1. Rent Manual The Rent Manual days left: 10 . . . money you got: $0 . . . money you need: $350 The slip is gonna come in the mail like it do every month, with the Lysol and the Save the Children envelope lookin regular as hell. It's gonna have your name, Michelle A. Sutton, on it. And it's gonna say balance. And it's gonna say when the balance due: first of the month. Read the slip to yourself. Scream, Shit, then stub your toe on the kitchen table. The man in 14C gonna hit the wall. Hit the wall back. Banneker Terrace on 129th and Fred Doug ain't pretty, but it's home. Until now, it's been the same since you moved here when you was pregnant with Fortune. One long gray-ass building, twenty-five floors, three hundred suttin apartments. Four elevators that got minds of they own. Laundry full of machines that don't wash clothes right. Bingo room that the old folks hog up and a trash chute that smell like rotten milk. Little bit of everybody here. Young people with GEDs. Old people with arthritis. Folks with child-support payments, uncles in jail, aunties on crack, cousins in the Bloods, sisters hoein. That's what everybody wanna concentrate on. The shit that be happenin only 1 percent of the time. Like that boy that got molested and thrown off the roof. Niggas still talk about that like it happened five times a week. Don't nobody wanna talk about the cookouts with beer and wings and aluminum flyin off the grill and you be smellin it and thinkin, Can I get a plate? The summertime when the souped-up Honda Civics bumpin Lil Wayne be vroomin thru the back parkin lot leavin tire marks. The dudes who be shirtless on small bikes tryna get Najee or some other snotnose to run to the store. How you take a foldin chair outside and cornrow people's hair from sunup to sundown for twenty-five dollars a pop and make a killin. Don't nobody wanna discuss that. You didn't come up here for no shoot-ups. You came here to make a good life on your own. You were twenty-five and you couldn't be livin with your mother and sisters in the Abernathy Houses no more. Plus, Swan, Fortune's father, is here. You gonna go over there and live by yourself? your ma asked. That's what I said, Ma, didn't I? Chase after a man that don't want nothin to do with no baby? And how you gonna make for rent? Imma get a job like responsible people. I heard that before. Remember them last words as you study that slip again. Don't try to hold the tears in, because you can't. Go in the bathroom. Rub the snot out your eye. Fortune gonna barge in as soon as you try to close the door. How you thuin, Mommy? Fine, baby. You thon't look fine. How you know? You a doctor? I know suttin that make you happy. What? He gonna flap his wings goin, Earrr, earrr like Amelia Earhart. God bless that child. You didn't think nothin of it when he was three years old and lickin beads from the walls after his baths. A year later he was talkin funny and the doctor said he got lead poisonin. He asked, Did you expose him to lead? He said it like you was a trashy mother, and you blacked out. When you came to there was three security guards with they hands on your titties, restrainin you. Fortune still flappin around, flyin into your purse. Smack his hand. A ten-dollar bill you ain't know you had drop out. It's a start. His backpack's open and there's a box that spill out too. What the hell is this? Candies the school want us to sell. What they need money for? I gave them money for uniforms last Tuesday. I thon't know. Can't stand that school. Always want money and it's always the special class they want it from. Mommy, am I gonna sell it soon? They don't want you to sell it, baby. They want me to. Last month, instead a puttin money on the side, you bought this pair of gold-eagle bookends that you seen at Brookstone. Now did you need that? Do you even got books in the house? Or was it just suttin nobody got in they apartment, especially not Sheema? It ran you four hundred dollars and you said, That's it, after this I'm puttin part of my next check away. You didn't. You bought Louis Vuitton bags, Jordans, leather booty pants. Open-toed spaghetti-strap shoes you ain't never wore and an Xbox you ain't never played. Social worker visited Fortune at home in apartment 14D, seen the fifty-inch TV on the wall next to Fortune's fingerprints and was like, That's a pretty pricey model. And you said, I worked real hard and I can buy whatever I want. days left: 8 . . . money you got: $10 . . . money you need: $340 Call Sheema up. She your bestie since ninth grade when y'all skipped eighth period together. Your English teacher called you two the Glamour Girls. When you did go to class, all you did was paint your nails and kiss up your lipstick. The assistant principal used to stare at your booties and the janitor got a hard-on one time and tried to follow y'all home. Sheema got a thick scar on her forehead cuz one of her drunk uncles burned her with a cigarette, but she still