White Lines Read online

  “Outside,” Jada answered flatly. She didn’t even glance at her mother. But she noticed Mr. Charlie looking at her from across the room.

  “Well, you better not come in here as late as you did last night.” Edna’s attempt at sounding authoritative was unconvincing to Jada. “I don’t want you over that boy Sean’s house, neither. His mother ain’t even home half the time. I ain’t stupid, Jada.” Edna shook her head. “That’s where you were last night, ain’t it?”

  Jada shook her head, preparing to lie and say that she hadn’t been. But to her surprise, Charlie did it for her. “Nah, Edna. I saw Jada last night in my building with her friend Shante. Shante lives in my building. I know her family. Her mother works every day. They good people. Her and Shante are good girls. They don’t be getting in trouble like these other girls around here. I look out for her, you know.” He smiled at Edna, and she seemed to relax.

  Both Edna and Charlie looked at Jada. Jada’s brow furrowed slightly, wondering what was going on. She had seen Mr. Charlie the night before. But she hadn’t been with Shante at all. She had been in the corner store with Sean. While she had gone to get a soda from the back, Sean had been at the counter asking for condoms. When Jada had joined him at the register, Charlie had walked in. She had cringed while Charlie ordered a pack of cigarettes and watched her walk out of the store with Sean’s hand on her ass. And here he was lying for her. As her mother searched her face for confirmation, Jada nodded. Charlie winked at her.

  She suppressed a smile as she left. Charlie followed her out, as he went to retrieve the air conditioner from his car. When they were out of Edna’s earshot, Charlie said, “You know I saw you last night, right? Now, what would your mother think about what you were doing with that boy?”

  Jada looked at him. “I know you came to give my mother more than an air conditioner. And what would your wifey think about that?”

  Charlie smirked. “I’ll keep your secrets if you keep mine,” he said.

  Jada smiled back. “Deal.” She strutted off toward Broadway, and Charlie couldn’t help watching.

  From then on, Jada felt that Mr. Charlie was her ally. He saw her from time to time, being fast and acting grown. And she turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the loud fucking he did with her mother twice a week. Charlie treated Edna as his chick on the side. Whatever she needed, Mr. Charlie could provide. Charlie always brought them something. He gave Edna money, groceries—whatever. He’d give her money to take Jada shopping, and he drove them to the mall. But what Jada liked about him was that he seemed to understand her. He seemed to remember what it was like to be young and to want to have freedom—to have fun. Whenever Jada told her mother that she had been at the after-school center, while she and Ava had really been riding around with niggas smoking weed, Charlie knew the truth. And he never told their mother. He would even cover for Jada if Edna caught her in a lie. He became her coconspirator.

  One night Charlie bumped into Jada as she stood in the stairwell of his building smoking weed with Shante. He stopped and warned her that she would get in trouble if the cops caught her smoking there. “You should be careful where you do your dirt,” he said. He could tell that she was moving in the wrong direction, because she was hanging out with Shante more and more. Shante was bad news, and everybody knew it. Her mother seemed blind to it, and she was grown long before the law said so. She was a booster. She smoked weed all day, boosted her shit, and got her money. Shante hardly ever went to school, and she seemed to be able to come and go as she pleased. Her mother worked all the time, and was obsessed with her younger boyfriend. Shame’s mom had time for little else than young Raymond, so her apartment was the hangout spot. Shante was fast, and she didn’t give a fuck. Jada would get high with her just about every day after school. Some days they would invite guys over and get busy with them, but usually they would just chill, drinking and smoking, talking and acting grown.

  Jada nodded. “I’ll be careful. Thank you, Mr. Charlie.”

  He walked up the stairs, and she kept right on smoking. She took his advice, though. And after that they started smoking at Shame’s house.

  They opened all the windows and sprayed air freshener to keep the scent out. By the time her mother got home, the place was always back in shape. This became their routine. It was on one such occasion that smoking with Shante changed Jada’s life forever.

