Chasing Pavements

Krys723

Jazmine DuBois has always lived with her mother, even after Tom and Sarah DuBois got divorced and Sarah moved her daughter far away from her life in Woodcrest. After Sarah gets arrested for drugs and prostitution, Jazmine follows her father back to Woodcrest and realizes that everything, but not everyone has changed.

A/N: I HAVEN'T WRITTEN A BOONDOCKS STORY IN YEAR AND A HALF AND DECIDED TO GET BACK IN THE FOLD. ITS BEEN AWHILE SO PLEASE DON'T JUDGE!

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN ANYTHINGBOONDOCKS-RELATED! THE TITLE OF THE STORY BELONGS TO ADELE!

Setting: 518 Eric Rd., Westbrook Ave; Richmond, Virginia

Date: November 2ND, 2010

Time: 6:30 A.M.

Chapter One

Returning to Woodcrest

Jazmine DuBois…

I always wondered what I did wrong when I was younger. I believed in God, I got good grades, and I understood the differences of right and wrong. Sure, it took me a while to stop believing in things like the Easter bunny or Santa, but I still stopped at the age of fourteen. I've never been truly happy, well not since I left Woodcrest. I thought my family would be together, forever, but at age twelve that wasn't the case. My Mom was notorious on Timid Deer Lane, she was known to sleep around with various men from her law firm, everybody knew it except my Dad. The day he found it, the day he divorced my Mother and it turned into an brutal battle for custody for me. Even though Thomas DuBois tried his hardest to prove his case, the judge ruled in favor of Mom and in two days time…Mom and I made our move to Virginia.

We had it good at first, Mum got a job at Allen & Allen and she was bringing home weekly checks. She placed some money into a college fund for me and up until I was fifteen, we lived fair. And then, two years ago…everything fell apart. My Mom lost her job when I was fifteen, that meant that I had to drop out of the school I was currently enrolled in. I was preparing for this day, just two weeks prior I saw my Mom and a hotshot lawyer from her firm practically fucking on the living room couch when I came home from school. After she was fired, we moved to Eric Rd and my Mom started doing her…what I considered to be…her downfall. A week after we got settled, Mom begun prostituting. Her being good at the late night even would be an understatement. She knew when the cops were patrolling the best areas, so those were the nights she didn't go in. Instead, she used those nights for her second illegal venture, distributing marijuana.

Now, don't get me wrong, my Mom was dealing since we first moved out here to Virginia, but she only did it on her days off. When she got fired; growing, selling, and smoking marijuana became her specialty. To the drug dealers on our block, she grew the best weed Virginia has ever seen. For a while in my junior year, I would put some of her weed in her special bong and hit it hard on my bad days. I had gotten sick after doing it one too many times and decided to quit. By the end of December, my Mom was arrested and since it was the holidays, the judge went lenient on her and she spent five days in jail. That was strike one.

After Mom came back home, she was assigned a patrol officer, but that didn't stop her. She only stepped her game up further. She decided to open a bakery as a store front, even though everybody we knew in Virginia knew that she was bad at everything that required a stove and a set of ingredients. She hired four other "workers" to help spread "product". It was in May that police raided her shop and she was arrested her for not only drug trafficking, but also for prostitution. This time, the judge wasn't so lenient, she spent five months in jail, got slapped with a $5,000 fine, and when she was released; the judge gave her a warning. The judge said that if she got caught one more time, she would spend the rest of her life in jail and I would have no choice but to go back to Woodcrest to live with my father.

I started thinking about this while my Mom was planning her next outcome to dealing and selling off her body to random strangers. They might send me back to Woodcrest when my Mom gets arrest again. Would my Dad even want me back? We really haven't communicated since my Mom dragged me off to Virginia. Would he get remarried? He should, he's a good person that got royally screwed off by my mother.

It was now November and I felt something bad brewing. Both me and Mom had been busy. I was getting ready to apply for schools since her stupidity hadn't brought down my education and Mom was back in full swing when it came to drug dealing and prostitution. Back in junior year, I had taken an after school job at Barnes and Noble as a clerk so application fees were nothing to me. I didn't want to use my Mom's drug money to help me get into school, I was afraid of the stench the admissions board would've found.

I was just getting up and going to the kitchen when my Mom ran through the front door. She was still wearing the short, tight red dress she wore two nights before, her red heels were in her right hand. I looked at her. She used to be a beauty woman, then drugs and sex got in the way and now she was a common Virginian whore. Her blonde hair was stringy, her body looked as though its been stretched out due to a lot of men, and her eyes looked dazed from all the weed she sold and smoked. She was no longer the beauty woman I've always wanted to be when I was grown, but a monster that I desperately wanted to get away from.

"Jazmine, go to your room and pack everything you think is a necessity, including clothes and your school books," Mom said. She reached for the tin can where she kept all her drug and prostitution money, it all totaled to at least $7,500, probably more.

"We're leaving again?! Mother, I'm tired of leaving!" I told her, remaining in my spot. She got caught again, I just know it.

"Jazmine, this is no time to argue! Pack some damn clothes now!" Mom shouted.

"Did you get caught again? This is why we're leaving, because you got caught?" I asked her. When she didn't respond, I wanted to punch a wall. I didn't even like this house, everything was broke and the random pieces of the floor was rooted from the ground. It was the fact that we were running away from the police. I'm tired of running, she knows that if she goes to jail, then I was going back to Woodcrest. She hated that, so she keeps me closer to her. The longer we were on the run, the longer she kept her baby girl. Well, it wasn't going to happen, not this time.

