Black Beauty

Meet Andre

Andre picked his high-top fade three times before he patted it down, making sure the top was nice and flat.

He put the black pick with an imprint of a black fist on its handle back onto the bathroom counter and peered in mirror.  Smudges of toothpaste and specks of hair gel splattered the mirror's surface.  He wiped it hurriedly with a wet piece of tissue, threw the tissue in the toilet and looked in the mirror again.

He nodded as he bit his lip.

Hair. Check.

He wore black mesh basketballs shorts and a freshly starched white t-shirt. He'd spent thirty minutes ironing it while he switched between watching videos on MTV and BET in the living room.

His clothes looked damn good. Check.

He looked in the mirror again to makes sure there were no eye buggers in the creases of his lids and nothing hanging out of his nose.

Buggers. Check

He blew into his hand.  His breath smelled good and minty.

Breath. Check.

"Get the fuck out of the bathroom, Andre!"

He jumped not expecting his brother to be banging on the door. "Fuck you, Sam. I just got in here."

"You been in there for thirty minutes. Hurry the hell up."

Bitch ass, nigga. I just got in here, he mumbled under his breath while he patted the top of his box.

More banging on the door. "Hurry up!"

"Shit." Andre stepped over his pajamas and used towels and swung the door open.

Sam, Andre's older brother stood, on the other side. He was nineteen had graduated high school a year ago. He had a low fade and was a head shorter than Andre, but his brother had never let the difference in their height stop Sam from being a bully. "You gonna make me late for work," Sam said, push past Andre.

"Fuck you.  You got a job. You need to move the fuck out so I can have my own room," Andre said.

Sam turned, lifted his hands, and pressed it down on Andre's box.  "I ain't going no where. I'm going to stay here to fuck with you for the rest of my life."

"I fucking hate you," Andre said ducking, trying to get away to protect his hair. 

"Whatever." Sam laughed and slammed the bathroom door.

Andre bucked up to the closed door for one more show of dominance before he walked to the living room, patting his box trying to make sure it still held its shape.

Koko and Kali, his two little sisters, were sitting in front of the television watching Looney Tunes and eating cereal. They giggled at two lab rats while the rats planned to take over the world. As the girls laughed, large drops of milk and cereal fell out of their mouths and onto the carpet.

"Momma gonna get y'all for eating in the front room," Andre said, imagining the bugs that would pounce on that area once the girls were gone.

"So. Why you worried about it?" said Koko or Kali, Andre couldn't tell which.  They were exactly ten months apart.  One was seven the other eight, but they had the same dark brown skin tone, height and build. To make it worse, their mother dressed them alike and had their hair exactly the same. He just called them the worse-some twins.

"I would come over there and whoop yo' ass but I ain't got time for y'all." Both were spoiled, loud, and messy.

Neither he nor Samuel were able to eat in the front room when they were their age.