Still Hood Read Online Free Page B

go to school at night and work during the day, but when Nadine’s father took off she was forced to work two jobs just to make ends meet. By the time she realized what was becoming of her life, Nadine was four and her mother was pregnant with Shannon.
    Nadine was well into her thirties but still couldn’t seem to find a place of her own, or a clue as to what life was about. She was content to coast off government income and an on-again, off-again supply of sugar daddies. No one could deny the fact that Nadine was fine—ugly was something her family didn’t do—but she had about as much get-up-and-go about her as a six-hundred-pound man looking at a Stair-Master. Dena saw her as an example of what she didn’t want to become.
    Careful not to twist her ankle in the high-heeled Gucci sandals she wore, Dena made her way down the stairs. On the last step she almost tripped over a beer bottle that someone had left on the stoop. She looked down at the almost empty bottle and sucked her teeth. It was bad enough that the building was fucked-up and the landlord refused to do anything about the recurring rodent problem, but the nightly stockpile of trash was getting ridiculous. People would party on the stoop all night and leave their trash wherever it fell. It was just one more reason why Dena was determined to finish school. She knew that completing her education was her best chance at getting off Jefferson Avenue.
    A few buildings away were two girls that Dena didn’t care to see first thing in the morning, Yvette and Mousy. Yvette was a transplant from East New York that had moved to the block a few years back. She was a mixture of Dominican and Black, giving her a skin tone that was a shade deeper than caramel candy. Her face could’ve been considered attractive had it not been for the lingering war scars from the many scraps she had been in over the years. She wore her long hair wrapped and tucked beneath the ever-present scarf on her head,
more so to keep her hair from being pulled out in a fight than to preserve whatever hairdo she was sporting.
    Mousy was short and dark-skinned, with large breasts and an equally large mouth. Unlike Yvette, for whom there might’ve still been hope, Mousy had never been very attractive. She wasn’t butt-ugly, but it was an effort for her to turn the head of a man who had anything going for himself. Mousy was a skilled boxer, but had made her name in the streets for her willingness to go above and beyond in the bedroom. Though it was never confirmed, Dena had heard that a guy gave Mousy two thousand dollars to have oral sex with his pit bull.
    These two were the official guardians of the “Stoop of Shamelessness.” The stoop was a platform for all things hood. Most neighborhoods in the inner city had a focal point for most of the bullshit that went on in them, but the stoop had them beat. The things that took place on that stoop were straight out of an episode of Jerry Springer . From drug sales to group fights, to domestic disputes, the stoop had it all.
    â€œLook at you!” Yvette shouted as Dena approached the stoop. Yvette let her eyes roll from Dena’s Gucci sandals to the matching shades sitting on top of her head. “Dena, I gotta give you your props. For a young bitch you be on your job. Get money, shorty!”
    Dena smirked. Though she didn’t say it, she knew Yvette was speaking the absolute truth. For a girl that was all of seventeen years old, Dena had quite a bit going for herself. Unlike some of her peers she was about to graduate high school and had a feasible shot at going to college. Dena gave a halfhearted effort at best, but a natural intelligence kept her ahead of the pack. None of her teachers could quite understand how a girl who looked at school with such a flippant attitude could be so brilliant. It was one of the greatest unsolved mysteries amongst the faculty of Martin Luther King Jr. High School.
    â€œI