At Odds with God Sneak Peek by Author Katrina Franklin

Hey HairyKats,





Check out the first three  chapters of my first book At Odds with God here for free. Then  visit www.lulu.com/ishopkatrinafranklin to get your copy. But it doesnt stop At Odds with God. Check out the sequel It Just-Is Between Brothers/Family Secrets.

Thank you for the love and support!

Chapter One

 

 

 

“He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.” Malachi 4:6

 

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 As the youngest, and the only girl in a family of three older brothers, somehow I ended up being the “man of the house.” My brothers were all named after my mother’s favorite singers – Barry White Jackson, Alvin Green Jackson, and Marvin Gaye Jackson. But there I came, the black sheep, it seemed, separated from the rest even at birth, when I was named Tamia Cheryl Anne Jackson.

My father left when I was only four years old, and my mother decided to blame me for this. The last time I saw him, I was ten. He asked me how old I was. At ten years old, my first thought was, “Shouldn’t you know?” But in my shy, sweet little voice I responded, “Ten.” I don’t really remember his face, just his voice. It was distinctive. It was comforting. It made me feel safe. But it also left me unable to forget the hurt in my heart, wishing that he loved me. Not only did he not love me; he didn’t even care that I was alive.

 My mother worked two jobs to support us. She was rarely home, which meant that in our house, anything went down. She loved her boys, but I couldn’t say the same for me. She always looked at me with hatred. She would berate me, saying things like, “If you were born a boy, he would have stayed, don’t you understand? Women are useless. You cannot keep his name alive. He stayed for Barry, Alvin, and Marvin, but not you. You wonder why? Why? Because you are a girl! A worthless girl! You will be nothing!”

She would speak to me this way on a regular basis. I was like her verbal punching bag. It made me wonder, even then, if she felt useless, too. After all, she was a woman. I wondered if her words were applicable to only me or all women. I used to cry after she scorned me with these words, and on top of that, I cried for the lack of my father’s love. My brothers tried to comfort me, but there was nothing or anyone that could heal such pain. 

       Whenever my brothers did something wrong, she would slap me and tell me that it was my fault.  I knew my brothers loved me, but not enough to keep me from being the scapegoat of my mother’s pain. My brothers would have freak fest from the time I left for school until midnight, when my mom got home from her second job. I was sickened by the things I saw. Girls came through the doors as freely and easily as if they lived there themselves and made a beeline to my brothers. With five people living in a one-bedroom Crenshaw District project apartment, it was difficult to not be exposed to the sex-capades that occurred after school. Most times I would stay out until bedtime, but when I did go home, there was always some commotion involving my brothers and these girls. Still, they always warned me that if they ever found out that I acted even remotely like those girls, they would kill me.

Once I came home to see an ambulance in front of my house. Terror set in my heart. Those red lights mesmerized me with the fear of death; death in my family. I ran over and saw my youngest brother Barry being escorted down the stairs of our building on a stretcher. “Barry!” I screamed in fear, not knowing what was wrong. But something was definitely wrong. He was unconscious; he wasn’t answering me. There were so many faces in the crowd, but none that I recognized. Where were Alvin and Marvin? What is my mother going to say when she gets home? I knew that somehow, this was all going to end up being my fault.

“Not today, please Lord, not today,” I thought to myself. The nosy onlookers in the crowd were all from the neighborhood. If I sneezed a nickel, it would be reported around the hood faster than I could put the change in my pocket. They were all whispering, pointing, and laughing. What could be so funny? My brother is dying here, for all I know; where’s the humor in that?  My fear was overcome with anger. I walked up to one of the pointing girls in the crowd, grabbed her by her neck and pinned her up against the stucco wall of our building. “Chill out,” she whispered as she simultaneously pushed me and gasped for air. People were tugging at me, trying to pull me off her. “What’s so damn funny? That’s my brother you’re laughing at. He’s dying, and you find that funny? I’ll kill you, bitch,” I responded, reaching to choke her again yet still being restrained by one of the nosy onlookers. “Your brother ain’t dying, you crazy bitch,” she replied, just as angrily.

