I jog down to Third and Rhode Island with my heart pumping fast before a G4 bus catches up to me. I ride it over to the Northeast side, get off and relax a bit.
Whew! Shit! Why da fuck am I so nervous about robbin’ one white ma’fucka? Them white niggas rob us all the damn time, with rent, taxes, fucking hospital bills, and services. But not for a cheap-ass seventy fucking dollars! This shit is stupid!
I get back to the crib after eleven. I turn my TV on and the damn news is on again. Shit! They got a nigga’s mug shot for robberies and rapes out in Howard County! They say he was posing as a gas man. Howard County is the whitest place you can get! Joe in big trouble!
God damn! My heart is beating like I’m about to have a heart attack. This shit ain’t even me. But wouldn’t that be a bitch? I rob one white man for seventy fucking dollars and end up with the police after me!
I fall out across my couch and chill. White people don’t even carry real-ass money on them. That motherfucker probably has his real-ass money in stocks and bonds and stuff like I heard Wes talk about Butterman putting his money in an account too. Ain’t that some shit? I mean, it’s cool with me, but that nigga Butterman is a trip. Maybe Rudy is right about him trying to cut us short. But I’m still getting my grand every Monday. I saved up five thousand dollars now. So what the fuck am I doing robbing a white man for seventy fucking ducats?
That’s just how they get us niggas. We get like we backed up against a wall, then we break down and do stupid shit. I mean, Rudy got me in a bind now. I’m gon’ either have to kill him and stay with Butterman or help kill Butterman and go up against this Northeast crew with Rudy and his cousins. Either way is no way out. Unless I get the fuck up out of here. But that’s punk shit.
Damn! What da hell should I do?
I remember my cousin Cal telling me after we finished watching Juice at the movies in Trenton two years ago: “You see that nigga, Bishop? That’s how you get when you kill a man. It’s no way back to fightin’ wit’cha hands or your mind. You feel that rush like you can kill anybody, anybody that got beef.”
Damn! What da hell should I do?
I call up Carlette on my new cordless phone. At least I can be with her one more night. I mean, it feels like I don’t have that many left now. The walls are closing in on me.
“Hello,” she answers.
“Yo, I’m glad you home.”
“Why?”
“’Cause you get to see my house t’night.”
She’s smiling. I know her. Believe me.
“Why now?” she asks me.
“’Cause I don’t feel like leavin’ my crib.”
She pauses. “I’m not even dressed.”
“Get dressed and call me back.”
She gets quiet. “Umm, maybe we should do this another night.”
I don’t really know what to say. “I need to be wit’chu t’night.” Damn! That shit sounded weak! I’m thinking. But it’s the only thing I can say besides threatening her with something stupid.
She sighs. “Okay. You live up on Rhode Island Avenue, right, on the northeast side?”
“Yeah. It’s a 7-Eleven right up around Nineteenth Street?”
She gets excited. “Yeah, I know where that’s at!”
“How many minutes?”
“Prob’ly like thirty.”
“Aw’ight. Hurry up then.”
“Okay.”
I press the OFF button and take a deep breath. If I didn’t have her, I don’t think I could sleep tonight.
I wait thirty minutes and walk around the corner to the 7-Eleven. Carlette’s blue Toyota Tercel pulls up right as I cross the street. She opens the passenger’s door and I get in.
“Ride back down a half a block and make a right.”
She does what I tell her and parks on my block. “This looks real quiet,” she says behind me, walking up the steps to my building.
“Yeah, it’s jus’ what a nigga need, some peace and quiet.”
I open my door on the second floor and take my shirt off. Carlette walks in behind me and puts her black Coach pocketbook on my couch. She looks around my poster-decorated walls like it’s some kind of museum. And yo, no lie, she’s the first person to step foot in my crib or even know where it is, except for my family. So I guess she’s really getting close to me now.
