Hell's Diva:. Anna J. Stewart

M’s job was a minimum-wage job, the rent would be lowered to accommodate her income.

      Ron was arrested for a murder he committed against a rival clan in the Langston Hughes projects. Eventually, he pleaded to a five to fifteen–year bid and was shipped upstate to the same prison Ruby’s father was killed in, Attica. Ruby was devastated.

      She loved him. He was her first. She visited him faithfully. She sold the drugs he left behind and made sure his commissary account stayed in the three-digit range. She snuck in balloons of heroin for him to sell on the inside and accepted his collect calls. Ruby was always there for his calls. She wrote him love letters every night, crying herself to sleep. She never looked at another man, ignoring the advances guys made around the projects. Even some of his friends tried to get a piece of her.

      “Damn, that nigga got you sucked up, girl! Let me hit it while he gone,” they would say when she was seen around the projects. She ignored them all.

      At the same time, her older sister was seeing a guy from the neighborhood named Bobby Sykes. The prettiest nigga Ruby ever saw. Her sister was happy and that’s what made Ruby like Bobby. Ruby sometimes became jealous of her sister’s relationship because her man was in jail while her sister enjoyed the company of Bobby. Bobby bought her sister anything she wanted. Her sister stayed with the latest trend of clothing and he decorated her with diamond-studded trinkets, rings, bracelets, and necklaces.

      Ruby had a rough time selling dope in the projects because she was a female. At first the hustlers accepted it because they knew she was doing it to take care of her man, who they respected, but that didn’t last. Ruby knew she had to get her own respect if she was going to continue to hustle. She bought a gun from an old timer who ran the neighborhood number spot. Even though it was a .25, Ruby had to make do until she was able to buy and handle a bigger one.

      The day came when she had to put her weapon to use. The cousin of the guy her boyfriend had killed heard that Ruby was making money for his cousin’s killer. He had to put a stop to that. He was a known troublemaker around Brownsville. Anywhere he went, something was bound to happen. He was also known to carry around a blue steel .44 Magnum and wasn’t scared to use it. For that, he was given the moniker “Blue.”

      The rain poured down heavily on that Brownsville night, sending the dopefiends into the staircases to shoot up and the hustlers into project lobbies to hustle. Ruby stood in the hallway of her building wearing a black sheepskin with the hat to match, a black pair of Vidal Sassoon jeans, a black sweatshirt with “Ruby” written on it in white letters, and black Pumas. She had a plastic bag in her coat pocket with two bundles of dope in it, and her .25 in her other pocket.

      Blue walked into the lobby with a black rain suit on with a black hooded sweatshirt underneath it. He took his hood off and glanced at Ruby while she leaned up against the silver mailboxes on the wall. He pressed the button on the elevator, acting as if he were waiting for it to come.

      Ruby knew who he was. Everyone in Brownsville knew who he was. Seeing him around the way almost every day, Ruby didn’t think anything of him coming into the building. She definitely didn’t expect him to try to rob her as he pulled his blue steel .44 and pointing it at her chest.

      Ruby had never had a gun pointed at her before and the shock of it made everything seem as if it were in slow motion. The graffiti on the walls looked as if it were moving. The pissy smell in the lobby seemed as if it were new to Ruby. She already had her hands in her pockets so she pulled out the plastic bag containing the two bundles and she put her other hand on the trigger.

      “Where’s the money? I know you got money. If I search you and find some I’ma blast you, bitch!” Blue said between clenched teeth.

      “That’s…that’s all I got,” Ruby stuttered in a fearful voice.

      “Don’t play with me, I know you sending that bitch-ass nigga of yours money. He lucky I wasn’t around when he got my cousin or I would have murdered that punk-ass nigga!”

      Hearing Blue say vulgar things about her man made all the fear in Ruby vanish. Her fear was replaced by a burning rage in her chest. With the gun still in her pocket, she pointed it at him and squeezed five times. All five shots hit Blue in his stomach, his groin, and his thighs, sending him falling face forward. His finger pulled the trigger on his gun as he fell, sending a bullet into the building’s front door.

      “Who’s the bitch-ass nigga now, you faggot!” Ruby bent down and took his gun as he lay on the floor, moaning, then spit on him.

      She ran out of the building and disappeared into the Brownsville night. A bullet had traveled to Blue’s spine and he was paralyzed from the waist down. Ruby moved to Coney Island after she shot and paralyzed Blue. Blue didn’t tell the cops who shot him, though. He was embarrassed by being shot by a female, let alone the girlfriend of his cousin’s killer, so he told his friends that some cat he never saw before ran him down. When Ruby visited Brownsville, Blue, now being pushed around in a wheelchair by his little brother, only glanced at her, not wanting to stir up any trouble.

      Ruby’s world came crumbling in on her when she took one of her weekend trips to Attica to visit her boyfriend. The prison allowed inmates five visitors at one time. The prison only informed visitors that an inmate had visitors if the limit was reached; otherwise, they would allow a visitor to visit an inmate who was already on a visit. When Ruby was let in she immediately noticed her boyfriend hugging and kissing on a girl she recognized from Langston Hughes. She walked over to the couple just as they finished kissing.

      “Who the fuck is this bitch, nigga?” Ruby yelled, standing between her boyfriend and the girl. Looking at the both of them, tears began to form in her eyes.

      “She’s a friend, Ruby. Chill out, girl,” her boyfriend explained, trying to grab Ruby’s hand. He could tell by the look in her eyes that she was about to go off. The other visitors and inmates all watched the drama unfold. Even the correction officer positioned at a desk at the front of the visiting room watched.

      “After all I been through for you, this is how you pay me back? This is what I get, you bastard?”

      “Yo, you buggin’, Ruby. She’s my friend!”

      “Friend? Fuck you mean friend, nigga? You just asked me to marry you, and I’m your friend? You better tell this bit—” the girl responded. She was shorter and smaller than Ruby, but she wasn’t the least bit afraid of Ruby’s stature.

      She didn’t get the chance to finish her sentence before Ruby was all over her. The correction officer had to intervene before total chaos broke out. He had to call for backup to get Ruby off of the girl because she was already bleeding from the nose and mouth. The visit was terminated, and Ruby left the prison distraught and heartbroken. She never visited him again. She didn’t respond to his letters or accept his calls. She told her sister about the incident and the next day his name was taken off the lease. Ruby threw all of his clothes, pictures, and anything else that was his or reminded her of him in the incinerator. Ruby developed a deep hatred for men after her ordeal, and she swore to her sister that she would never let another nigga have her heart again.

      As Ruby and Mecca drove the streets toward home, Ruby tried her best to get these thoughts out of her head. She couldn’t help but notice how much Mecca looked like her now-deceased sister, and vowed to herself that she would do everything in her power to help Mecca get through these trying times that were clearly too much for a child to handle. Ruby also knew she couldn’t dwell on the past, and had to keep the flow going in her own life.

      Ruby brought her niece to her Coney Island apartment a few blocks away from the amusement park the neighborhood was famous for. Her duplex apartment on Twenty-Fourth Street between Surf and Mermaid Avenues was decorated with mirrored walls and bright-colored furniture. It had a seventies look to it. Ruby was living in the apartment with a female companion, but she was currently serving a ten-year sentence for possession of a half kilo of heroin found in a backpack she attempted to bring on a Greyhound bus headed to Virginia. When they entered the apartment, Ruby turned on the television for Mecca to watch.

      “You hungry, baby?” she asked while walking into the