Capital City

  Walt backs away from her. “Naw, naw, I ain’t tryin’a hear that. Nigga get a car and some new gear and all of a sudden he’s your type.” He points at her to the other guys as he continues to back away, still grinning at her obvious embarrassment. “See how girls are t’day, you’n?”

  She gives up trying to hit him and turns back to me. “Well, anyway, are you driving me home, Wes?”

  I look to the guys as if they can help me out of this jam. They respond with blank stares.

  Walt says, “Well, take her home, Wes. You da man now.”

  Candice sucks her teeth. “Nobody asked you nothin’, Walt!”

  Walt just smiles.

  “Well, I’ll see y’all later on. We’re all going to Marshall’s, right?” I ask them.

  “We thinkin’ ’bout goin’ to the movies t’night, man,” Marshall tells me quietly, as if it was some kind of secret.

  “Okay, I’ll go.”

  Derrick looks me in my eyes with no mercy. “You remember what I told you?”

  He’s referring to not wanting to ride in my drug-money car.

  “Yeah. We can all ride with Marshall,” I respond to him.

  Walt frowns. “Man, look, fuck that dumb shit, you’n! I’m ridin’ wit’chu, Wes. We’ll jus’ follow them niggas up there and listen t’ ya bumpin’-ass system.” He looks back to Derrick and Marshall. “Y’all some cheesy-ass niggas, man. I can’t believe y’all.”

  Neither respond in front of Candice. “Well, I’ll see you later,” I tell them.

  Candice and I take the escalator down to Connecticut, cross the street, and walk around the corner to my car. A pink parking ticket is sitting inside of my window wipers.

  Candice spots it and laughs. “See dat shit, Joe? That’s that Sharon Pratt Kelly tryin’a increase her salary.”

  I just shake my head and take the ticket. “I bet the meter just ran the hell out, too.”

  Candice giggles. “They prob’ly waited for that shit, shawdy, ’cause them parkin’ people get bonuses for writin’ tickets.”

  “Yeah, I bet they do.”

  I drive Candice to Fourteenth and Harvard Streets Northwest, but she doesn’t get out. She sits there in my passenger’s seat as if I have something important to tell her.

  I look into her seductive, light brown face. “Well?”

  “Well, what?” she quizzes.

  “You’re home, right?”

  “And?”

  “Aren’t you getting out to go in?”

  She shakes her head defiantly. “Not until you tell me where we are in this relationship.”

  Oh my God! I knew this would happen. Now I’ll have to tell her the truth, just as I had to do with Sherry. But I should have known that this would happen in the first place.

  “Well, like Walt said, I didn’t know you liked me all like that.” I’m stalling to get her to loosen up her vice grip on my neck. It actually feels like I’m having a hard time breathing right now even though my windows are down and the weather is great.

  Candice gives me a hurt and evil look. “Aw, don’t even play me like dat, man. You know what we did. I don’t just let anybody spend the night. And I even got up and fixed you breakfast.”

  I sigh and look out my window away from her.

  “So what’s up, Wes? Are you gon’ ask me to go with you or not?”

  “I have to think about it.”

  It honestly doesn’t look like I can tell Candice that I have a girlfriend the way I told Sherry. I can’t lie to myself. I have more respect for Candice, I like her more, and more importantly, I’m still kind of afraid of her social status and the whole glamorous way in which she carries herself. She’s liable to make me the talk of the school if I diss her. Then she’d want to know who my girlfriend is and the whole nine yards.

  God, I’ve turned into such an idiot these last couple of months! I think it’s best for me to get out of this thing. In fact, I know it is.

  Candice looks confused. “You have to think about it? Well, you should’a had all the time in the world to think before you jumped into my damn bed!” She gets out and slams the car door with her bags in hand. “Thanks for da ride,” she says slyly, with all of her sarcasm.

  I take a deep breath and drive off. Candice would be a great catch for a lot of guys. But I have better rapport with NeNe. I mean, we’ve been together for only three months, but NeNe doesn’t give me half the jitters that Candice gives me. I just feel like I’d have too much to prove in order to keep Candice. And I’m really not up to that kind of a challenge.