fine, almost finer than you. Y'all are cool even though you graduated and she didn't. Even though you got a career waitressin and doin hair and she be in jail every full moon. You never been arrested. You been known to put your hands on dudes, but they don't never press charges. Everything you got is 100 percent you. You don't have problems. People supposed to tell you theirs. Mimi, my EBT card run out. Mimi, my baby girl swallowed roach poison. Mimi, come to my rent party. Somehow Sheema got it together though. She got her daughter TiKai a Louis Vuitton rhinestone jacket and she got enough to pay you fifty a month to braid TiKai's hair. How's it over at Banneker? she gonna ask on the phone all nosy. Heard they over there tryna nickel and dime people. I ain't felt it to be honest. A pause when y'all both is doin nothin but breathin on the line. Then Sheema gonna say, Saw your mom and sisters on they way to Costco. Your mother almost got hit by a car tryna wave me down. She heard about people bein pushed out and was like, How Mimi doin? I said, Fine, I guess. Then, she was like, No, really how she doin? Mimi, you did not tell me your mother had all them kids livin in that place. Tell her your mother ain't crazy, she a witch who want you to become a welfare robot like her. She told you to drop outta school and you had to say no. She want you to be your sisters, makin macaroni and puttin they nasty undone toes on the food tray. If she and your sisters wanna sit around fat wit bad skin, watchin SpongeBob and waitin for some check, they can do that. Meanwhile you gonna have saved up enough dough to move to Westchester. Hell, some of your sisters' kids might be able to move in, provided they stop with that mashin Cheerios all over the floor. Sheema gonna ask, What time you want me and TiKai to come by? Huh? You still doin her hair, right? Yeah. Wednesday? Make it Tuesday. You love Sheema cuz she give you complete creative control over her daughter hair, but she don't know you bout to charge her a hundred dollars when you see her. ∙ ∙ ∙ Roscoe's, where you work, is the banginest soul-food joint in all Harlem. Everybody done had theyselves a plate here. They got pitchers all against the wall of Roscoe Sr. when he was alive. One wit Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. One wit that baldhead guy from the cop show. People see the wobbly tables and no AC and wanna grumble, but when that catfish come steamin out the back, it's a whole different story. Greet your coworkers. What up, Mustafa. Hey, Laniece. Walk by Diabla and say nothin. That's your name for Vivian. The Dominicans taught you that. Pretend to wipe down some tables and stack up some menus, but you don't really work for the first few hours. A group of construction workers gonna come in at 11:30 wit hammers on they belts and paint in they fingernails. They got muscles and stomachs. One a them will be pickin his teeth like what he got between them is a piece of you. Oh, this hard hat, he gonna say. This hat is to let pretty things like you know I got a job. Laugh like it's the funniest shit you ever heard. I like the ponytail and that tattoo up your leg, the other one gonna say. Say thank you and tell him his biceps ain't bad, neither. Bet they could lift you up and bounce you around. Be like, Bet they could. Then act like your titties is loose and you can't control them. I like this one, she fun. What's your name? Mimi? Mimi, we like you. You ain't afraid to talk. Never forget the day four years ago on 110th and Fred Doug when Bernie, your boss-to-be, spotted you while you was in a hurry to scoop Fortune up from daycare. You was clickety-clackin up past the ninety-nine-cent bins by the Israelites with aluminum foil on they heads who always screamin out that God is Black. Bernie and his pasty self--this is before he got stank--flagged you down and was like, How would you like to be our franchise player? The next week, he put you on the three back tables and in one hour you had customers orderin Long Island Iced Teas and pork chops and applesauce, throwin up on theyselves. Customers wasn't requestin waitresses before you got there. Anyway, serve those construction dudes they meal: smothered chicken, candy yams, and mac-and-cheese. With that extra cholesterol, Hard Hat will say. Watch them eat, cuss, and laugh like a pair a razors. When they done, lean in slow to scoop they plates and brush one a them on the back by accident on purpose. Draw a heart on the bill and drop it on the table. On his way out, Hard Hat will corner you by the buffet. Pretend you surprised. We three put in twenty dollars each for your tip, he gonna say. Look up and thank whoever there. One catch, though. What's that? You gotta let me put it anywhere. Say yeah before you can say no. He might untie your apron and shove it down ya coochie. Wonder if you would slap him or not. Fortunately, he gonna tuck it in the part of ya apron where he think ya bra at