BLACK LADY CHRONICLES
By
Lady Dae
BLACK LADY CHRONICLES
Published by Lady Dae at Smashwords.com
Copyright 2011 Lady Dae
Dedication
To
my sisters and brother,
Qadeera, Zakiyyah, Sakinah, Khadijah, Khalidah,
& Sulaiman (the only boy)
Queen of the Nile
Basketball… Basketball… I muttered to myself. Ugh… Where is it?
“Ma,” I yelled. “Have you seen my basketball?”
“It’s in the laundry room. Where are you going?”
“With the guys to play ball,” I replied slowly, rolling my eyes. I mean really. Where else would I be going if I were looking for my basketball?
I didn’t have to turn around to know she was scowling. We went through this everyday and every time it ended the same.
“Why don’t you go with Lisa or Ali? The two of them are nice girls.”
Yeah right… Harpies were nice and sweet too, until you pissed them off and they showed their true colors.
“I don’t like them,” I snapped.
“Why?”
“Because quite frankly I think they’re bitches straight from the pits of hell sent by the devil to torture me. I must have done something bad in my past life as the Queen of the Nile.”
“Cleopatra,” she warned.
I groaned. “Cleo,” I dragged out.
Why couldn’t my mother have named me something normal, like Mary or Kim? Did she have to name me after the most beautiful woman to walk the planet, the queen of the Nile? I sure as hell didn’t have any of her characteristics. I don’t know what she was thinking when she looked down at me and said I was a future queen and therefore named me Cleopatra. I was about as likely to become a queen as Donald Duck was to becoming president of the US. In fact, his chances were better.
“I don’t like you hanging out with those boys Cleo-.”
I tuned her out. I knew the lecture. They’re much more aggressive, have no self control and one girl in the midst of a whole bunch of boys meant trouble for the said girl… That or she was a whore. I curse the day my mother heard about that big story about the girl who was gang raped. She had me on lockdown for a week. I missed a big basketball game that week.
“Ma,” I interrupted. “I’ve been around these guys since I was five. I’m seventeen. You should be used to it.”
“I wasn’t worried about it when you were five.”
“Well if you weren’t worried about it then what’s the difference now?”
“You all became teenagers and when boys are around a pretty girl there are these things called hormones that turn them into beast.”
I shrugged. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“Have you looked in the mirror lately?”
I groaned. Why did my mother have to remind me that I was girl? A pretty one at that, even though I hated to admit it. I was well aware of the way I looked and while most girls would probably kill to look like me, I didn’t like it. I would give anything to be big and hard looking like some of the girls who did sports on television. Like Serena Williams… She was pretty yeah, but she was thick and looked like she could handle herself and there was a certain hardness to her features, especially when she went to play tennis. I wore baggy jeans, black shirts and caps and I still looked like a soft feminine girl. It didn’t help that I was short (well 5’5” is actually average for a woman) and petite and curvy. It wasn’t fair!
“Don’t remind me ma,” I said rolling my eyes.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a woman,” she said sighing. That meant she was fed up and wasn’t going to waste her time or mine telling me the beauty of being a woman.
I put my cap on, backwards, and fetched my basketball.
“Don’t worry about me ma. I’ll be fine. Everyone in the neighborhood knows me. I’m practically one of the guys.”
I closed the door behind me and started towards the basketball court. I probably should have taken the car to pacify my mother. It would be well after dark by the time I started home and even though I always walked home after dark, my mother still worried about it. I’d just get a ride with one of the guys.
Why I decided to go play ball on a hot summer evening, I’ll never know. Probably because I thought it would be a little cooler. I was really regretting that. Another thing I hated about being a girl. It was a real discomfort to get all hot and sticky especially during a period. Luckily, I wasn’t having that problem (Another thing my mother said was a wonderful thing about being a woman. Quite honestly, I didn’t see the beauty in bleeding every month).
