The Coldest Winter Ever

  “Seriously Momma. Why did you cut off your hair?” She started to make jokes and I grabbed her arm. “No seriously. Why did you cut off your hair?”

  “I was just mad.”

  “Mad at who?”

  “Well it started with Aunt Laurie. She knew I had been wearing the blond wig because it worked for me. She come talking about she wants to use the blonde wig because it goes with her tiger dress and she’s going out to the bar tonight. Now she knows I don’t have the money to go to Earline’s right now and I’m damn sure not about to ask Earline no favors. I figure your aunt was tryna be cute by taking the wig away from me. Now she knows I’m not the type to go borrowing things in the first place. So I said, “I’ll fix her. I’ll never ask her for no more of her wigs. I’ll just cut all my hair off.’”

  “But now everybody can see your scar and where they operated on you and everything.”

  “That’s right,” she said, smiling.

  “But why?” I asked.

  “Well, when I was in the mirror at first tryna style my own hair I realized I wasn’t really gonna get no money for no plastic surgery, I might as well be proud. You can’t get no respect in Brooklyn being all down on yourself. I was sitting in the living room looking at Aunt Laurie’s old record albums. I saw that live hoe Grace Jones. It clicked in my mind. It’s a sign. I ran in the bathroom and just cut it all off. Now I’m gonna rock it just like Grace. She don’t care what nobody says and neither do I.” For the rest of the ride, we sat in silence.

  It was clear that I was gonna have to take my Nicole Miller dress back to the store. I just couldn’t spend my last four hundred fifty dollars on a new outfit. I would return this one, get the money back and use it to purchase a new one. The upcoming meeting with Midnight was important to me. Everything had to be as perfect as I could make it. If he was successful in locating some of Daddy’s money, I still had to break him down so he would at least talk real with me about what we were gonna do. He might reject my business arrangement at first but now that Santiaga was locked up, he’d have to make money too. Wouldn’t he? He couldn’t stay speechless and distant toward me forever.

  I was so jumpy about our meeting the next night that Sterling kept asking, “What’s up? What’s wrong? What’s the matter? It’s like you’re not even here or something.”

  I smiled sweetly, thinking to myself, Hey idiot, I haven’t been here since I got here. I can’t believe how dumb Sterling is. He sickened me. He wore tight briefs, not boxers. He left small clunks of toothpaste in the sink after he brushed and little droplets of piss on the toilet seat. What really did it for me, though, was the skid marks in his draws that he leaves visible ’cause he is too lazy to put the lid to the laundry pail back on. Worst of all he reminded me of the bad shape I was in myself being homeless and all. I hated him for it. Sterling only had about one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars a week spare cash on hand after paying the bills. He really ought to have realized he couldn’t buy no quality ass for that kind of money. Friday it would all be over for him. I would tell him my parents were back from vacation. I’d leave with my things in one of his suitcases. He’d call me later in Long Island. The phone would be disconnected. He would spend the rest of his life tryna figure out where I had disappeared to. I’d have the money from Midnight and a little business going on. Hell, maybe Midnight would let me chill up in his spot until I could get my place situated.

  I traded my Nicole Miller outfit easily for a Calvin Klein dress. Things went smooth. There was no sense in the store clerks arguing with a regular customer, even if they could detect that I’d already worn the dress. I had time to get my hair touched up as well as my nails. My hair was swept up into a French bun and my skin was perfect, smooth and clear. My ears held my diamond studs and I carefully put on my necklace and bracelet.

  I tried to speculate on exactly how much money Midnight would come back with. I came up with an A budget and a B budget. The A budget was if he came with something around fifty thousand dollars. I would bring money to the lawyer for Santiaga even though I was still mad about Dulce. I would take a couple of thousand dollars for an apartment. If I was lucky, I’d find a place big enough so my moms could get my sisters back and we could all chill. The rest of the money would be for me and Midnight’s investment. Now the B budget worked like this. If he came back with twenty thousand dollars, I’d pay the lawyer ten, invest seven and keep three for myself. When our investment paid off, then I would worry about everything and everybody else.

  At 59th and 8th, I sat outside of Central Park near the statue and waited for Midnight to arrive. When I spotted his freshly washed black Acura with the gleaming rims coming around the circle, my heart jumped. He pulled up to the curb. “Get in.”

  “How you doing, Midnight?” I asked, really sultry and cool. I was gonna be more womanly and in control, I told myself.

  “I’m cool,” he said with little emotion.

  “Well, what did you come up with?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “we can check out that museum. It’s only a few blocks over.”

  “What?” I asked as I knitted my eyebrows together. He raised his hand to cut the conversation short.

  I was wondering what was going down. I sat quietly. Glancing to the left, into the backseat I caught the glimpse of a suitcase strap. My body filled with panic when I saw Midnight’s bags packed. So many different thoughts filled my head. The first one was: treachery. Midnight had all the money. All of it, I thought. All the money Santiaga had, he had. Now he was gonna break me off a little piece, pretend the rest had been stolen and fly to Colombia or something to hide out.

