

  “He got the car ’cause he thought yo’ ass was graduating from high school. Since you so muthafuckin’ grown, get yo’ own shit, bitch.”

  With tears burning the back of my eyes, I reluctantly tossed all my keys onto the coffee table. I didn’t look back as I walked ten blocks to Mina’s apartment complex.

  * * *

  I was sweaty and out of breath by the time I made it to Mina’s complex. The humidity itself had taken my breath away. She saw me coming from her balcony. Mina was wearing Daisy Duke shorts and a pink half shirt that showed off her belly button, and she was barefoot. Her lip gloss was popping as she sipped her bottle of Coke with a red straw.

  Mina was my best friend, and she was so sweet. She was five feet, three inches of pure peanut butter – brown curves. Mina was a beautiful Afro-Cuban girl. She was born in Cuba and had come over as an illegal immigrant with her entire family. We had been best friends since I started high school, and she was the only person I told everything to. She’d been a grade above me, but she hadn’t had any friends, and neither had I. When she’d graduated last year, I’d felt lost, so I’d skipped school to hang out with her.

  Ever since Mina had got her own spot a few months ago, I had hardly gone to school. I liked being over here. My mom always hated on me for being here. Mina had three older brothers and a couple of uncles who were in and out of prison, and Ma swore up and down I was fucking one of them. I was fucking, but not any of her brothers. That was just nasty. I was comfortable around them because they were like my brothers too. Mina had a big heart and always let her family crash at her spot whenever. She kept her door open for family no matter how crowded it got.

  “Wait . . . Hold up. You walked? Why didn’t you call me?” she yelled down to me from her balcony. “I would’ve picked you up.”

  “The bitch took my car.” I wiped my forehead and exhaled. “You got a whip?”

  “You see that Chevy right there?” She pointed to a red car that looked brand new. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  “No. You must’ve thought you did, but you didn’t.”

  She giggled. “Oh. My fault.”

  “Sammy gave you a pay raise?” I asked, wondering how she could afford rent, a light bill, and now a brand-new car.

  “I don’t work at Sammy’s no more . . . That wasn’t paying shit. I got something else poppin’.”

  “Oh, okay . . . You gonna tell me what’s poppin’? I need a job.”

  She sipped her soda and didn’t answer about hooking me up with a job. “Happy fuckin’ Birthday. You are now officially an adult. How does it feel to be eighteen?”

  I couldn’t smile, because I was too hot. Now that I wasn’t walking, sweat was forming all over my body, especially under my boobs. “You gonna let me in or not?”

  “You look hot and mad as hell,” she laughed.

  “Girl, I’m over this shit. I had to walk all the way up over here. You got another Coke? ’Cause you making that shit look really good.” I sighed as I walked up the stairs to her front door.

  She smacked her lips, disappeared into the apartment, and opened the front door for me a few seconds later. “I should have one bottle left in the fridge. Now that my uncle NuNu is staying here again, we can’t keep nothin’. I need to go grocery shopping, but I do that on Saturdays, as you know.”

  As soon as I was inside and that freezing air from her air conditioner hit me, I felt relief. I went to her refrigerator, and it was empty as hell. She had an empty pizza box, an empty jar of Welch’s grape jelly, and that one unopened bottle of soda. I took it and closed the fridge. I unscrewed the cap and took a few gulps. I burped from the bubbles.

  “Where can I put my bags?” I asked.

  “Come on. Let’s put them in my closet.”

  I followed her to the back of the untidy two-bedroom apartment. There was a big pile of clothes on her couch and a sink full of dirty dishes, but Mina kept her bedroom spotless. She was a neat freak, but only when it came to her bedroom. I handed her my suitcases, and she put them in her closet with the mirrored doors.

  “So, what’s up? You graduating or not?�
� she asked.

  “The fuckin’ school called and told my mom I ain’t graduating. I think I’m a few credits short.”

  “But you can always make those up in summer school. That’s what you’re going to do, right?”

  I rolled my eyes. One thing about Mina was that she always said to stop fucking around and get my diploma, but I didn’t see the point of that.

  “I’m too far behind to finish up this summer. I probably gotta go to continuation school or something.”

  “Damn it, Desi. You’re that far behind? I told you to go to school, but nooo, you just had to be with your boo.”