  They were smoking at Shante’s place with her friend, Lucas. Lucas was a guy everybody knew yet no one was really close to. He was ugly, loud, rude, and often dirty-looking. The only reason anyone even bothered to socialize with Lucas at all was because he always had weed, always had money. Hanging with Lucas always meant a good time. Jada was beginning to suspect that Shante and Lucas had something going on. It seemed that every time Jada visited Shante these days, Lucas was there already. She couldn’t understand what Shante saw in him, but figured it was none of her business, as long as he kept the weed coming. On this day, everybody was smoking Lucas’s blunt. It wasn’t unlike them to experiment with different types of weed: hydro, blueberry, chocolate, purple haze. They mixed it with hash, and smoked with bongs, different cigars, and rolling papers. Almost every time they got together, they tried something new. So when Lucas rolled up a blunt and passed it to Shante, Jada thought nothing of it.

  Jada watched Shante puff eagerly on the blunt, and how that look of complete peace washed over her friend. The expression on Shante’s face was similar to how someone would look after taking a long drink of water after being thirsty for days. She seemed relieved. That must be the good shit! Jada thought. When Shante passed the blunt to her, Jada took a long, hard toke, and exhaled. Then she took another one. Immediately, a fog swept over her. She could feel her heart galloping in her chest, and yet she felt better than she could ever remember feeling. Jada took another toke and felt all the nerves in her body tingle. She felt higher than she ever had in her life. Jada had never felt more alive than she did at that moment. She felt like she was floating, and all her senses were heightened. She took another toke. Damn! she thought. This is the best shit I ever had. Reluctantly, she passed the blunt to Lucas, who sat grinning at her in the most sinister way. But Jada was oblivious to Lucas’s grin. She was off in space, her mind taking her on a trip unlike any she’d ever experienced before. By the time the blunt made its way back to her, Jada took it anxiously. She relished the feeling it gave her, and took long puffs as she enjoyed it.

  When it was finished, the three of them were extremely high, Jada most of all. Shante and Lucas held an animated conversation about something that Jada paid no attention to. She sat in silence, enjoying her high. The music seemed louder, the colors in the room somehow brighter. She started laughing to herself at jokes no one but her could hear. She felt completely carefree. As it wore off, and she began coming out of the fog she had been in, Jada looked over at Shante and cleared her throat.

  “What was that shit we just smoked, Shante?”

  Shante smiled at her friend. “Girl, that was a woolah.”

  Not wanting to sound like a lame in front of streetwise Lucas by asking specifically what kind of weed it was, Jada simply nodded her head. “Damn. Woolahs is the bomb!”

  After the first time they smoked a woolah together, Jada loved it. The high was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. And for the rest of the night, Jada thought about that feeling. It wasn’t until the next day, when Lucas wasn’t around, that she finally asked Shante why the previous night’s high had been so much better than normal.

  That’s when Shante explained to her friend that they had been smoking weed with crack mixed into it.

  Jada was stunned. “We’re smoking crack?”

  But Shante acted like it was no big deal. “Nah. It’s not like we’re smoking straight-up crack. That’s the shit that gets you addicted—when you smoke it straight, no chaser. We mix it with weed, and it takes some of the potency out of it, so you won’t get addicted. Stop worrying,” Shante said, nonchalantly. “I’m
surprised you ain’t never heard of it, with you being from Brooklyn and all!”

  Jada frowned, and Shante knew she’d touched a nerve. Jada often liked to behave as if she was so far ahead of the girls her age in Staten Island. She entertained them often with stories about her Brooklyn days, and about the things she’d seen and lessons she’d learned there. So when Shante mentioned Brooklyn, Jada felt like she was questioning her gangsta.

  “I have heard of it. I just never knew anybody that smoked it before,” she explained.

  Shante shrugged her shoulders. “Well, it ain’t no big deal. Everybody smokes these. There’s so much weed and so little crack that it don’t get you hooked.” Shante smiled at Jada. “But that high was the bomb, wasn’t it?”

  Jada smiled back and gave Shante five. “Hell, yeah!”

  After that, Jada and Shante smoked woolahs all the time. They naively assumed that Shame’s theory was correct, and that they couldn’t get hooked as long as they mixed it. But it wasn’t long before Jada was strung the fuck out. The first time Jada had experienced a high that was so wonderful that soon she was chasing it all the time. The feeling was so intense. But it seemed as if the highest high was always just out of her reach, and she just had to have it. It was like trying to grasp an elusive dream. And then she would come down, and find herself craving it all over again. Now she had a problem.