But it was still hot and most of the boys had their shirts off. Most girls would fall and swoon but not me. I was wishing I could do the same. There were only two things wrong with that. One, my mother believed in modesty and two even though I always wore a sports bra, there was no way it would hide the fact that under all my baggy shirts there were actually a pair of womanly adornments. If any of the guys had any doubts that I was a girl, then all doubts would be removed then. I always wished I had a flat chest or had a really small bust one.
“You all are a bunch of sissies,” I muttered. “You’re stopping cause of a lil heat?”
“This ain’t just a lil heat Cleo. This is a damn oven,” Tahir muttered.
I shrugged. “Whatev. Next time tell me when I’ll be wasting my time to play ball for only two hours. It just got dark. That’s the best time to play.”
“You’re crazy CG,” Tahir muttered.
CG… I unfortunately wasn’t the only Cleo on the court and the initial solution was to call me by my full name. I didn’t let that happen. I started a fight for the mere suggestion. CG was the next best thing. It stood for Cleo Girl, but I wasn’t for the girl part of the name and so it became CG. Most people didn’t know what it meant so it was okay.
“You’ll give me a ride?”
Tahir hesitated. It was never a good sign. It meant my request would interfere with something.
“You can say no. I don’t bite.”
“I would. I really would, but it’s out of my way tonight… Unless you want to come with us?”
I groaned. That meant they were going to hang out and that meant they would get to talking about guy stuff, stuff that they wouldn’t like to say around a girl, which either meant they would subject me to their horrible talk or I would cramp their style and insist they change the topic. I really don’t know why some of their girlfriend’s tripped about it when they slipped. Boys couldn’t help being silly and stupid when they got together. Grown men did the same thing.
Beyond basketball and the few like Tahir who weren’t nearly as bad as they tried to act, I really couldn’t stand to be around them. As much as I hated being a girl and acted like one of the guys, I still wasn’t one of them unfortunately.
“Don’t worry about it T,” I muttered. “I’ll walk. Not like I haven’t done it before.”
“Alone?”
“Alone,” I confirmed and bounced my ball as I started down the sidewalk from hand to hand.
Why was there no in between group? A group of girls who wanted to be boys but couldn’t and were friends. Maybe, I wouldn’t be so lonely and then my mother wouldn’t mind me playing basketball all day long.
“Agh!” I said loudly throwing the ball harder against the ground.
I didn’t fool myself into thinking I wasn’t lonely, although I fooled everyone else. As much as I preached that I rather be alone and to myself-and really, I did-I wouldn’t mind having one friend that was a girl, one that wasn’t fickle and a backstabbing heifer, didn’t get jealous cause I’m pretty and didn’t think I was doing a lot more than playing basketball with the boys. Was it really too much to ask? In the last twelve years, I realized that it was.
“Give me all your money and valuables right now,” some said from behind me cocking a gun.
Lovely. Now I’m being mugged. Well, that’s what they’d call it if I actually had anything on me.
“I don’t have anything,” I said honestly still bouncing my ball.
“I don’t believe you,” the man said and then looked at the ball. “And stop doing that.”
I let the ball bounce to a stop and put my hands up. “Look man, I promise I don’t-.”
“Shut up you liar,” he said and hit me with the gun.
The back of my head hurt, that’s for sure, but that didn’t mean I was down for the count. I took him by surprise and snatched the gun. But in my snatching it, I dropped. Damn, I really could have used that to disable him. Resorting to other methods I kicked him in the shins missing my target and tried to twist his arm. Unfortunately, he was stronger than me and I knew it. So it didn’t surprise me when he got the best of me and I hit a wall where he started to pat me down to search me.
I really cursed being a girl right then and there. It made me weak and it made me… a girl. Oh crap. If this man realized I was a girl, I’d have a much bigger problem than being mugged.
“Looks like you do have something,” he said and flipped me around.
Damn. He realized it. But if he thought I was going to cower and whimper while he did the deed, he had far more coming than he could have bargained for.
“You bastard,” I started to scream at the top of my lungs along with some other indecencies that would make my mother ground me for the rest of my life. All the while, I struggled and pinched and pushed where ever my hands could make contact.
