Read Online The Corner II by Alex Richardson - Free Book Online Page B

that too loud. You know you the only one that knows that.”
    “My bad. Let me get outta here. Now I gotta stop by the store.”
    “Why Brian don’t never have any condoms?”
    “He say he don’t like the way they feel. I think he wants to get me pregnant thinking that shit is going to keep me on lock while his ass goes off to the Marines, huh.”
    “Yeah, he’s trippin’.”
    Once downstairs they passed by the dining room and Jasmine said her goodbyes to everyone. Jack just waved and LaDonna spoke telling her to tell her family hi. Jasmine told her that she would and left the house in a hurry to meet her man. LaTanza sat down at the table to join her sister and stepfather for dinner. She hated when they ate at the dining room table. The seat her father made her sit in was the seat where her mother sat whenever they had dinner. Her sister didn’t think anything of it, just figured that LaTanza missed her mom like she does. It had been five years since her mother’s untimely death. Five long years for LaTanza who wished she could have left with her sister when she moved shortly afterward. And that’s when her personal hell broke out.
    The dinner actually went well. LaDonna had put her thing down, macaroni and cheese, greens, fried chicken, hot water cornbread and sweet potato pie for dessert. She had even made enough for LaTanza and Jack to have leftovers for a couple of days and for that, LaTanza was grateful. That meant that she didn’t have to cook tomorrow. LaDonna even stayed to help do the dishes and to talk to her younger sister. She was twenty-seven and LaTanza seventeen so she assumed that her sister was sexually active or thinking about it and figured she’d have that big sister to little sister talk. LaDonna took a beer to her father who was in the living room already drinking on some E&J and LaDonna hated that because her father was okay when drinking beer but sometimes acted a fool when he sucked down too much hard liquor.
    LaDonna walked back into the kitchen with the beer in her hand but made a u-turn when her father yelled for her to bring it back. She did and when she brought it to him he asked her to sit. He was nowhere near drunk—yet.
    He talked to her about her job and told her how proud he was of her and that he’d always known that she would amount to something. He went on about how he remembered the times when she came home with straight As and Bs and whenever she ended up with a C she was upset and vowed to come home with an A next grading period. He told her how he was glad that she’d decided to stay in the city and not move elsewhere—that he needed her. When she told him that he had LaTanza he let out a grunt and wrapped his thick lips around the bottle.
    LaTanza was ear hustling the entire time and felt pain and anger. She knew how her stepfather felt about her. How he hated her for having to play the role that she was his daughter even though no one asked him to do that. He and her mother just wanted to save face and the embarrassment of hearing the gossip in the neighborhood if everyone knew that her mom had conceived a child by another man while her husband was spending time in Cook County jail. A many nights LaTanza cried herself to sleep asking God why hadn’t he let someone kill Jack while he sat in the notorious county jail.
    LaTanza listened as the two talked. Once she got sick of hearing her stepfather dog her, she decided to get back to the dishes. She washed most of them then slammed a plate to the ground. When her sister came into the kitchen to see what happened LaTanza told her she dropped it by accident even though she did it to get her sister back in the kitchen so they could spend more time together before she left.
    It was a little past midnight when the hairs on LaTanza neck stood up like a Porcupine that was sent into defense mode. She was in her bedroom curled up and had been sleeping for only a couple of hours. When she cracked open her eyes a bit she