Black Beauty Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Also by Constance Burris

  Title Page

  Copyright © 2015 by Constance Burris

  SHEMEYA

  ASHLEY

  ANDRE

  LATREECE

  SEAN

  GALENA

  CHALCEDONY

  COAL

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AUTHOR NOTES

  To Granny

  I hope I'm as much of an inspiration to my grandkids as you are to yours.

  Kinyada, Megan, and Toneeka

  Thanks for taking my nerdy behind out of the house, getting me into trouble, and giving me lots of material to write about.

  Also by

  Constance Burris

  Chaos: A Short Story

  Coal: Book One of the Everleaf Series

  Chalcedony: Book Two of the Everleaf Series

  Copyright © 2015 by Constance Burris

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  SHEMEYA

  A woman who cuts her hair is about to change her life. - Coco Chanel

  Shemeya jumped out of the green pleather seat, ignoring the bus driver's grunt of annoyance as he pulled the lever and opened the doors. As soon as she could, she squeezed through the opening and hopped off the crowded bus.

  While she walked through the maze of cracked concrete sidewalks, the hot Oklahoma wind thrashed her face and sweat prickled her skin. Vista Apartments, unlike the two apartment complexes flanking it, had green siding that was well maintained and the parking lots only had a few potholes.

  "What's wrong with you, girl?"

  Surprised, Shemeya stopped. The question had come from Crazy Jade. She'd popped up two years ago out of nowhere. There were a dozen rumors about her circulating through the apartments, including one about her being a voodoo priestess.

  Jade stood a few feet away in the open doorway of her apartment. Shemeya's mom would have killed her if she'd done that - flies and air conditioning and money not growing on trees and all. Shemeya wanted to keep walking, but she didn't want to be rude. Jade was the only parent who didn't pay for babysitting with food stamps.

  "Why are you in such a hurry?" Jade asked. With her light skin and brown freckles, she didn't look anything like her dark-skinned five-year-old son, Coal, who stood nearby bouncing a basketball.

  "I have homework to do," Shemeya lied, trying to focus her attention on Jade instead of the three girls walking from the bus stop. Latreece, Benita, and Aaliyah were cousins and protected each other like sisters. If one of the girls hated you, all three hated you. And right now Shemeya was number one on Latreece's crap list.

  "Move, Medusa," Latreece said, hitting Shemeya's shoulder as she walked by. As if on cue, Benita and Aaliyah followed suit, almost knocking Shemeya to the ground.

  "What's that about?" Jade stepped onto the sidewalk, standing next to Shemeya. "Why did they call you Medusa?"

  Shemeya blinked the sun out of her eyes and pulled her shirt away from her moist armpits. "No, reason. Just stupid girls saying stupid things." Medusa had been her nickname after she'd started growing dreads her freshman year. The constant teasing almost made her cut them out.

  "Are they the reason you've stopped smiling?"

  Shemeya arched an eyebrow. "Stopped smiling . . . What are you talking about?"

  "You've always been full of joy. That's why I like it when you watch Coal. He always comes back happy." Jade stepped closer. "But now your smile is gone."

  My smile? Shemeya thought. Who pays attention to someone's smile?

  "There's nothing wrong with me."

  Jade folded her arms across her chest. "I've been here for two years and I've never seen you sad. Let me help you."

  "There's nothing wrong with me and I don't need help." Shemeya paused and lowered her voice. "So is it true, though? Are you a voodoo priestess?"

  Jade laughed. Her eyes sparkled for a moment and seemed to turn from muddy brown to red. "I don't know nothing about voodoo, child," she said in a mocking, thick Cajun accent. "But I do admire their results."

  Shemeya twirled a dread around her finger. "Anyways, I don't have any money."

  "I don't need your money. You are one of the only people in Vista Apartments who dares to smile." Jade placed a hand on Shemeya's shoulder. "Let me help."

  She stepped away from Jade's touch. "This conversation is getting too weird, Ms. Jade. I have to go. Call me this weekend if you need a babysitter."

  Shaking her head, Shemeya turned to Coal. "Bye, Cutie." Good luck on having a normal life with that weird-ass mom of yours.

  She walked the rest of the way to her apartment and up the concrete stairs. She forced herself not to look down, but once she got to the door, she couldn't help it. Jade stared at her from below. From this angle, the sun beamed on Jade's face and her muddy brown eyes appeared to glow red.

  Shemeya stood in the hallway eating a bowl of cereal. Iris, her younger sister, squirmed as their mother ran a comb through the girl's kinky hair. The medicated scent of Blue Magic hair grease mingled oddly with the sweet smell of Frosted Flakes. The good thing about dreads: she never had to get another scalp burn from a relaxer and she never had to comb her hair.

  "Momma, since you don't work today can you take me to school? The bus has been late for the past three days." Shemeya had spent part of the morning practicing how to ask the question so it sounded casual, instead of like the desperate plea for help it was.

  "Hell, no." Mary pulled the comb roughly through Iris's hair before she pointed it at Shemeya. "And if you miss that bus I'm gonna whoop your ass. I don't care if you are about to graduate. You ain't too old to get a beating."