Mom walked towards me, but the closer she got was the farther I moved away. She wasn't the same woman who gave birth to me, she wasn't my Mom. She was just her prostitute name, White Chocolate.

"Jazmine, I'm your mother. You need me, that's why," she said.

"No, I don't. You aren't the same person, you are not my mother! Your nothing more than a drug queen who's also known for her amazing body. Do you even know how much jail time you have? You could be spending life in prison, these charges might even go up if you run! Let me go back and live with Dad, its gonna happen whether you like it or not," I said. "You need to surrender."

"Jazmine, you're my daughter. My baby," Mom said. When she stepped closer to me this time, I did not move. She hugged me one last time, but I didn't hug her back. When she let go, we heard a loud pounding at the door. We both instantly knew it was the police. Mom handed me her drug money, but I placed it back inside the coffee tin. I would come back for that later. When Mom opened the door, two officers were standing there but I knew that more were around just in case she escaped. The officers were both male, one was tall and African American. The other was blonde and short. They both dressed in their navy blues, the African-American officer was the one arresting her.

"Sarah Walkman, you are arrested on the counts of drug distribution and late-night prostitution. Do you agree with the charges given?" the African-American officer asked. Mom nodded and the officer started saying her Miranda Rights as he placed handcuffs behind her back. As he led her out, the blonde officer stepped inside.

"Why don't you get some clothes on and follow us to the station so we can figure out whether to send you with your father or put you in foster care," the officer said. I complied and went in my room, putting on a pair of jeans with a sweater and my sneakers. It would be one of the last two times I exited that house.

Setting: 301 South Meadow Street-Richmond Police Department; Richmond, Virginia

Date: November 19TH, 2010

Time: 10:30 A.M.

Mom was arraigned two and a half weeks later. This would also count as my last day in Virginia. The Richmond Police Department got in contact with my Dad and he agreed to let me live with him during my last year of high school. He would be making the two hour drive today and he promised to meet me at the Richmond Police Department.

I arrived first, carrying two suitcases that were filled with all the clothes I owned and a duffel bag filled with shoes and my notebooks. The money Mom gave me was gone, just like I thought it would. The police came back for it, they considered it to be drug money and I didn't want nothing more to do with her. I was only here to see her arraignment and then I would off to Silver Springs with Dad. When I talked to him, he crammed a lot inside a five minute conversation. Just as I predicated—and hoped—he had gotten remarried to a woman named Rachael Kingston-DuBois and they had five-year-old twins, a boy and a girl named Abby and Alex. Their real names were Abigail and Alexander. They still lived in the same house across the street from the Freemans and I would be attending Wuncler High School that following Monday. He was happy to hear that his firstborn daughter was coming back to him, but he wasn't too happy about the circumstances. I wanted to know more about the Freemans, but the phone call had ended due to the police officer telling me it was time to get off.

My Mom's arraignment was simple and clear. She plead guilty to all charges and the judge sentenced her to life in prison with no possible chance of parole. She gave me one last hug and oddly enough, it was the one hug that felt genuine. It would be the last hug I would ever receive from her, she knew that I wasn't going to visit her anytime soon. This was a proper sending off. After my Mom was taken away, I sat with my stuff in the conference room, awaiting for my Dad to come. I decided to write while I was waiting for him, wondering if he was still going to come. Writing was one of the few things I had gotten into, I had even took a creative writing course down at J. Sergeant Reynolds Community College in Downtown Richmond.

When the door opened, a police officer entered and then another man stepped through. The other man was my father. He still had dark brown hair that was scalped neatly and his eyes were still hazel. His skin was darker, but he still wore his favorite blue suit with the red tie and black dress shoes. He smiled when he saw me.

"Jazmine," he said. I smiled and placed my notebook back inside the duffel bag, the pen I was carrying was placed behind my ear as if I was a reporter hard at work. Dad helped me with my suitcases and the two of us went to get the proper paperwork done so I would no longer be a Virginian resident, but a Marylander resident. Once all the paperwork was done, Dad and I got inside his car. He drove a black Toyota Sienna, a family car with great mileage. Dad placed my bags in the trunk and he and I got up front. He was definitely a family man, the backseat was littered with toys and two booster seats, one was dark blue and based off Toy Story 3 and the other was a light green and based off The Princess and the Frog.

-Break-

The drive to Maryland involved Dad telling me that he needed help around the house when it came to the twins, which I was somewhat glad to do; me being nice to Rachael, which—once again I didn't mind; and we set a curfew. On schooldays, I would need to be home by ten, but I had free reign on weekends as long as it was before 3:00 in the morning. I was expected not to drink or smoke, those were a given, and I had to do my homework first before anything else…unless I had to work, which I was because there was no way I was going to be lazy during my senior year. We stopped at a rest stop shortly before entering Maryland and we ate greasy cheese fries with chili cheese dogs and a pitcher of orange soda shared between the two of us. As soon as we entered Maryland, the nerves started setting in and the questions started flooding in. What had changed in the past five years?

SO…WHAT DO YOU ALL THINK? IS THIS WORTHY OF A CONTINUANCE OR SHOULD I STOP HERE? LET ME KNOW IN THE BOX BELOW!