Eviction Notice by K'wan Page B

get her mind off Scar’s creepy stare, she reflected on her and Alonzo’s conversation and it brought a smile to her face. Alonzo was a good dude and a fair catch, but she respected his grind too much to complicate his life with her bullshit. She was a broke college dropout with half a plan and a dream to get out of the hood, and Alonzo looked like he might actually make it, so she wouldn’t share her karma with him.
    As she was about to turn up the path leading to her building, a cab was pulling up on the avenue and someone was calling her name out the back window. “Porsha, it’s me, Sahara. Come here right quick.”
    Porsha looked to make sure it was really Sahara before approaching the cab and looking at her in shock, because she was such a mess. Her hair was all over the place and there were welts on her dark face. “What the hell happened to you?”
    “It’s a long story, and I’ll tell you all about it, but first I need you to let me hold eight dollars to pay for this cab,” Sahara said.
    “Shit, where’s your money?” Porsha asked suspiciously.
    “I left my pocketbook on the bench in front of King’s building. Please don’t play twenty questions with me right now, Porsha, because I’m not in the mood.” Porsha paid for the cab and held the door open for Sahara. When she stepped out, Porsha could really see how much of a wreck Sahara was. Her elbows were scraped and her dress was torn down the back, barely covering her ass. “I swear to God I’m gonna murk this bitch.” Sahara smacked her hand against her palm in frustration. She was speed-walking down the path to her building.
    “What bitch? What happened? Who?” Porsha fired off questions while trying to keep up with Sahara.
    Sahara stopped in her tracks and looked at Porsha as if she were stupid. “Yvonne! Damn, ain’t you been listening?” Sahara continued walking, giving Porsha the short version of what had happened.
    “Wow, I can’t believe that bum bitch tried to frog-up on you.” Porsha shook her head.
    “That’s a’ight, because I’m about to call my bitches from Patterson and let the BX in me be felt,” Sahara fumed.
    “Well, I ain’t no big fighter but I got some wild-ass cousins from Bed-Stuy that’ll come up here and get it way popping,” Porsha offered. Fighting had never been one of Porsha’s strong suits, so she generally left it to her cousins, and those chicks were professionals at delivering ass whippings.
    When they rounded the corner toward their building they spotted Happy, Levi, and Frankie on the bench passing around a blunt. There were a half-dozen designer bags on the ground and on the bench, so Porsha knew she had caught Frankie fresh off a lick, which meant she would get the pick of her goods before they made it to the streets to be picked over. Shopping with Frankie as opposed to in the stores allowed Porsha to keep up her high look, on a broke bitch’s budget.
    As they were closing in on the bench, Boots and Bernie were coming out of the building with three of their children. Bernie pushed the stroller carrying their youngest child with one hand and clutched a brown paper bag in the other. He strode so purposefully and proudly with his family in tow, and it sent a wave of sympathy through everyone watching it. Bernie was an accident that just hadn’t happened yet.
    Boots was decked out in gray sweats and lime-green flip-flops with a black tank top that struggled to hold in her large breasts and increasingly growing waistline. Boots was a cool chick, but she had some very scandalous ways about her, promiscuity being only one of them. Boots loved to fuck and didn’t care who knew it, which probably explained why she had five kids by almost as many dudes.
    Bernie was the only one of her kids’ fathers who actually stuck around and tried to create a family structure with Boots and her children, but she did him the dirtiest. At one time Bernie had been a promising basketball recruit, but Boots’s