Part 12

Part 12

I hardly slept last night. I don’t know if I was more afraid of what he was going to teach me or what I had to do to survive. I’ve read many books and seen maybe movies on what women do to survive, I feel like I may have to run again. I showered and headed across the hall to Abuelo’s, when I knocked the door popped ajar, and I was told to come in to eat breakfast. Abuelo said he knew I was going to get up early, the leaders always do. We sat and ate while Leo was still sleeping. A little after 7am, Abuelo went to wake Leo, telling him that time is money. The longer he sleeps, the less money he makes. Leo jumps up off the sofa and heads straight to the bathroom,

“Morning Yah.” He muttered making his way across the floor.

“Morning Leo.” I replied back without lifting my head.

I remembered my father when he first woke up in the morning and just didn’t want to see that. So keeping my head down made loads of sense at the time. Leo took all but ten minutes in the bathroom, I’m wondering if he even turned on the water. Anyway, enough about his apparent poor hygiene. Abuelo takes us over to Queens and introduces us to this guy by the name of Beast. I assume it’s his street name, and his parents didn’t hate him that much to name him Beast; but nothing these days surprise me. Abuelo tells me,

“Most girls think they have to use their bodies to survive. In my Country, the women are just as tough as the men if not tougher. You will never have to use your body as long as you pay attention to what we are going to teach you. I’ll make you the toughest Princess on this side of the Brooklyn Bridge.”

To me, that wasn’t enough. There’s a lot more land on the other side of both bridges than there is here. I not only paid attention, I asked questions. I wanted to get everything out of Abuelo and Beast as I could. They taught me about marijuana and cocaine, what to look for, how much to sell it for, where to store it during transport, and the best places to get it. Everything they said I took notes in my head and repeated it to make sure that I remembered. Leo on the other hand was dealing with best traveling routes, what to say and what not to say. Since he’s hard headed they told me that I would handle much of the workload with him, I’ll be the brains, he’ll be the brawn. We were in this warehouse for hours and hours. Abuelo got us food, as we ate, we learned. There were no brakes, no bathroom time, we had to hold it. I was cool with that, I didn’t want to miss anything and never want to feel like I have to sell my body in order to live; if I do that, I may as well kill myself because I’ll be dead inside already.