Hell's Diva:. Anna J. Stewart

off of what had happened as much as she could.

      “Yes, Auntie, do you have Cap’n Crunch?” Mecca replied to her surprise. Ruby knew at that moment that Mecca was tougher than the average girl her age. If she could get through the death of her parents with no problem, anything else that would come her way would be a breeze.

      Chapter Four

      He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.

      Revelations 13:10

      After two weeks of taking Mecca shopping for new clothes and furniture for the room once used by Ruby’s roommate, Mecca returned to school. Ruby allowed Mecca to continue to attend school in Brownsville with all of her friends. She, along with some of Mecca’s teachers, noticed a change in Mecca’s attitude immediately. Her temper, to be exact.

      Her first explosion was directed toward a girl her age named Tamika, the sister of her parents’ killer. Tamika didn’t know it was her brother who had killed Mecca’s parents. Tamika hardly saw her brother, and when he did come home it would be after a week of him missing and he would come home while Tamika was asleep. When she got home from school, he would be gone. It all popped off when Tamika asked Mecca for some candy during lunch period, something she was better off leaving alone.

      “Can I get one of your Now and Laters?”

      “No! Get your own,” Mecca replied to Tamika while rolling her eyes.

      “Forget you then,” Tamika came back, sucking her teeth and rolling her eyes at Mecca. When she turned to walk away she didn’t see Mecca charging at her like a speeding train. By the time she turned around, hearing the footsteps coming toward her, Mecca was swinging wildly, punching and scratching Tamika’s face. She pulled Tamika’s hair, forcing her to the floor and causing Tamika to squeal in pain.

      “Mecca, get off me! You’re hurting me!”

      Mecca had rage in her eyes and she didn’t hear Tamika’s cry. She didn’t hear the other students laughing and screaming for Mecca to “beat her up!” and “stop, Mecca, you’re hurting her!”

      Teachers hearing the commotion came to break it up. When Mecca was pulled off of Tamika, she had patches of her hair missing. Her face was scratched and bruised. Mecca was breathing hard and just stared at Tamika while the teachers walked her to the principal’s office, where Mecca was told she was on a three-day suspension. Mecca thought she would come home to an angry Ruby. Instead, Ruby waited for Mecca to return home to a diamond bracelet and brand new Sergio Valente jeans and Reebok sneakers. Ruby was usually high off of the weed she constantly smoked, and smiled at Mecca.

      “You beat that li’l bitch ass, Mecca?”

      “Yeah, Auntie, I beat her ass.” Mecca smiled back at her aunt.

      Ruby hugged her niece and said, “If anybody says something you don’t like or tries to hurt your feelings, you beat they ass. If they beat you, you grab a bottle, a knife, anything you can find and you make sure they feel pain, you hear me?” Ruby asked. With a serious look on her face, she held Mecca’s shoulders and continued, “If I ever hear you let somebody hit you and you ain’t do nothing, I’ll beat your ass myself.”

      Ruby smiled again and handed Mecca her gifts. When teachers complained to Ruby, she told them she would deal with Mecca. Eventually Mecca got expelled at numerous schools in Brooklyn. By the time she reached junior high, Mecca had been to six elementary schools, and ended up in a school for problem kids known as “six hundred schools.”

      Ruby sold dope out of the apartment and didn’t have to worry about standing on corners subjected to harassing beat cops and detectives and the stick up kids. Coney Island was full of stick up kids. Ruby had regular clientele. People she knew. She didn’t run a spot where just anyone could come cop; her customers were also friends she invited in to drink and gossip with, most of them women.

      Ruby had some of the same customers she had before leaving Brownsville, and it was from her Brownsville customers that she received info she needed about the goings-on in Brownsville. The who’s who and what’s what of the neighborhood. This is how Ruby received the information she needed to make her move against the man responsible for killing her sister and her brother-in-law, and making her niece an orphan.

      The kids in Mecca’s new Coney Island neighborhood learned the hard way that Mecca wasn’t the social type. Ruby kept Mecca’s hair tightly corn-rowed, which made Mecca’s eyes seem catlike. The look in Mecca’s light brown eyes scared a lot of the kids. A lot of the kids envied Mecca, due to Ruby making sure that Mecca’s clothes were of the latest fashion. Mecca wore clothes that kids in Coney Island wouldn’t see until months later and wouldn’t be able to have because their parents couldn’t afford them.

      What Mecca didn’t know was that her clothes were from boosters that Ruby paid for with dope or were given to her by her friends. The only things Ruby bought for Mecca were jewelry, sneakers, and shoes. Mecca wore two-karat diamond earrings, diamond-flooded wrist and ankle bracelets, and she had every cartridge for the Atari 2600 and the 3200 ever made.

      When the summer of 1983 rolled in, Mecca met a girl her age named Dawn who lived down the hall from her tenth floor apartment. Dawn’s mother was one of Ruby’s customers and asked Ruby if Dawn could stay at her apartment while she went out on “dates,” which everybody in Coney Island knew were Johns. She sold her body to support her habit. At first, Mecca hated the dark-skinned, thick, bushy-haired girl. Dawn wore dirty clothes, smelled like piss, and she was always ashy. Mecca didn’t like her out of jealousy. Ruby started giving Dawn new clothes; she bathed Dawn, and did her hair the same way she did Mecca’s.

      Mecca found her excuse to try to physically hurt Dawn when Dawn tried to steal one of Mecca’s Atari cartridges. They were playing each other in a game of Frogger when Mecca noticed out of the corner of her eye the print of a cartridge in Dawn’s dungaree pockets. Mecca dropped her joystick and went to grab Dawns pocket.

      “What are you doing?” Dawn jumped back and yelled.

      Mecca gave her the look that usually scared other kids away from her, but to her surprise Dawn returned the look. Mecca was caught off guard. She was not used to anyone not being scared when she gave them that menacing stare.

      “Gimme my cartridge, you thief!” Mecca barked.

      “This ain’t yours!” Dawn grabbed her pocket when she saw Mecca stare at it.

      “Yes, it is!” Mecca yelled, charging at Dawn, who was no pushover.

      This was no easy fight for Mecca. Dawn was just as strong and ferocious as she was. Ruby, in her bedroom, was bagging up heroin into small, white packets, wearing a hospital mask over her face as not to inhale the fumes, when she heard the argument going on between the girls, and ran out to see what the commotion was. When she entered the living room she saw Mecca and Dawn both with ripped T-shirts, hair out wild, and both had scratches and blood coming out of their noses. They were both out of breath holding each other’s hair, and swinging their arms at each other. Ruby watched them fight for a few more minutes, grinning, then when she realized they had both had enough, she stepped between them, holding them apart from each other.

      “All right, you two! Y’all know damn well y’all had enough. I don’t know what y’all was fighting for….”

      “She tried to—” Mecca replied, pointing to Dawn, out of breath.

      Ruby cut her off. “I don’t want to know. The way y’all fought each other y’all better off being friends and holding each other down against them people that’s going to hate you for who you are. Whatever it was, don’t let it come between y’all again. Don’t let nothing come between y’all, I want y’all to be like sisters, you hear me?”

      Both girls stared at each other, neither not wanting to fight each other again. Mecca had to admit to herself Dawn was tough and Dawn thought the same of Mecca. Dawn also thought Mecca was a spoiled brat who was spoon-fed and didn’t have to fight for anything, but she had a change of heart after the fight