Just then I saw another stretcher, with a girl lying on it, coming out of our apartment. Her mouth had been pried open and the EMT was holding an icepack to her face. What happened? Did Barry beat her up, or even worse, rape her? What was going on? I needed answers.

I shook loose from my neighbor’s grip and attempted to run up the stairs. The police stopped me. “I live here, that’s my brother on a stretcher!” I yelled anxiously. The officer responded with a chuckle, which pissed me off even more than the ones coming from the crowd and that girl I tackled. Before I could choke the police officer, too, my brother Marvin ran out of the apartment. “Come on, we have to go with Barry to the hospital.” He pulled me down the stairs in a rush to Barry’s car. “We have to follow the ambulance,” he said, without any further explanation. “Did you call Mama? What happened to Barry? Is he dying? What’s going on?”  I asked as I jumped in the car, waiting for him to respond. Then he just looked at me and burst out laughing.

Wait a minute. Was the joke on me? Why does everyone think this is funny? An ambulance in front of our home is not funny. My brother on a stretcher didn’t provide me with any sort of comic relief.  Marvin looked at me and said, “Do you know what getting head means?” I was 17, and of course I knew, but my brothers still saw me as a little girl. So, I almost responded with an “of course,” but I knew that would lead into a heated discussion with my brother about my sex life, which at that point only consisted of getting head. Technically, I was still a virgin.

“Well, I heard my friends talk about it,” I lied. He fell for it and said, “Well, Barry decided to get some head from a girl with braces, and, well...” He burst back into laughter. “Well, what, Marvin?” I said, anxiously waiting to hear what happened. “She tore the skin off his dick. Blood was everywhere; you could see the skin stuck in her braces,” he said, laughing hysterically through each word.

For some reason I wasn’t intrigued. We learned that Barry had to have sixteen stitches – I guess one for every tooth the girl had stacked behind her braces. At that moment I decided money was all I needed in this world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

 

“Whoever loves money never has enough money; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless.” Ecclesiastes 5:10

           

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Well, I didn’t love money, but I needed it desperately. My mother treated my brothers like kings. They didn’t work and didn’t go to school. My mother didn’t buy me school clothes and didn’t pay for me to get my hair done – basic things that a teenager needs help with. On her off days she would cook extravagant soul food dinners: fried chicken, greens, smothered pork chops, dressing, gravy, corn on the cob, the works. But I never tasted it. I wasn’t welcome at the dinner table, and if I tried to join them, there would definitely be an altercation.

I basically just felt blessed that she let me live in her household. She always warned me, though, that when I turned 18, I either had to pay rent or find somewhere else to live. My aunt lived around the corner from us, but her house was filled with kids, so I knew that wouldn’t be an option. She did let me stay over sometimes, but to live there was a different scenario. I needed money, and I needed it fast. I considered prostitution, selling drugs, even bootlegging. I decided I would get a legal job to cover up for the illegal things that I was planning to do. I had too much pride and too much fat on my bones to be a prostitute. I thought those girls were idiots anyway. There was no way I was going to do all the work and then pay some man a cut of my money when he did nothing to help earn it. To me it felt like the same concept of having taxes taken out a paycheck.

    So, I decided to sell weed. It was a hot commodity, and the jail time, if caught with intent to sell, was less staggering than that of cocaine or harder illegal substances. I did well at it, too. I would purchase flavored Tootsie Rolls from the liquor store down the street. I would eat the candy and then wrap little bunches of weed in each wrapper. I would put five to ten in a sandwich bag, depending on the order, and do business as the “candy girl” at school and around the neighborhood. There was no such thing as privacy in my house, so I bought a safe and kept my supply hidden in there. I kept the safe hidden under the bathroom sink behind all the cleaning products. Since my brothers never lifted a finger and I was the only one required to clean, I was sure it would be safe there.  I always did what my mother demanded in the hopes of one day making her proud. I also wanted to secure my ability to sleep on the floor next to the couch which she secured when she wasn’t at work. Of course, the boys shared the one bedroom in our apartment. My mother always fussed that had I been a boy, my father would have stayed and we would have a house and money.