and then pat it before he leave. Feel Diabla starin you down. That's how much it cost to scoop sixty dollars in ten minutes. But take it out ya apron and walk it over to the tip glass. Wait for your share at the end of the day, when Bernie count out all the money wit his pinkie. Call yourself a fool for obeyin this rule. days left: 7 . . . money you got: $50 . . . money you need: $300 Go downstairs with Fortune to pay Swan a visit in 6B. His hallway is hot and it smell like brown lettuce. It's twelve o'clock but that muhfucka's in there. He prolly on worldstarhiphop.com watchin the video of that dude shootin hisself on the elevator. Don't knock on his door all haywire. Knock on it slow and sexy. Chain latch, dead bolt, bottom lock. Swan in white socks and slippers, squintin like the hallway is blindin him. Don't hide the ten pounds you got on him. And if I came upstairs bussin up in your crib, I'd be wrong, he gonna say. Say, Fortune said he wanna see his daddy, so I took him to see his daddy. Fortune never said that, and the way Swan scratchin the veins on his neck, he know that, too. You forgot how lean he is and how much muscle he got for those twiggy arms and how ugly but cute that scruff on his chin is. Let him pout wit those same black lips that used to kiss all up on your shoulder blade. Let him not say one word to you and pull his son in his apartment by the head. Then let him stand aside to allow you in, too, like he some gentleman. People always wonder how he got you. He not a talker and parts of his face look swollen. But guess what? All the fine niggas ain't got self-esteem. It's always the niggas that got no business, the bums, the busted niggas, the jobless niggas, the all-the-above niggas that wanna spit. You was at Mayella's house party and all the brolic niggas was huddled on the other side of the room on some middle-school shit and Swan was the only dude who brung you a beer. He was like, Wanted to introduce myself. I swear that's all. You thought it was mad cute when you shook his hand and it was all clammy. You also thought it was cute the third time you was in his crib watchin The Simpsons and you pulled your panties down for him out the blue and his eyeballs was too wide to get it up. He called you up three times after that to apologize. Last time he seent you, though, you had a tight pair of booty huggers wit your phone in the back pocket and he death-grilled you til you had to go in the bathroom and switch your phone to your front pocket. When you and Fortune done settled in his mama livin room, he gonna whip you up a smudgy glass of Ovaltine and y'all gonna feel like a family again. Be like, How you holdin up, Swan? Fortune gonna say, Yeah, Swan, how you holdin up? Hey, that's Daddy to you. Sawwy. He gonna turn to you and say, Maintainin. Really? Seem like everybody runnin around this month like a chicken wit they head cut off. Well, that's them. Been three months since you been here, but his mama apartment ain't change much. She still holdin on to that old-ass vacuum by the futon and padlockin the food cabinet. A whole thing of paper towels is stacked up behind the front door. That got nothin to do with Swan. As far as everybody concerned, he a grown kid livin in his mama neat world. Point at the new pair of Jordans wit fresh socks hangin out them in his hallway. Be like, Where you get them from? They fell off the back of a truck. Fell off the back of a truck, huh? Don't start that. Be like, I'm jus sayin I wish baby clothes fell off the back of a truck. See, that's the bullshit-- Food and money for Fortune's doctor visits-- Mimi, I'm not doin this. I told you I been tryin. You want niggas to lie on applications? Fine, Imma write I wuhn't locked up. Imma put down I went to Harvard. Is that what you want? I want you to try harder is what I want. Stop havin ya fifty-year-old mother work two jobs while you out thievin and sittin on ya ass, Swan. If I said, Swan, can you help Fortune sell the chocolates the school gave him, you would stand there lookin stupid. Stop it. No, Swan, you need to hear the truth about yourself every once in a while. You a piece a shit that can't contribute a hundred a month to support your son and his mother. Stop it, Mimi. You a coward, Swan. If your mama wasn't there workin at the school and the airport to put food in your sorry-ass mouth, you'd be-- Shut up! Shut the fuck up! You a hypocrite, Mimi. Let me ask you this. Why everybody in Banneker think you got it all together? Why I got niggas tellin me you goin around sayin, Fuck Swan, I don't need that nigga? Why I hear you goin around givin people advice on how to make rent? He not gonna slap you or grab you up--Swan ain't like that--but he will open up the door's top lock and say nothin til you leave. And Fortune will be still sittin on the futon, bobbin to whatever music he got playin in his head. Wring his arm up and say, Fortune, baby, we gotta go. When he say, But I thidn't