  I pull over to my mother’s on Bunker Hill Road and park around the corner again. I use my key to enter and walk straight into an unexpected trap.

  “Hi, Wes.”

  I turn to my left to find Sybil resting against my mother’s black furniture in the living room. My heart skips a beat before I can say anything. She still has her hair braided, and she looks kind of good. Her brown face has a glow of confidence. She’s wearing a Kente-designed blouse and a royal blue skirt. I guess things have been going quite well for her.

  I force myself to smile. “Well, what a surprise this is.”

  My mother walks in from the kitchen wearing all green again—sweat pants and matching shirt—and slings her left arm around my shoulder as we both face Sybil. “Guess who I saw getting off the bus today, who I talked into having dinner with us?”

  I smile at her humor. But inside I’m hating this. I’ve never told my mother about NeNe either. I’ve just been living myself a double life, now, haven’t I?

  “How did you talk her into it?” I ask through the laughter my mother’s remark has stirred between these two conscious black women. My mother has always adored Sybil.

  “I begged her,” my mother jokes before laughing again. “No, just can’t allow you two to break off right when you’re both graduating in another week. It just doesn’t seem fair.”

  Everything is stale for a second before my mother tries to add spice to the situation. “Well, come on over here and talk to Sybil while I finish cooking this vegetarian lasagna.” She pulls me over to the couch, sits me next to Sybil, smiles at both of us and rushes back to the kitchen.

  Sybil looks at me and sighs. “Well, how’ve you been?” I guess she wants to settle all this tension that we’re both feeling as quickly as possible.

  “Okay, I guess. And you?”

  “I’ve been all right. You know, I’m still working at my job and all. They even offered me a full-time position during the summer.”

  I guess I’ve forgotten how much her employers like her. Sybil’s already been helping out the black cause by filling a counselor role at a halfway house for troubled teenaged girls in Northeast.

  “It looks like I’ll be doing the same thing you’re doing this summer with this group called Y.B.M.C.,” I tell her.

  Her brow raises with interest. “Y.B.M.C.?”

  I chuckle. “That’s what I said. But no, it stands for Young Black Men’s Club, and it’s in Southeast.”

  She nods. “That’s good. You know there’s a cultural art and poetry club in Southeast, too, on Martin Luther King Avenue when you first cross the bridge.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s the name of it?”

  “Eight-Rock.”

  I nod. “Yeah, I’ve heard of that.”

  She says, “Yeah, well, I’ve been reading my poetry over there every now and then. You know the black arts movement is about to explode all over the place.”

  “Like the sixties, huh?”

  “Bigger than the sixties.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah, because the time is so urgent that kids are gonna start living and dying with their art. I mean, it’s the only way out for so many lost souls, Wes. It’s like a bird’s only feathers to fly. Art is that which does not cost money. And the artistic ones will learn to soar with their God-given talents because the white man can’t take that away from them.”

  “Well, the white man seems to be putting a pr
ice tag on rap music and taking that away. And that’s the most vital poetry that we have going right now.”

  “Only for the meantime, before this explosion of stage and written poetry starts to inspire the grassroots again.”

  I cut her off. “But the grassroots are still going to need some type of economic support. And see, back in the sixties you had organizations that gathered the money they needed to funnel into their different programs. But this generation seems to be broke.”

  Sybil frowns. “Yeah, we be broke, while our drug brothers be dopes, getting rich while they be selling coke, and our children be goin’ up in smoke for the man, in this treacherous, treacherous red, black, and blue land.”

  I smile. “That was good. I forgot how you can just make poetry up from anything.”

  Sybil looks away from me. “You forgot my phone number, too?”

  Man! I can’t get a break. “Where did that come from?” I ask her.

