Spin, p.4
Spin, page 4
I’m Toni. Toni McCall. If you’re from Miami, then you’ll know that I go by ‘fine ass Toni’. I wasn’t the only Toni that was in Miami, so if my name was ever brought up in conversation, and someone needed to know which Toni it was that you were referring to, all you had to say was ‘fine ass Toni’, and they would know exactly who you were talking about. I’m 35 years old, and just because I didn’t have any children of my own, it didn’t mean that I didn’t have pussy that was God sent because I did. I just wasn’t foolish enough to willingly lay on my back and allow one of these tired ass men out here that deep down inside hated women, especially black women, to ejaculate himself inside of me, and to have me proudly walking around here as a baby mama. I knew that everything about me from the top of my head, down to these pretty, French manicured toes deserved to be a wife! I liked to fuck just as much as the next woman, but this pussy was fucked with condoms only, and I popped my birth control as if it was daily breath mints.
As you learn more about me, you’ll see that I’m quick with my tongue, I tend to say whatever comes to mind, and since I was a little girl, I’ve known how to read a bitch to filth! It didn’t come as a surprise towards anyone in my life that I decided to study English in college. For one, I loved to speak, I knew how to speak very fluently, and anything that consisted of writing, and the English language was my thing.
I grew up being the oldest child. It was just my younger sister, Temperance and I. My mother Shayla, but everyone knew her as Shay was the woman to raise us. I grew up spending a lot of time with my mom’s mom, who was my grandma Lucille, and my mom’s sister, who was my aunt Ophelia. My dad was around, but he was like the men that I just referred to, where his main job in life was to procreate with a woman, give her the title of being a baby mama, with no desire of being a man, stepping up for his children, and being a part of his kids life. I couldn’t even put the full blame on my father because my mama saw that he wasn’t shit when she got pregnant by him the first time, only for her to turn around, and she was pregnant again with my little sister. My sister and I had the same father, and we both felt the same way about him… which was we thought very poorly of him, but that’s a story for another day.
I wouldn’t say that we grew up struggling because we didn’t, but we also didn’t grow up rich, either. Even if all the money wasn’t always there, it didn’t matter because we had the confidence of someone that was born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Our mama, grandma, and auntie had made me, and Temperance this way. Growing up around women where they told you every day how pretty you were, literally letting you know any chance they could that you were that bitch and was going to continue to go through life being that bitch, had really skyrocketed our confidence.
My grandmother was a seamstress. Literally, all you had to do was show her a picture of an outfit, or just explain it to her, and I kid you not, within a day or two, she would have it ready for you to pick up. So, growing up, my sister and I would rock pieces to school that you wouldn’t be able to find in stores, and that’s what made us so unique. I was in elementary school, coming to class with denim looks, that had added fur, snakeskin jackets, and pants sets, killing the girls!
By the time I was seven, my mom had my sister and I running track. I was fast, but Temperance was faster. I was very competitive and wanted to be the best at everything that I did, so back when Temperance and I raced against each other, and she would beat me, I would always place the blame on me losing due to her being taller than me and having longer legs. I stopped running track once I got to middle school because I wanted to play volleyball. To the girls that grew up playing volleyball, I’m sure just like me, after all these years, your still thankful for the body that volleyball gave to us. At 35 years old, part of the reason why I was still holding onto the description as being ‘fine ass Toni’, had a lot to do with the fire ass body that I was working with.
I stood up tall. You couldn’t tell me that I wasn’t a stallion at 5’7. I treated my body as if it was my temple, therefore I was mindful of what I put into it. I was careful of the kinds of foods that I ate, and I didn’t partake in any drugs. I won’t sit here, and act like I didn’t go through bottles of wine weekly, and that I didn’t enjoy a couple of cocktails whenever I would go out with my girls. Work was stressful, and just the day to day of what I went through in life was stressful as well, so I loved having me a good drink.
Five years ago, when I turned thirty, I made a drastic change to my hair. All my life, I’ve always had mid- back length hair, and it was fine in texture. Because my mom was a hairstylist, there wasn’t a hairstyle that I haven’t tried. I loved to experiment, but five years ago, I decided to cut it all off, and I was now rocking a blonde, short cut, like the one Nia Long used to rock back in the day.
This haircut opened a whole new world of compliments for me because so many people had fallen in love with it. I don’t know if it was the blonde itself that they loved on me, or the actual shortcut, but this combo helped to show off my perfect face structure. My parents did their big one when they procreated and conceived me because my face should really be studied, and hung in museums. My skin was the perfect shade of caramel. It was to the point that I almost looked golden. I had green eyes, and that was something that both my sister and I had inherited from our father. A cute, button nose, and nice, full lips. The waist was so small that you could put a cheerio around it, and the hips were always spreading like they were supposed to, and the ass stuck out, leaving every man in the room to try and break their neck whenever I would walk past. Oh, and the walk on me was something serious! It was a classy walk, but I added a little bit of stank on it, walking with my head held high, just knowing that I was the shit.
