Hustlin' Divas Read Online Free PDF

Momma.”
    â€œAnd don’t you forget it.” I lift my head and stroll up to my front door, knowing full well that Arzell’s big, young chocolate eyes are following each sway of my hips. As I suspect, the front door is unlocked and when I step into my house, the place is pitch black.
    â€œHumph,” I say, playing along. “I wonder why it’s so dark in here.” I flip the switch by the door. Niggas jump out of the woodwork like cockroaches.
    â€œSurprise!”
    I light up while tears burn the back of my eyes. “Now this is what I’m talking about. Somebody pass me a blunt and let’s get this muthafuckin’ party started!”

4
Yolanda
    T he music from Momma Peaches’s welcome-home party is bumping so hard all the walls up and down Shotgun Row are jumping and trembling. But nobody says shit because everybody loves Peaches—me included. As far as I’m concerned, Peaches is like a second momma, only better. She has always tried to look out for me, despite the fact that I’m a little hardheaded. Still, I have nothing but love for the feisty old lady.
    Back in the day, she saved me from my drunk, no good daddy (though I found out years later that he really wasn’t my daddy) when he came at me with a broken beer bottle. Peaches had stepped in, bold as you please, asking him what the hell he thought he was going to do with that bottle. Daddy charged toward Peaches. However, Peaches had something for his ass. Instead of slicing her up, he got sliced. Hell, she was so fast, nobody even saw when she’d reached for her blade. It was just swish-swish-swish—like some old Zorro shit, and the nigga went down, grabbing his face and hollering like a bitch.
    My momma, Betty, was pissed about that shit, and to this day blames Peaches for chasing her man off.
    â€œShit. Betty should be grateful—I did her ass a favor,” Peaches would always say whenever Betty’s venom dripped into her ears.
    I agree.
    I don’t even remember how old I was when the shit went down. My daddy had already banged me up pretty bad because he claimed I’d back talked him. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t—I don’t remember. However, I do remember laughing my ass off when Peaches lopped the nigga’s ear off.
    Peaches looked at me like I was crazy. But the shit was just funny. After that, people up and down Shotgun Row started saying that my elevator didn’t quite reach the top. Teachers told Betty on the regular that I was slow and needed to be on Ritalin. Keeping it real, the shit was just a legal high and turned me into a zombie.
    Teachers and the neighborhood kids still called me slow no matter how hard I tried to be like them. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to be popular. I used to let people borrow what few good clothes and toys my momma scraped up only for them not to return them or fuck them up before giving them back. In junior high, a few of the kids were curious about my Ritalin, so I let them try it. I got into some major shit for that. Soon after, a boy I liked, Jimmy Gaines, gave me a box of Lemonheads to let him put his dick in my mouth. I did it—and then the next day another boy asked, and then another.
    I finally became popular—at least with the boys. They even gave me the nickname Lemonhead.
    I didn’t care. Boys loved me, especially when my body started to resemble a Coke bottle, and I proved that I was a certified freak when it came to sexing the 6 poppin’ crew. School turned out not to be my thing; books always hurt my head. So I dropped out in the ninth grade and started hustling. When my momma couldn’t afford my medication, I turned to the street shit and found it all made me feel about the same.
    But now I’m tired of just being a mule, hauling shit everywhere and spreading my legs for every foot solider in Python’s crew and getting next to nothing for my troubles. I might not be book smart, but