play Swan in Sock'em Boppers yet, you put your hands on your hips and say, Fortune. As you halfway out the door, Swan gonna hit you wit the real dagger. Bet you I'm the only nigga in here know you ain't paid your rent in five months. People out there call you ghetto trash. How you got money to deck yourself out for the club but none to pay your bills? They be on TV shakin they heads. I don't get it, they say. It's ignorant. Just last month you bought a pair of stilettos and a Louis Vuitton suitcase for ya next trip to New Jersey. You bought the J.Lo perfume, the Beyoncé perfume, and the Miley Cyrus perfume. You bought them Bluetooth speakers at Best Buy (they was on sale so you stocked up wit five). You bought anklets from the African bazaar, that lamp wit the water fountain in it, that glass walrus you seen at Times Square, the moonwalk you rented for Fortune's seven-and-a-half birthday right after Sheema had thrown TiKai's six-and-a-half. Every time you coughed up the money you said, That's it, I'm savin up from here on out, until they came out wit the new Prada belt line. Of course you could stop spendin. Eat no-name cereal and move to that house in Westchester sooner than you think. But it ain't worth comin out the house raggedy, not feelin good about yourself. You been thru that growin up. Your mama was buyin OshKosh BaGosh and fondlin Goodwill bins for blouses that ended up scratchin ya shoulders. People on TV don't understand that and never will. They need to stop frontin like all people want in life is food and a roof. You got Sheema comin in tomorrow. You gotta dial up Dary and inform him you don't need his services for this appointment. Dary is the gay dude that live in 12H. When you first started doin hair on the side, he begged you to teach him. He said, Mimi, I can do this. I got dolls I been practicin on. Let me sit under your feet and watch you. You ain't gonna know I'm there. I swear, boo. He said, Mimi, you know ain't nobody in Banneker gonna let a man touch they hair. You let him wash clients' hair and later, while you texturized and braided, had him put on the barrettes at the end, things like that. You hit him off wit twenty for his time cuz he got nothin else as far as you know. Even though y'all apartments is two floors apart, swear you can hear his phone ringin thru the walls. When he answer be like, Dary, this Mimi. I got good news for you. Oh yeah? Sheema pushed her appointment up to this Tuesday. I was callin to let you know I could take care of her myself. He gonna be like, Oh no it's all right. I ain't doin nothin on Tuesday. Be like, No, take the day off. Then hang up the phone. Guess which set a long eyelashes and angry cheekbones gonna be all up in your peephole five minutes later. You doin me dirty, Mimi, he gonna say. Laugh it off. Be like, I never seen somebody so mad about a day off. You did this to me the last two times. You actin like you don't want me around. I do, Dary, but remember this ain't a full-time job. You shadowin me. Then why you tellin me not to come at all? Ask him what he tryna say. I'm sayin to your face and not on the phone that if you don't want me to come Tuesday, don't ask me to come any day no more. Let him cross his arms and scrunch them eyebrows and glossy lips of his in your hallway like a dirty photograph. Be like, That's fine, Dary. Do what you have to do. Sheema is all about mirrors. Hand mirrors, vanity mirrors. It's like she exposed until she get to the next one. She think she prettier than you. She might be. While TiKai in your seat, ready to get her hair did, listen to Sheema brag. All you gotta do, Sheema gonna say, is put notebook paper in the deposit envelope. Tell the ATM you puttin in five hundred and they gonna let you take out two hundred real dollars right there. Remember when that teacher at Sojourner called me a dumbass back in the day? Bet you he wouldn't of thought of that. Stroke her. Be like, Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Wow. But don't say it dull, say it like, That's wonderful. Make her feel like she somebody, somebody who can get charged one hundred dollars for her daughter hair. You know it's workin cuz she start up about her diaper business. I'm tellin you, Mimi, you need to come over and be one of my employees. I got workers gettin me diapers real cheap from all over: Key Foods, C-Town, Associated. I be sellin them almost full price at my building. I know--lazy heifers can't walk down the street when they out. I be cakin off this! I know it ain't for you, Ms. No Fingerprints. Hold TiKai by the head. Let Fortune kick around the hair on the floor while you bring her to the kitchen sink to wash her hair. Where's Dary? Sheema gonna ask. Come to think about it, I ain't seen him last time neither. Be like, He said he don't wanna work for me no more. What'd you do to that man? I don't wanna talk about it. Mimi, that man was learnin. He was conditionin. He was permin. Blow-dryin