Read Online Chill Wind by Janet McDonald - Free Book Online

all big. You gotta be cute too. Where your cup? No, you are not fixin’ to drink out the carton! I swear, Ai, you put the ghett in ghetto !”
    â€œPlease, I ain’t drinking out your booty milk carton. Your lips probably been on it. And don’t worry about my looks. I take after my mama the beauty queen. Now you, that’s another story. Ya mama so ugly, when she cry her tears go sideways.”
    â€œDon’t start with me, Ai, ’cause you know Miss Ingram so ugly when she looked in the mirror, it broke.”
    The girls were suddenly nose to nose, wobbling their heads at each other.
    â€œRight, Keeba. That’s why your mama so ugly, the dogcatcher refused to pick her up.”
    â€œYour mama so ugly, she scared the u off the gly .”
    â€œNow that was stupid, Keeba, just like you.” Next thing they were pulling and giggling and punching at each other. Having run out of “ya mama so ugly” jokes, Aisha focused once again on her future.
    â€œAh-ight, jokes aside, I‘ma call. Why not? Done tried everything else, right? I ain’t letting nobody force me in one of them no-pay workfare jobs. If I gotta work, then I’ma be out there like Tyra Banks, getting paid Puffy style, I mean mega benjamins. I‘ma travel all over, be all up in magazines and music videos like my girl Brandy, open me a bank account, take care of me and mines, chill, get another
model job, count my cash, chill, and keep it goin’ like that on and on and on.”
    â€œWell you go, Puff Mama, make ’em show you the money, I ain’t mad atcha! I bet a lot of stuff that happen to folks is like Lotto—you can’t win if you don’t play. You probably should go for it. Maybe you right, something might break for you. But you know you gotta hook me up when you be clockin’ dollars so I can get mine. And my sister. Or we gon’ be all over you like a rash.”
    Aisha promised that if she made it, she’d “do the right thing” by Keeba, Teesha, Toya—all her homegirls. They settled back into TV and snacks and time passed like sleep.
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    Louis Sr.’s height genes had skipped a generation, making for a statuesque Ebony and a tall-for-her-age Starlett. What Aisha got were her mother’s dense bones, which formed a squat frame for her fleshy body. Growing up alone with a distant mother, Aisha discovered that not only did food taste good, eating itself was soothing. Feeding herself became an act of love. The slow smear of thick brown peanut butter across a soft square of white bread, the swath of mayonnaise, the buttery cheese toast, hot and dripping—these were rituals in a small world of pleasure controlled absolutely by her.
    When she had money, there were red hots, jawbreakers, SweeTarts, Chuckles, and chocolate kisses. Salted treats made her mouth squirt—potato chips and curled cheese puffs, vinegar-flavored potato sticks, and ridgy corn chips.
A little more money bought real food like hamburgers and hot dogs, fries and onion rings, pizza and hero sandwiches, all washed down in floods of sugary cherry, orange, grape, or cola-colored drinks. As Aisha’s cooking skills grew, so did the stacks of pancakes, mounds of mashed potatoes, and piles of fried chicken parts.
    Swathed in blankets and supported by pillows, Aisha would sink onto her bed with a tray full of food on her lap, absently engaged in one after another cartoon, soap opera, sitcom. As she developed outward but not upward, her breasts ballooned, her hips spread, and her thighs thickened. Constant eating became a way of life, something that happened almost automatically, like breathing.
    In the projects, Aisha’s size wasn’t unusual, nor was it criticized, as most girls her age were large. With her dark eyes, strong cheekbones, and full, sensuous lips, Aisha was one of the prettiest girls around. So why couldn’t she be a rich and famous big model?
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    Aisha could