She’s wearing this tan leather outfit and still looking around my living room. “This is all right!” she says while checking out my stereo system and speakers. It’s placed inside of my entertainment shelf. It’s all black and six feet tall with my television, stereo, and a bunch of tapes and CDs on different shelves. I bet she’s shocked to see a crib like this from a nigga like me. I even got some Persian-type rugs on my floors now.
I pull her close to me. “This leather smells good.”
She smiles. Her hair is done up in one of those Shirley Temple do’s with curls all over the top.
“Well, I got bad news,” she tells me.
“What, you pregnant?”
She pulls away from me, shaking her head. “No, I am not pregnant! Why do you keep asking me that?”
’Cause I wish you were. Then I would know that I’d have somethin’ left from me in this world when I die. But I don’t have the heart to say no shit like that. Even though it’s the truth.
“Well, what’s wrong?” I ask her.
She walks toward my bathroom, alongside the kitchen. “It’s that time of the month.”
I smile. “That’s cool. I ain’t want no sex t’night anyway.”
She starts running the sink water and peeps out the door, looking all cute and shit. “You lyin’.”
“No, I ain’t. I just wanted to be with you.”
I walk past her and head to my bedroom. She comes in behind me and checks out my new black dressers and my black satin-quilted bed. It’s a full-size.
“God! I would have never known that you were so . . . so—”
“What, a nigga can’t have a slammin’-ass apartment?” I’m smiling at her. And I’m glad this is how I’m ending this crazy-ass day.
Carlette walks back to the bathroom, closes the door, and comes out wearing a blue satin teddy. She’s carrying her leather outfit and her big, black Coach bag. She puts them on top of my smaller dresser in the left corner and jumps in my bed.
I lay back and let her rub on my chest. I look down at her light-ass hands, gliding across my black-ass chest. “Damn! Look how light you are,” I tell her.
She giggles. “Look how dark you are.”
I smile at her. “Our kids would prob’ly be tannish-brown or that red-brown, lndian-lookin’ color.”
She grins. “And would their father be able to be around them?”
I grimace. “What’chu mean by dat?”
“Would you raise them?”
“Damn right I would raise ’em!”
She chuckles and falls down against my chest. She damn near looks white on me! This shit is weird. I feel like I might get lynched for this.
“I love your skin,” Carlette tells me. She’s drawing circles on my stomach with her painted nails.
“Why?”
“Because it looks so deep. It shines without lotion or baby oil. And it’s so smooth.”
I laugh at the shit. Then she goes inside my drawers and makes my dick hard as she cradles it with her baby soft hands.
I grab her hand out of my pants. “Yo, I thought you said it was that time of the month.”
She smiles up in my face. “It is. But we can do it in the shower.”
I frown at her and push her away, play-like. “You really is nasty.”
She cracks the hell up. “Stop callin’ me that before I start to believe it and not wanna make love to you anymore.”
I lay silent. “Do you know what’chu jus’ said?”
“What?”
“You said ‘make love’ to me.”
She looks off of my chest and in the direction of my long dresser to my right. “I know.”
“So you sayin’ you love me? How you gon’ love me an’nis the first time you even been t’ my crib?”
She pauses like she has to think about it. I’m interested to hear her answer.
“I do love you. I love your honesty. I mean, even when you don’t say nothin’ you tell the truth.”
“Huh? What da hell dat mean?” I’m giving her a “dumb-nigger” look, but I know what she means. All real niggas tell the truth without speaking. It’s the law of the strong. That’s why you know which niggas are real and which niggas are fake-ass punks. But do you have to kill a man to be real?
Carlette’s still drawing on my stomach. She says, “It’s like, you’re so serious—even when you say stuff that’s funny—that no one could ever read you wrong. I mean, it’s like, I know just what you’re telling me. Like when you called me t’night, you needed me.”
She squeezes me tightly. And I ain’t got nothing to say. All I know is that she’s right, and I’m glad she’s here with me. Fuck being hard when you’re really hurting inside. It may be punk shit to cuddle up with a girl like this to some niggas. But fuck them! I need this kind of attention! Maybe if my mother gave it to me I wouldn’t be in this crazy shit in the first damn place.
