Unruly Duz It

Allow me to introduce myself. My friends call me Unruly. Unruly Brown.

Unruly (adj.) Disorderly; difficult or impossible to discipline, control or rule; recalcitrant; wayward; headstrong

Brown (adj.) (of persons) having the skin naturally pigmented a brown color; (noun) a dark tertiary color with a yellowish or reddish hue.

And unruly I am, although I don’t look nearly as volatile as I can be. The view infers I’m as sweet and harmless as a slice of pie, but that’s bullshit—a convenient element of illusion that has distracted many a foe from the fact that they needed to be watching my hands. That looks can be deceiving could never be truer than in my case. A shrewdly wielded ruse that affords the assholes of the world the wrong first impression, causing them to assume by the pretty face and petite size that I’m nice and easy to intimidate or take advantage of. Utterly fascinating how much more damage you can do when you catch people off guard.

Fortunately, I no longer have to call upon my unruly side often, although sometimes I don’t feel like I’ve changed a whole lot. When it comes to dealing with jerks and shit-starters, there’s not much difference between the me I was then and the me I am now. I still get fools in check from jump. But even though the nightmares I once lived and the anger I carried around more than half my life have finally subsided, I also realize that the moment someone fucks with my children or other loved ones, there’s no real guarantee I won’t unleash that beast again. That’s what scares me—what I still might do.

Back when I was growing up, I was always quick to defend my family and deliver a beatdown any time, any place at whatever level of intensity necessary. The oldest of eight, I was as vigilantly protective as a momma lioness when it came to my younger siblings. We moved around constantly when I was a kid, but whenever I got into a fight back then it was almost always because one of my siblings was talking smack he or she couldn’t back up and knew I would jump in.

No, the military didn’t have shit to do with our instability. People always ask me that. My stepfather, known as the Big Bad Wolf by my brother and me, was little more than a gambling, shortchanging, money-laundering hustler, so when a spot got hot, we bounced. Intrastate, interstate—I lived all over the southwest from kindergarten to 10th grade. It’s a wonder I finished high school or made something of myself at all.

Or lived to see 35.

I almost didn’t do either.

* * *

Just before Spring Break during my senior year in high school, I was in drama class trippin’ in the back with Nika. Nika and her sister Janice had moved there not long before from Ohio and we’d hit it off from jump. I could relate to being the new kid, plus I wasn’t from the boondocks we were stuck in either. They were both cute with flyy hair on top of being hella cool. They’d moved into a huge house by the lake and their parents had two late-model Lincoln Towncars (the long ones) that they didn’t mind giving their daughters the keys to, so they were free to roam. We clicked instantly.

As much as I longed to escape my home life, we lived in a nice home as well—a two-story brick house in a cul-de-sac. Since this was supposed to be home base, my parents would leave us kids at the crib with my aunt and uncle for days, sometimes weeks, while they traveled and did their hustle thing elsewhere. My mom hated it, but my stepfather was the domineering, physically, verbally and mentally abusive type and didn’t give her much choice in the matter. If he wanted her to go with him, then she went regardless of how she felt about it, and us kids were left behind.

By then I had been at this school for almost two years. It was the longest I’d ever stayed in one place, and I was ready to graduate and get the hell outta dodge. My attitude was ‘Fuck a prom. Fuck a cap and gown. Fuck walking across a stage. Just gim’ my paper cuz I got places to be.’ My plan was to get up out of this damn hick town my stepfather had us in as soon as possible, go back to Los Angeles, and make me some money working in somebody’s office. I typed over 90 words a minute, had mad computer skills, and could write my ass off, so I knew someone would hire me real quick. I had no intention of looking in the fast food or retail direction at all, and I wasn’t going to college until I had my money right, my own place far away from backwoods alley, and my own ride. Damn that struggling student route.

That day in drama class my girl Nika was fuckin’ with this girl named Sondra, talking about her drippy ass jheri curl, how she talked with a lisp, and how her braces were always caked with plaque. I was rollin’ laughin’. It wasn’t like she was lying! Sondra got mad at me—I guess because we used to be cool before Nika and Janice moved to town—and she jumped up in my face and started talkin’ shit to ME, like I was the one dissing her. Unconcerned about her hurt feelings, I kept laughing in her face and trying not to look at all the gunk in her braces. Meanwhile, Sondra got madder and madder and closer and closer.

She was a few inches away and cursing loudly when something wet landed on my chin and neck. I hesitated before swinging on her because I wasn’t sure if she’d spit on me or if it was normal spray from that excessively aqueous mouth of hers. Either way, she needed to move. I stopped laughing and lost the smile real quick. “You got about two seconds to back the fuck up off me,” I warned through clenched teeth in a voice low enough for only her to hear.

