Hell's Diva:. Anna J. Stewart

an apple. Mecca reached in her back pocket and pulled out a Gem Star razor that she had found on the kitchen table. Ruby used them to chop up her drugs.

      Grabbing the girl by the back of her head, holding her hair, she sliced the girl’s face from her ear to the corner of her lip. The blood squirted from the girl’s face. She tried to hold her face closed so the blood wouldn’t leak out.

      “She cut me! Get this bitch off of me!”

      When the crowd saw all the blood, they started walking away. Mecca and Dawn both ran to the exit and rushed to the bus stop to catch the bus heading home. Later that day, two cops knocked on Monique’s door in Langston Hughes looking for Dawn and Mecca. The girls used Monique’s address so they could go to school in Brownsville. They had to live in the zone in order to attend the school. If the school found out they lived in Coney Island, they wouldn’t be allowed to attend. The cops told Monique that they had a warrant for the arrest of Dawn and Mecca. Monique informed both of them that Dawn and Mecca didn’t return home that day. When they did she would bring them to the station. She lied.

      “Who the hell is Tah, Dawn?” Mecca asked Dawn while they rode the bus home.

      “You know him by face. He’s in my math class,” Dawn replied, looking out the window while the bus rode through the Pitkin Avenue shopping area.

      “How he look? He better be cute after all this bullshit we going through,” Mecca said.

      “He all right. He ain’t no LL Cool J. He gets fresh and all that. He pump jums in Brownsville houses.”

      “You know we can’t go back to school, right?” Mecca said more than asked.

      Dawn sighed. “Yeah, I know. Fuck it, I’m tired of school anyway. I’m ready to start making some dough.”

      “What are you talking about, Dawn?” Mecca asked with a look on her face that said, “I know you ain’t talking about what I think you’re talking about.”

      “I’m talking about the way your aunt gets money. Like everybody else. I’m tired of taking handouts from Ruby, Mecca. I’m ready to get down with the program.”

      Mecca shook her head at her friend. Dawn is going crazy, she thought. It’s probably losing her virginity that messed her brain up. Mecca hoped Dawn was just talking and not dead serious about it.

      “Dawn, you crazy, girl,” was all she could say before riding the rest of the way to Coney Island in silence.

      The white-robed man named Lou folded his arms and stared at Mecca for a few seconds.

      “What?” Mecca asked tersely.

      “Did that girl deserve to have her face sliced up like that?”

      Mecca sucked her teeth and looked away from Lou. “Shoot, she spit on me. I ain’t letting nobody spit on me, for real.”

      “Don’t you see how reckless you were, Mecca? I could understand you being young and in emotional pain from the tragic loss of your parents, but to live your life blaming everybody for it? It’s not fair, Mecca. Two people are responsible for what happened to your parents. Not the eight million people that live in New York City.”

      “What do you care? It wasn’t your family!” Mecca barked. “You don’t know what it feels like. How you going to tell me how I should have felt?”

      “I didn’t tell you how you should feel. I’m just saying you should have learned how to deal with your feelings better than the way you did,” Lou shot back.

      “What’s the point then?” Mecca asked, lifting her hands in a protesting manner while shrugging her shoulders

      “I haven’t gotten to that yet. When I do you’ll be the first to know.”