My Own Worst Frenemy (6 page)

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Authors: Kimberly Reid

BOOK: My Own Worst Frenemy
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Chapter 9
I
'm hanging out with Tasha and Michelle after my interview, telling them about my new job. We're in Michelle's kitchen, which looks like the set of one of those cooking shows on cable and nothing like my kitchen. It's the only room in the house that doesn't have some kind of cross or Bible in it so it must be the only room Pastor Owens didn't get a say about how to decorate.
Thanks to her mother working overtime all the time, every appliance is stainless steel—not the hodgepodge of mismatched appliances at my house, where Lana buys what's cheap, not what coordinates well. There's a block of knives on the counter that must be crazy expensive because no one in the house can touch them except Mrs. Owens. They even have a cappuccino maker. As you can imagine, Mrs. Owens is a great cook. She always leaves something good in the oven or refrigerator before she goes to her nurse job on the second shift. Michelle and I are fighting over who will get the last pork chop, and eventually I have to concede since it's kind of her food. Okay, it
is
her food.
“But I'm a guest. A good hostess always lets the guest come first.”
“Since when are you a guest? Nobody invited you, or Tasha, for that matter. And Tasha had the nerve to bring her sister.”
“She'll be in there glued to Nickelodeon for the next hour, like she's not even here,” Tasha says. “I'm watching her tonight so I couldn't leave her at home.”
“Y'all could have
both
stayed home instead of coming over here eating my food,” Michelle says. I notice her voice goes up an extra octave when she's miffed. “Why don't we ever go to your house, Chanti?”
“Her mother doesn't like people visiting when she's not home,” Tasha says.
“I'm starting to wonder if you even have a mother. Tasha, have you ever seen her?”
“Yeah, I've seen her. We
have
known each other since third grade.”
Yeah, and don't you forget it, Squeak. She was my friend first, though I do appreciate your mother's baked apples. Maybe I could get to like you after all.
“Well, she's never home, to hear Chanti tell it. Even when her car is parked right there in front of the house.”
“She's like Chanti. Not very social. And we don't go over there because her mother can't cook,” Tasha adds, helping herself to more macaroni and cheese.
That's true, Lana is the worst cook, which is why I do most of the cooking, although my skills are limited to anything that comes from the store in a box, bag, or a frozen food container. Which is kind of sad since I love to eat. But the other problem with going to my house is Lana's job. She keeps odd hours, but she's at home as much as any working parent. I just can't risk taking friends over there and walking in to find a gun on the dining-room table, or Lana coming out of her bedroom dressed for work, i.e. like a prostitute, because she didn't know I had friends over. That would be pretty hard to explain. So I shut up about the pork chop and being a guest, and make do with more mac and cheese.
“Guess who got out of jail?” Tasha says, and like she always does when she asks you to guess something, she immediately follows with the answer. “Donnell Down-the-Street. He was out this morning. He came by to see Michelle just as we were leaving for school.”
“How'd he get out?” I ask, wondering if he broke out because I'm sure he was guilty of whatever they took him in for.
“Because he didn't do it,” Michelle says, sounding convinced.
“He also claims he didn't cheat on Michelle, and that you lied about seeing him and Rhonda Hodges making out at the movies,” Tasha says, adding, “He had some four-letter words for you Chanti.”
“Now why would I lie about that? Michelle, think about it. What would I gain from telling you your ex is a lying cheat?” I mean, other than a beat down for my trouble.
“Like Donnell said, you're probably just mad because me and Tasha are girls now.”
“Chanti's still my girl,” Tasha says, “but I'm beginning to think it may not be safe hanging around her with all these criminals on her case.”
“Donnell is not a criminal,” Michelle protests.
“Yeah, right,” Tasha says. “All I'm saying is Donnell and MJ are two people I don't want to be on the bad side of.”
 