sometimes. I was like, You go, boy. I almost might let you touch my hair. I have a feelin we ain't gonna be speakin for a while. Who else gonna teach him to do hair? I said I didn't wanna talk about it. Usually you give TiKai eight zigzag rows and then you string the rainbow barrettes at the end and charge your fifty. But do crowns today. Braid all her kinky hair into microbraids, then braid all the microbraids into two big braids that tie around her head. It's gonna take a long time and your fingers is gonna burn like hell afterward. When Sheema notice you takin more than the normal hour, she gonna say, You givin her suttin fancy today? Be like, Yeah. Straighten TiKai's head when it loll back and forth cuz she wanna sleep. Hard to believe this eight-year-old girl with her teeth shinin like tiny pearls be in school cussin and talkin bout boys' things. Let Sheema stretch her arms in the air and take her own nap on your couch. When you finish TiKai's last braid, put the lighter flame to both ends of the crowns to close them up. Flex out the pepper in ya joints. Brush the Indian extensions you weaved in TiKai's hair off ya lap and off the Velcro on TiKai's sneakers. After you done all that, be like, That'll be one hundred dollars. Let Sheema's ice-grill burn a hole in your face like the one time in eleventh grade y'all fought over this boy named Sherman and she confronted you early in the mornin at the 125th train stop. She yanked the book bag off your back and emptied it out on the platform, and combs and pencils came pourin out onto the tracks. She gonna say, It's supposed to be fifty. Be like, I gave her crowns today. You didn't tell me you was givin her that. I told you I was givin her suttin special, Sheema. You was there the whole time. Lean over TiKai and be like, Didn't I say I was gonna make you America's Next Top Model? Hold her shoulder til she nod. Let Sheema squint hard like she's just found out suttin new about you. Oh, I get it. You think I'm Dary. I'm not Dary, Mimi. She gonna laugh in your face. It will sting you. Say, You payin me or not? Oh, I am. I got it right here. Wit room left to spare. Mattafact, Imma pay you and my rent today. Early. She gonna pull five twenties out her purse and stick it in an empty plastic cup by your foldin chair. Sheema gonna yank TiKai's hand and be like, Let's go. days left: 4 . . . money you got: $150 . . . money you need: $200 They got a meetin at the 135th Street YMCA wit the buildin's tenant ladies. What's it gonna solve, not much, but you need to say you did suttin. Attend it, but don't tell nobody. It will be at 6:00, so you gotta hightail your ass to Fortune's after-school and drag his big-headed self there. Inside they got a loudspeaker up and some rows of metal chairs and a table of muffins and orange juice under a basketball hoop. It won't be like the rallies on TV. Ain't no signs and chants. Ain't no cameras. The way those ratchet old ladies had flung the flyer at your face when you was in the Banneker lobby made it feel like you was the problem. They like a gang with they nasty purple toenails and they earrings shaped like Africa and they wrinkled skin smellin like black soap. Think just cuz they retired from twenty-five years of answerin telephones, it's now they turn to be the ones dialin. The young girl Quanneisha was the only one who pretended you might wanna know what it's about. And that's how you here. You, Fortune--he climbin from chair to chair before you can snatch him--a Muslim brother wit a kufi, and a girl wit a tape recorder and a notepad. Before the meetin start, mess around wit your phone to kill time. Google houses in the suburbs. Go to the images. Stop at one in some place called Wappinger with the red brick and big-ass windows in the front like a wide-open eye. It got pools and shrubs and seem like it come with its own white snow and two rooms for everybody. Probably could open your hair shop in the basement and won't have to leave home. Fuck around and give Sheema a discount and hire Dary full time and kill him wit kindness. Might could even sit Swan's ass in the house like a kept man. Fortune and his friends from school could play hide-and-seek and be anywhere--not like you and your sisters, who could only be in the closet with the leftover Christmas stuff or under the bed if you push the baby stroller all the way to the back wall. Interruptin all this is Emeraldine, the head lady with tube socks straight out a exercise video. This is the year, she gonna say while the mic is in front of her squeakin. This is the year we gonna fight for you like we never fought before. Boo! That's the dude in a kufi from a few rows back. No disrespect, sister, but when's the last time you all did anything for us? Think in your head, damn, this shit might be better than the movies, but don't clap. Watch Emeraldine shake her head like she starin at a bunch of sorry constituents. Take a second to look out the window and see what's