Bruce sat on her couch and said, “I was around the courts, and I thought I might as well stop by.”
“Was it a game around there?” Tracy asked him. She joined him on the couch, keeping a space in between them.
“Yeah, but it’s over with now,” he answered her. “And you know dude named Peppy?”
Tracy frowned. “Yeah, I know that punk.”
Bruce smiled. “Dig, I don’t like dude either, but he got busted up at the courts though.”
“By who?” Tracy asked, hungry for gossip.
“Some drug-dealing dude named Cash. You know who I’m talkin’ about?”
“Unt unh. I heard about him though. What he look like?”
“He a cool-looking dude, tall, brown and slender. He look a little like Rudy on the Fat Albert Show,” Bruce told her with a laugh.
Tracy shook her head. “No he don’t,” she responded. She thought about getting a chance to meet the boy. She then turned her attention back to Bruce.
Tracy asked him with a smile, “So Bruce, when you gon’ buy me somethin’ again?” She gestured passion with her hazels.
Bruce slapped his hand on her knee and whispered, “As soon as we make love again.”
Tracy figured he was serious. “You ain’t making love to me,” she snapped, turning away from him. She wanted to see if Bruce would pursue her. He would be more exciting that way.
“Why not?” he asked, begging already.
“Because I said you can’t,” Tracy told him, annoyed by his weakness. Bruce was still slow.
“Well, the fuck if I’m gon’ buy anything then,” he snapped in a low tone. Patti was right in the kitchen. Bruce added, “You ain’t givin’ me no ass. So what I look like, Santa Claus or some shit to you?”
“Watch your mouth, boy,” Tracy said, tickled brown. She chuckled at his radical response. Then she lied. “I don’t want nothin’ from you, Bruce. I just wanted to see if you were still stingy.”
Bruce looked in between Tracy’s legs. “Look how stingy you are.”
Tracy grinned. “You nasty.”
“Aw, girl, don’t even try it. You know damn well you be givin’ them panties up.”
Tracy laughed aloud.
Bruce asked, “Can I get some water?”
“No, you can’t have nothin’ from me.” She was hoping that Bruce would keep talking nasty to her. Tracy liked it.
Patti came out of the kitchen.
“Is Jason still in front of the house?”
Tracy responded, annoyed, “Yeah, mom.”
Patti was in the way.
She walked to the front door to see for herself.
Bruce figured it was a perfect opportunity to get the upper hand on Tracy. “Oh, I can’t get anything to drink, Tracy?” He was sure that Patti would hear him.
“Tracy, get up and get him somethin’.”
Bruce giggled at his success.
Tracy said playfully, while bringing him a glass of lemonade, “I hate you.”
“Yeah, I know you love me.”
“I don’t hardly love you, boy.”
Bruce chuckled, gulping from the tall blue glass. “Well, I’m ’bout to roll,” he said, finishing the lemonade. His mother had told him he had to start packing for their trip to the Bahamas.
Tracy asked, “Why you leavin’?”
Bruce lied. “I gotta go see my girlfriend.”
“What girlfriend?”
“None of your business,” he answered sharply, walking toward the door.
Tracy followed him out of her house, disappointed that he didn’t stay longer. She was jealous, thinking that he was telling the truth.
“Don’t leave, Bruce,” she pleaded. She then whispered, “Fuck that girl.” She looked back toward her brother, who was playing on the lawn with a neighbor, to make sure that they didn’t hear her.
Bruce felt in charge. He wanted to keep Tracy begging. “Nope. I gotta go. Bye-bye. Seeya’ later. Buenos noches. Don’t forget to write.” He laughed as he walked off down her block.
Tracy retorted, “Well, don’t come back then.”
Of course, she meant the opposite. Bruce was fun.
She looked and noticed a brand-new jeep at the opposite corner. She waited for Bruce to disappear before going to inspect it further.
“Where you goin’, Tracy?” Jason asked, tagging along. His friend had been called inside.
“Nowhere, boy. Get back in front of the house,” she told him. Jason remained at her side as Tracy looked the Bronco jeep over. It was two-toned, black on the top and gold across the bottom.
