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halfrican-heat · 2 years

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Bad Reputation (Ain't Shit Series)

SUMMARY: Every story has a beginning. This is Amalia's.

Pairing: Ransom Drysdale x Amalia Wright, Ransom Drysdale x Black!OC

Warnings: Angst, Discussions of Drug Use, Offensive Language, Colorism, Discussion of Weight Differences, Dysfunctional Family Dynamics, Cursing, Mother-Daughter Tension, Underage Drinking, Illegal Substance Usage, Depictions of Underage Drinking, Flashback Fic, Mentions of Central Park East in New York -- No harm or offense intended and it's used for storytelling purposes only; WC: 2376

A/N: Hey! It has been a month since I posted part one of this series and the response has been wonderful! Thanks so much for the love and support. I am excited to continue this journey with you all and dive deeper into Amalia's world. This story has really taken up a special place in my heart, so I hope this next part resonates. It's a little sad, but we get a deep dive into the things that have shaped Amalia. Beta'd by my boyfriend :) Please enjoy -Lyv

Song Inspo: Bad Reputation - Joan Jett

Masterlist Previous Chapter

“He left half of his estate to you.”

Half. To you.

To you.

Me.

When I was a little girl, I lived in a one-bedroom apartment with my mama and baby sister. We were placed smack in the middle of Darlington, South Carolina’s toughest projects. My mama scrapped and scrimped and starved trying to make sure my sister and I were well taken care of. It was just us girls, after all.

I did have a dad for the first five years of my life. But that bastard wasn’t interested in the little family he created with my mama. Instead, he wanted to rip and run the streets, chasing after anything that wore a skirt. That man brought a whole new meaning to the term “papa was a rolling stone”. But his absence didn’t make much of a difference one way or another. He was hardly ever home, to begin with, so I didn’t notice when he just…stopped coming home. I can’t place the moment it dawned on me that we were finally, for real this time, on our own.

But my mama knew immediately.

I don’t remember the day or the week or the month. But I remember my mama’s face like it was yesterday. It was mid-day. She stood at the window with my sister hiked up on her hip. Stephania was two at the time, so she didn’t get what was going on either. She babbled incoherently at my mama, but her toddler noises fell on deaf ears. My mother’s eyes were blank as she stared outside. It was a bright summer day with a cool breeze gently rustling the trees at the playground across the street.

I don’t know how long mama stood there, maybe an hour or so, but I do know that my mama changed from that day on. Her face was blank, sure, but the heartbreak in her eyes was as clear as the sky outside. There were no tears in her eyes, only a mixture of emotions that swirled like a raging storm. Then, all at once, those emotions faded. She tucked them away one by one until all that was left were hardened spheres of grey. Mama didn’t even spare me a glance as she set my sister down, told me to watch her, and went to the kitchen to make us lunch.

After that, my mom was never the same. She never…loved the same after that.

See, I took after my dad with my almond brown skin and plump cheeks. My sister, on the other hand, took after our mother. Stephania was a stunner from the age of three with skin like golden honey and upturned, whiskey brown eyes. Neither of us inherited her stormy grey eyes, though. Those were hers and hers alone. Steph was also petite like our mother as well, a trait I didn’t seem to inherit either. I was dark and on the chubby side, so my mama did everything she could to change that. From flash diets to dance classes, to trying creams that could lighten my skin-- Mama tried everything under the sun. But my deep hue endured and that stubborn baby fat just wouldn't give up. As a five-year-old, you don't think anything of it. It's just another day with mommy to you at that age.

But the day our father left was the day I realized just how differently my mother really treated me.

I was eight when my mother and I had our first huge, blowout fight. I don’t remember how the fight started. Probably over something Steph did that I got blamed for. I remember her standing by the couch, at the end furthest from me, as I stood at my bedroom door. I also remember, clear as day, the unicorn stuffie she had given to me for my fifth birthday. She got it two months before dad left us. It sat on my pristinely made bed as I looked at it and then back at her as she said--

“I should be able to depend on you!”