Aside from being a professor, I have other means of making money. I was a true hustler, going to find a way to make a dollar, but all my hustles were legal, and weren’t going to lead my ass in jail like my sister, but let me finish talking about me, and then I’ll get to the jail bird Temperance.
I was an author of five books. I’ll pretty much read any genre of writing, but what I loved writing about most was anything motivational, and emotional reflections. I had one book that I’d put out, and all it consisted of was short story poems, and I was in the middle of finishing up my first mystery book. I was signed to one of the biggest publishing companies out, which was called ‘Novelty Writing, and just know if you were signed with this publishing company, you had yourself a few New York Times Best Sellers, and not to toot my own horn, but I had three under my belt. Writing is truly what I enjoyed. I always have my friends, and family in my ear, wanting to know why I wouldn’t quit my job being a professor, and just stick to writing novels, but the love that I had for literature, and the joy that I get when I have students in my class each semester, that all have that same hunger, and thirst for literature just as much as I do, makes me want to stay in this craft. Besides, I have done some good things while being a professor. I’ve had students sit in my class that have gone off to become New York Times Best Selling authors themselves, some have written storylines for movies that have won Oscars. One of my students from last year has graduated with her bachelors in English, working as a professor now, and she’s just a few doors down from me. I’ve done so much at this school, won so many awards for my hard work, so I really didn’t have any plans of walking away from it any time soon.
Another hustle that I had outside of being a professor, and writing books was a new hustle that I just got into about seven months ago, which was real estate. I currently have two real estate properties under my belt. One was located in West Palm beach, and it was a single-family home, and I would get a lot of tourist to book it whenever they would come into that part of town. I had another one, which was more local, and this one was located right on Fort Lauderdale beach. No exaggeration, that apartment on the beach was always booked out, and with the bookings that I would receive, the money from that was paying the mortgage, as well as keeping the lights, and the water on. Next month, the plan was to ride out to Orlando and attend this seminar, as they were going to talk about new vacation properties that would finish being built towards the end of next month. I was a hustler at heart, always going to try and find a way to add more income to what I was already making. Being raised by a single mother, and watching her slave, trying to do as many heads as she could a day, just so that she could keep a roof over our heads, and the lights on, had inspired me to hustle the way that I do.
When I wasn’t writing books, teaching students, working out, traveling, investing in properties, and everything else that I enjoyed doing, I also had a new title in my life, which was auntie/ mommy. Technically, I’ve been an aunt to my niece Brooklyn for the last sixteen years because that’s how old she was, but I was now taking on responsibilities that a mother would take on because Brooklyn has been living with me for the past year, and some change. Her mom, who was my little sister Temperance was in prison, and she was serving a five-year sentence. As close as Temperance and I were, we were really like night, and day. I was always the sister to have my head on straight, while Temperance was the sister who was always getting in trouble as a kid, and it would cause for her, and our mom to constantly throw down. No exaggeration, my mama used to be on top of Temperance, trying to kil her ass, and I’ve broken up plenty of fights between the two of them.
Temperance knew that after high school, she didn’t want to go to college. I think her ass was in middle school, and she was already screaming out how she didn’t want to go to college. My mom kept us in sports, in hopes that we would excel in them, and we would get full rides to college. With my good grades, and the skills that I had in playing volleyball, I was able to come to The University of Miami on a full ride scholarship. By the time Temperance was in high school, she was kicked out of three high schools because she was always fighting, always going at it with the teachers, so she had to be put in an alternative school, where I personally felt like her behavior only worsened because now, she was around other kids that were kicked out of school as well, and they acted just like her ass.
She was sixteen when she started going to that alternative school, and two months in, and her ass was pregnant by one of the boys that went to the school with her. When our mom found out about her being pregnant, I think that’s the worst fight that the two of them had ever been in . It’s sad to say, but my mom was trying to beat that baby out of my sister. It didn’t work though because nine months later, at the age of seventeen, she gave birth to my niece, Brooklyn.
Because my mom didn’t want her child to be a teenager that had a baby and let that be the reason why she didn’t have an education, she would bring Brooklyn to the hair salon with her during the day, while she worked, and while Temperance went to school. The baby daddy, Wop was useless and wasn’t helping to contribute towards anything. His mom would step up in the very little way that she could because she was struggling herself, trying to raise her kids too, but whenever she would get a few extra dollars, I remember her coming to the house, dropping off diapers, wipes, and a few outfits for Brooklyn.
Temperance did graduate from high school, but once she graduated, those same friends that she met at her alternative school, she went on to continue being friends with them. They would do stupid shit together. Stealing out of stores, credit card fraud, anything that you could think of that would get their hands on a few extra dollars, they were out here doing it. With that, Temperance did get locked up a few times, but she would never spend anything over a year in jail. This time was different though. Her stupid ass had gotten pulled over because she was driving drunk, and that was her second DUI within that year, and the car that she was driving in, it belonged to a nigga that she was messing around with at the time, that he’d stolen, so they’d gotten her for the DUI, along with grand theft, and my sister was sitting down, with four more years left to serve in her sentence. If it was up to our mom, and our grandmother, they would have let her ass rot because they didn’t put up any money for a lawyer. It was me, and my big heart that I had for my sister, and wanting her to do better, so I paid top dollar for her to have a good lawyer, but she still ended up having to serve time. It was time, but it was far less than what she was originally looking at. When all of this started, she was looking at fifteen years.