  "You could have just said no," Shemeya muttered.

  "What did you say?"

  Mary worked as a health care worker and traveled from house to house, cleaning crap and cooking crap, as she put it. When she got home, she'd always tell them, "I deal with too much crap at work to hear it from my kids."

  "Nothing. Bye," Shemeya said hurriedly, placing the empty bowl on the kitchen counter. She grabbed her backpack and raced out of the apartment before her mother could deliver any more threats involving someone's ass getting beat.

  She had known the chances of her mother taking her to school were slim so she headed out of the apartments and walked the three blocks to stand in line for the neighborhood bus.

  The apartment kids were not allowed to ride the neighborhood's bus, and the neighborhood kids were not allowed to ride the apartment's bus. Separating them had been the school's half-assed attempt at keeping the well-off bougie kids from the poorer kids, but the yuppie kids had moved out of this area years ago. Everyone in this part of town either received welfare benefits or they were one paycheck away from living on the streets.

  Once the neighborhood bus arrived, she lowered her head and followed the other students. She chose a seat in the middle of the bus away from the driver's line of sight. While she removed her backpack, she noticed a few stares, but no one said anything.

  When the bus started moving, she closed her eyes and let out a sigh of relief.

  "What are you doing on my bus?"

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and looked up. Jason, her chemistry partner, stood in the aisle.

  "It's a free world. I can ride this bus if I want to."

  He sat down,
put his arm around the back of the seat, and leaned towards her. He was so close she saw flecks of dry skin on his forehead. Jason's hair was shaved close at the sides, and his perfectly coifed box rose half a foot above his head. Jason and another guy, Andre, were in competition for who could grow the biggest box. Unfortunately, Jason was winning. "No, you can't. No Vista kids are allowed on this bus."

  Shemeya scowled. "You gonna tell on me?"

  Jason laughed. "No, I wouldn't do that to you. Anyway, our chemistry project is due soon. You want to meet up at my place today and work on it?"

  "Sure." She took a deep breath. "I thought you were gonna snitch, and then I was gonna have to cut you."

  He grabbed her arm and laughed, letting his hand linger. "You know I wouldn't do you like that. So why are you on this bus?"

  She turned from him and slipped lower into the seat. "No, reason. I just wanted to change it up."

  The twenty-minute ride through the outskirts of south west Oklahoma City took Shemeya past cow pastures and oversized warehouses. According to her sophomore history teacher, the Gene Autry school district was created to fight the desegregation of public schools in the 1950s. But forty years later, Blacks, Hispanics, and Vietnamese made up thirty percent of the school district as more minorities moved into the suburbs. As she entered the school, fliers requesting her vote for the next student president and posters daring her to say no to drugs littered the walls.

  "Hey, Shemeya." Sam, a fellow senior that hadn't talked to her since freshman year, walked beside her. His grin revealed a mouth full of gold caps. "You want to meet up later?"

  "No," she said. "Why would I want to do that? I hardly know you."

  "Well, I heard you were down for anything and I wanted to know if you wanted to hook up later."

  She stopped. "Who told you that?"

  "Everybody knows about what happened between you and Sean. So, what's up? You want to hook up?" he said, grabbing his crotch.

  "Eww. No."

  Sam seized her hand and placed a piece of paper in her palm. "Here's my number. Call me if you change your mind. I've always wondered what it would be like to pull on those dreads."

  Shemeya's mouth fell open and she threw the paper into his face. Before she could curse him out, someone pushed her from behind. Her hands broke her fall as she went crashing to the floor. Embarrassed and uncomfortably aware of everyone in the hallway staring at her, she looked up.

  Latreece stood above her, lips pressed and shoulders back. "Watch where you're going, Medusa."

  "What's going on?" asked Mrs. Smith, the tenth-grade social studies teacher, who thankfully, had been passing by.

  "I'm sorry. That was an accident." Latreece sneered at Shemeya before she turned and blended back into the crowd of students.

  Mrs. Smith bent down and helped Shemeya pick up her bag. "Are you okay? I can report her to the office, she glanced down the hallway. "That didn't look like an accident."

  "I'm all right." Shemeya forced herself to stop trembling and hurriedly walked in the opposite direction of Latreece and her first-hour class.

  She managed to avoid Latreece for the rest of the day, but she had been tripped, jabbed, and propositioned by half of the school.

  Through all of the taunting, she'd kept her head high and her face straight. But the quiet walk through her apartment complex destroyed the flimsy barrier she'd built during school. Tears streamed uncontrollably down her cheeks. She tried to wipe them away, but more quickly took their place.

  As she turned towards her apartment, she kept her head low, hoping no one would see her crying. She lifted her head to gauge her location and noticed Jade. The woman stood in the same spot as yesterday, staring at Shemeya intensely.

  She stopped and wiped her face with her shirt sleeve. "How can you help me?"

  A slow grin crept across Jade's face.

  She followed Jade through the living room, past Coal asleep on the couch, and into the master bedroom. All of the three-bedroom apartments were the same. This would have been her mother's room, but there was no bed, and plants were everywhere. Dozens of plants: potted plants, hanging plants, creeping plants. Even though she'd taken botany for two years, Shemeya couldn't name any of them.