There was a long pause after that. So long, I felt like my feet had grown roots in the ground. I couldn’t move, pinned beneath my mother's hard stare. And all she did was look at me. She looked at me like I was the crazy one. As if I should be able to understand why her stress should rest on my eight-year-old shoulders.

Then, seemingly reading my mind, she scoffed and rolled her eyes as if to say that being eight didn’t matter. As she brushed by me to get to her room, a chill ran down my spine. Something told me that, to my mother, being eight didn’t matter. It was time to grow up.

From that day on, I became the problem child. Stephania was her perfect, golden child. I became the one who had to pull my weight if I was to ever measure up in my mama’s eyes. Stephania barely had to lift a finger. I had the most chores and the most responsibility. If anything went wrong in the house, best believe that blame fell on me. Sure, I was the oldest and some responsibility was to be expected but I was still a child. I still needed my mother. But most times, I was left to fend for myself and Stephania while bearing the brunt of my mother’s ire. I didn’t blame Steph, though. It didn’t matter how bad things were with mom-- she was my baby sister and nothing was gonna change that.

Besides, no matter what I did, I was never enough for my mother. And on those rare occasions that I went against her, she saw that as me proving what she already believed-- that I was a bad seed after all.

And when that happened, it was always--

“Why can’t you ever do what I ask you for once?”

“You never do anything I tell you. I’m telling you something for your own good!”

And that gets real tiring after a while.

I love my mama. I love that woman more than life itself but she doesn’t make it easy on you. She doesn’t make it easy for you to feel her love. And she certainly doesn’t make it easy for you to love her. Instead, she makes you fight tooth and nail for a morsel of her attention or some semblance of affection. And that, too, gets tiring after a while.

A person can only take so much. My mother treated me like a fucking animal. Like this thing, this beast that she needed to tame. Truth be told, I think my mama saw herself in me. She saw every aspect of herself that she ever hated and, in turn, she despised me. I was nothing more than a conquest to her-- the personification of fears she longed to conquer.

So, I became the fucking animal she wanted. I became the kind of primordial beast that could never be conquered. Never destroyed or tamed.

For every time she called me disobedient or disrespectful-- or selfish and unappreciative-- I started giving her a reason to see me that way. I started being exactly what she wanted me to be. When I was younger, it was simple stuff like talking back and not doing my chores. But when I got older, things got a lot more complicated.

It started with sneaking out to meet the local potheads in my neighborhood when I was twelve, almost thirteen. They were three or four years older than me. I did little favors for them in exchange for the weed I couldn’t afford. It was small things like stealing from the corner store for them or doing the school work they were too fucked up to do. It was a good gig for a while, a great way to forget the bullshit going on at home. But when I started high school, I started looking for something harder to take the edge off. I tried coke but it wasn’t really my style-- I didn’t like shit going up my nose. Tried LSD and prescription drugs, too, but all they did was take me to the places I was trying to avoid. Bad trips are no joke.

Then, at my first high school party, I got a taste of alcohol. I had been offered before by the junkies I ran with but I was too scared to try it. I never felt pressured with my neighborhood crew but high school was a different field altogether. In a room full of your drunken peers, with eyes watching every move you make, you’ll do anything to fit in. So, one shot of Henny became two and then it turned into Vodka, and so on. The party got busted by the end of the night, and I was one of many teens caught because we were too drunk to see straight let alone run properly. Needless to say, I was pretty popular around the police department by the ripe age of fourteen.

The final straw came during my sophomore year of high school.

Back then, I had long, dark natural hair that fell to my waist when blow-dried. It was the only thing about me that my mama took any real pride in. She never let me get anything more than a trim, no dyes, and absolutely no heat other than a blow-dry. Mama coveted my hair like it was her own. She even did my hair herself to ensure that I wouldn’t mess it up. Those were the few moments she was soft with me. It was the only time I felt like she cared for me. But as soon as my hair was dried, moisturized, and put into a new protective style…the walls went back up.

So, I cut it.