  She sighs. “When I called you in December”—she looks at me pointedly when she says December—“I was confused about how happy you were in the relationship. I wanted to give you time to rest and gather your thoughts because I understand that I was getting a bit serious. And—”

  “But you said not to call you—”

  “Until you thought things over,” she says, finishing my sentence. She looks away again. “I guess you had a whole lot of thinking to do, huh, Wes?”

  She leaves me speechless except for an answered question here and an answered question there while we eat a “pre-graduation dinner” with my mother. My mother then drops Sybil off at the Brook and Metro station and drives me home. I’m feeling kind of silly about this, since I have a car now. But hell if I was going to tell her “Mom, I’ll take the bus home” or something to get out of her driving me. She’s always driven me home. Last time I ran out of the house before she could say anything about it. Plus, she still had company over, and I told her I was going to Marshall’s house anyway.

  “So, how did things go?” she asks me as we pull up in front of my building.

  With my peripheral vision, I can see J sitting inside of his car to our left. There’s no reason to get nervous or anything. My mother doesn’t know he’s here for me.

  “Well, Mom, I mean, Sybil and I haven’t been talking all that much lately, and—”

  “Don’t you both go to U.D.C. Don’t you see her?”

  “Not really. Most of her classes are at the other campus down near Howard now, on Eleventh Street.”

  My mother frowns. “And you mean to tell me that you two just”—she snaps her fingers—“broke up just like that?”

  “Not really. It’s a longer story. But I don’t have time right now to tell it to you. I’m going out to the movies with Marshall and them tonight.”

  “Mm-hmm. And does that boy Walt still hang out with you all?”

  I smile. My mother always asks me about Walt. She always wonders how he ended up hanging with us instead of “out going someplace” with his crazy self.

  “Yeah, he still hangs with us, Mom,” I tell her.

  “Hmm. Is he gon’ graduate next week?”

  I smile again, knowing the type of response my mother’s liable to give. “In December.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I shake my head at her, still grinning. “Why are you so down on him, Mom? I mean, what happens to all this conscious spirit when it comes to guys like Walt? What, he doesn’t have an opportunity like I do?”

  My mother laughs it off. “Go on, boy. He’s your friend. You know I love ’im. I jus’ like talking about him a lot.”

  “Why? Why not talk about Marshall or Derrick? Why do people always talk about the wild seeds?”

  “Because the Lord put the wild seeds on this earth to be talked about, that’s why.”

  We smile at each other as I climb out of my mother’s green Ford Pontiac. “Hey, Mom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is green your favorite color or something?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  We share another laugh as I shut her car door.

  “You make sure you get back with that good girl, you hear me?” she yells through the open car window.

  I smirk. “Yeah, I hear you.”

  As soon as she drives off, J hops out of his car and begins to walk in my direction with a big grin on his face. “Hey, man, what’s up?”

  I walk into my building expecting for him to follow me before I speak to him.

  J follows me up the stairs with my visible anger and confusion. “You ain’t mad at me for that dumb shit last week, is you?”

  “No, I just didn’t want my mother to see you talking to me in her rearview mirror as she drove off.”

  J smiles. Then he chuckles. “What she say about ’cha car?”

  “I didn’t tell her.”

  “You didn’t tell her?”

  I open my door and let J in. I close it back before I look him eye to eye. “What did your mother say when you told her how much drug money you’re making?”

  J drops his head and looks away from me. Then he looks back up with a smile. “She said, ‘Great! Keep it comin’!’”

  I smile back at him. “Yeah, sure she did.”

  I get ready to head to my bedroom so that I can finally give J his record book back, but he grabs my arm.

  “Yo, man, I ain’t mean dat shit I said to you last time in here, you’n. I was lunchin’ a li’l bit, man. Niggas called me up talkin’ ’bout some ol’ ‘Two t’ ya head’-type shit.”

  “That’s what Rudy was involved in?” I ask him.

  “Oh, I’on really know. I was just askin’. But don’t worry about that shit now. E’rything is taken care of.”

  Sounds fishy to me. But I’m not going to even ask him about it. “Okay. I understand.”

  J extends his right hand. “Aw’ight. We cool den.”

