Black Lady Chronicles



  BLACK LADY CHRONICLES

  By

  Lady Dae

  BLACK LADY CHRONICLES

  Copyright 2011 Lady Dae

  Dedication

   To 

  my sisters and brother,

  Qadeera, Zakiyyah, Sakinah, Khadijah, Khalidah,

  & Sulaiman (the only boy)

  Queen of the Nile

  Basketball… Basketball… I muttered to myself. Ugh… Where is it?

  “Ma,” I yelled. “Have you seen my basketball?”

  “It’s in the laundry room. Where are you going?”

  “With the guys to play ball,” I replied slowly, rolling my eyes. I mean really. Where else would I be going if I were looking for my basketball?

  I didn’t have to turn around to know she was scowling. We went through this everyday and every time it ended the same.

  “Why don’t you go with Lisa or Ali? The two of them are nice girls.”

  Yeah right… Harpies were nice and sweet too, until you pissed them off and they showed their true colors.

  “I don’t like them,” I snapped.

  “Why?”

  “Because quite frankly I think they’re bitches straight from the pits of hell sent by the devil to torture me. I must have done something bad in my past life as the Queen of the Nile.”

  “Cleopatra,” she warned.

  I groaned. “Cleo,” I dragged out.

  Why couldn’t my mother have named me something normal, like Mary or Kim? Did she have to name me after the most beautiful woman to walk the planet, the queen of the Nile? I sure as hell didn’t have any of her characteristics. I don’t know what she was thinking when she looked down at me and said I was a future queen and therefore named me Cleopatra. I was about as likely to become a queen as Donald Duck was to becoming president of the US. In fact, his chances were better.

  “I don’t like you hanging out with those boys Cleo-.”

  I tuned her out. I knew the lecture. They’re much more aggressive, have no self control and one girl in the midst of a whole bunch of boys meant trouble for the said girl… That or she was a whore. I curse the day my mother heard about that big story about the girl who was gang raped. She had me on lockdown for a week. I missed a big basketball game that week.

  “Ma,” I interrupted. “I’ve been around these guys since I was five. I’m seventeen. You should be used to it.”

  “I wasn’t worried about it when you were five.”

  “Well if you weren’t worried about it then what’s the difference now?”

  “You all became teenagers and when boys are around a pretty girl there are these things called hormones that turn them into beast.”

  I shrugged. “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

  I groaned. Why did my mother have to remind me that I was girl? A pretty one at that, even though I hated to admit it. I was well aware of the way I looked and while most girls would probably kill to look like me, I didn’t like it. I would give anything to be big and hard looking like some of the girls who did sports on television. Like Serena Williams… She was pretty yeah, but she was thick and looked like she could handle herself and there was a certain hardness to her features, especially when she went to play tennis. I wore baggy jeans, black shirts and caps and I still looked like a soft feminine girl. It didn’t help that I was short (well 5’5” is actually average for a woman) and petite and curvy. It wasn’t fair!

  “Don’t remind me ma,” I said rolling my eyes.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a woman,” she said sighing. That meant she was fed up and wasn’t going to waste her time or mine telling me the beauty of being a woman.

  I put my cap on, backwards, and fetched my basketball.

  “Don’t worry about me ma. I’ll be fine. Everyone in the neighborhood knows me. I’m practically one of the guys.”

  I closed the door behind me and started towards the basketball court. I probably should have taken the car to pacify my mother. It would be well after dark by the time I started home and even though I always walked home after dark, my mother still worried about it. I’d just get a ride with one of the guys.

  Why I decided to go play ball on a hot summer evening, I’ll never know. Probably because I thought it would be a little cooler. I was really regretting that. Another thing I hated about being a girl. It was a real discomfort to get all hot and sticky especially during a period. Luckily, I wasn’t having that problem (Another thing my mother said was a wonderful thing about being a woman. Quite honestly, I didn’t see the beauty in bleeding every month).