“Shut up bitch,” he said grabbing my wrist above me before punching me, not that it stopped me from screaming, but it may have been a hopeless cause. Someone had heard me. I know it. It wasn’t that late. Cars were zooming down the street. And there was still some life in a few restaurants around this… what was it an old gas station? I guess it was one of those things people chose to ignore. Great, my story was going to be on the national news… I could practically picture the headline.
Ugh. People would think I was weak. That made me more desperate, so desperate I did something I hadn’t done in years… I cried. Well, more like sobbing. I didn’t know I still had the ability.
I was going to just wait for it to be over and then try to make my way back home. I would walk in the house, my mother would hear me with her superman ears and scream in mortification even though I’d be insisting I was fine, but actually a physical and psychological mess.
Was and would being the keyword in that rant. I never had to. Just when I thought he was about to penetrate, someone saved me. I didn’t really care how. I just wanted to get away and out of sight as fast as I could. I didn’t want anyone, especially some random male stranger albeit a kind one, seeing me like this, all helpless and weak like a woman.
“Wait,” someone said.
I tried to stand up and run then, even though my legs were like jelly. I fell over not because my legs gave way, but because my pants were still down. I tried to scream, but it came out as more of a whimper probably from all the screaming I had done earlier and the fact that I was still crying even though it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Oh forget it. It was bad enough. I was going to need therapy for life.
“It’s okay. I’ll help you.”
It was then I picked up on the fact that the person talking was a woman or a man that sounded like a woman in any case. It was confirmed when the person pulled me into her bosom and held me. Definitely a woman… dressed in robes? I looked up. It was then I noticed I couldn’t see her face not because it was dark, but because of the shadows of her black hood masking it. I pulled away from her and stared in amazement. This woman, this strong woman, was a person that only a percent of the world could say they had come across in their lifetime.
“You’re a-.” I coughed. I really had done a number to my voice.
“A what?” she asked and I could see the ghost of a smile on her lips.
“A Black Lady,” I added.
The Black Ladies were like legend. Something like a geisha to me. They were beautiful woman (well I don’t really know that, most of the time a Black Lady has her hood on. I guess it’s the fact that they’re so alluring) who entertained and cooked and acted just like what most people would say a proper lady should act. They were everything I practically disdained about being a woman. Tsh… They were a sorority with a bunch of backstabbing and envious dogs or so I assumed. There was no way a group of woman like that could be as perfect as everyone on the outside saw.
But even with all that, I saw something else that night. Something like a ninja. In fact, I hadn’t heard much of a struggle when I was trying to get away.
“Where’s-?”
“Dead,” she replied curtly.
I looked somewhere to the side of me and cringed when I saw the body. She had killed him.
“But you’re a Black Lady, not some ninja,” I said.
“Yes, that’s what the public sees, some alluring seductive woman, which we don’t do by the way. That’s just the way a titillating society like this portrays us as untrue as it is,” she added grudgingly.
I was confused then. Black Ladies weren’t the American version of a Geisha. Well of course they weren’t. Everyone knew they didn’t entertain men exclusively. But still, I never pictured them as warriors or something. I mean she had just killed that man. That man who just tried to…
“Oh my God!” I muttered. This was all so confusing.
“I’ll escort you home,” she said standing up and helping me up.
I leaned on her for support. She was strong even though she was even smaller than me. She walked me all the way to the door and made sure I could stand before she let me go.
“I would advise you don’t wander around at night,” she said softly but in a firm tone.
I actually took her seriously and I would have even if I hadn’t been attacked. I took out my key and opened my door but before I went in, she handed me something. My basketball.
“I think this is yours,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said taking it. I almost dropped it. Heck, I almost fell.
“You should get in Cleopatra,” she said.
If I hadn’t been so out of it, I would’ve asked how she knew my name. Instead I went inside and then looked back. The Black Lady was gone that quick… When I closed the door, I stumbled trying to go up the stairs and fell. So much for not waking up my mother…
About
Lady Dae is a nineteen year-old writer who mainly writes fantasy books for young teens and older. She has been writing for seven years and has over five books in the works.
For more informations Check out her blog:
www.ladydaewrites.blogspot.com