  4

  KILLING ME SOFTLY

  Jada and Ava spent less time together as Jada’s addiction blossomed. She had a boyfriend she had met around her old neighborhood in Brooklyn. He was rugged and ruthless, and he turned her on. While Jada was only seventeen, her man, Rico, was twenty-three. She convinced herself that she’d found love. He flaunted her around his boys, and she loved every minute of it.

  “Come here, mami. Suck my dick.” Rico sat sprawled across his water bed, watching Jada masturbate in front of him. Rico was selling crack and was no stranger to recreational drug use. So when Jada told him that she liked smoking woolahs, he didn’t mind. He gave her a vial or two of crack to mix in with her weed whenever he reupped. He liked the sex she gave him when she was high on that shit. Today was one of those days, and she eagerly obliged him. She placed him in her mouth and sucked him like a Popsicle. “That’s it, mami” Rico enjoyed the ride as Jada took him to paradise. He watched her and voiced his approval.

  Jada stopped abruptly, straddled him, and plunged him deep inside her. She rode him, and their lips locked together before she pulled back a little and bit his lip until she drew blood. Rico pried her off of him, and turned her over on her stomach. She writhed as if she was going to resist him, and he slapped her ass hard. Sucking the blood off his lip, he stroked her from behind. Rico wrapped her long hair around his hand and pulled it roughly.

  “Fuck me!” Jada yelled, defiantly. “Fuck me, Rico!”

  He pounded her furiously, turned on by her yelling. “Yeah? Like that?” He fucked her, and pulled out right before he came. He splashed off on her ass, and turned her over roughly. “You a fuckin’ freak!” Jada smiled at him in a way that he thought was sexier than anything he’d ever seen before.

  Rico’s mother had been a heroin addict. He had a father who snorted cocaine. He, himself, snorted a little from time to time. But he managed to keep it together enough to be a contender in a hood full of hustlers. Drug use, drug sales, drug trafficking, it was all familiar territory to Rico. So while he didn’t exactly discourage Jada’s habit, he did warn her that it could get out of hand if she let it.

  After taking a shower Jada sat at the foot of his bed and took another hit.

  Rico shook his head. “It’s too much now, Jada. Your shit is out of hand. Every time I turn around you’re doing that shit again.”

  Jada sighed and rolled her eyes. “Come on, Rico. Not now with that shit!”

  “What you mean, not now? If I didn’t care about you, I’d let you go ‘head. But I’m telling you, you got a problem now, baby girl. You should trust me on this one. You need some help.”

  Jada stood up and angrily threw her clothes back on. She was sick of Rico’s cryptic warnings that she was headed for trouble. She ran a quick comb through her hair, grabbed her bag, and turned to Rico. “Fuck you, Rico. I don’t need nobody’s fuckin’ help!” She bounced and headed back to Staten Island. She went straight to Shame’s house—a place where she could get high in peace.

  Jada told Shante about her fight with Rico. Shante listened, and then said, “You know what it is? He feels like he can say that shit to you because he thinks you need him. Right now, he’s your main source for getting high, but you don’t need him for that shit. I ain’t met a bitch yet who had a hard time staying high. As long as you use what God gave you, you should never go without.” Jada grimaced, and Shante laughed. She figured it was time to explain the power of the pussy to Jada.

  “Whenever you give it up to any man, you should be compensated for it. Pussy has its price, you know what I’m saying?”

  “I’m not a prostitute, Shante. I ain’t putting no price tag on my pussy.”

  “It ain’t prostitution,” Shante reasoned. “That shit is fair exchange. The nigga wants some ass, and you want some cash. One hand washes the other, right?” Jada’s expression was unsure, so Shante clarified her position. “I’m not saying you walk around with a dollar sign on your shit. But no man touches me without giving me something. Ain’t shit for free over here.”