  “Now you sound like her,” I scowled, feeling irritated.

  She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Well, since school is not on your list of things to do and you say you need a job, how about you come and work with me?”

  “You gone tell me where you work and what you do and whatnot?”

  “Sit down on the bed real fast,” she said.

  “Why?” I gulped the soda.

  “Just do it.”

  I sat on the corner of her bed and watched her go into the top of her closet and pull out a shoebox. “You work at a shoe store?”

  She looked at me like I was crazy. “Hell nah. Shut up and listen.” She opened the box and showed me that it was full of money bundled with rubber bands. “I have three more boxes like this. I made all of this in four days.”

  My eyes nearly popped out of my head. “Doin’ what?”

  “Nothin’ but dancin’.” She shrugged. “You got some money on you?”

  “I took all my money out of my piggy bank. It ain’t much, but I can eat with it for a few days. Wait, so you’re dancin’ or strippin’?”

  “Dancin’.” She took a bundle of money without counting it and said, “Here. Take this.”

  I took the money reluctantly while asking, “Where you strippin’?”

  “I’m dancin’ at the Queen of Diamonds. You ever heard of it?”

  “Nah . . . So, you be dancin’ naked?” I asked, trying to imagine taking off my clothes for strangers.

  “Sometimes . . . Hey, how long you need to stay?”

  “I don’t want to go back home, not for a while, anyway. She told me if I don’t go to Saturday school, then don’t come back, so I really don’t know.”

  “You know you can always stay as long as you need. I gotta dance tonight. You should come, and if you think you can hang, I’ll talk to Queen about you.”

  “Okay.” I started to count the money Mina had given me, while she returned the shoebox to the top of her closet. I paused when I was midway through the bundle of bills. “We still going to the beach?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  “You ain’t invite Montego?” she asked with a smile.

  Montego was my so-called boo, and he was a year older than me. We were off and on so much because he was so childish and played too much. I was mad at him because he hadn’t called or sent a text to tell me Happy Birthday, as if I wasn’t important. Plus, I had heard he was fucking bitches all over Miami. I couldn’t stand a cheating-ass nigga.

  “Nah, I ain’t talk to him.”

  “It’s always the light-skinned boys that act like that,” she said and laughed.

  I laughed, shaking my head. “I don’t know what skin tone has to do with it, but he’s so stupid. Speaking of boos, you tell Zay to meet us up there?”

  Xavier, aka Zay, was Mina’s boyfriend. They had been in a relationship for only six months, but they acted like they had been together forever.

  “He’s on his way over here now. We’re riding with him to the beach.”

  I nodded, but then my mind went back to her new gig. “So . . . how you be dancin’? You be all on the poles and shit?”

  She stuck her tongue out and then replied, “Yeah, but you’ll see tonight.”

  I was curious, but then I realized I hadn’t finished counting the money she had handed me. I added up the rest of the twenties, tens, and fives. “Mina, this is four hundred dollars.”

  “I know. Does that give you a li’l motivation?”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t a virgin or nothing like that, but I had never been in a strip club before. I liked to get naked when Montego and I got down, but how did she expect me to get naked in front of a roomful of strangers?

  “Why you lookin’ all scared?” she asked with a scowl.

  “I ain’t scared.”

  “Yeah you are. You ain’t about to be dancin’ tonight, so you don’t need to be scared. All I said was to come and watch, but if you want to make some money, then cool. I got you. I’ve seen you naked before. You got a bangin’-ass body. You got a phat ass and nice juicy titties, your stomach is flat, and you can shake and twerk your ass better than me. And you cute as fuck. Dudes stay gettin’ at you everywhere we go. We always talk about all the nasty shit you do for Montego all the time. This ain’t no different.”

  I was a freak; I liked having sex and dancing, but with Montego only. Nobody else. I knew I wasn’t ugly, so I didn’t need her to tell me that. I was five feet two, with curves in all the right places. So many niggas tried to get at me regularly, but I didn’t fuck around. Montego wasn’t my first, but he had been the only one for two years.

  “Yeah, but with my boo, it’s different. So, wait . . . You do nasty shit at the club?”