 But finally I had money. Business was good. I had secured a loyal supplier and loyal customers. The best thing about it was that my brothers were so busy being promiscuous, they had no clue what baby girl was up to. That’s what they called me – “Baby girl.” though I was far from a baby.

 Around this same time, age 17, I had developed Dolly Parton breasts, and men loved it. My skin made the wrappers of a Hershey’s kiss jealous. I kept my hair done in a “wrap,” as it was called. I had never trusted anyone else to do my hair after a certain, traumatic experience. 

   A girl from the neighborhood recommended me to her beautician after I admired her new “do.” The beautician looked at the coarseness of my hair and coerced me into getting a perm. She said it would make my hair more manageable for the time between visits. I suppose she assumed that I was going to become a regular customer. Everyone’s a hustler. 

 But, I agreed to let her give me the perm. It smelled like sweating eggs, which made me nervous. The perm was cold on my head, but for some reason my scalp felt like it was on fire. I tried scratching it, but she popped her comb on my fingers with every attempt. After she finished  “breaking down my roots,” as she explained, she told me to follow her to the bowls in the back to rinse out the perm. I was excited to see the outcome. I heard the faucet turn on but I didn’t hear any water running. “Oh shit!” she said. “Oh shit, what!” I responded. I went into a panic. What was going on? I had a cold fire going on in my hair. She ran frantically to the front of the shop and opened the robbery-proof, padlocked door, where I saw her talking to a maintenance man who was drilling next to the sidewalk. They had cut the water off. She ran back to me and said, “Don’t panic, we’re going to figure this out.”

  Hearing those words is never a good sign. I was hoping that when she ran away again, she was going to retrieve water from the Arrowhead dispenser they had set up. Instead, she ran and got a towel and began to wipe the perm out of my hair. On the towel was my beautiful mane of coarse hair that I could have managed myself, had it still been attached to my head. She rushed me back over to the shampoo bowl again, and the water was back on. I was guessing that the panic of the situation made her forget to use the water cooler. She rinsed my hair out and looked at me, her face filled with anxiety. We walked back to her station. I glanced at myself in the mirror in pure disbelief. The side of my head looked like a scraped knee. There were scabs everywhere. She promised that she would do everything to fix it.

 That day was the first day I wore a weave. It covered the damage that was done to my hair, which I knew was never going to grow back. I was so pissed off but my new hair – well, someone else’s hair – looked good on me. When she was done I collected my things and started for the door.

 “Umm,” she said, rolling her neck. “Umm what?” I responded, knowing she didn’t want me to pay her. But she did. “That will be Eighty-five dollars,” she said with an attitude of ten females at a ghetto attitude convention. “Eighty-five dollars? Are you crazy? You burned my hair off and you want money? I should charge you!” I responded with just as much attitude. Without hesitation, she lunged at me and started ripping the tracks she had just placed in my head off my hair. I could feel my scalp bleeding; I managed to get to her hands before she could completely ruin my hair twice. Then I punched her in her face. She fell. I ran towards her station and picked up her pressing stove by the handle. She was back up and charging towards me again. I threw the stove at her forcefully, snatching the plug out of the wall. Everything happened so quickly. The stove hit her in the face, and I could smell her flesh cooking. “Charge that, bitch,” I yelled. She lay on the floor, twitching like a fish out of water.  Everyone in the shop was mute with shock. As she lay on the floor crying and whimpering in pain, I ran for the door before anyone could try to stop me. I knew the police would be called, and I just couldn’t go to jail. My mother would hate me even more if I did. I tussled with a customer who tried to block me in and made my way towards a back street. It was going to take me forty minutes to walk home.

  I decided then and there that I would never set foot in anyone’s beauty shop ever again. I walked down the street looking crazy. My head was burning and I just wanted to get home. I roamed the streets, ducking and dodging any car that passed, hoping it wasn’t the police coming for me.