  Two windows filled the east side of the room, but hundreds of vines had crept up the wall, and in their greed, had blocked most of the sunlight.

  "What is all of this?" Shemeya asked. The moisture in the air clung to her skin and sank into her chest, making it hard to breathe.

  "These are my other babies," Jade said in the same affectionate tone she used when she spoke about her son. She walked through the labyrinth of plants and stopped at a table on the far side of the room, barely visible through the foliage. On it lay a pestle and mortar, and inside the mortar Shemeya saw something amazingly similar to . . .

  "Is that weed?" Shemeya gasped. "You grow pot?" She looked towards the door expecting to see the police. The last thing she needed was to get caught in a drug dealer's house.

  Jade laughed as she pulled a leaf from a plant with green and purple leaves. "This is much better than weed. It's from my homeland. And, most importantly, it's not illegal here."

  "Oh," Shemeya said, a little disappointed. She hadn't wanted to get caught with a drug dealer, but she wasn't opposed to smoking a little bit of weed though.

  "Where are you from?" Shemeya asked.

  "No place you've heard of."

  "I'm not stupid. I got an A in geography-- Ow." Shemeya shrieked in response to Jade yanking one of her locs. "You almost pulled out a dread."

  "For it to work for you, it needs a bit of you in it." Jade held the hair in front of her face. "These five strands should be enough." She placed them into the mortar and started grinding it into the marble bowl with the leaves.

  Shemeya rubbed her head while she watched the hair became indistinguishable from the other ingredients. "Is this voodoo?"

  "No. This isn't voodoo." Jade ground the mixture faster, causing the pestle to clang loudly against the marble bowl.

  "Then what is it? My mom would kill me if she knew I was messing around with voodoo."

  "It's an herbal medicine. When you receive blood, the doctors have to make sure they match your blood type, right? Well, adding your hair makes the herbs specific for you. Like recognizes like."

  "But what does it do? Will it get me high?"

  "It will give you courage and confidence, but it will not get you high."

  Disappointed, Shemeya watched Jade roll the herbs inside a small sheet of paper. "It looks just like a joint to me."

  "It is not a joint," Jade said sharply, handing it to Shemeya. "Smoke it here so I know I haven't wasted my time."

  Shemeya studied the fake joint. She should have walked right past this place and left Crazy Jade to her craziness. But after the day she'd endured, she couldn't tolerate the thought of going back to school. Maybe, just maybe, smoking this would make it all go way. Besides, what would some herbs hurt?

  "Okay." Shemeya placed the tip of the faux joint into her mouth, and Jade lit it.

  Shemeya inhaled. The smoke traveled through her mouth, down her throat, and settled in her lungs for a few intense moments before Shemeya exhaled. "Dang, that's nasty." But the taste didn't stop her from bringing it back to her lips and inhaling once again.

  Shemeya knocked on Jason's door. For the past three years, they'd ended up in the same chemistry course as lab partners. He'd asked her out a few times, but she'd politely said no. He was smart and decent looking, but he bored her. Turning him down made her feel like an idiot who only dated thugs, but she wasn't stupid. She only wanted a little thug, not a full serving.

  When Jason answered the door, she pulled off her backpack and stepped into the house. "Is your mom home?"

  "No, she's with her new guy," he said, leading her into his kitchen. "Want something to drink?"

  "You got some juice?" Shemeya desperately wanted to wash away the dry, earthy taste the herbs had left in her mouth. Wate
r hadn't worked.

  "I got something better." He reached under one of the kitchen cabinets and pulled out a bottle of Hennessey.

  "Jason, really?" She cocked her head to the side, and he smiled innocently.

  She rolled her eyes. "Sure. I need a drink after the day I've had." And liquor should kill the taste in my mouth.

  He poured the cognac into two yellow Solo plastic cups, before they walked into the living room and sat on the couch.

  She only took a small sip but it was enough to warm her from the inside out and sear away the taste of the herbs.

  "We should be talking about absorption, not sitting here getting drunk," Shemeya pointed out, sitting the cup on the living room table.

  "We always finish our projects tipsy. Why should this time be any different?"

  Shemeya laughed, remembering all of the late night homework sessions they'd had in the past. They didn't talk much in school, but she enjoyed hanging out with him. He was funny and thoughtful when he didn't have a group of other people around him. "Anyways, let's get started: absorption vs. adsorption." She pulled her chemistry book from her bag.

  "Stupid names. Why do they have to be so similar?" He sat back on the couch with a glazed look in his eyes.

  "Are you going to get your books?"

  He licked his lips and leaned forward. "I've heard stories about you and Latreece's boyfriend."

  "So?" The small buzz she had from the liquor quickly dissipated while her heart raced. She dreaded where the conversation was headed.

  "I don't understand. I've been asking you out for months, but you go out with him instead. He has a girlfriend."

  "I didn't go out with him," she said through clenched teeth. She'd expected to be harassed at school; she hadn't expected it here. She had hoped her anger would shut him up, but no such luck.

  "I saw you go in the room with Sean last weekend at Serena's party."

  She threw her books on the table and stood. "Jason. Really?"