Over the years, with all the trouble that Temperance would get into, and my mom having to always save her, it put a damper in their relationship. So much so, that Temperance didn’t want my mom raising Brooklyn in her absence. Neither did she want my grandmother to be the one to raise Brookyln. She couldn’t go to her father’s side because Wop’s ass was a piece of shit, still living in the house with his mother, so he wouldn’t be any good for raising Brooklyn, either.
I loved my niece to death. God knows that I loved her in ways that I couldn’t explain, but I didn’t sign up to raise her. Brooklyn had a lot of her mom’s old ways, especially when Temperance was a teenager, and I knew that with my temper, I would fuck around, and lay hands on her ass, but because of the love that I had for my sister, I stepped up in her absence, and I was now taking on that load, and raising my niece. I won’t even sit here, and act like it wasn’t hard raising a sixteen-year-old because it was! Because I watched the demise of Temperance, and all the shit that she would do in high school, I knew the way she would cut up, and the trouble that she would get in, so I can say that Brooklyn wasn’t that bad, but her ass wasn’t that good, either. The fighting at school, the phone calls home from her teachers about her slick ass mouth, the hanging out late, missing her curfew, and let’s not talk about last month, when her ass came home smelling like weed, and I took her to get drug tested, and there was weed found in her urine. Yes, her little ass was taking me through it, but God it could be worst, and the way that I saw it, she was better off with me than anyone else. She might have fucked up from time to time with me, but since she’s been living with me, her ass has been on the honor roll, I had her in dance, that was keeping her busy, and out of trouble, and this summer, when she has summer break, I have a couple of cities lined up for us to fly to because I wanted to take her on a few college tours.
I didn’t see it in my future to be raising my sisters daughter, especially when I didn’t have any kids of my own, but I was solid, and I was loyal to those that I loved. Also, when I loved, I loved hard. I’ll give my sister my rib if she needs it.
“Bryson, you know that that statement is going to have to come with some elaboration. Don’t just say that you don’t agree with my insight without backing up your stance. Come on. We have about five minutes left of class. That gives us more than enough time to have a small debate,” I stated, coming from behind my desk, so that I could go to the front of it, and I hopped on top of it, making sure to keep my legs crossed at the bottom, since I was wearing a dress.
I was in one of my favorite work dresses from the brand Seezona. It was a black, and white suit styled dress, with short sleeves, satin cuffs, and a white collar. I wore black stockings, and on the stockings, there were black hearts all around them. Black So Kate Patent pointed toed Christian Louboutin heels were on my feet, and I know I looked good. To match with the red that was on the bottom of my heels, I wore red lipstick, and my red Chanel purse was tucked away in my closet that was behind me.
I had a mean sense of fashion, and at this school, there was either going to be other female professors that hated my sense of style, thinking that some of the things that I wore was a little inappropriate, or there were going to be some that loved it, pulling me to the side, wanting to know where I’d gotten a specific outfit from.
“It’s so many reasons on why Malinda is the actual villain here. Let’s not be biased, and let’s not give her grace because she’s a woman. I think that a lot of women are agreeing with her actions because you all are putting yourself in her shoes, and you’re going off how you would have felt if a man had done to you what Robert did to her. Let’s talk about all the money that she spent on him. Yes, it was a lot, and yes, he milked her of all the money that her mother had left behind for her, but did he not pay her back, and then some more? The divorce. It was the divorce that she asked for! The divorce that her sisters pretty much demanded as well! He granted her the divorce, gave her the money, and with that, the two of them were free to go on about their lives, and start over. They didn’t have any children together-
“And what’s the reason why they didn’t have any children together, Bryson? I’m going to ask you the same question that you just asked Dr. McCall, which is did you watch the same movie as I did? They didn’t have children because he was caught cheating, and it forced her to lash out, driving her car into his trailer, and because of the extent of the accident, it forced her to damage her ovaries so bad to the point that she would never be able to have children. The same way you’re trying to argue that us women are making this a gender related problem, it’s pretty much the same that you’re doing! So what he gave her the money, and the divorce? What does that mean? He went on and gave the new woman all the things that he’d promised Malinda, who’d stood by his side when he didn’t have a pot to piss in, nor a window to throw it out of!” Cache, one of my other top students, jumped in to say her piece. When she finished, majority of the girls in the class started clapping for her, agreeing, while the boys booed, not in any kind of agreement with the things that she was saying.
From there this started an entire debate, that you really would have thought that this was a debate class, instead of an English one, but this was the propose of this topic. I was teaching controversy, and how it could lead to outrage, and from the looks, and the sounds of things, I’d done my job.