When I get home from eating all Michelle's food, Lana surprises me with dinner.
“I made my famous tuna-artichoke-raisin casserole.”
Believe me, its only claim to fame is the vast number of people it has sent running for a bottle of Pepto. But I hate to tell her I already ate at Michelle's since she looks so proud doing the mom thing, so I confirm her delusion that her casserole tastes good.
“But you took so little. How about another big spoonful ?”
“Watching my calories,” I say, and change the subject before she can make another offer. “I heard Donnell Down-the-Street was out. Did he make bail?”
“No, they had to turn him loose. Kind of hard to hold someone on suspicion of theft when the evidence you thought you'd find in his car, at his house, or on his person, can't be found. It also doesn't help when you can't place him at the scene of the crime.”
“Theft? I thought he'd been picked up for dealing again. I guess he's been expanding his business.”
“Something like that,” Lana says, and then looks up at me, almost catching me spitting her casserole into my napkin. “Why are you so interested in Donnell? You haven't been hanging around that hoodlum girl again, have you? Those two probably run together.”
“MJ wouldn't have a thing to do with Donnell. She's gone straight.”
“Yeah, and every perp who swears on his mother that he's innocent really is.”
I figure Lana's anger is still too fresh for me to defend MJ, so I take another approach.
“Michelle told me. She and Donnell used to go together, and he came by to see her today.”
“If that's the kind of boy she attracts, I want you to stay away from her, too.”
Luckily she doesn't know how tight Michelle and Tasha are now, or I wouldn't have a friend left on The Ave. She leaves the table, saying she needs a shower after a long day trying to convince her confidential informants it would be in their best interests not to hold out on her.
Donnell being back on the street is not what I wanted to hear. But it's only a matter of time before he's arrested for something else, at least this is what I tell myself so I can stop worrying. Because if Donnell really cares about Michelle (how could he when he had his tongue all down Rhonda Hodges's throat?) and he thinks I'm the one who ruined it for him, I admit that Tasha might be worried about me for a reason. Just because you played kickball with someone back in the day doesn't mean they grow up to be right in the head. And Donnell DTS wasn't right in the head even back then.
But Lana and Tasha are all wrong about MJ. In fact, I could use her friendship right about now. I mean, she saved my life. Or at least, saved me from a beat down. When it happened, I didn't know how to thank MJ for keeping me from getting my butt kicked, because words didn't seem to be enough and, if I'm being honest, she scared me, too. The two guys posted at the front door didn't even try to stop her when she crashed the party, said she'd heard it was the place to be, and asked if they had a problem with her being there. Apparently her reputation had already spread to the south end of Denver Heights. I figured if she was living on The Ave, she'd be a good person to make friends with, and I'm nothing if not a diplomat. When she told me she had walked to the party (she was wearing Doc Martens boots, and wouldn't know a stiletto from a wedge heel), I gave her a ride home from the party. Now that I look at it, this wasn't such a grand gesture since she lived half a block from my house, but I can tell you that not a single other person at that party would have given her a ride.
Michelle and Tasha were just plain rude about the whole thing. Since Lana was on stakeout—and the party was less than a mile away and she'd never spot that on the odometer—I took her car, the backseat of which doubles as a landfill because my mother is a little messy. The three of us fit just fine on the front seat on the way to the party, and as tiny as Tasha is, she could have easily sat on Michelle's lap on the way back. But those two refused to share the front seat with a Blood/Crip girl, as if she could do a drive-by on them from
inside
the car. So we spent about ten minutes moving food wrappers, several pairs of shoes (including a pair of mine I thought I'd lost a year ago), old newspapers, a couple of blankets, a locked suitcase with half a blond wig hanging out of it, and a set of binoculars (I had a hard time explaining those last two items) into the trunk so they could sit in the backseat.
But MJ must have thought me giving her a ride was a big deal, because after that, she wanted to hang with me. This meant I had two different sets of friends because Tasha and Michelle didn't want anything to do with her. I didn't know what the big deal was. Aurora Ave has enough madness going on that a Blood/Crip girl is hardly noticeable. But Michelle and Tasha have their standards. Drug-dealing Donnell DTS is one thing, but MJ apparently crossed a line. She was the first girl ex-con on The Ave.
I liked having a double life, sort of like Lana. I had to hide my friendship with MJ from Lana, who would never approve, which made the friendship all the more solid. Everything I did before MJ met Lana's approval. I was about to be a junior in high school and I was way overdue for breaking out. Suddenly my life was not so lame. People who'd been picking on me since grade school stayed out of my way. And that girl who threatened me over Robert Tice? She even came by to tell me I could have him. Which would have been nice if I knew what to do with him because Robert is fine, but unfortunately he lost all interest in me once he heard I was friends with MJ. Even
boys
were afraid of her.
A few weeks into hanging out with MJ, I felt as close to her as I ever did to Tasha. Having someone save you from a serious ass-kicking will bring you together quick because you get to bypass all the usual girlfriend, frenemy drama. And because MJ knew I was forever indebted, she felt completely safe in telling me the real story, which she decided to do one day when we were watching TV at her grandmother's house.
People thought it was wrong that her grandmother, whom everybody had called Big Mama long before MJ showed up, had to take in a juvenile delinquent in her golden years. Part of MJ's probation agreement was that she not associate with the people she ran with when she was arrested. Her mother thought it best she just get out of town altogether, which was how she ended up with Big Mama, who is not exactly frail and helpless. When she's not attending her church meetings, she's running her numbers game—an illegal lottery for people who like the halfway decent odds of winning five hundred dollars from the numbers more than the impossible odds of winning 10 million in the state lotto.
That was another thing I liked about MJ—there really was no wild and crazy side to her, even though that was what I originally wanted from our friendship. She liked some of the same things I did, like books and detective shows (except I silently rooted for the detectives while she cursed them out loud). Tasha and Michelle imagined we were out knocking over liquor stores or something, but mostly we just hung out at MJ's place watching game shows and reruns of
Law & Order
, which is kind of interesting when you watch it with an ex-con after years of watching it with a cop.
One day a few weeks into our friendship, we were watching
Jeopardy
. Neither of us had spoken except to answer Alex Trebek in the form of a question, so it surprised me when she offered a confession that I hadn't even asked for.
“Okay, I'm going to tell you what really happened in L.A. I've heard all the BS that's out there and I want to set the record straight.”
I muted the TV because even though I hadn't asked for her confession, I'd been dying to hear it.
“First, stop calling me Blood/Crip girl. I know you think it's funny, but it's kind of annoying. I was never a Blood or a Crip.”
I didn't say anything, but was surprised how disappointed I was in hearing this. Blood/Crip girl was part of MJ's mystique.
“If you get all your information from TV, you'd think those are the only gangs out there. I was part of the Down Homes. Never heard of them right?”
“I don't think so.”
“Down Homes don't get any respect outside of SoCal. I think it's because it's two words. A single word like Blood or Crip just sounds
harder
, you know?”
I didn't know, but nodded in agreement, pleased to learn that (a) MJ really was a gang girl after all, and (b) she agreed with me about the oversaturation the Bloods and Crips have gotten in the media.
“I did spend some time in jail, but I was fifteen, so it wasn't so-called hard time. That's what people say who haven't been in juvenile detention. Let me tell you, it's hard in JD, especially in L.A. County.”

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