Dream Girl Awakened by Stacy Campbell Read Free Book Online Page A

gown.
    â€œHoney, it’ll have to be after the kids leave for school. Plus the ‘E’ and the needle on my gas meter are close enough to make a baby.”
    â€œIs Mr. J.B. there? Can he give you some gas money? Maybe I can sneak outta here tonight.”
    â€œHe’s pulling a double at the foundry. I thought you were out with Lasheera and Jamilah. They can’t bring you home?”
    Tawatha shifted in the small ER bed and fiddled with the admission bracelet on her arm. The night wasn’t supposed to go down like this. She was doleful about not convincing James that she and the kids should move in. She didn’t try to find him in the hospital, but figured he’d been admitted to a room since his business was so successful. His wife is probably in his room rubbing on him and kissing those sexy lips. If only we were married. I know things would be better for me and the kids. She pretended she wasn’t in pain and the aches were nonexistent as not to be admitted to the hospital. No health insurance. She’d been meaning to fill out the paperwork at Hinton and Conyers for insurance, but knew the bimonthly payments of $180 would suck the life out of her anemic paycheck. Her life had become a maze of shuffling her pitifulpaycheck, food stamps, and under-the-table jobs that left her unfulfilled and tired. No child support, no contact with her children’s fathers, and no prospects for a new apartment. She still had to think of a lie to tell her mom.
    â€œWell, I got in the accident after we left Olive Garden. Sheer and Milah went to Club 7 after we ate to get their dance on, so I bet their phones are either on vibrate or shut off. I’ll just try and get a cab or something.”
    Roberta paused a moment. She had enough time, gas, and money to pick up Tawatha, but she was tired of enabling her. Bet she’s out with somebody’s man or husband. Humph. Letting her stay at the hospital oughta teach her a lesson. Roberta felt guilty for her thoughts because she realized Tawatha was a branch from her whorish tree. Only dumber. Roberta Gipson remembered all the men in Riverside, California that marched in and out of Tawatha’s and Teresa’s lives when they were small. She also rued the fact that prior to the twins, she was hopeful about moving to L.A. and owning a clothing shop, meeting a man with whom she could build a future, and providing a stable and nurturing environment for the children they would have. As one of few black students in her business classes at U.C. Berkeley, she was shunned by whites who resented her intelligence and the ease with which she grasped concepts; she was ostracized by blacks for being too white in her thinking. Whoever heard of a sista wanting to have a productive future, land, a stable life, and spouting that stupid scripture about leaving a legacy for her children and her children’s children? Her life appeared to be moving smoothly until that breezy afternoon in May as she prepared for her advanced economics final. She was seated outside in the quad near the library, wearing Levi’s bellbottoms, a floral peasant top, and leather sandals. She wasn’t afraid of basking her dark skin in the sunlight because her color accented the sheen of her Afro thatwas meticulously picked out and oiled each day. She fondled her wooden hoop earrings as she read. As her eyes drifted off the page, the sight of a drop-top, cranberry Cadillac convertible with white leather interior and sparkling spoke wheels arrested her. More striking than the car was the butterscotch-complexioned man who emerged from the car and strode across the walkway into the library behind her. Roberta normally associated such cars with hoods and pimps, not ones passing through the portals of a campus library on a Saturday afternoon. Roberta gathered up her books to go back to her apartment. As she grabbed the last book, she dropped two folders, the contents strewn about by the