  Midnight must of been down with the other team all along. He sold Daddy out and that’s why he was the only one who didn’t get locked up. Now he was dipping out on not only Santiaga, but the other guys too. He had a plan so sweet that he has ended up with all their cash and both of the other teams got jerked.

  When I turned sideways and looked at him, I thought he looked so sincere. A new thought came. He was gonna show me the money, all of it, in a yellow business-type envelope! No—a briefcase, a black briefcase! Then he was gonna say that he and I should go away for a while to regroup, organize ourselves, make some more dough, big money. We would send the money to the lawyer for Santiaga and give some to Momma, then we would leave. But then, why didn’t he tell me last time I saw him to pack my bags?

  “Get out and wait on those steps,” Midnight said, interrupting my thoughts.

  “Where are you going?” I was worried.

  “I’m gonna pull the car around over there where I can park.”

  “What’s up with the museum?” I questioned him after he’d parked the car.

  “We not going in there,” he said.

  “So why did we come here then?”

  “Come on. We’ll sit down right over there.” He pointed to a table with benches. When I got over there, I noticed nasty blotches of bird shit splattered around.

  “Let’s sit over there,” I said directing him to another table with an umbrella surrounding it.

  Midnight grabbed my arm tight. “I said sit down here, a little bird shit ain’t gonna hurt you. I gotta be able to see my car.”

  I grabbed a little leftover newspaper off the round table to cover the shit on the bench. It took everything I had not to show how aggravated I was. With slight attitude I asked, “So what’s up?”

  “I don’t talk in my car,” Midnight whispered. “You never know who’s listening in.”

  I laughed. Either he had lost his mind in the last four days or he was just telling a joke.

  “Everything is fun and games for you, Winter, huh?”

  I got serious then, too. I wasn’t gonna let him make me feel like a child. “So what’s all the luggage for? Are you going somewhere?”

  “Yeah, I’m leaving.”

  “Going where?” I was horrified.

  “That’s my business. All you need to know is I’m outta here.”

  “
No, that’s not all I need to know,” I said, standing up. “I need to know what the fuck is up? Santiaga said you had his money and it should be obvious by now that I need to have it.”

  “I talked to Santiaga,” he said. “He knows what happened. The money is gone. Even the money he put aside for situations like this is gone. Somebody he trusted double crossed. The way I see it, he got raided by the street niggas and he got raided by the authorities. The authorities uncovered shit nobody but family should’ve known. Now niggas is turning state’s evidence on Santiaga. The shit is bad, real bad.”

  “Well let me ask you something, Midnight. How come you get away smelling like you ain’t had shit to do with nothing? How come everybody else is behind bars and you cruising around in your damn Acura like your shit don’t stink?”

  “Because I’m smart. I figured this day would come and I planned for it. Nothing good lasts too long. I never did no talking to anybody. I never kept no shit in my place. You can’t be in this business yapping off at the mouth like a woman. Half the evidence they got on niggas is niggas telling on themselves over the phone and in their cars. The feds is listening in, clocking niggas, recording shit, straight up snooping. Niggas running around buying too much shit with no reasonable cover to explain where it came from, flashing, making a scene. Stupid shit. But a man can’t tell another man what to do. You can’t teach a man how to humble himself if he don’t want to. Every man gotta do it his way. I did it my way. It worked out for me, that’s it.”

  “You tryna say you a better man than my father?” I asked, tears running down my face.

  “Nah, nothing like that,” he said. “Your father’s a smart man. I learned a lot from him. Sometimes a man as smart as your father can see everything and everybody else but he can’t see himself. Your father was sharp but sometime, he let women influence him to make moves he knew he shouldn’t make.”

  “Women? Are you referring to my mother?”

  “For the most part,” he said in such a cool way I wanted to kill him. Did Midnight know about Dulce all along? Had he met with Santiaga in Dulce’s apartment the same way he met with Santiaga in my house? What other secrets was he keeping?

  “Women,” he said, as though he was an old man, “are emotional. That’s why a man gotta be strong. Now emotional women have a way of pushing for what they want and not thinking about how things gonna end up.”

  “Sounds to me like you don’t even like women.”

  He laughed. “I like women, but I like smart women. A smart man never chooses a dumb woman. All she can do is make demands, spend his money, and bring him down.” Now he was stabbing me back. He thought I was gonna bring him down. Or maybe he thought Momma brought Santiaga down. Any way you look at it, it was a knife in my stomach, an insult, a dis. I had no time to dwell on the pain, so I pulled the knife out by saying, “What about me? What am I supposed to do? What did Santiaga say for me to do?”

  “Santiaga said go back to Brooklyn, it’s OK now.”

  “Go back to Brooklyn and do what? Live where?”

  “Your Aunt B has a spot for you. Santiaga worked that out already.” The idea of returning to Brooklyn with nothing seemed crazy to me.

  “So what, Brooklyn’s not good enough for you anymore?” he asked.

  “Apparently it’s not good enough for you, that’s why you leaving right.”

