Lighter Shade of Brown (Urban Fiction) BWHM

Chapter 1

AN: Liberty James ^^

It was the summer of '93, and the weather was almost hotter than the location. But then again, what could be hotter than hell? The Ninth! Some would assume that the steam which rose from the broken sidewalks in front of the brick apartment building justified the neighbor hood's nickname, the Ninth Circle of Hell. The heat wave however, had nothing to do with why people associated Messalina projects with Dante's Inferno. No, that honor went to the infestation of dealers, crack heads, boosters, and hoes. Dope boys handled their business like it was legal, and everyone learned to look the other way. If they didn't learn, then they never got the chance to look again.

Life in the ninth operated by the code of the wild, predators ate and prey got eaten. The drug dealers sat at the top of chain. Boosters, strippers and hoes fell somewhere in the middle, while the crack heads and the civilians clung to the last wrung. Everyone knew their assigned roles and no one ever deviated from the script. Cleopatra James, an unremarkable thirteen year old girl, understood better than anyone, her dictated place in the procession. But that didn't mean she accepted the role she'd been given to play. In fact she resented her mother for never trying to be better. Hounding limitations followed her around like a bad smell, and she knew that Liberty James was the one to blame.

Her mother's sexnastics broadcast to an indiscriminate audience daily. These same onlookers expected Cleo to be her mother's daughter. They even had an ongoing bet as to when she would turn her first trick and her thirteen years didn't mean a damn thing. Why would her age be a factor? The average girl in the ninth lost her virginity at the raw age of twelve. So everyone believed her v-card status would soon change. In fact dudes twice her age stayed going out of their way to talk her out of her thread bare underwear. But Cleo avoided those brothers like the well-established STD they were.

She would never allow a man to be her undoing like her mother had. So instead, she kept her head down and learned to develop selective hearing. Words only hurt when you paid attention, so Cleo never did. Life worked out well that way. Sure, she didn't have any friends, and yeah she spent ninety-five percent of her time alone, but certain sacrifices just had to be made to avoid the drama.

Cleopatra wrapped her thin chocolate covered arms around her knobby knees and watched the world continue to spin without giving her a passing glance. An indifferent line settled on her slightly too large mouth as she noticed her mother cutting across the cement cracked basketball court. The guys who were in the middle of a game yelled a string of curse words as she passed.

"So stupid." Cleo muttered to herself.

Cleo rose from her place on the stairs. The last thing she needed was Liberty calling attention to them with her loud mouth self. It was bad enough being talked about on general purpose, but even worse when her mother gave the chickens shit to cluck about.

"Cleo."

With a roll of her eyes and a sigh, she sank back down on the step, "What, Liberty?"

Liberty put a seductive twist in her hips as she climbed the stairs. Leaning forward, she tooted her ass just enough to give a passer by a presentation of her goodies, which really wasn't a new thing since most of the dudes in the Ninth had already seen her cookie.

When she stood on the step below hers, she placed a hand on her hip. Looking Cleo up and down, her top lip curled at the corner. "You been sitting on those steps all day haven't you?" Liberty's long fake genie ponytail swiped each shoulder as she shook her head.

"Why?" She snapped.

"Humph." Liberty threw her hands in the air and leaned against one of the rails. "Why you always sitting on these stairs like you an old ass woman. Your job to hold them down, huh?" Slapping a hand to her stomach, she threw her head back and laughed at her own joke as if Martin Lawrence was the one who'd told it. "Sheeit, when I was your age I stayed gone. Yo' grandma had to put a lock on my window to keep me home."