Free White Lines by Tracy Brown

and tried not to notice his unfamiliar scent. She wanted to cry the entire time, and she felt sick. But she held it together, knowing that Charlie didn’t like tears. If she cried, she ran the risk of not getting what she wanted. No matter how hard he fucked her or how nasty he treated her, she wasn’t allowed to cry. So as she sucked Gordon’s dick she was determined not to cry. Jada stepped outside of herself and separated her mind from what she was doing. She imagined herself someplace far away, and only her body was involved in the act she was engaged in. She wandered off in her mind until Gordon burst on her favorite shirt. When she was done, she desperately grabbed the crack from Charlie’s hands and ran to the bedroom to get high. She felt dirty all over again, until the crack took her to a place where nothing even mattered.
    Another time, Charlie demanded that she have anal sex with him in exchange for some crack. That time she did cry, the entire time. And Charlie didn’t even seem to care. He kept pounding away at her, ramming her with no mercy. “You like that?” he panted as she bit the sheets, her body tense. “You know you like it.”
    It seemed to take him forever to cum that night. When he finally did, he passed out, and Jada spent the rest of the night getting high. She was beginning to see that living with Mr. Charlie came with a bigger price than she could afford.
    One day Jada was jonesing and she knew Charlie had money. But for some reason, he wasn’t so willing to part with it anymore. She had her period, and therefore had little to offer Mr. Charlie. She didn’t feel like being passed around like a toy among Charlie and his friends this time. She had five dollars she found in the pocket of one of Charlie’s jackets. All she needed was four or five more dollars to get high at least one good time.
    Jada was in the corner store, and she was itching for a scratch. “Come on,
papi.
I just bought this shit from you yesterday. I don’t need it, sojust let me get my money back.” Jada pushed the container toward the man behind the register. She was trying to return some laundry detergent she had bought the day before.
    “I don’t even know that you bought that here,” the Hispanic store clerk argued. “You could have bought that anywhere. Now you want me to give you money back for it. Where’s your receipt?”
    “I don’t have the fuckin’ receipt. But I’m in here every day, and you know I bought this here. It’s four fuckin’ dollars. Just let me get it so I can get out of your store.” Jada was desperate. She stood there and argued with the clerk, until he finally gave her the money back. She could tell as the man muttered in Spanish while he reached in the register that he was giving her the money just to get her out of the store. She almost snatched the four one-dollar bills out of his hand, she was so anxious to get them. Then, as she turned to leave, Jada saw her mother standing near the front of the store, as if she had just walked in.
    Jada stopped dead in her tracks, and wondered how much Edna had seen and heard. Edna looked in Jada’s eyes. And for a moment, Jada swore that her mother knew everything. The look on her mother’s face made Jada feel like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar. It was almost like Edna could see right through her, and could tell that her daughter was jonesing. She could see that Jada was out there. Edna looked at her daughter’s disheveled clothing, her sloppy ponytail, and her thin frame. She wanted to cry. But despite the obvious angst written all over her face, all Edna did was move aside and walk toward the back of the store. As she walked past her, Jada thought for a moment that her mother was going to stop and say something. But she didn’t say a word. Edna simply walked past her, and Jada walked slowly out of the store. After Jada left the store, she cried all the way back to Charlie’s building. She was so hurt that her mother