I headed straight to the hair salon after school one day and got my hair cut up to my shoulders. I don’t know what possessed me to do it. I don’t recall what triggered this rash decision, but I went through with it anyway. The lady, a middle-aged black woman with a cute smile was hesitant at first but she got to clipping when I threatened to sit in the white lady’s chair. Then I had her flat-iron it and add some fiery red streaks-- a special "fuck you" to my mom. And she fucking hated it…but that made me feel good.

We argued for hours that night. The worst fight we’d ever had at that point. She told me I was just like my father-- a lazy troublemaker. Only good for lying on my back. I told her the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. She was the single mother of two, not me. She slapped me for that and called me a sorry piece of shit. I shoved her and called her a selfish bitch. I left that night and didn’t come home for three days. But then Stephania found me one evening, hanging with friends in some back alleyway. We were all crossfaded as hell, giggling around a trash fire and burning our schoolwork for fun.

“Mala,” She called, her voice tiny and frail.

I sobered up as soon as I saw her. She was crying, saying Ma wouldn’t help her with her science project or something like that. Steph looked so fucking scared standing in that cold alley wearing a hand-me-down jacket with the hood pulled tight over her head. She was shaking like a leaf, too. It was cold out but I was too fucked up to notice. Guilt dropped through me like lead. Steph didn’t deserve to see me like that. She was only twelve for fucksake. So I pulled it together as best I could, stole some supplies from the store, and I helped my sister put together the best damned solar system ever.

Ma praised Steph for her hard work. She never acknowledged me.

About a month after the “incident”, mom decided that a change of scenery would do us-- me-- some good. Who would’ve thought that of all the shit I could do, cutting my hair was the most heinous?

She packed my sister and me up, along with our meager belongings, and moved us from the pitiful projects of South Carolina to the elite slums of New York. We was finally gonna be “fancy” broke. Mama had some cousins up in the Bronx with the hookup in East Harlem. She got a two bedroom for real cheap-- well, as cheap as can be in New York-- and that’s where we settled. Ma got us enrolled in school fairly quickly and Central Park East was where I would spend the rest of my high school years.

I fucking hated that place.

I hated it because it wasn’t home. Because it wasn’t my tiny little high school where everyone knew everyone. I hated it for everything that it wasn’t. But I mostly hated that place because, suddenly, I was thrown into this giant new pond where I was the tiniest fish of all. I was a nobody from some no-name town in the middle of fucking nowhere. And they treated me like I was from some no-name town, too.

So, I did what I knew how. I acted out, got in with the wrong crowd, and figured out the best places for getting high between classes. I barely talked to my mother those days. I don’t recall seeing her very much either-- not that I truly cared. I found ways to occupy my time, so her absence didn't make a difference. There was this girl, Marta, who lived in the apartment down the hall from us with her mom and little sister. We laughed about how similar our lives were and bonded over silly things like boys and popular music groups. But she didn’t go to CPE, so we only hung out occasionally.

Most days, it was just Steph and I hanging out after school.

As the years went by, Stephania got older and prettier and was still my pride and joy. My best friend. When mom and I would argue, Steph tried to play mediator sometimes. But when small arguments turned into screaming matches, she would stay out of sight until it was over. Then, she would be there for me with a sheepish smile and corny joke to lighten the mood. The fights bothered her, of course, but she never let mom and I’s bickering get her down. It was like she was a cloud of Teflon-- durable yet pliable and soft. No matter what, Stephania had my back.

It was actually Steph who had warned me about Ransom.

“He’s a goddamned womanizing, manipulative, lying snake,” She had said.

I just laughed her off, determined to be different. My relationship with Ransom would be better than that. Fighting for love wasn’t new to me. I was used to it.

What was one more battle?

A/N: I hope you enjoyed it! I should be getting chapter three out soon so be on the lookout for that. Thanks for reading and please remember to like and reblog! Feedback is always appreciated. Also feel free to drop in my inbox to make requests, ask questions, or just chat. It would really make my day :)

Next Chapter: This Way

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Title Card: Me :)

Backup Blog: @thegirlonhamilton

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