Read Tuff for Free Online Page B

just lent you seven hundred dollars.”
    “He didn’t want to at first, talking about he would have to liquidate some stocks, but I liquored that nigger up and guilted him into it. Besides, it’s his fault I almost got killed.”
    “How is it his fault?”
    “Nigger know I didn’t want to work in Brooklyn.”
    “Tuffy, why can’t you tell Smush no?”
    Yolanda started to pout and busied herself restacking the money. Pretending obliviousness to her irritable mood, Winston nuzzled Jordy’s snot-encrusted nose. Yolanda placed the money in the top dresser drawer, removed the baby from Winston’s arms, and walked into the living room. As she belted her black satin nightgown with one hand, she issued Winston a caveat: “Better be a goldfish in here.” Winston kicked off his shoes, folded his arms behind his head, and lay back on the pillow, awaiting the tirade. “How this stupid nigger get to be my baby’s father?”
    “You know damn well how—I wooed the fuck out of you.”
    Y olanda had been working as a cashier at the Burger King on Fourteenth and Sixth Avenue, the filthy one around the corner from the YMCA. It was her first job since she’d started going to school part-time at York College, and even after six months she was still a gung-ho serf in the Burger King’s fast-food realm. She wore her paper crown with pride, pretending that every customer was possibly a mysterious Burger King plain-clothed inspector making a clandestine inquisition of her franchise. Super-sizing the Whopper Combo orders with a smile, and never forgetting the “Thank you, come again” salutation, Yolanda had a reputation to live up to—her photo Scotch-taped to the Employee of the Month plaque.
    She didn’t notice Winston and his posse enter the store, each hooded druid bundled in overstuffed down jacket, ski mask, headphone earmuffs, shaking the December snow from their bodies like wet dogs and stomping their boots on the just-mopped floor. The group was bunched up at the counter jostling for position when Winston spotted Yolanda salting the french fries. He’d only gotten a glimpse of her, butalready there was an expanding hollow in his chest. A machine in the kitchen emitted a long beep and Yolanda’s thick, tight body glided over to a silvery panel. She pressed a button, mindful of her long cherry-red fingernails, and removed a batch of breaded chicken pieces from a deep fryer. Winston saw several rings on each hand—a sign, he thought, that she might have a man. Yolanda placed the chicken in the warmer, and her squat profile revealed the arc of her right breast. The brown polyester pants gave her buttock a sexy sheen in the store’s fluorescent light. Her face Winston couldn’t see, since her head was turned. She was talking to the manager about some take-out trivialities. Winston stared at the nape of her neck, exposed by a granny-bun hairstyle. He shivered. Yolanda turned, topped off a soda, and faced Winston. Seeing him standing there transfixed, she started, then smiled. Their eyes met, and they were instantaneously on page 6 of a Harlequin romance novel on a spinning pharmacy book rack.
    As she made her way back to her register, Winston retreated a few steps and let his hungry friends surge ahead of him in line.
That wasn’t no “Welcome to Burger King” smile
, Winston thought.
Baby trying to say a little something
. Yolanda avoided Winston’s stare. As she took the orders of his friends, she absentmindedly stroked the thin baby hairs meticulously greased to her temples, silently repeating the dating mantra passed down by generations of black women:
Niggers ain’t shit. Niggers ain’t shit. Niggers ain’t shit
.
    “Next person in line, please,” Yolanda politely called out. Winston bellied up to the register and gazed at the menu. He took his time, carefully choosing his opening words to the woman he knew would be the love of his life: “One Whopper cheese, no pickles, no onion. Two king-size chicken