She had a live-in boyfriend but not even her relationship with him could heal the wound. Pete woke up when he heard all the commotion. Partially clothed, he rushed into the bathroom.

“That’s enough, Veronica!” he said, as he bear-hugged her and dragged her out the bathroom. “You gonna kill that po’ girl.”

“Lemme go!” she pleaded. “And I will kill that hot heifer!”

When her mother was safely out of the room, a hysterical Tonya got up off the floor and looked into the mirror. She had a puffy right eye, a split lip and a bloody nose.

“I didn’t even do nuttin’,” she sobbed, and tried to clean herself up.

Tonya passed her mother in the small apartment hallway while heading to her room, and flinched. Veronica had almost forgotten that she would be due to show up for work. Shortly, she was on her way out to get to her job as a home attendant.

“Don’t take ya hot ass ta school taday!” Veronica ordered. More than anything she was scared some nosy school official would question her daughter about her bumps and bruises. She didn’t want to risk arrest on child abuse charges or her daughter being removed from her home by some child welfare agency. “I ain’t finished wit you, Ms. Thang.” That said as she wobbled out the door, off to another hard day of work.

Tonya went to her room, closed her bedroom door, flopped down on the bed and cried some more. She replayed the beating in her mind over and over again. After about an hour or so, there was a knock on her door. It was Pete with a glass of Kool-Aid in his hand.

“Tonya, you alright?” he asked, while he ran his eyes all over her body. Over the years, Pete had earnestly watched as Tonya’s body began to fill out. As she was growing up, he would sneak a feel on her young body, under the pretense of horseplay. Seemingly overnight she had arrived at womanhood. The Morris family and close friends had often wondered what Veronica Morris saw in Pete. Other than the SSI disability check he received every month. He was twenty years her senior, and an alcoholic. But love is blind and he had caught Veronica at a vulnerable time in her life. She had just given birth to her only child, Tonya.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Tonya mumbled, sitting back down on her bed.

“You know ya mother didn’t mean to do you like that. You know how crazy she gets ’bout you and dem boys.”

“Look at my face!” she screamed. “She ain’t have to go dat far.

She coulda talked ta me. Shoot, she ain’t no angel, her damn self.”