  But it was still hot and most of the boys had their shirts off. Most girls would fall and swoon but not me. I was wishing I could do the same. There were only two things wrong with that. One, my mother believed in modesty and two even though I always wore a sports bra, there was no way it would hide the fact that under all my baggy shirts there were actually a pair of womanly adornments. If any of the guys had any doubts that I was a girl, then all doubts would be removed then. I always wished I had a flat chest or had a really small bust one.

  “You all are a bunch of sissies,” I muttered. “You’re stopping cause of a lil heat?”

  “This ain’t just a lil heat Cleo. This is a damn oven,” Tahir muttered.

  I shrugged. “Whatev. Next time tell me when I’ll be wasting my time to play ball for only two hours. It just got dark. That’s the best time to play.”

  “You’re crazy CG,” Tahir muttered.

  CG… I unfortunately wasn’t the only Cleo on the court and the initial solution was to call me by my full name. I didn’t let that happen. I started a fight for the mere suggestion. CG was the next best thing. It stood for Cleo Girl, but I wasn’t for the girl part of the name and so it became CG. Most people didn’t know what it meant so it was okay.

  “You’ll give me a ride?”

  Tahir hesitated. It was never a good sign. It meant my request would interfere with something.

  “You can say no. I don’t bite.”

  “I would. I really would, but it’s out of my way tonight… Unless you want to come with us?”

  I groaned. That meant they were going to hang out and that meant they would get to talking about guy stuff, stuff that they wouldn’t like to say around a girl, which either meant they would subject me to their horrible talk or I would cramp their style and insist they change the topic. I really don’t know why some of their girlfriend’s tripped about it when they slipped. Boys couldn’t help being silly and stupid when they got together. Grown men did the same thing.

  Beyond basketball and the few like Tahir who weren’t nearly as bad as they tried to act, I really couldn’t stand to be around them. As much as I hated being a girl and acted like one of the guys, I still wasn’t one of them unfortunately.

  “Don’t worry about it T,” I muttered. “I’ll walk. Not like I haven’t done it before.”

  “Alone?”

  “Alone,” I confirmed and bounced my ball as I started down the sidewalk from hand to hand.

  Why was there no in between group? A group of girls who wanted to be boys but couldn’t and were friends. Maybe, I wouldn’t be so lonely and then my mother wouldn’t mind me playing basketball all day long.

  “Agh!” I said loudly throwing the ball harder against the ground.

  I didn’t fool myself into thinking I wasn’t lonely, although I fooled everyone else. As much as I preached that I rather be alone and to myself-and really, I did-I wouldn’t mind having one friend that was a girl, one that wasn’t fickle and a backstabbing heifer, didn’t get jealous cause I’m pretty and didn’t think I was doing a lot more than playing basketball with the boys. Was it
really too much to ask? In the last twelve years, I realized that it was.

  “Give me all your money and valuables right now,” some said from behind me cocking a gun.

  Lovely. Now I’m being mugged. Well, that’s what they’d call it if I actually had anything on me.

  “I don’t have anything,” I said honestly still bouncing my ball.

  “I don’t believe you,” the man said and then looked at the ball. “And stop doing that.”

  I let the ball bounce to a stop and put my hands up. “Look man, I promise I don’t-.”

  “Shut up you liar,” he said and hit me with the gun.

  The back of my head hurt, that’s for sure, but that didn’t mean I was down for the count. I took him by surprise and snatched the gun. But in my snatching it, I dropped. Damn, I really could have used that to disable him. Resorting to other methods I kicked him in the shins missing my target and tried to twist his arm. Unfortunately, he was stronger than me and I knew it. So it didn’t surprise me when he got the best of me and I hit a wall where he started to pat me down to search me.

  I really cursed being a girl right then and there. It made me weak and it made me… a girl. Oh crap. If this man realized I was a girl, I’d have a much bigger problem than being mugged.

  “Looks like you do have something,” he said and flipped me around.

  Damn. He realized it. But if he thought I was going to cower and whimper while he did the deed, he had far more coming than he could have bargained for.

  “You bastard,” I started to scream at the top of my lungs along with some other