“What you gon’ do, l’il bitch?” Her voice climbed a few notches as she grew even more irate.

I opened my left hand and was pulling my arm back to deliver a slap from the depths of unconsciousness when the drama teacher reappeared between us, grabbed our arms, and steered us to the office.

“Sit right here,” he said, pointing to a seat outside one of the assistant principals’ offices. Sondra sat across the room scowling at me. I flipped her a surreptitious middle finger.

“You need to stay out of trouble, young lady,” Principal Barnes admonished after I explained what had happened. “You’re a senior now. You can’t afford to get suspended. You have three months until graduation. All you have to do is keep your nose clean and your grades up.”

“Understood,” I replied coolly, keeping to myself the part about how that trick best stay out my face before she lands on hers. He lectured me another 10 minutes before letting me go.

That night somebody began playing on my phone, calling and hanging up. This went on a good five times before I answered the phone and said, “I know it’s you, Sondra, with yo’ simple ass. You need to be trying to find a sponge big enough to stick in yo mouth and sop up some of that spit instead of calling me all night, you wetmouth trick.”

She chomped the bait and went off, calling me all kinds of bitches. I pictured spit spraying the phone and cracked up, laughing harder while she tried to top that with some old weak mess about my stepbrother being gay. Like I gave a damn. I started to drop the phone back on the hook, but my call waiting tone sounded. I clicked over; it was Janice.

“Hey, girl, what are you doing?”

“Playing with that mark Sondra. What y’all up to?”

“Nothing. My daddy gave me the keys so we’re about to come over there.”

“Aiight, cool. See you in a minute.”

As soon as I hung up the phone it rang again. I snatched it to my ear. “MARK ASS BITCH, I SAID what do you WANT!?”

“Well, I damn sure don’t want yo man so won’t you tell him to quit calling me?”

I guessed she was talking about Jonathan, but he wasn’t nowhere near my man. That boy smoked weed and drank beer and was forever trying to get me drunk and high. I don’t even play like that. He had grabbed me one night after a football game and was kissin’ all on me with that ashtray breath of his up at McDonald’s, which everybody saw and assumed we had something going on. Ugh.

“Puh-lease. I don’t want him. You wish he would call you, but unlike the rest of the football team, he knows better than to let you suck his dick with all that damn metal in your mouth.” I laughed loudly.

“At least my momma ain’t no ho!” she said. “Everybody know that’s why yo momma always be gone out of town all the time.”

My laugh suffocated as blood raced to my head. I could feel my pulse throbbing at my temples and all through my head. My neck stiffened. Surely I hadn’t heard this bitch right.

“Excuse you? What was that?”

“I said at least my momma ain’t no ho! Everybody know that’s why yo momma always be gone out of town cuz yo daddy is a pimp and she be ho’in for him.”

No the fuck she …

Before I could even begin to seethe fully, Nika and Janice drove up—at the wrong time. I heard car doors slam, so I hung up the phone without another word and went to let them in the front door. I was so pissed I couldn’t even say hello. Instead I gestured for them to follow, doubled back and ran upstairs. They followed closely behind.

“What’s up? What happened?”

“I’m ’bout to beat Sondra’s ass, that’s what.” I stomped around my room, searching for something to beat her with and snatched up the first thing I saw—my wooden desk chair—then dashed back downstairs with it so fast I touched only every fourth step. Nika and Janice raced after me, listening intently with their eyes widening as I spat over my right shoulder what she’d said.

“Oh HELL no!” Janice exclaimed.

Nika’s hand flew to cover her mouth, and she laughed. “No, that bitch didn’t!”

I noticed absently that Nika laughed at everything.

I kept moving, carrying the chair through the den, down a short hall, through the living room and out the glass front storm door to the driveway, then slammed the chair against the short brick wall lining our driveway until the chair leg I was after broke off. I whipped around to face Janice. “Take me to her house, Janice.”

She hesitated. I held out my hand for the keys. “I’ll drive,” I offered.

I didn’t think to be amazed that she gave me the keys until the next day, but we climbed into their dad’s blue Towncar and I drove to Sondra’s house. I didn’t have license to first but that was for damn sure the furthest thing from my mind.

I had barely driven up in front of her house before Sondra was on her way out the door and walking toward the car like we’d stopped by for a friendly visit. I put the car in park, grabbed the chair leg and had gotten out of the car, rounded the rear of the Lincoln, and was going in on Sondra before Nika and Janice even got their seat belts off.

Sondra never saw it coming.

Continued in “Drive-By Beatdown”

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