     I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I was too nervous to go home. Since I was recommended to the shop by a neighborhood friend, this woman could find out where I live. She could have the police come for me. My mother was going to kill me. Going home was no longer an option. I had to crash somewhere and lay low for a while.

    Luckily I had cleared my safe the week before. I paid a crack head to pretend to be my mother one day so that I could open up my own bank account and keep most of the money in there. Since I was only 17, I needed an adult on the account. Identification was required, and the crack head had to use her real information. That was an issue, but I couldn’t walk around with thousands of dollars on me. She was one of those crack heads who still took care of her business in between drug binges. Her children were being provided for by the County of Los Angeles, which meant she had to keep identification and Social Security cards to continue to receive her benefits.

     I had made close to ten-thousand dollars from selling weed. I threatened to kill the crack head if she even dared to come close to my account. I had no intention of hurting her, but she was frightened enough to do as I said. Once she did what she was supposed to do, I gave her one hundred dollars and the next day I called the bank, pretended to be her and changed all passwords and pin codes. I couldn’t take any chances.

   As I walked, I realized I could stay at a hotel, but being a minor, that would be a slight problem. Also, I knew I had to keep doing something productive to stay out of trouble. I called my only friend in the world, Trish. I didn’t keep friends because girls my age were too flighty. All they thought about were boys, hair, and clothes. All they wanted to do was be noticed and start fights with girls who got the attention they wanted. I was interested in money. That meant college, jobs, and hustling. I didn’t want Trish to know what was going on, though, so I had to make up a story before I called. I knew it wouldn’t be a problem for me to stay there. Her house was the kick-it spot. Everyone was welcome there: boys and girls came and went at all hours of the night. Her mom thought she was just as young as we were. I guess since she was only twice our age and had traded her teenage years for motherhood, she was determined to gain them back. 

  I walked inside a liquor store a couple of blocks away from the beauty shop to call Trish and still managed to duck the police. I dialed her number. She answered on the first ring; caller ID was a great invention. “Mama Mia,” she said, sounding like a cheap knock-off of Notorious Big. “Unh,” I replied, sounding just as bad. “Hey girl, what’s up?” she said. “Oh, nothing, I just wanted to see if you felt like some company, girl, I need to get out for a while.” I tried to sound like my usual self, but I was in a state of panic, not knowing what was going on at home. Were the cops there? Was my own burn victim standing at my front door looking like a new-age Freddie Krueger ready for round two? I was so nervous for my family. “Girl, you know you’re always welcome here, you don’t even have to ask. Come on through. Girl, I got somebody I want to hook you up with anyway.” Trish was already having sex. She was beautiful and men groveled to get to her. Her body had developed early. I’m sure the Commodores wrote “Brick House” just for her. Her mother was Belizean and her father Puerto Rican, and this diversity made her look like an Island Goddess. I secretly hated how average I was and how extraordinarily beautiful she was. “Girl,” I replied, “You know I don’t be thinking about any boys.” “You need to be,” she added. “You too cute to be gay.” I laughed off her response and assured her I’d be at her house in a couple of minutes.

   I had to travel by bus to get to Trish’s place, and it was going to take longer than a couple of minutes to get from Manchester and Normandie to Compton. I decided to buy some snacks for my expedition to Trish’s house. I reached in the fridge to get my favorite CranApple Snapple, when I heard “Open up the damn register.” I heard a gun cock and slid my way to the floor, hoping no one saw me. A damn robbery. “Great,” I thought. This would be just my luck to be killed over a couple of convenience store dollars.

The voices of the robbers sounded familiar, but I didn’t want to take any chances to see who it was. The store clerk was frantic. I felt so bad for him. He just wanted to make a decent living; he probably had a family waiting for him to come home.  He looked like he was of Korean decent. He had likely come to America to make a better life for himself and then moved his family out here after he got established. He saw the promising businesses available in the inner city, such as providing the hood with the vices of alcohol, cigarettes, and junk food. So in a way, this robbery was a kind of revenge for the families who had been torn apart by this business opportunity called the Liquor store. “This all I have,” he shrieked, his accent heavily apparent. “A hundred dollars,” one of the robbers replied. “Don’t make me kill you, where’s the safe,” the other robber yelled. I was praying to God that the safe was not in the back of the store; that meant they had to come my way. I couldn’t see anything and I was afraid to move.