Jason squealed, “Deeeeep. This truck is decent.” He was four years old.
“Shet up, boy,” Tracy told him, being evil.
“So you like my jeep, hunh, pretty?”
Tracy turned and spotted a tall, handsome, brown-skinned teenager wearing white leather shorts and a purple t-shirt. A wide gold chain was wrapped around his neck, and he wore no socks with his Timberland shoes.
Tracy said, “It is kind of nice.” Feeling nervous, she seized Jason’s hand.
Tall-and-handsome asked, “What’s your name?”
“Tracy.”
He leaned up against his jeep. “You live on this block, Tracy?”
“Yeah.”
“My name is Jason,” her brother said, reaching out to shake Tall-and-handsome’s hand.
“Oh, you a cool little dude, hunh?” he responded. He picked Jason up, shocking Tracy with his friendliness. She stood there, waiting to be sweet-talked, as he put Jason back down and looked her over.
“So Tracy, I got an aunt that lives here, and whenever I’m up here to see her, I can stop by and shoot the breeze with you.”
“Aw’ight. I live right there,” Tracy told him, pointing to her house. “What’s your name?” she finally asked him.
“Everybody calls me ‘Cash.’ My name was Ronald three years ago. But hell, you might as well call me Cash now, too.”
Tracy asked, “Was you just fightin’ some boy named Peppy at the playground?”
Cash nodded with a grin. “Yeah, I had to smack dude up a bit, you know. He was talkin’ shit to me like he was hard or something.”
Tracy liked his sense of authority and his nonchalant attitude. “I hate that boy,” she told him.
“Yeah, well anyway, won’t you give me your number so I can call you when I come back around to see my aunt?”
“Aw’ight,” Tracy responded, refreshed by a new boy with a Bronco jeep. She wrote her number on a business card that Cash had pulled from his dashboard. He seemed to have everything in control. Tracy loved his organization. He gave her a beeper number and a three-digit code before he left, pumping Roxanne Shante from his booming system.
“Yo Cash, we gon’ pick up that package later on?” asked a short, tanned-skinned friend.
“Naw, man. We ain’t got the money together from the last one yet. And I ain’t trying to owe no niggas nothin’.”
Cash sat on his apartment couch, back in North Philly, counting ones, fives, tens and twenties.
“So you busted dude up today, hunh?” Short-tan asked.
“Oh yeah, Ed, ’cause dude thought I was a sucka’.” Cash was still preoccupied with counting money.
“It be some babes up there, Cash?” Ed asked. He was watching Black Caesar, starring Fred Williamson, on the VCR.
Cash said, “Up in Germantown? Yeah, they got some good-lookin’ chicks, cuz’. I met this young chumpee named Tracy up there t’day. She live on my aunt’s block, on Diamond Lane. Mount Airy got some bad bitches too though. Straight up. Them rich hoes be lookin’ gooder than a muthafucka.”
“They got any connections, runnin’ things up there?”
“Yeah, my man Victor Hinson and his brother got things rollin’. We went to school together in elementary. Victor’s people’s from North Philly.”
Cash stood up to look out of the window. “Yo Ed, here come that girl, man. Get the shit.”
Ed wen
t outside and met her at the corner.
The ragged woman spied him nervously. “Give me a twenty, man.”
He made the transaction and went back to the apartment.
Cash said, “That bitch come like every two days, cuz’.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Ed gave Cash the ruffled twenty-dollar bill.
“Man, she gotta get that monkey off her back,” he responded, chuckling to himself. “Ay, man, I’m gon’ call that young-girl up. Fuck it, you know.”
Cash walked to the phone with the number in his hand and dialed it.
“Hello . . . Yeah, is Tracy there? Yo, what’s up? It’s Cash . . . Yeah, well you know what? That’s for young-boah’s, ’cause when I get a babe’s number, I’m gon’ use it when I want to . . . Yeah, well I was thinking ’bout coming up on Thursday, if you really wanted to ride around and all.”