  I shake on it. I walk into my bedroom and pull his ledgers from deep within my closet. When I walk back out into my living room, J has spread a considerable amount of green cash out across my couch.

  “We gettin’ busy like a muthafucka, man! This eighteen thousand dollars!” He looks up at me with the energy of a child.

  “Yeah, well, not me. I’m calling it quits, J. I can’t stand the heat. So here’s your car keys.”

  I toss the ring of Acura Integra keys on top of his drug money.

  J looks astonished. “I thought you said it was cool about that dumb shit, you’n. I mean, damn, Joe, I said I was trippin’.”

  He looks serious for a minute. Then he just busts out laughing. “Yo, you’n, you got me in here soundin’ like a girl an’ shit. Now stop lunchin’ on me like that, Joe. Seriously.”

  I keep a straight face. “I am serious. I can’t do it no more, man. It’s as simple as that. And if you have to kill me . . . then do what you have to do.”

  I don’t really mean this at all. I’m hoping J gets the point I’m trying to make and not have me killed for real. But I doubt if Shank would do it. We’ve gotten pretty familiar. I think he likes me.

  J nods his head in slow, meaningful nods, as if he’s actually thinking it over—having me killed. My heart is starting to race, but I have to do this. I just have to!

  “Aw’ight, man, ’cause, like, things ’bout t’ get a li’l rough anyway.” He picks up the car keys and throws them back to me. “You can keep the car, man. The shit is in your name now anyway. You even got tags for it now.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t keep hiding it from my mother.”

  He chuckles. “Where is it at?”

  I smile. “Around the corner from her house.”

  He laughs a good hard one. “Yo, you somethin’ else, man. But yo, I was jus’ thinkin’ ’bout’chu that night I left here. And man, you already put me down on how to get my money in’na bank. So we cool at that.”

  He looks into my eyes as he stands with his money gathered back into his hands. He wears a Rolex watch on the left wrist and a gold nugget br
acelet on the right. He reaches out to shake my hand. I reach out to receive it.

  “My books, nigga,” he says, slapping my hand away.

  “Oh.” I give the small, brown ledger book to him.

  “Psych, man,” he says, extending his right hand again. This time I’m hesitant.

  “Come on, man. I’m on’na up an’ up.”

  We shake hands and smile at each other.

  “So what’chu gon’ do about money?” J asks me.

  “Get another job. Since I have a car now, maybe I can ride all the way out in Maryland or Virginia someplace and get something worth my while.”

  J pauses. “You know, it should be automatic for guys like you to get a job, man. I mean, good, clean niggas like you should keep a damn job, you’n. You should be da fuckin’ manager! You know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Yeah. Exactly.”

  He smiles and nods to me as he walks out. “Yo, you need me ta ride you back t’ ya ride?”

  “Ah, no, I’ll get it tomorrow morning when my mom goes off to work.”

  J frowns. “What about school?”

  I grin at him. “School is over with.”

  “Aw’ight den, man. That means my girl’ll be home soon.” He closes the door on my smile.

  Wow! That was tough! But it’s over with and it was easier than I thought it would be.

  I plan to sell the car and put the money in the bank along with the other four thousand dollars I’ve saved while keeping J’s records. He’s made over $200,000 since February. That’s no joke! But a lot of it gets wasted on trivial stuff like girls, outlandish amounts of pocket cash, guns, gear, and other expensive gadgets. Then again, what would a drug dealer be without those things? Then he’s had to pay off all the runners and keep cash to make buys. Not to mention paying off different small-business people to write him checks to deposit back into his account.

  I must say—negative cash or not—J has a lot of weight on his shoulders.

  I call up Marshall and tell him to pick me up when they’re all ready to go to the movies. I don’t know what we’re planning to see. I saw Who’s The Man? with NeNe last week. I thought it was ridiculous, at best. I mean, oil in Harlem? Get real! And casting a million rappers just undermines the whole deal of being an actor or an actress. I guess this is the “Rap Exploitation Era.”