coming from a mile away. This building is under new ownership and they're drooling for Manhattan prices. The city can only protect us so much now. What you have is valuable is all we're saying and they won't look you in the eye when they take it. They'll tell you you don't have secession rights. Bump your rent a teeny bit. Evict you right on time when before they would have dragged it out. All within the confines of the law. We just gettin you ready to deal with the slithering in the grass. The dude in the kufi again. We spose to believe that? Excuse me. Cons can come from your own kin. He gonna stand up and take off his kufi for a second and massage his head. We give y'all money from raffles every year and not one of us here ever won it. Wouldn't be surprised if y'all with the yakubs waitin for us to get tossed out so y'all can say I told you so. Everybody gonna get quiet cuz he went there. A couple people gonna nod they heads like he Malcolm X. As long as we stay unified, you got nothing to worry about. But. I'd be wrong if I didn't warn you-- Feel the groans around you. Make sure you caught up with your statements is all we're saying. Make sure all those ducks is straight. It used to be you could slide with being a few months behind, but now they might start paperwork right away, so they can bump you over and charge the next one market price. Swallow hard when you hear that. under the bed if you push the baby stroller all the way to the back wall. Interruptin all this is Emeraldine, the head lady with tube socks straight out a exercise video. This is the year, she gonna say while the mic is in front of her squeakin. This is the year we gonna fight for you like we never fought before. Boo! That's the dude in a kufi from a few rows back. No disrespect, sister, but when's the last time you all did anything for us? Think in your head, damn, this shit might be better than the movies, but don't clap. Watch Emeraldine shake her head like she starin at a bunch of sorry constituents. Take a second to look out the window and see what's coming from a mile away. This building is under new ownership and they're drooling for Manhattan prices. The city can only protect us so much now. What you have is valuable is all we're saying and they won't look you in the eye when they take it. They'll tell you you don't have secession rights. Bump your rent a teeny bit. Evict you right on time when before they would have dragged it out. All within the confines of the law. We just gettin you ready to deal with the slithering in the grass. The dude in the kufi again. We spose to believe that? Excuse me. Cons can come from your own kin. He gonna stand up and take off his kufi for a second and massage his head. We give y'all money from raffles every year and not one of us here ever won it. Wouldn't be surprised if y'all with the yakubs waitin for us to get tossed out so y'all can say I told you so. Everybody gonna get quiet cuz he went there. A couple people gonna nod they heads like he Malcolm X. As long as we stay unified, you got nothing to worry about. But. I'd be wrong if I didn't warn you-- Feel the groans around you. Make sure you caught up with your statements is all we're saying. Make sure all those ducks is straight. It used to be you could slide with being a few months behind, but now they might start paperwork right away, so they can bump you over and charge the next one market price. Swallow hard when you hear that. Everything gonna be normal right after that like nothing happened. She gonna go on about knitting classes and newborns we all gotta take time to bless. Some volunteer gonna come up and say that they put up a fresh wall on the sixteenth floor like that's suttin that gotta be announced. Other than the custodian at the entrance spottin you in the second row and gettin lost in your titties, wasn't nothin to remember. When the meetin adjourn, get the hell out of there. Emeraldine is gonna block the exit. She won the citywide gardenin contest for high-rises and her name got printed in the Amsterdam News , so she gotta put it in everything she do. What apartment you in? None of your business. She gonna hold your shoulder. Be like, Get your hands off me. I was tryna be polite. You Michelle A. Sutton, correct? Don't say nothin. Yeah, you is all right. Michelle A. Sutton in 14D, right? Mm-hmm. They got you listed here as five months in arrears. You on they list for eviction after this month. I can tell you that for a fact. That's bull. I pay my rent every month. That's what you tellin yourself? I don't got time for old bitches playin games. Hook Fortune around the waist, hold his backpack strap in your mouth, and march outta there. Hear Emeraldine's voice trailin after you. You might wanna stop catchin attitudes and get your ass to more meetins. You might know your rights. What to do in case they ever wanted to start paperwork. Excerpted from Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
