PRESENT DAY
Josyiah Sanai Lee
Age: 17
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"Get up bitch!" My mother shouted dumping ice on my head.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and looked up at her with pleading eyes.
"Maybe today will be the day," I thought, "Maybe today she'll save me. "
"Time for work, ho," she said with a sinister smile.
My spirit was instantly crushed.
Every morning I wake up thinking, "Today will be the day." and it never is.
I trudged to the bathroom downstairs. Our house didn't look like a whorehouse from the outside, but it also didn't look that nice on the outside either.
The only way I could describe our house is if California had trap houses, this is what they would look like.
Our house was boujetto. A mixture of bougie and ghetto. My mama was sane enough to try to make our house look presentable but it was to no avail as there were blood stains and peeling wall paper on every wall and the house reeked of drugs and hot sex.
I did my hygiene to the best of my ability since our water was shut off this month. I'd had to bathe with lukewarm water bottles that I'd stolen from the store down the street because nobody in this house ever paid the bills.
I was snapped back into reality when I heard 4 men's voices in the den.
I almost had a panic attack until I remembered what my sister used to tell me when I was little.
"Don't cry, they'll only get upset and he'll give them an extra hour."
I took my birth control and put on whatever skimpy outfit my father had laid out for me.
Today it was a black lace thong with black glittery nipple covers.
"I might as well be naked."
My dad always said I had a great shape so it should be put to use. My boobs weren't huge but they were a nice size. Same thing with my butt.
"Syah!"
I took a couple of my mother's antidepressants, drunk some purple stuff that was in a styrofoam cup and prepared for the day I had ahead of me.
~
"You love it?" the man asked Josyiah rhetorically, slapping her.
Her eyes were cold as she thought of literally anything other than the 53 year old entering her roughly.
"Look at her, she's so pretty," the girls whispered.
"Her life's probably so perfect. "
"I'd kill to be as pretty as her. I wanna be just like her."
A young Josyiah timidly walked down the 8th grade hallway. Her mother had dressed her in a black turtleneck, black and red plaid pants, and some expensive shoes she didn't know the name of.
To outsiders, it would seem as if she had the perfect life. Her mother was a retired actress and her father was police commissioner. They lived in a seemingly beautiful house on the outskirts of town.
"If only they knew," She would think to herself," If only they knew the truth. The truth about how hopeless I am."