  I sat there, closed my eyes, and prayed to God. “Lord, don’t let me die like this. Please forgive me for all the things I have done.” They were coming my way. I could hear six feet walking my way; two of the clerks and four for the two robbers. What was I going to do? God’s not answering. Oh, Lord, I’m going to die. I tried to crawl away but was met by a shotgun barrel sitting directly on my forehead. Every liquid that my body ever stored was released right there on that store floor. Sweat, snot, tears and urine were exiting quickly, and all I could think was, “Lord, please let this death be instant and painless.

   Instead, I heard myself speaking. “Please, sir, don’t kill me, I’m not a snitch. Please let me leave,” I cried. “Baby Girl?” the masked gunman said in a whisper. Well, of all the days I decided to hide in a liquor store, today had to be the day that my brothers Alvin and Marvin decided to hold it up. “Dot,” Alvin called over to Marvin. “We got a problem.” I was hoping God had saved the day but was unsure because Alvin was still holding the gun to my head, even after discovering it was his baby sister. “What, man, we got to get out of here fast, man, before they call the police,” Marvin replied. “Man, its Babygirl, we got to get her out of here, too.” I was still buckled down on the floor wetting myself, hoping my brothers didn’t hold me hostage. “B’s waiting out back; run and get in the backseat,” Marvin told me while still trying to focus on getting the money in the safe. Alvin pointed his gun back at the store clerk. I quickly ran outside.

  Halfway down the street, I heard gunshots fired behind me. They sounded like they were coming from the inside of the store. I was hoping my brothers didn’t kill anyone or get killed. I was still hearing shots when suddenly, I felt the sting of metal fly past my ears. They were bullets, and they were aimed at me. Barry was shooting at me from the car, not knowing it was me. I kept running, too afraid to turn around until I saw a house surrounded by bushes, where I took refuge.    

 Alvin and Marvin hopped in the car and I saw them fly by from my safe cover in the bushes.  I started to think,: If I had run back to that car as Marvin instructed, Barry would have killed me from being scared, not knowing I was unintentionally a part of the plan, and worse, if they got caught, I would be implicated in a robbery and even murder, as an accessory. I was already sure the police were after me for burning the beautician earlier; I didn’t need an entire rap sheet in one day. I suppose that logic was pointless because he still fired shots at me. I was just a witness to a crime that he wanted silenced. He didn’t even notice that it was me, his own sister.

  Now I really couldn’t go home. What was even worse was that I had to ride the bus in wet clothing. I’m sure the other passengers on the bus would just see me as a typical crack head that was too far gone to control her bodily fluids. Little did they know that my own brothers had just held me hostage and tried to kill me. To top it off, my hair was still untamed from the beauty shop brawl. Then it hit me that I couldn’t appear at Trish’s house like this and expect her to think everything was normal. I had to make a detour to the mall and get myself together. I called her back and told her it was going to take me longer than expected. She didn’t mind; her house was like New York City in the summer. It never slept.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Three

 

“But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors”- James 2:9

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If today’s views of society needed a spokesperson, Los Angeles would be the perfect poster child – those views being, of course, that outer appearance trumps inner beauty any day. This city was the prime breeding ground of low self-esteem. Beauty, money, power, and respect meant everything here. If you didn’t have it, you would fake it until you made it, or stole it.  This was the place where dreams were made and souls destroyed.  Status meant everything and was often defined by what you wore, what you drove, and where you lived. Even the vagabonds wore Nikes and White T’s.

 Los Angeles was the place where dreams could be translated into reality – as long as you knew someone. Everyone knew someone famous; someone was always someone else’s cousin. Every girl wanted to be a model and every guy a rapper. But the County of Los Angeles and all its inner cities was just like the superficial beauties it contained. There was a soul about this place that was masked by sham and pretense. The cultural makeup of Los Angeles was like an economic food chain. The Mexicans grew it, the Asians sold it, the Blacks bought it, and the Whites lived off the profit.