* * *
I’m in some type of hospital. I have on light blue cotton pants and a matching short-sleeve shirt. I’m pushing some kind of cart in front of me. It looks like a food tray with wheels that they use in the hospitals. It’s other people in the hallway with me, but it’s not like anybody’s paying me any kind of attention.
Now I’m sneaking inside of a fire escape. I open the bottom door to the outside. Sirens are going off with lights, trying to locate me. I run across some grass field and slip underneath a barbed-wire fence.
Shit! I cut my arm on the edge of the fence. They got dogs after me now. But it’s like, I can hear the motherfuckers barking, but I don’t see them.
I run across a highway and almost get my ass hit by an eighteen-wheeler truck. I walk inside some bar and it ain’t nothing but white people in it. I look up at their television and the news is on.
Oh, shit! They got my mug shot! And they know my real name!
I run out the bar hearing police sirens, but I don’t see no fucking cops. My heart is beating fast like shit, and I’m sweating now.
Somehow I’m back in Southeast on my mother’s block on K Street. But nobody’s out and it looks like a ghost town.
I beat on my mother’s door. “Mom! Let me in! They after me!”
My mom opens the door looking all pissed off at me like she always looks. She got fucking rollers in her hair.
“Gotdammit! What’chu do now, boy?”
Boom! Boom ! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
“Open up, it’s the police!”
“Oh shit, Mom! Hide me, Mom! Please! Don’t let ’em get me!”
“Where, boy? I ain’t got no place to hide you in’nis small-ass house.”
I run to the back of the stairs and kick a hole in the wall. “Hide me in here and block off the hole with a dresser.”
My mother starts to push me in the hole, but I can’t fit.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
“We’re breaking the door down, ma’am!”
My eyes are big as hell! My heart feels like it’s about to jump out of my fucking chest!
“Oh, shit, Mom! Hurry da fuck up!”
“Who you cussin’ at, boy? I’m tryin’, damn it!”
* * *
“Darnell! Darnell!”
“Huh? What?”
Carlette is staring at me and shaking me around in the darkness of my room like she just saw a fucking ghost. “Are you okay?”
“What’chu talkin’ ’bout?” Damn! I know what she’s talkin’ about. I musta been lunchin’ like shit in my sleep. And now she fucked around and caught me!
“You were shaking like you were having a seizure or something.” She shakes her head, still looking shocked. “God, you scared the hell out of me.”
I lean up and sink my face into my hands. I pull my knees up to my chest. Damn! I’m fuckin’ up in’na head, I’m thinking.
Carlette hugs onto me. “Are you okay, Nell?”
I sigh. Ain’t no use in acting like I’m hard now. She done messed around and caught me slipping. I guess too much has happened today for my mind to take it all.
“I’on know, girl,” I tell her. “I jus’ don’t know.”
I lay back on my bed. Carlette lays her head across my chest and starts stroking on my stomach again with her nails. All I’m thinking about is lyrics for some reason. I guess something’s telling me that my rhymes are my salvation.
It was late one night. I was out, taking a walk, Joe.
A car pulled up behind me with no lights, cruising slow.
I looked to the driver. He said, “Yo, what’s up, brother?”
So I thought it was cool and didn’t think about ducking for cover.
All of a sudden I saw the 12-gauge shotgun. And boom!
I didn’t even get a chance to run. Then smack!
My back hit the concrete.
Is this the end, Joe? Is my life complete?
Goddamn! I’m only dreaming, and my heart has a fast pace.
I’m having nightmares, like my man Scarface.
Wes
Professor Cobbs yanks me to attention before I can get out in Dennard Plaza to talk to the guys up at school. “So have you contacted Mark Thompson yet?” He’s wearing his usual prep look with an attention-grabbing green-and-orange tie.
“Not yet, but I still have his number.”
“Well, have you taken the GRE exam?”
“Yeah, and that little study guide you gave me came in handy.”
He nods with a smile. “That’s why I gave it to you.”