Ed interjected, while peeping out of the window, “Yo Cash, that bugged-out bitch is back again.”
Cash spied out the window, four stories down. “Ay Tracy, I’m gon’ call you back in a few.” He hung up the phone and went back to the window. “Aw, man, I’m ’bout to punch this girl in her mouth.”
They watched the young woman marching up the stairs toward their apartment complex. She was flyy, sporting gold and gear.
Cash sprinted outside, catching her before she made it inside of the building.
“I want my shit!” she screamed at him.
“Look, girl, I told you I ain’t got it.”
“Well, you know somethin’ about it.”
“Why you think I know, out of all people?”
“ ’Cause you down wit’ Victor and them.”
“What he got to do with it? You fuckin’ him or some shit?”
“Look, all I know is that I was at that damn party up Haines Street, and my three hundred dollars are missin’. Now one of y’all know about the shit.”
Her good looks were beginning to decline from being out in the streets too long. She was twenty-four years old, still dating young hustlers.
Cash said, “Well, you should’na had all that money on you anyway. You knew everybody was damn-near drunk in ’nere.”
“I was holding it for my boyfriend.”
“Who’s your boyfriend?”
“Shawn Matthews.”
Cash roared, “That dick-head is your boyfriend?” Another customer came up as he laughed. “YO, ED, come out and get this, man!”
Ed was watching from the window and came down to make a transaction with an older man. The gray-haired man wobbled in his stance. He then walked away shoving the twenty-dollar pack of cocaine inside of his pocket as if it would fly away from him.
The young woman who had been arguing with Cash stopped herself to think about things for a second. “It’s a shame, what y’all do to these people,” she commented.
“We ain’t doin’ nothin’ but business. They takin’ the drugs themselves. Nobody’s forcin’ ’em,” Cash argued.
“Well look, I just wanna get my money back,” she told him, getting back to the matter at hand.
Cash quizzed her, “Ain’t that money your boyfriend had from drug-selling? Shawn sell drugs, too. He a nut, but he still sellin’.”
“Look, I’on even know. Okay?”
Cash smiled and said, “Yeah, you know, you just don’t wanna say it. So you can’t say shit to me about gettin’ paid, ’cause I’m gon’ try to live it up as best I can.”
Cash never did call Tracy back. He had “business” to take care of.
Tracy went school shopping with her family.
“So how much money you gon’ milk for today?” her father asked.
“Well, you haven’t been around for a while. You owe me a lot, now.”
“I owe,” Dave responded to her sternly. Tracy was referring to him as if he was one of her little boyfriends. “Your mother told me about that boyfriend you had, so I think I’m ’bout to start showing up around the house more often. You’re getting way out of hand, to be living on the edge like that. You’re not even fifteen yet.”
Tracy grimaced. “I’m about to be fifteen though.”
“Yup,” Jason added, holding his mother’s hand.
Patti still had few words for her estranged husband. He knew where she stood in the matter. She wanted his ass to stay home or stay away, but he could not do both.
Dave retorted, “Girl, jokes and games are over. Now you better start thinkin’ before you get out here in them damn streets.”
Tracy listened, but she didn’t plan to adhere to anything. Where had he been? Who was he to give advice?
“In fact, I don’t know why you need so many new clothes anyway. It seems to me that all this extra stuff is the main reason that you’re out here running the streets,” her father commented.
Tracy rolled her eyes. “Well, forget it then. I don’t need any clothes.”
Dave grabbed her arm. “So you think that since I’m not in the house with you and your mother that you can say anything you want to me now? Is that it?”
Tracy snapped, “Wait a minute, nobody asked you to leave. You wanted to leave us, so don’t start acting like you wasn’t welcomed home. Maybe if you was home more, I would have something else to do,” she said, as she walked away from him.
Jason anxiously threw his hand to his mouth, expecting Tracy to get in trouble.
Dave looked to Patti, but she was not ready to sympathize with him. “If you really want to help her, then you know where your daughter lives,” she told him.