Gangs perpetuated fear within the inner cities. It amazed me how young Black and Brown men pledged honor to something completely cancerous to themselves, their families, and neighborhoods. They were businessmen; their colors were their logos. You were either a Blood, Crip, or Cop. Those were the three major gangs that ran Los Angeles. 

       I often daydreamed about what it would be like to live somewhere else, or if every urban or major city in the world was as perplexing as Los Angeles, but public transportation was always entertaining enough to interrupt my thoughts about this and my life, in general. I was being stared down by a three-girl crew. I suppose they were trying to understand why my clothes were wet and my hair was such a mess. I didn’t care. My mission was to get to the mall and fix myself up so Trish wouldn’t suspect anything out of the ordinary. These girls were typical “hood” females. They reminded me of the “around the way girls” LL Cool J rapped about. They were all wearing turquoise-blue wife beaters, orange jackets, jeans, and Nikes to match their outfits. They wore the huge gold hoops with their names in them. They were either a gang or on their way to take pictures – either way, I smelled trouble and unfortunately, they smelled me.

They looked like they were my age, but it was obvious that we led different lives. I didn’t really have time for the typical teenage girl stuff. I heard them discussing some boy named Travis. The one whose earrings read “Lashay” was telling the girls how fine Travis was. I was listening to their conversation, but not by choice. They were talking so loud that people outside on the street could probably hear Lashay talk about the things she did with Travis in her mother’s garage when she thought everyone was asleep, but got busted by her grandfather. Again, I just didn’t have time for boys. They were just as much trouble as having friends. Trish always wanted to hook me up with someone, but I needed money more. I always felt like when I was finished handling my business the same old parties, boys, friends, and bullshit would be there at my disposal.

The bus stopped and four passengers got on. A girl got on first. She looked similar to the “around the way” girls, but she wore all black. When she walked passed me I got a glimpse of her oversized hoop earrings. It was becoming a game to learn about the lives of complete strangers. Her name was “Travis.” I quickly realized that some trouble was about to arise on the bus. Her earrings paid homage to “Lashay’s” man. Either Los Angeles was way too small, or it was true that there was one man to every ten women. What were the odds? 

The next two passengers were an older woman and a boy whom I figured was her grandchild. Behind them was who I assumed to be Travis. He was fine. I had never really paid attention to boys in that way, but Travis grabbed my attention. He was at least six feet tall, almost too tall to stand up on the bus. He had “basketball player” written all over him, but his build was all football. His eyes were caramel brown like those Sugar Daddy lollipops. His skin was smooth and chocolate. He looked “tasty” to me; he had a fresh haircut and was dressed in the latest L.A. fashion. He smelled like the cologne older men wore. As he walked past me, for the first time on that bus ride, I was actually embarrassed about my appearance. My pee-stained jeans and wild hair was not making a good impression. I was daydreaming about looking like the other girls on the bus. They were ‘hood,’ but it was obvious that Travis was into them.

My daydream was cut short by some commotion going on in the back of the bus. Had I felt more outgoing that day, I probably would have warned Travis about Lashay and her crew back there. He was in fact the same Travis they had been discussing earlier, but it turned out Lashay wasn’t his only girl. “Who is this bitch?” Lashay was yelling in disbelief that Travis had the “audacity to have a travel companion” on the bus. Travis calmly responded, “Chill all that out.”  He wasn’t surprised that Lashay was on the bus or that he had been caught. Travis’s sidekick was standing on the other side of him, yelling back at Lashay, “I’m his girl, who are you?” “His girl? His girl? I’m his girl!” Lashay shot back. Travis took a seat and let the two girls argue. I was amazed that neither one of them yelled at Travis.