  They got high together, and Jada contemplated Shante’s advice. She knew that she didn’t want to have to ask Rico for shit anymore. She hated hearing the condescension in his voice when he told her that she needed help. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being her sole provider.

  Soon Jada adopted Shame’s philosophy, and the guys she dealt with knew that they had to pay to play. She was a high-maintenance fly girl with a habit that was growing out of her control. She was in Mr. Charlie’s building pretty often, copping weed and crack from Lucas on the third floor and going up to Shante’s place to smoke her woolahs.

  The nineties in New York City were plagued by an out-of-control drug epidemic, and with police eager to stop the young hustlers from making a killing. But plenty of them were still getting dough. Shante and Jada tried to rub elbows with all of those types. They used their looks and flair for fashion, as well as Shame’s talent for stealing, and they gained access to all the biggest parties. It wasn’t hard for two young ladies in an error of excess to gain entry into the drug-induced fog of addiction.

  But the drug use started to become evident in Jada’s appearance. She was strung out, and she looked it. Her face was sunken, her hair often uncombed. She rarely bothered to iron her clothes, or even to change them from day to day. Still she was in denial. She reasoned that she just had a little habit. Eventually, Charlie warned her that her mother had begun to notice the change in her appearance. He told her to clean up her act, and Jada worried for a moment that he knew her secret. “Your mother thinks you’re losing too much weight. I told her you was probably on a diet, and that I think she should get off your case. But you need to stop upsetting your mother. You know what I’m saying?”

  Jada nodded, and made an effort to keep her appearance intact. Shante was boosting. Jada told her that she wanted to learn how to do that, too. So one day Shante took Jada with her. She taught Jada how to take off an alarm, and that was it. Jada was stealing whatever she could steal. She did it all the time. She was enrolled in high school at the time, but hardly ever went. The only time she would go was when she had a new outfit that she knew would make the other bitches sick. Jada looked fierce every day, always one of the best dressed around the way. Her clothes were fabulous. She was making money to do what she wanted by stealing and running niggas’ pockets. She was still in school, coming into her mother’s house all hours of the day and night, dressed to kill and hiding a drug problem.

  Edna noticed the change. Jada was thinner than she’d ever been, and wearing clothes that Edna hadn’t bought her. Her mothe
rly instincts told her that something was amiss. She could feel it in her gut. But never one to really rock the boat, Edna questioned Jada about her weight loss only offhandedly. She didn’t want to spur Jada’s wrath. So in soft tones she would question, “Jada, those jeans used to be tight on you, right?” Jada would always react defensively, and Edna would always retreat. When Ava finally saw her sister she told Jada that she was concerned about her rapid weight loss, but Jada didn’t think it was a big deal. She had only been smoking crack for about a year. It wasn’t that bad. That’s what she told herself. She knew other people who were using, and she saw them maintaining. Jada figured she could do that, too.

  When too many people raised their eyebrows at her weight loss, Jada made even more of an effort to stay presentable. She was a lovely young lady. Her long hair was natural. Her pretty face was chiseled, showing off a flawless bone structure that was enviable. To top it all off, she had the gift of gab. Jada had the ability to look a person in the eyes and make them feel as if all she was concerned with was them. She had a smile that people yearned to be on the receiving end of. Jada was likable. And that made it all the easier for her to find new “friends.” It also made it easy for her to smile at and distract store security guards when she went to work.

  “Work” is what Jada called the boosting she did to get the clothes and funds she needed to get high the way she wanted to. She got up every day with stealing on her mind. She soon became a compulsive thief. It got to the point where she would steal even when she didn’t need anything. It was an obsession. She enjoyed the rush of getting something nice for free and of using it to get money. She liked the high she was always rewarded with afterward, and the whole thing became a routine for her. And one that she rather enjoyed. Jada was giving her sister a lot of things, too. Ava was the recipient of bags of designer clothes, courtesy of her sister. Jada wondered if her sister knew what she was doing. And, indeed, Ava suspected that her sister was doing something shady to get all those things. But Ava loved the way nice clothes made her feel. So she didn’t rock the boat. They were in high school in a new borough, each with a gorgeous face, a nice figure, and the best outfits. Needless to say, she and her sister stood out.