Hittin' the Bricks: An Urban Erotic Tale by Noire Read Free Book Online Page B

was real tight in their house and picking up a temp job here and there wasn't getting it. Aunt Milena had agreed to take Rosa in with them, but in reality the little girl wasjust one more mouth to feed. The only thing Fiyah cared about was scribbling in his songbook and rapping into the mirror like somebody important was about to discover his ass, and it pissed Eva's aunt the hell off that he wasn't out there earning money on a job instead of wasting time talking shit into a microphone.
    Eva loved her auntie and she knew Milena loved her too, but she was a real bitter woman who carried too much of a load. She'd gotten off drugs and had taken care of both Eva and Fiyah, but Milena had expectations of her son that he just wasn't ready or willing to meet.
    “Get a fuckin job!” she would scream whenever he grabbed a mic and started blasting his beats. Fiyah would be all up in the living room acting like he was on a stage. All the little Catholic saint statues that Aunt Milena collected would be his audience. They'd sit there staring back at him like his flow was the shit for real.
    Eva found a job in midtown working as a receptionist for a printing company. They processed blueprints for architects, and since she was straight outta high school with no skills or nothing, the pay was shitty but it beat having nothing at all.
    Sometimes Eva felt like a burden in her house. Don't get it wrong. Aunt Milena never did or said anything to make her think that, and Eva and her had a good relationship, but always in the back of Eva's mind she felt the need to pull her own weight. She wasn't Aunt Milena's child—she was her niece. Milena didn't owe Eva shit. She'd taken her in and helped her get clean because Eva was her brother's only child and Milena loved her. But still … Eva had a mother out there who shoulda been doing all the stuff that Aunt Milena was doing for her. She felt guilty when Fiyah got screamed on for not working and bringing money into the house, when it was
his
house. Evaand Rosa were taking food out of
his
mouth. And even though Fiyah never once complained or nothing, Eva made sure that each week when she got paid she gave Aunt Milena the majority of her check. She tore off some to send to Mrs. Threet for her son, she held back a little bit for a MetroCard, and she broke Fiyah off a few ends, but the bulk went straight to her auntie.
    Eva was at work sorting through the mail one day when her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. It was her old friend Sherri from Brownsville, the one Eva had introduced to heroin when she was twelve. They had reconnected a couple of years back through their boy Reem Raw, not too long after Eva had moved up to Harlem and gotten clean.
    Reem and Sherri used to go together back when they were kids, and when Eva ran into him in Harlem he'd given her Sherri's telephone number. That same day Eva had reached out to Sherri to apologize for dragging her into her drug- induced nightmare, and Sherri had forgiven her. Sherri's grandmother still cursed when she heard Eva's name, but Sherri was still her girl.
    “Yo. Your moms is in the hospital.”
    Eva's heart stopped. As bad as Rasheena had done her, there was still a place inside Eva that had love for her mother.
    “Jahden tried to kill her. He burnt her ass up. That niggah made her strip naked, then he poured boiling water all over her.”
    “No …” Eva moaned. A hot wave of pain rolled through her body.
    “That ain't all he did neither,” Sherri said. “That twisted motherfucker dragged her outta the house and made her walk up and down Mother Gaston Boulevard. Butt- naked and burnt up.”
    Tears fell from Eva's eyes and she couldn't even speak.
    “Now, I know you might not give a fuck about your moms, Eva. And you got a lot of good reasons to tell her to kiss your ass. But you her only family and I thought you should know.”
    Eva ran out the office and jumped on a train heading uptown. By the time she got up to Harlem she had killed