I know I look anxious to catch up to my friends, but Professor Cobbs doesn’t look like he’s finished with me yet.
“So what do you have planned for this summer, Ray?” he asks me with an intense look on his face. I can feel that he’s going to proposition me with something.
“Work, work, and more work.” I’m hoping I can head him off with a busy-sounding schedule before he can zap me with some grand idea of his.
“I have this summer program—Y.B.M.C.—that I’m trying to find young, upcoming guys like yourself to take part in as counselors.”
“Y.B.M.C.?”
“Young Black Men’s Club.”
I nod. “Oh, well—”
“And if you have any spare time, I’d love for you to participate.” He shakes his head, seemingly as if he’s in great pain. “We gotta do something out here to stop these young boys from killing each other.”
I nod, feeling guilty as ever and halting my planned rejection. I believe I’m trapped in the thick of it now. The money and attention I’ve been getting lately is really hard to part with. But I’ve finally found the courage I need to call it quits.
“So you think you’ll be interested in anything like that? We’re located in Southeast.”
“Southeast?”
Professor Cobbs smiles knowingly. “If you wanna deal with this monster for real, you have to start with the most vicious head.”
I smile back at him. “I guess so.”
He grabs my shoulder the way older brothers do us younger brothers when they’re really trying to communicate with us or convince us of doing something they deem important.
“So how ’bout it, Ray? You think you wanna help me out? You can tell a couple of friends, too, but only if they’re serious. I don’t want any half-steppers.”
He’s grinning at me while I think it over. He’s still caressing my shoulder as his guarantee. I feel like he’s more telling me than asking me.
“Yeah, I guess I’m in, but let me call you on it after I check my summer schedule and all.”
He finally backs off of me with a smile. “Great! I knew I could count on you, Ray. We’re not totally in the dark. We still have a few good soldiers.
”
He shakes my hand and heads for the down escalator to Connecticut Avenue. “Okay, Ray. I’ll be talking to you.”
I nod. “All right.”
I head in the opposite direction toward U.D.C.’s Dennard Plaza area. As soon as I enter the yard I spot Candice talking to Marshall and Derrick on the benches to my right. Walt is to my left, talking to a brown-skinned sister in a big pair of blue jeans.
“Speak of the devil!” Marshall says to Derrick and Candice, who have their backs turned toward me.
“Hey, Wes,” Candice says, facing me.
Derrick just smiles. We’ve made up—partly—after that rainy night when I first revealed my money sources and my car to the guys after hiding it for so long. I guess I took it harder than they meant it. They still see it as being hypocritical, even though they haven’t disowned me yet. But I think I have some good news to tell them for later on.
“Yeah, it’s me, the troublemaker,” I joke with a smile.
Marshall and I could pass for twins. We’re both wearing our thin-rimmed school-boy glasses and colorful vests with our blue shirts, blue jeans, and brown shoes. Derrick’s wearing the Boyz II Men look: all denim gear with a colorful tie. And Candice shocks me with her black leather short-and-vest outfit over lace stockings, while Walt wears his typical jeans, tennis shoes, and a Polo sweatshirt.
Hell! When did I start paying so much attention to what everyone’s wearing?
“So you ready ta drive me home?” Candice asks, grabbing my right arm. I guess she’s showing off her affection for me in front of the guys.
I feel slightly nervous. I mean, we’ve slept together and all, but this is definitely going to add fire to the flame with the guys.
“Ahh, are we all hitting Marshall’s house tonight?” I ask Derrick. I’m trying my best to make Candice look less obvious. Of course it’s not working. The guys are eyeing her new affection for me like hungry vultures. And here comes Walt to throw the salt and pepper on me.
“I thought Wes wasn’t ya type, Candice?” he says, smiling.
Candice laughs it off. “Aw, you’n, why you gon’ say dat shit? You know me an’ Wes always been cool like dat, Joe. Why you playin’ me?” She lets my arm go and throws love taps in Walt’s direction to release some of her embarrassment.