  “You gotta be a freak to do this, period. Girl, the nastier and the freakier, the more money you get, but we ain’t even about to talk about this right now. I’m about to get changed, because Zay will be rollin’ up in a minute. You got your bathing suit on already?”

  “No. I’ll get changed right now.”

  “Matter of fact, take off your clothes for me.”

  “For you?” I asked with a frown.

  She smacked her lips and rolled her eyes. “How many times I’ve seen you naked before? Shit, we’ve had sex in the same room how many times now?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t look at you. I was too busy getting mine.”

  She rolled her eyes again and waited for me to get naked. “If you can’t take off your clothes for me, then you sho’ can’t take them off for strangers.”

  I took a deep breath and hopped up from her bed. I removed my jean shorts, tank top, bra, and panties and kicked them away from my feet. She folded her arms across her chest and scanned my body, as if she had forgotten what it looked like.

  “Turn around,” she instructed.

  I turned around fast and put my hands on my hips.

  “Damn, yo’ ass got a li’l bigger since the last time I saw you,” she noted. “Montego has been bending that thang over, huh?”

  “Somethin’ like that,” I replied, turning back around to face her.

  “I can tell.” She walked closer to me and put her hands on my shoulders. She guided me to the full-length mirror that was hanging on the back of her closet door. “Look at yourself. You’re beautiful, Desi.”

  “Thank ya, thank ya.” I looked at myself. I knew what my body looked like, but I tried looking at myself to see what she was staring at. There wasn’t anything about my body that I didn’t like. “Okay, I’ll go to the club tonight, but I won’t make no promises ’bout strippin’. My daddy might kill me.” I grabbed one of my bags from her closet to get dressed.

  “A’ight. Deal. You know, it’s crazy how you don’t care anything about your mama’s feelings, but you still want to be an angel for your daddy. Straight-up Daddy’s girl.”

  “You know it. Hey, can we get a fresh fruit batido when we get to the beach?” I asked, digging in the bag for my bathing suit.

  “Yeah, yeah. I got you. It will be my birthday treat. Hurry up. I think I just heard him pull up.”

  The bass from the sound system in Zay’s car was faint, but I could hear it. I rushed into my bathing suit, threw my jeans and tank on over it, and grabbed my purse.

  “I got the towels and sunblock in my beach bag,” Mina said. “You got your sunglasses?�
��

  “Shit. I left them at home.”

  “I got an extra pair,” she said, reaching into her top dresser drawer. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  We loved South Beach. It was only about twenty-five minutes away, and we always had so much fun there. Underneath a mist that swirled thicker than air freshener lay warm sand, sand that shifted underneath the pressure of my bare feet. I didn’t need to look down at the sand, only feel it. The feel of it always took away any worries I had.

  I looked out past the sand at the ocean, and it was alive with constant motion as a scatter of people jumped in and splashed around. I inhaled the salty smell. It was a fragrance that summoned surfboards, half-naked men and women, and their dogs. The sound of the ocean gave me internal peace. These waves were never the gentle kind that rolled up the beach the way I had seen in the movies. And they weren’t the crashing kind, either. These powerful waves moved smoothly but then died within a few feet. South Beach could’ve been anywhere, but it wasn’t. This was my home, and I had been coming here ever since I was a small child.

  I got out of my jeans and tank, stood still, facing the breeze, and soaked it all in as I sipped my fresh fruit batido through a straw. I savored the mango sherbet, vanilla ice cream, fresh mango, milk, and honey blend. It was the best, and ever since I was a kid, Papi had always got us a batido before hitting the beach. The beach didn’t feel like the beach without it.

  “Zay, can you put this sunblock on my back?” Mina cooed before she sipped her coconut and pineapple batido.

  You couldn’t wipe the smile off his face as he happily obliged. Zay was tall, with a baby face. He wore a fade, and his skin was smooth, dark, and chocolate, much like Hershey’s Special Dark. He was wearing basketball shorts and nothing else except a pair of worn white Jordans that needed to be thrown away. I didn’t see how Mina even dated a nigga with fucked-up shoes. I wouldn’t be caught dead, but he was cute. His skin was dripping with sweat already, and we had just got there. His abs were glistening as he took off his backpack.

  “Baby, don’t you think Desi got a bangin’-ass body? She should work at Queen of Diamonds with me, huh?”