  “Nah. I live simple. Brooklyn was alright for me. I’m leaving ’cause there’s nothing to stay for. The feds would love to catch me slipping or pin some shit on me I didn’t even do. They hate to be out-smarted. They ain’t got nothing on me. My place was clean. No drugs. No jewels. No money, and they hate it. Rather than sit around waiting for them to cook something up—and them devils will cook something up—I’m out. I’m out like I was never even here. I did time already. The first time was the last time. Anybody try to take me down, we all going out, right there on the spot in a hail of gunfire. ’Cause I’m never going back to jail.”

  His words were clear. He said them with so much strength I couldn’t even front like he was lying or something. But I still wanted to know about the money. Somehow it just didn’t seem right that there was no money left. Where was he getting money from? How was he gonna make money? Where was he gonna stay? “How you gonna make your dough where you going?”

  “I’m gonna be straight, Shorty. Don’t worry about me. I got plans. I’m about to come into something. Listen,” he said pulling a white envelope out of his pocket, “this is for you.”

  I looked at it. I knew it had money in it. I exhaled.

  “Don’t be stupid, Winter. Learn how to use that head of yours, otherwise you’ll end up like everybody else.” He said some other stuff but my mind drifted. How much was in the envelope? I wondered what would I use it for first? What step should I make next?

  Midnight planted a kiss on my face and snatched away the object of my childhood crush with two little words, “Take care.”

  “Can I come with you?” The words dropped out of my mouth before I could stop them from embarrassing me.

  “No.”

  “No? Why not? I’m not saying I have to be your girl. I’m just asking if I could roll with you. You might think I’m dumb but I’m not. I know a lot of shit. I understand. We can put whatever little money we got together and make something out of it. I am seventeen now you know. I’m not as young as you think.”

  “None of that has nothing to do with it,” he said.

  “Then what is it? What is it?” I asked over and over again. “Let me in on the big secret why you never wanted me. Why is the answer always no with you. Let me know why you would leave me in Brooklyn knowing what’s happening with my family. Everybody’s gonna find out and you just bouncing out like it’s cool.”

  “I already told you. I gotta do what I gotta do. What happened to your family ain’t no secret. Everybody already knows. You hiding from Natalie and all those silly bitches and they already know.” He grabbed the leftover newspapers from the table beside us. He balled them in his fist and pushed them into my face. “Can’t you read? Santiaga been in the newspaper every day. Page two, page three, page four. You see? That’s what I’m talking about— dumb women! You don’t even know what’s going on around you. If it ain’t on the front page you don’t know it. But you know the name of every designer in Bloomingdale’s. Hell no, you can’t come with me. Your dumb ass ain’t bringing me down, not me.”

  Midnight walked away. I stood on the steps crying mad. He drove right past me. I ripped open the envelope and couldn’t believe I was flipping through tens, twenties and fifties. The grand total was three thousand dollars. Three thousand measly dollars. What the hell was I supposed to do with that? In the envelope was a business card turned backwards. Scrawled across the back of the card, in neat handwriting, it read: I know you don’t like her, but she can help you get your head together. I flipped it to the front and Sister Souljah’s name was on it with an address and phone number. I sucked my teeth and put the envelope in my pocketbook.

  8

  I walked until I saw a cute little coffee shop. I bought a newspaper from the stand and ducked inside. Inside I flipped to the section with apartments for rent. I took a jar of nail polish out of my pocket book and splashed a red dot on all the listings I was gonna check out. I had already decided I wasn’t going back to Brooklyn with everybody feeling sorry for me. I wasn’t gonna give Natalie the pleasure of feeling like me and her were on the same level. I’d find a decent place to stay while I put my survival plan together.

  I put the money for the tea and fries on the table plus a dollar tip. After walking halfway through the coffee shop door, I turned around, and grabbed my tip off the table, realizing I had to save my dough. I hit the pavement, heading for an available advertised apartment in Harlem.

  The building was a brownstone, on a block of brownstones. This particular one was real nice and neat with a decorative iron gate on it and flowerpots on the left and right sides of the entrance. The land lady came
to the door and peeked out the curtain. She was only about five-foot-two, real dark-skinned with a colorful scarf on her head, a dress, and house slippers. After opening the outside door, she stood behind the locked gate, looking me over from head to toe. She spoke with a thick West Indian accent, “Good afternoon chile, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m interested in the apartment you have for rent.” I was confident, I looked good, expensively dressed, with a fresh hairdo.

  “Are you alone?” she asked, as if she couldn’t tell I was standing on the step by myself.

  “Yes I am,” I replied, trying not to be snotty. She went into her front pocket on her multicolored dress, pulled out a small key, and unlocked the gate.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Winter Shulman,” I said proudly.

  “Are you married?” she asked.

  “No I’m not.”

  “Do you have any children?”

  “No.”

  “Oh,” she said, “because we have working people in this building and little babies are wonderful but they can be a loud disturbance in the middle of the night.”

  “No, I don’t have any children,” I reassured the suspicious little lady. “What floor is the apartment on?” I asked, trying to hurry her along.

  “Oh, it’s on the second floor. We’ll go up in a minute. So how did you hear about the apartment?”

  “I read about it in the paper,” I said, wondering why she put an ad in the paper if it was supposed to be a secret.

  “Oh,” she said. “How old are you?” she asked, still digging.