Careful of the Company You Keep Read Free

about it and be about it. Starting right now, my life was beginning anew. A tear streamed down my cheek because I wasn’t sure if I even knew where to begin.

2
    Danielle
    I turned the burner down low on the stove, then moved up to my daughter’s room to tell her it was time for dinner. After knocking on her door and not getting an answer, I stepped in and found the room empty. Hearing water running in the bathroom at the end of the hall, I realized Portia was taking a shower.
    Seeing dirty towels on the floor, I reached over and grabbed them. No wonder I can’t find half my damn towels. They are here, buried in Portia’s room.
    I reached for a large gold bath towel and something dropped. Looking down, I spotted a small leather-bound book. I reached for it, flipped it over, and realized it was Portia’s journal. Staring at it, I was tempted to open it, but I try to respect my daughter’s privacy . . . most of the time. But curiosity got the better of me and after several seconds I had convinced myself that I’m the mother and had a right to know what my teenage daughter was up to, because the majority of the time she was up to no good.
    â€œI’ll look at just one entry, then I’ll put it down,” I murmured to myself and flipped to the center of the book.
    I saw Ron’s dick today. He wasn’t too happy that I walked in on him, so I played it off and stepped out of the bathroom. I’ve never seen a thing with the skin still on it. But dang, it was big! I promise you I’m going to get some of that before the school year’s over.
    Hell to the no.
    Stunned, I flipped forward several more pages.
    Tomorrow my mother is working evenings and I plan to finally make my move on her boyfriend. The plan is to come running out of my room butt naked, pretending I saw a spider.
    Fingers shaking, I turned the page.
    I can’t believe Ron rejected me. Even after I told him I loved him he tossed it back in my face and said he loved my mom, not me, and that I needed to find a boy my own age. I hate him! I hate him! Just wait, I’m going to get him back.
    My hands were shaking as I flipped to an entry dated the day after I broke up with Ron.
    Well, my plan worked. Mama believed me over Ron and put his butt out. Hee-hee! You should have seen his face. That’s what he gets for treating me that way. Now Mama thinks I’m pregnant by Ron when I’m really carrying Demetrius’s baby. Yuck! That was the worst sex I’ve ever had. I sure hope my baby comes out looking like me.
    I didn’t even know the journal had slipped from between my fingers until I heard it hit the floor. For the longest time I just stood there, stunned, knowing good and well what I was reading better not be true. But it was.
    My daughter had lied.
    Everything went still as my world started spinning. Slowly I lowered onto the bed and took several deep breaths to calm my nerves because what I wanted to do was to run down the hall to the bathroom and snatch Portia’s wide ass out of that shower. The only thing stopping me was the fact that she was pregnant and I didn’t want to be responsible for two dead bodies.
    Ain’t this a bitch? I believed her. Even when something in the back of my mind kept telling me something wasn’t right about my daughter’s story, I believed her anyway because she’s my daughter and that’s what mothers are supposed to do, stick by their children.
    How was I to know that when she described my man’s uncircumcised dick, the reason she knew what it looked like was that her hot ass had barged into the bathroom and seen it? Not because Ron had been sleeping with her.
    It was like a sick joke.
    For the first time in my life I could understand how a woman could murder her own child, because that’s exactly what I wanted to do. The only thing stopping me was that I didn’t own a gun and that Portia was pregnant. Dear God, Ron isn’t