The final stop was the mall. The girls argued over him the whole ride there. When it was time to exit the bus, bodies just rolled down the stairs. Lashay’s friends were hitting Travis and pushing him to break things up. Not only did he not break up the fight, he laughed, took out his cell phone and started recording it. I was nervous that one of them was going to get hurt badly over a boy who didn’t care about either one of them. I wanted to stay and watch the fight but I had to hurry and clean myself up and make my way to Trish’s house.

I could still hear the commotion when I entered the mall. Once inside, my first mission was to get a jacket to cover up the stains on my pants. This would have to go quickly. I was starting to smell like a downtown bus bench. People were staring at me, but I was still reeling from what I had just gone through, so their judging eyes meant nothing to me.

I briskly walked into the department store. I saw a rack of sweat jackets that were perfect for what I needed. I was searching through the rack for my size when one of the employees walked up behind me. “May I help you with something?” she said with her perky, yet suspicious voice. She was a white woman, probably in her late forties. Her hair was pulled back in a neat bun. She wore a white blouse and beige trousers. She was thin. She didn’t have to frown; her nose did it for her. She gave a new meaning to “turning up your nose.” Hers really was, and it was aimed at me. I turned around to her condescending eyes peering at me. The feeling of guilt rushed over me and I hadn’t even done anything.

“No, I’m just looking” I replied in a “leave me alone” sort of tone. “Don’t look too hard, unless you plan on purchasing something” she responded briskly. 

Well, that pissed me off, literally. I didn’t feel like being judged as a thief. I guessed my appearance led to her judgment and not her racially insensitive views.

Time was ticking away. I found my size in red and made my way to the counter. I got to the front of the line and the same court-marshaled store clerk was standing there to ring up my purchase. “Found something you like?” she said sarcastically. “How will you be paying?” she demanded. I said nothing. I reached in my purse and handed her my debit card. “Debit or credit?” she said. “Debit,” I responded. “I’m going to need some identification,” she replied.

It was as if we were playing checkers. Her tone felt as though she had “kinged” me. She just knew that she would have an Employee of the Month placard hung in her honor for catching a store thief. She was sure that I would have a problem producing identification with a picture that matched the name on the debit card.

I was going to ‘”king” her ass back. I handed her my ID and asked for a store manager. She reviewed the information first and looked up at me, startled. “Is something the matter?” she said in a more humble tone. I had a feeling I wasn’t the only one that she profiled in this place. I was waiting for the room to go dark, a spotlight to come down, and ‘We Shall Overcome’ to start playing in the background.

“Yes, I am a paying customer, and I have never had to show identification for a debit card transaction. You saw me and assumed I was someone I wasn’t. You don’t know me. You don’t know the day that I have had. I’ll tell you something else. All my life, I’ve had to fight. So when I come in this damn store to purchase something, you treat me like you would treat your fair-skinned patrons and give me the fucking service I deserve,” I stated proudly and boldly.

I was hoping the store’s customers would go burst into applause, but instead, I was being approached by security and someone I assumed was the manager. The manager, a middle-aged African-American man whose demeanor screamed, “I am the epitome of the forty-year-old virgin” quickly hushed me and asked if there was a problem. “If racial profiling is the normal procedure of this store, then no, everything is fine. Maybe I should call your corporate office and ask them.” I stated.

I was bluffing, but I knew that kind of threat always pinched employees’ nerves. “I’m so sorry, miss,” he proclaimed. “All our customers deserve respect and fair treatment.” He nudged condescending Connie out of the way and completed my transaction. By the time I left the store, I had purchased my jacket at a fifteen percent discount and received a one-hundred-dollar store credit.

I tore the tags off the jacket, wrapped it around my waist and moved on through the mall. I needed hair care products, under clothes, pants, shirts, pajamas, and a duffle bag.

I had spent five hundred dollars, but I still had enough money saved to put off hustling for a while until I figured things out. I wasn’t going home for a while. I still had a terrible instinct that the police were after me and my brothers. Trish’s mom never minded my long stay-overs, anyway. 

  I had everything I needed. I went in the mall bathroom, took out my Bath and Body Works soap and lotion I had purchased, and washed up, changed clothes, and made my way to Compton.