Thong on Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

lived downtown in what seemed like a mansion to me. Compared to the freezing-in-the-winter, boiling-in-the-summer rattrap I lived in, it probably was.
    Me and Paris were the same age but we were nothing alike. I lived with Kimichi and her pimp lover, King. Paris had a mother and a father and a baby brother, and I didn’t have nobody. I was poor and dirty, and Paris walked around looking like a sparkling black princess. I lived in a dilapidated Harlem apartment upstairs from a record shop, and Paris lived in a high-rise suite downtown. My daddy had gotten shot dead trying to rob a check-cashing place, and Paris’s daddy was a big willie who worked for the state, a shot caller who rolled with important playas and carried big bank. My mother was a street junkie and Paris’s mom was a sanctified housewife. I crawled into a grimy bed every night, catching feelings when my panties got snatched off and my legs was yanked open. Paris rested peacefully in a platform bed with stars painted on the ceiling and frilly lace curtains hanging over her head.
    “Turn that shoe around the other way,” Paris tried to boss me. It was the Friday before Easter and the only reason she’d asked Uncle Swag to bring me to her house was so she could show off all the new gear her mother had bought her.
    “Don’t tell me what to do,” I snapped, bending up her white patent-leather shoe and shoving it back in the box damn near sideways. Her new clothes were thrown all over the place. The bed, the dress, the floor…most of them sporting price tags so high they boggled my mind. She had name-brand everything. Sailor dresses, party dresses. Panties. Socks. New denim short shorts and back-out tops to match. Skirts with flowing peasant tops. Three pairs of Nikes, some Timbs, and two pairs of shiny shoes with low heels. Cute little summer outfits that would have looked too fly on me. She even had one of those dressy knit ponchos and a real Gucci purse in the same shade.
    “These shits is ugly anyway,” I said, tossing the shoe box to the floor with a smirk. “You shoulda got something with a high heel on it. Don’t nobody like flat shoes with buckles on them no way.” I mighta been talking mad shit out loud, but deep inside I woulda died for them patent-leather shoes, and was wishing I had Paris’s whole life.
    Uncle Swag was my father’s little brother and I coulda ate me a mouthful of his ass. He worked some kinda high-post government job and people all over Harlem swarmed around him trying to shake his hand and get his attention. Like Daddy, Uncle Swag was tall with sexy bowlegs and had pretty chocolate skin, but that’s where the resemblance ended. Daddy had been a grimy, peasy-head, ball-scratching, stank-breathed needle fiend, and Uncle Swag was paid and shiny, holding swole pockets and pushing a jet-black Maserati. He was down with people on the streets and looked and smelled good, and whenever he came around I told myself it was just to see me. I had even convinced myself that he liked me better than he liked his nappy-headed daughter Paris.
    “Sweet Saucy!” He would laugh real loud and grab a handful of my long curly hair before twirling me around and picking me up. “Girl you getting taller and prettier every time I see you. You been a good girl? Tell Uncle what you want for your birthday.”
    I lived to see my Uncle Swag rolling up to my block in that big black whip with the deep cream interior. I would sit in the window for hours fantasizing about how much doe I’d have if I was his daughter, all the shoes I’d sport, all the designer clothes and jewelry I’d possess, and all the smart shit I’d talk, if only I had been born Uncle Swag’s baby girl instead of Daddy’s!
    Whenever he pulled up to the curb with those spinners moving, niggas would scatter from their apartments like roaches, rushing over to admire his g-ride. The young boys on the block would be fighting each other trying to get appointed to stand guard over