Patti sat and listened all that night as Dave lectured Tracy about the “hot-ass girls” he knew when he was a teenager. Patti had been a “hot-ass” herself, she and her sisters. Nevertheless, despite Dave’s efforts, all Tracy could think about was how her father had the audacity to tell her how to live when he had basically walked out on his family.
Dave was gone again, talked out, after only an hour of shopping and three hours of lecturing.
Patti sat on the living-room couch with her son after his father had walked out on them again. “You see that? Now I’m stuck to raise you and Tracy all by myself. And that sister of yours is just too fast for her own good.”
“So where are we goin’?” Tracy asked Cash, hopping inside of his black and gold Bronco.
Cash was going on nineteen years old, older than any boy Tracy had dealt with. He pulled off without responding to her. The air-conditioner pumped into Tracy’s face, and the bass from his stereo system made it feel like she was at a live concert. They whipped down the street doing forty miles per hour to an unknown destination as Tracy enjoyed the scenery. Cash then stopped at a gas station to fill up while Tracy leaned back in the passenger seat, thinking that she was dreaming. Yet it was real. She was not yet fifteen, cruising in a brand-new jeep with a young drug dealer.
Cash said, “Look, I gotta go pick up this package, and then I got some other stops to make.”
Tracy nodded. She had been on several car rides before, but a jeep ride with him was the best.
They drove through neighborhoods in Philadelphia that Tracy had never been to before. Outside of Logan, where she had had dance classes, Tracy never had any reason to visit other areas. Germantown was her home.
They stopped in the middle of a block, in the heart of North Philly. Cash jumped out and was surrounded by five or six tough-looking friends.
“CASH MO-N-A-A-Y! What’s up, man?”
They looked into the jeep at Tracy, reminding her of the type of rough-looking guys that her cousins dated in Logan. Cash then walked around the jeep to let her out.
“Come on,” he demanded, opening the door.
Tracy climbed out, feeling terrified. Her father tried to tell her about living in the fast lanes. She looked around, realizing that Cash had every motive in the world to sell drugs. The streets were ripped up and aged, along with the cars and the houses. Down at the opposite corner, two girls were fist fighting and trying to nearly kill each other, but the neigh
bors seemed unconcerned. They were used to the chaos.
Cash was showing Tracy off, or “sportin’ her.” “Come here, I want you to meet my boy, Wayne,” he said.
Wayne looked Tracy over: pretty face, honey-brown complexioned, hazel-eyed, tall, full of body, asymmetric hair and glittering with gold.
Wayne responded, “Damn, girl, you got any older sisters?” He was older than Cash. Tracy suspected that Cash was working for him. Wayne looked about twenty-four and was loosely dressed with Adidas gear. He had a neatly trimmed goatee and was walnut-brown like Mercedes.
Wayne looked important. Tracy could not help staring at his thick, gold nugget bracelet. Then again, her earrings were just as big, shining ostentatiously. And she could sense that the North Philly girls were jealously staring at her. She was taking one of their players.
“No, I don’t have any sisters,” she answered Wayne. “All I got is a little brother.”
Cash butted in. “Yeah, her brother gon’ be aw’ight, Wayne. Little dude ran up and spoke, shook my hand and everything. Oh, these my partners, L.C. and Trap,” he told Tracy, introducing two others. They weren’t as glamorous or as handsome as Wayne.
“Hi y’all doin’?” Tracy said politely.
“Not as fine as you, unfortunately,” L.C. said, laughing boisterously. “You know, cuz’? Unfortunately,” he repeated, still chuckling to himself. L.C. was short with a missing tooth, wearing an old Todd 1 sweat suit, which was out of fashion at the time.
Trap said, “Dig, ’cause I’m ’bout to run on up to Germantown and get quite fortunate myself, I must say.”
Tracy was pleased and tickled by their lighthearted Saturday Night Live attitudes. But she was smart enough to know that they were only friendly because Cash was their boy and she was his young-girl.
She followed Cash into his house to meet his young-looking mother and friendly sisters. His family was large. Tracy envied that. With three older brothers and four sisters, Cash would always have someone to talk to.