Miami's Superstar

Diamond Johnson

Sujets

• Urban Books

Informations

• Publié par: Sullivan Group Publishing, LLC
• Date de parution: 26 juin 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781648542480
• Langue: English

Extrait

© 2018
Published by Leo Sullivan Presents
www.leolsullivan.com


All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Unauthorized reproduction, in any manner, is prohibited.
Contents



1. Ryan Brownlee

2. Messiah Washington

3. Kimani Washington

4. Ryan Brownlee

5. Messiah Washington

6. Ryan Brownlee

7. Leroy Washington

8. Messiah Washington

9. Montay Knight

10. Ryan Brownlee

11. Messiah Washington

12. Ryan Brownlee

13. Ryan Brownlee

14. Messiah Washington

15. Devin Clark


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1

Ryan Brownlee
7 years ago; The year 2011



“S ay another word, and so help me God, your face will be going through this fuckin’ wall!”
Malik’s deep voice boomed through the thin walls of our home, which jolted me from my deep sleep. Malik was my mother’s boyfriend, and she was his punching bag. I was seventeen years old, and they’d been together for the past thirteen years of my life. For twelve of those years, I’d been awakened from my sleep to this very thing. It scared me to my core. So much so that I didn’t stop peeing in the bed until I was ten years old.
I couldn’t stand to lie in my bed and listen to my mother be tossed around her bedroom like a rag doll by a man who she swore up and down loved her. So, by the time I turned eleven, I had come up with my own solution to tuning the two of them out since putting my hands over my ears didn’t seem to help much. Even when I would place my comforter over my head along with putting my hands over my ears, I still managed to hear what sounded like a boxing match going on from the other side of the wall.
My remedy was to go outside and sleep on the porch until the next morning. With the front door closed and with the two of them in the back bedroom, I couldn’t hear a thing. I would finally be at peace, even if my peace was only temporary.
“Malik, why are you acting like this, baby? All I wanted to know was how did the lipstick get on your shirt, that’s all,” I heard my mother say, and I cringed because I knew he was going to hit her. I could feel it.
We’d been through this over a thousand times before. I loved my mother to death—even though I questioned her love for me over one hundred times a day—but, sometimes, I couldn’t help but feel that she enjoyed getting her ass beat. She knew Malik was crazy. He’d just told her not to say another word, and there she was, questioning him about another woman. She knew that he was cheating on her, so I had no clue why she acted so shocked.
A few months ago, Malik had told my mother that he was leaving for a couple of hours, so he could go to a job interview. That turned out to be a lie because that same day, my mom dropped me off at my Burger King job, and we spotted him and another woman all hugged up as they left the nail salon that was right next door. I hated the things that Malik did to my mother, but I also hated that she allowed him to continue doing it.
“Bitch, I thought I told you to shut your fuckin’ mouth!” I heard, which was followed by a big boom.
I released a low scream right before I jumped up from my bed, grabbed the comforter, and ran for the door. The whole time I was running, I could hear a bunch of banging coming from their bedroom along with my mother’s screams and cries. I wanted so desperately to help her, but I had learned my lesson years ago.
I had to be no more than nine years old when I found myself trying to jump into one of their fights and protect my mother from Malik. I was swinging on Malik, like I’d seen him do to my mother on so many occasions. One of my swings connected to his nose, and he started bleeding profusely. Do you know I got my ass beat for that? My mother stood over me swinging a belt while blood sprinkled down from just about every part of her body, simply because my love for her allowed me to jump in and rescue her. I was tired of seeing her get her ass beat by this man. From that day, I was told to stay out of their business, and that’s exactly what I had been doing.
So, at 3:45 in the morning, there I was, sitting in the old rocking chair on our porch with my blanket wrapped around my body. I rocked myself back and forth with tears trickling down my face, praying that Malik didn’t kill my mother this time.
Almost an hour had gone by, and I was just about to close my eyes when I heard a door close next door, which made my eyes flutter open. I peeked over at our neighbor’s house, and because their porch light wasn’t on, I wasn’t able to make out the figure that had come outside.
We’d only been living in this home for about three months, and truth be told, I hated this area. I mean, the house that we were renting prior to this wasn’t that much different, but this environment right here would probably have people looking at me like I had balls the size of a gorilla to even be brave enough to sleep outside by myself.
This was the type of area that you needed to be inside your home as soon as the street lights came on. Not only should one be inside the home, but there should be locks and chains on the door to prevent anyone from breaking in. We’d already learned from our other neighbors that this neighborhood was known for that. Not only did I have to worry about my mom and Malik fighting in the middle of the night, but there were also times when I had to hide under my bed and pray that none of the bullets that were flying outside would come flying into my bedroom window.
My eyes were getting so heavy, and I knew that I needed to eventually close them because I had to be up in a couple of hours to get ready for school. It was my senior year, and I was expected to graduate in another five months, but I had no clue what I wanted to do after I finished high school. Graduation would actually be celebrating two milestones because not only would I receive my diploma that day, but I would turn eighteen that same day as well.
I hadn’t even applied for any colleges yet. I barely made decent grades simply because I dealt with so much turmoil at home that it was hard for me to keep up in school, let alone grasp what the teachers were even talking about. The part time job that I had at Burger King wouldn’t even be enough to help pay for one college course or even a textbook for that matter. By the time I gave my mother the half that she needed for rent, I would be lucky if I had thirty dollars left to my name.
My mom worked at Ihop, and with her salary and mine mixed together, we were barely making ends meet. A lot of people probably thought it was fucked up that I was still a minor and my mother was charging me for rent, but I didn’t see it that way because I knew what we’d been through that forced me to get a job. When it was just my mother working, it was always like we had to choose. Choose to pay the rent for the month or buy groceries for the house. Choose to pay the electric bill or the water bill. It was so bad that we never had the option of getting both things. The same thing went for food. We might have had milk, but we didn’t have cereal. Meat to cook, but the electric bill hadn’t been paid, so there was really nothing that we could do.
We were struggling bad, and my mother came to me and told me that I needed to find a job, or else we were going to end up homeless. With all the fucked-up shit that I’d endured in life, I’d be damned if I had to add being homeless to my list as well. I know you might be asking the question, well why doesn’t Malik work? Truth is, Malik’s criminal background was so damaging that Dollar Tree wouldn’t even hire him, so we had to work.
You would think that with my mom busting her ass to provide for his grown ass, that he would be a little more appreciative, but that didn’t stop him from laying hands on her every chance he got. I sat there in my thoughts because I knew I needed to do something after high school. Although I said that college wasn’t an option for me, I saw how not getting an education had damaged my mother’s life, and I didn’t want to go out the same way she did.
Before she started working her job at Ihop, she did room service for a few years at a local hotel. Although school work was something that I didn’t excel at, I could sing. I had a composition notebook that was filled with songs that I’d written over the years, but it’s been a year since I’d picked it up and actually given any thought to writing another song or even singing for that matter.
My mother didn’t dream, and because she felt that way, she’d gotten into my head and forced me to stop dreaming myself. I can’t tell you how many times over the years this lady had told me that I was wasting my time for even having thoughts that I would be a singer. In the beginning, I just shrugged her off, but then I started thinking that she may hold a little truth to what she was saying, so it wasn’t too long before I stopped dreaming my damn self.
On top of that, the neighborhoods that we lived in for just about all my life didn’t give me reason to dream. I mean, even right now, we’re staying in an area where I had to drop down to my knees every night and pray that no one tried to break into our home, even though we don’t have much of nothing. I had to pray that I didn’t get hit by a stray bullet in the middle of the night. You see, it wasn’t much that I had to look forward to in life because I really didn’t hav